Search results for " Time"
showing 10 items of 3005 documents
Microfinance
2013
This chapter gives the reader an introduction to microfinance and reports how the industry has moved from generally being praised to increasingly being criticized. Particularly, the chapter addresses the concern that microfinance institutions chase profits and are moving away from the poor-customer segments. The authors' findings indicate that rather than being an industry with high profits, the industry struggles with high costs and low earnings. They also find that the focus on serving poor customers did not change over time. Thus, the ‘mission drift’ claim cannot be confirmed.
On the myriad mathematical traditions of ancient greece
2002
To exert one’s historical imagination is to plunge into delicate deliberations that involve personal judgments and tastes. Historians can and do argue like lawyers, but their arguments are often made on behalf of a picture of the past, and these historical images obviously change over time. Why should the history of mathematics be any different? When we imagine the world of ancient Greek mathematics, the works of Euclid (Heath 1926), Archimedes (Heath 1897b), and Apollonius (Heath 1897a) easily spring to mind. Throughout most of the twentieth century, our dominant image of Greek mathematical traditions has been shaped by the high standards of rigor and creative achievement that are purporte…
Secular trends in muscular fitness among Finnish adolescents.
2010
Aim: To investigate secular change over time in health-related muscular fitness and how leisure time physical activity (LTPA), sport club participation, and body mass index are associated with muscular fitness in adolescents. Methods: Two cross-sectional samples of Finnish 13—16-year-old adolescents were studied in 1976 (n = 643; 312 boys and 331 girls) and in 2001 (n = 579; 308 boys and 271 girls). Muscular fitness index was calculated as the sum of age- and sex-specific z-scores of four tests measuring muscular fitness and agility. Height and weight were also measured. Self-reported weekly frequency of LTPA of at least 30-min duration and regularity of participation in organised sport we…
Modeling Multi-label Recurrence in Data Streams
2019
Most of the existing data stream algorithms assume a single label as the target variable. However, in many applications, each observation is assigned to several labels with latent dependencies among them, which their target function may change over time. Classification of such non-stationary multi-label streaming data with the consideration of dependencies among labels and potential drifts is a challenging task. The few existing studies mostly cope with drifts implicitly, and all learn models on the original label space, which requires a lot of time and memory. None of them consider recurrent drifts in multi-label streams and particularly drifts and recurrences visible in a latent label spa…
Analysis of health communication texts: UK press coverage of debates about assisted dying
2015
Conventionally, social researchers analyse media messages by reading text and coding it. This is time consuming and restricts many studies to small samples. Nowadays very large amounts of text are available in electronic form, offering potential insights into the health messages they contain, but which appear daunting to the analyst with limited resources using conventional methods. I explain and illustrate methods for the computer-assisted analysis of media texts, using specialised software (Wordsmith Tools and Wordstat). These allow the analyst to provide a statistical overview of the key features of texts, to compare them (looking at change over time, for example) and to select illustrat…
Liquid Biopsy in Cancer Patients: The Hand Lens to Investigate Tumor Evolution
2017
In recent years the treatment of cancer patients has profoundly changed due to a better comprehension of the biological processes underlying tumor development and progression. Several tumors are defined as “oncogene addicted” and this discovery has led the way to the development of target therapies that are able to specifically kill cancer cells sparing normal cells from toxicity. Nowadays treatment decision is strictly dependent on the molecular characterization of the tumor; thus the path of cancer patients’ survival is tissue dependent but this may have several limitations. Indeed a single tissue biopsy represents only a snapshot limited in time and space but we are learning that tumor e…
The role of industry influence in sinus balloon dilation: Trends over time
2018
OBJECTIVE Balloon dilation (BD) is a controversial alternative to conventional sinus surgery. The role of industry on practice patterns remains unknown. The aim of this study was to determine whether industry payments from BD manufacturers influence practice patterns for otolaryngologists and evaluate how these payments change over time. METHODS Retrospective cohort study using Medicare Provider Utilization and Payment (PUP) Data and Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services Open Payments (OP) general payment datasets. A total of 294 otolaryngologists identified in the PUP dataset who performed BD procedures from January 1, 2013, to December 31, 2015, were cross-referenced in the OP dataset…
Longitudinal associations of student–teacher relationships and behavioural and emotional strengths on academic achievement
2017
Positive student–teacher relationships are related to students’ academic achievement and behavioural and emotional adjustment. How a student’s behavioural and emotional strengths are associated with these relationships and how the relationships influence students’ academic performance remains unknown. We examined this framework using a cross-lagged panel model with a group of Finnish students and their parents from Grade 5 to Grade 7. The results revealed that the parents rated behavioural and emotional strengths are stable over a 1-year (r = .78) and 2-year (r = .71) period and that students’ perceptions of student–teacher relationships demonstrated greater change over time (r’s = .54, .35…
Anomaly detection in dynamic systems using weak estimators
2011
Accepted version of an article from the journal: ACM transactions on internet technology. Published version available from the ACM: http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/1993083.1993086 Anomaly detection involves identifying observations that deviate from the normal behavior of a system. One of the ways to achieve this is by identifying the phenomena that characterize “normal” observations. Subsequently, based on the characteristics of data learned from the “normal” observations, new observations are classified as being either “normal” or not. Most state-of-the-art approaches, especially those which belong to the family of parameterized statistical schemes, work under the assumption that the underlying…
Professional agency in the stream of change: Understanding educational change and teachers' professional identities
2015
The qualitative meta-study reported here investigated Finnish vocational teachers' professional agency amid an educational reform. Differences were found in teachers' agency regarding their work, their involvement with the reform, and their professional identity. The manifestations of agency could remain stable or could change over time, and agency drew on various resources (e.g. teacher identity and the organizational management culture). The theoretical conclusions encompass professional agency as multidimensional, largely individually varied, temporally imbued, and both socially and individually resourced. Based on the findings, an agency-centered approach is proposed as a means of under…