332 research outputs found
Does Indonesia have a"low-pay"civil service?
No full textGovernment officials and polcy analysts maintain that Indonesia's civil servants are poorly paid and have been for decades. This conclusion is supported by anecdotal evidence and casual empiricism. The authors systematically analyze the realtionship between government and private compensation levels using data from two large household surveys carried out by Indonesia's Central Bureau of Statistics: the 1998 Sakernas and 1999 Susenas. The results suggest that government workers with a high school education or less, representing three-quarters of the civil service, earn a pay premium over their private sector counterparts. Civil servants with more than a high school education earn less than they would in the private sector but, on average, the premium is far smaller than commonly is alleged and is in keeping with public/private differentials in other countries. These results prove robust to varying econometric specifications and cast doubt on low pay as an explanation for government corruption.Decentralization,Public Health Promotion,Health Monitoring&Evaluation,National Governance,Knowledge Economy,Health Monitoring&Evaluation,NationalGovernance,Knowledge Economy,Education for the Knowledge Economy,Parliamentary Government
Corrole basicity in the excited states: Insights on structure-property relationships
No full textSteady-state fluorescence measurements and quantum-chemical DFT geometry optimizations are applied to extend the structure-property relationships between the free-base corrole macrocycle conformation and its basicity to the lowest excited S-1 and T-1 states. Direct basicity estimation in the lowest excited S-1 state is demonstrated by means of fluorescence quantum yield measurements. The long wavelength T1 tautomer is found to retain its basicity in the S(1 )state, whereas the short wavelength T2 tautomer shows a noticeable decrease in basicity in the S-1 state, which is related to the in-plane tilting of the pyrrole ring to be protonated. The conformational changes upon going from the ground to the lowest excited T-1 state and the influence of the meso-aryl substitution pattern on the overall degree of distortions and tilting of the pyrrole ring to be protonated are also discussed from the point of view of macrocycle basicity.Prof. W. Maes acknowledges the Research Foundation-Flanders (FWO) and Hasselt University for financial support. Prof. M. Kruk, Prof. L. Gladkov and Ass. Prof. D. Klenitsky acknowledge the State Program of Scientific Researches of the Republic of Belarus "Photonics, opto-and microelectronics", grant no.1.3.01, for financial support.Maes, W (corresponding author), Hasselt Univ, Inst Mat Res IMO IMOMEC, Agoralaan 1, B-3590 Diepenbeek, Belgium.
Kruk, MM (corresponding author), Belarusian State Technol Univ, Phys Dept, Sverdlov Str 13a, Minsk 220006, BELARUS.
[email protected]; [email protected]
Psilota aegeae Vujic, Stahls et Smit 2020, sp. n.
No full textPsilota aegeae Vujić, Ståhls et Smit sp. n. ZooBank link: urn:lsid:zoobank.org:act: C15AA253-D7AB-4BE7-BAAE-F7617409E9B6 Figs 9, 10, 11A, C Type material. HOLOTYPE: Greece, ♂, pinned, in FSUNS. Original label: “Agiassos, 21.iv.2007, Sanatorio Site, leg. Pérez-Bañón C. & Vujić A.”. PARATYPES: Greece: 1♂ + 1♀, same locality as holotype, Lesvos, Agiassos, Sanatorio Site, 39°06’00.26”N 26°21’25.45”E, 21.iv.2007, leg. C. Pérez-Bañón, A. Vujić (FSUNS); 1♂ + 2♀, Lesvos, Agiassos, 39°06’00.26”N 26°21’25.45”E, 13.iv.2013, leg. A. Vujić (FSUNS); 1♂, Lesvos, Agiassos, 39°06’00.26”N 26°21’25.45”E, 8.v.2007, leg. G. Ståhls (MZH; collection code http://id.luomus.fi/GJ.2051 ♀, Lesvos, Agiassos, 39°06’00.26”N 26°21’25.45”E, 9.v.2007, leg. G. Ståhls (MZH; DNA voucher, collection code http://id.luomus. fi/GJ.2501 and http://id.luomus.fi/GJ.2052 1♂, Lesvos, Megali Limni, 28.iv.2008, 39°05’49”N 26°19’55”E, leg. G. Ståhls (MZH; http://id.luomus.fi/GJ.2053 1♂, Lesvos, Megali Limni, 39°05’49”N 26°19’55”E, 9.v.2009, leg. G. Ståhls (MZH; http://id.luomus.fi/GJ.2054 1♂, Lesvos, Megali Limni, 39°05’49”N 26°19’55”E, 9.v.2009, leg. G. Ståhls (MZH; http://id.luomus.fi/GJ.2055 1♂, Lesvos, Megali Limni, 1.v.2008, 39°05’49”N 26°19’55”E, leg. G. Ståhls (MZH; DNA voucher http://id.luomus.fi/GJ.2655 1♂, Lesvos, 30.iv.2008, leg. S. Radenković (FSUNS). Diagnosis. Psilota aegeae sp. n. belongs to the P. atra species group, with metafemur in male not swollen (Fig. 9E) and epandrium in male genitalia longer than broad, outer surstyle lobe shorter than inner surstyle lobe (Fig. 11 A–B). Antenna in female implanted in the upper half of the face (Fig. 10A), basoflagellomere about 2 times longer than broad, with clearly brown elongated macula basoventrally (Fig. 10A); abdomen covered with predominantly whitish pile, while the scutellum covered with whitish pile intermixed with the black ones (Fig. 10 C–D). Based on male genitalia characters, Psilota aegeae sp. n. is the most similar to Psilota atra, but differs as follows: in P. aegeae sp. n. epandrium 1.2 times longer than broad, while in P. atra almost 2 times (Fig. 11 A–B), furthermore there are differences in morphological characters of other body parts as well: basoflagellomere in P. aegeae sp. n. longer (about 2 times longer than broad) than in P. atra (1.5 times); cell R on wing in P. aegeae sp. n. is hyaline compared to P. atra where this cell is distinctly yellow; in P. aegeae sp. n. pile on tergum 2 mostly pale-yellow, and much longer on lateral margins of all terga with regard to P. atra (pile on all terga mostly black and much shorter on lateral margin); tergum 2 with less developed transverse grooves in P. aegeae sp. n. which are distinctively developed in P. atra. The female of P. aegeae sp. n. can be separated from all other Psilota species by the combination of the following characters: antennae implanted in the upper half of the face; anepisternum covered with white pile and metafemur not swollen. From the related P. atra, it differs by the color of the pilosity: pale-yellow on frons in P. aegeae sp. n. (in some specimens the pile on frons are pale-yellow in anterior part and black in posterior part), while black in P. atra; mostly pale-yellow on scutum in P. aegeae sp. n., while black in P. atra; white on metathoracic pleuron in P. aegeae sp. n., while mixed black and pale-yellow in P. atra. Molecular data: The clustering of the mtDNA COI barcode sequences of the included Psilota species and specimens is shown in Fig. 12. The uncorrected sequence divergences between Psilota aegeae sp. n. and included Psilota spp. ranged between 3.3–4.4%. Description. MALE. Head (Fig. 9 A–B). Antennae elongated, basoflagellomere about 2 times longer than broad, rounded at the tip, mostly dark-brown, except small light-brown basoventral inner area; face and frons black, mostly shiny, with scarce, indistinct dark-brown/gray microtrichia, covered with black pile, as well as vertex; face with a bare vitta, from the base of antenna to upper margin of mouth; genae and ventral part of mouth edge without pile; eyes densely covered with long yellowish pile; eye contiguity about as 2 times longer than ocellar triangle; ocellar triangle isosceles, covered with very long black pile; occiput very narrow, covered with short black pile. Thorax (Fig. 9C, E). Entirely black, with fine punctuation, covered with black pile somewhat wavy at the top; pile on scutum and scutellum clearly of two different lengths (Fig. 9C); scutellum with a row of long pile-like bristles at the posterior margin; subscutellar fringe composed of short black pile; metathoracic pleuron mostly shiny, predominantly covered with black pile (except whitish ones at grey microtrichose anterior end of anterior anepisternum), the longer pile somewhat wavy at the top; wings hyaline, veins clearly yellow at the base; pterostigma yellow; wing covered with microtrichia, except basal half of the cell R almost bare; calypteres yellowish, with some brown pile at the posterodistal margin of fringe, the rest yellow; halteres yellow-brown; legs entirely black, except apex of femora and base of the tibiae slightly lighter; all legs covered with mixed pale and black pile; metafemur thin, about 4.7 times longer than wide; the apical half of the metafemur ventrally with a shallow groove, formed by two rows of mixed short and long black spines (Fig. 9E); the ventral surface of the tarsi with the short yellow pile. Abdomen (Fig. 9D). Entirely black, predominantly shining; tergum 2 mostly covered with yellowish pile, only the posterior half with some black pile; terga 3 and 4 usually almost entirely covered with black pile, except some yellowish pile on lateral margins of both terga and anterior end of tergum 4 (area with yellowish pile on tergum 4 can be larger); all pile on the abdomen erect; sterna black, shiny, covered with long and erect whitish pile wavy at the top. Male genitalia (Fig. 11A, C). Epandrium compactly built, rectangular, longer than broad; inner surstyle lobe elongated, broad apically; outer surstyle lobe narrow and curved, shorter than inner surstyle lobe; cercus very elongated, rectangular (Fig. 11A); height of narrowest part of epandrium in dorsal view small (Fig. 11C). Superior lobe fused with hypandrium, narrow with tapering tip; aedeagus with a serrate ventral margin and pointed apex (Fig. 11A). FEMALE (Fig. 10). Similar to the male except for the following characters: face, frons and larger part of occiput covered with pale-yellow/whitish pile (Fig. 10 A–B); basoflagellomere with a clear elongated brown to reddish macula basoventrally, developed on both sides of basoflagellomere, inner and outer (Fig. 10A); pile on the eyes much shorter than in males; pile on scutum all pale-yellow, except at the wing basis, postalar callus and on posterior margin of scutellum mixed white and black pile (Fig. 10C); the metathoracic pleuron entirely covered with pale-yellow pile; legs and abdomen predominantly covered with whitish pile (Fig. 10D, E). Etymology. The specific epithet is the genitive case of the Greek name Aegea (to which the Aegean Sea owes its name) and refers to its origin, an island in the Aegean Sea. Distribution. Only known from Lesvos Island (Greece) (Fig. 6). Probably local endemic. Biology. Adults were collected in open areas within Mediterranean pine forest Pinus brutia Tenore (255–355m above sea level). They were visiting flowers of Smirnium perfoliatum L. Flight period is from April to beginning of May.Published as part of Radenković, Snežana, Likov, Laura, Ståhls, Gunilla, Rojo, Santos, Pérez-Bañón, Celeste, Smit, John, Petanidou, Theodora, Steenis, Wouter Van & Vujić, Ante, 2020, Three new hoverfly species from Greece (Diptera: Syrphidae), pp. 103-124 in Zootaxa 4830 (1) on pages 114-119, DOI: 10.11646/zootaxa.4830.1.4, http://zenodo.org/record/440296
Performance management for learning, reform, and change
No full textA review essay of Performance Management in the Public Sector, by Wouter Van Dooren, Geert Bouckaert, and John Halligan; Government Performance and Results: An Evaluation of GPRA’s First Decade, by Jerry Ellig, Maurice McTigue, and Henry Wray; and The PerformanceStat Potential: A leadership strategy for producing results, by Robert D. Behn.Book Revie
Pastoralists, chiefs and bureaucrats: a grazing scheme in dryland Central Mali
No full text
The papers in this volume were presented at a conference on local resource management in Africa, held in Leiden on February 9-10, 1993. Introduction: Local resource management in African national contexts (Hans P.M. van den Breemer and L. Bernhard Venema); Case studies: Working with nature: local fishery management on the Logone floodplain in Chad and Cameroon (Carel A. Drijver, Jeroen C.J. van Wetten and Wouter T. de Groot) - Local management of moving resources: the case of the Dogon village herd (Walter E.A. van Beek) - Farmers managing their most scarce resource: an example of local-level soil fertility management in northern Cameroon (Bart de Steenhuijsen Piters and Louise O. Fresco) - Pastoralists, chiefs and bureaucrats: a grazing scheme in dryland central Mali (Han van Dijk and Mirjam de Bruijn) - Towards local management of natural resources in Senegal (Hans P.M. van den Breemer, Rice R. Bergh and Gerti Hesseling) - Wilfdlife resources and local development: experiences from Zimbabwe's Campfire programme (Wim Olthof) - Local environmental management in north Benin (Leo J. de Haan) - With a little help from our friends: the Gouzda case of local resource management in Cameroon (Carel A. Drijver and Youp J.J. van Zorge) - Insight, self-interest and participation: the keys to improved local environmental management: an example from Senegambia (Menno P. Sypkens Smit). Theoretical contributions by L. Bernhard Venema; Peter Laban; Wouter T. de Groot, Jeroen C.J. van Wetten and Carel A. Drijver; and K. Freerk Wiersum and Berry E.J.C. Lekanne dit Deprez (on the Sahel).ASC – Publicaties niet-programma gebonde
Spectral and Luminescent Properties and NH-Tautomerism of Alkylated Corrole Free Bases
No full textThe molecular structures and spectral and luminescent properties of 2,3,7,13,17,18-hexamethyl-8,12-di-nbutylcorrole and 7,13-dimethyl-8,12-di-n-butylcorrole free bases in solutions at 288-328 K were studied using luminescence and absorption spectroscopy and quantum chemistry. Absorption and fluorescence spectra of the compounds were shown to be superimposed spectra of two NH-tautomers. Individual tautomer spectra were identified. Bands were assigned to specific transitions. NH-tautomer equilibria in the ground S(0)and lower excited S(1)singlet states were characterized.The work was financially supported by the State Basic Research Program of the Republic of Belarus Photonics, Opto-and Microelectronics (Photonics Subprogram, Task 1.3.01).Kruk, MM (corresponding author), Belarusian State Technol Univ, Minsk 220006, BELARUS.
[email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]
Haptically Enhanced Motor Variability Shows Contrary Effects on Transfer of Learning
No full textIn order to improve skill acquisition and neurorehabilitation, we need to improve our understanding of human motor learning. It has been shown that innate variability of movements made by an individual when performing a motor task (motor variability) might enhance skill acquisition. Augmenting motor variability could therefore be a promising method to enhance learning. However, current methods that enhance motor variability show divergent results and need to be better understood. In a lab-based experiment with twenty healthy participants,we studied the effect of a new method that haptically increases participants’ motor variability in learning a dynamic task, i.e., controlling a pendulum. This new method consisted of applying pseudo-random perturbation forces to the internal degree of freedom of the dynamic system (indirect haptic noise), instead of applying forces directly on the trainee’s hands as previously studied. The main task consisted of swinging a virtual pendulum to hit incoming targets with the pendulum ball. To assess generalization of learning we used two transfer tasks, which consisted of altered target positions or altered task dynamics (i.e., a pendulum with shorter rod length). We evaluated the effect of the new methodon learning by comparing performance gains after training to a control group who trained without perturbations. We found that the perturbations successfully increased participants’ motor variability during training. Although we observed no learning benefits of training with this indirect haptic noise for the trainedtask compared to the control group, we observed divergent effects for transfer of learning. Participants that trained with indirect haptic noise seemed to benefit in transfer of learning to altered task dynamics but not in the task with altered target positions. Increasing motor variability by indirect haptic noise is promising for enhancing skill acquisition, specially in transfer of learning, and in tasks that incorporate complex dynamics. However, more research is needed to make indirect haptic noise a valuable tool for real life motor learning situations, e.g., inrobotic neurorehabilitation.Mechanical Engineering | BioMechanical Desig
Corrigendum: The influenza hemagglutinin stem antibody CR9114:Evidence for a narrow evolutionary path towards universal protection ( vol 2 , 1049134 , 2022)
No full textIn the published article, there was an error in the Author List. The author Jaco M. Klap was erroneously excluded. The corrected Author List appears below. Anna L. Beukenhorst, Jacopo Frallicciardi, Clarissa M. Koch, Jaco M. Klap, Angela Phillips, Michael M. Desai, Kanin Wichapong, Gerry A. F. Nicolaes, Wouter Koudstaal, Galit Alter and Jaap Goudsmit In the published article, there was an error in the Author Contributions. The author Jaco M. Klap was erroneously excluded. The corrected Author Contributions appears below. AB and JF contributed equally to the writing of this article. AB, JF, CK, JK and JG designed this article. WK, GA, CK, and JG contributed to the article and provided critical remarks. KW and GAFN performed the structural analysis, JK analyzed the in vitro neutralization data for the landscape. AP and MMD contributed to the parts regarding the evolutionary pathway of pan-influenza protection. All authors contributed to the article and approved the submitted version. In the published article, there was an error in the Conflict of Interest Statement. The author Jaco M. Klap was erroneously excluded. The corrected Conflict of Interest Statement appears below. AB, JF, CK, JK, WK, GA, and JG have disclosed that they are employees of Leyden Laboratories with stock options in this company. The remaining authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest. In the published article, there was an error in the Acknowledgements. The author Jaco M. Klap was erroneously included in the acknowledgements when he should have been added as an author. The corrected Acknowledgements appears below. We thank Carolyn Boudreau for the useful discussions. The authors apologize for these errors and state that this does not change the scientific conclusions of the article in any way. The original article has been updated.</p
A review of Absolute Life Cycle Assessment methods and applications: And their potential for benchmarking absolute product-level contributions to the UN Sustainable Development Goals
No full textAs of 2016, governments globally adopted the task to achieve social, economic and environmental sustainability by committing to the targets from the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The SDGs incorporate a set of 17 goals and 169 targets accompanied with more than 200 indicators that can guide towards achieving sustainable development by 2030. Sustainable development and human wellbeing fundamentally rest on the capacity of the biosphere to sustain us. In other words, the economy or society related SDGs can only be reached if the biosphere related SDGs, in which they are embedded, are respected. To ensure the achievement of all SDGs, the environmental impact as a result of human activity needs to be reduced to safe levels. Doing so requires quantification of both impacts and safe operating spaces in the environmental domain. However, from the SDG framework it does not become clear what safe operating spaces are because for many of the environmental issues addressed, quantitative targets based on ecological boundaries are lacking. Life-Cycle Assessment (LCA) is a method that enables holistic analysis of the environmental impact of product-systems by analyzing the impacts over the complete life cycle. Yet, as a comparative method it can only identify the most sustainable product system relative other alternative product-systems. In contrast, there have been developments to develop Absolute Life Cycle Assessment (ALCA), in which the environmental impact of a product-system is compared against a benchmark based on the earth’s ecological carrying capacity, in order to define if the system is absolutely sustainable. Such a benchmark is obtained by allocating a share of the environmental carrying capacity to the product system, using a specific allocation principle. The most recognized expression of environmental carrying capacity has been provided by the planetary boundary (PB) framework, offering a set of quantitative biophysical limits for nine critical earth system processes (ESP). The functioning of these ESPs is critical to keep the earth in its stable Holocene state, which is required for anthropogenic prosperity. Using the LCA method to quantify impacts, and the PB framework to provide quantitative ecological boundaries, ALCA could be useful to identify absolutely sustainable product-systems and support contributions from product-systems towards environmental SDG targets. Yet, an overview showing the availability of different ALCA methods and their applicability at the product level is lacking. Therefore, this master thesis provides a systematic literature review of ALCA methods and applications, that use the planetary boundary (PB) framework as an implementation of carrying capacity. The main research question is formulated as: To what extent is absolute life cycle assessment possible and does it enable a comparison of environmental impact against product-level benchmarks based on the PB-framework, to support the identification of absolute sustainable products contributing to the UN SDGs? With a database search on Web of Science (WoS) and a snowballing approach, possibly relevant publications were identified. Afterwards, 14 key publications were selected that entail either an ALCA method or application. The review was conducted with criteria primarily based on an absolute environmental sustainability assessment (AESA) framework identified from literature. The criteria cover aspects related to LCA, the PB framework and allocation approaches needed to obtain benchmarks at the product-level. The results showed that there are 5 dominant methods, and 9 applications of these methods. Only one of these methods includes a direct comparison of impact against a benchmark specifically allocated to the assessed product-system. Therefore, we concluded that only one method can truly be considered as an ALCA method that is also potentially usable in the context of SDGs. However, even claims of absolute sustainability that are made using this method are not fully conceptually consistent because a comparison is made between an annual benchmark (derived from the PB framework) and LCA impacts that are in reality exerted over many years. Other methods were considered usable for different purposes. Some methods only facilitate a comparison of impact against a per-capita benchmark, representing the occupation of an individual’s environmental budget by the product-system. These methods are rather usable for identifying sustainable consumption patterns. Some methods only enable the determination of impact reduction targets against which future impact reductions might be compared. Others do not involve any form of absolute sustainability comparison and are rather usable in conventional comparative LCA. We provided a terminology proposition for PB related concepts because there seemed to be inconsistencies across publications regarding the use of PB-related concepts and their terminology. Also, there were inconsistencies in the terminology for different allocation principles. We stated that all allocation principles could be classified in three main categories. Yet, further research is recommended to find common ground on the choice for specific allocation principles to obtain benchmarks for product-systems. Also, we recommend further research to focus on getting insights in linkages between LCA impact categories, PB’s and SDGs and combining these insights with the knowledge on ALCA methods that has been provided in this thesis. Such a combination would be the next step to find the potential of ALCA methods for supporting contributions from product-systems towards environmental SDG(-target)s.Industrial Ecolog
Comparative Experimentation of Accuracy Metrics in Automated Medical Reporting: The Case of Otitis Consultations
No full textGenerative Artificial Intelligence (AI) can be used to automatically generate
medical reports based on transcripts of medical consultations. The aim is to
reduce the administrative burden that healthcare professionals face. The
accuracy of the generated reports needs to be established to ensure their
correctness and usefulness. There are several metrics for measuring the
accuracy of AI generated reports, but little work has been done towards the
application of these metrics in medical reporting. A comparative
experimentation of 10 accuracy metrics has been performed on AI generated
medical reports against their corresponding General Practitioner's (GP) medical
reports concerning Otitis consultations. The number of missing, incorrect, and
additional statements of the generated reports have been correlated with the
metric scores. In addition, we introduce and define a Composite Accuracy Score
which produces a single score for comparing the metrics within the field of
automated medical reporting. Findings show that based on the correlation study
and the Composite Accuracy Score, the ROUGE-L and Word Mover's Distance metrics
are the preferred metrics, which is not in line with previous work. These
findings help determine the accuracy of an AI generated medical report, which
aids the development of systems that generate medical reports for GPs to reduce
the administrative burden.Comment: 10 pages, 1 figure, to be presented at HEALTHINF 2024, Author
contributions: Wouter Faber and Renske Eline Bootsma performed research and
wrote paper, Tom Huibers provided needed software and research inspiration,
Sandra van Dulmen provided the data and feedback on paper, Sjaak Brinkkemper
supervised the project and provided continuous feedbac
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