Search results for "resource"

Developing and Testing Speaking Skills in Academic Discourse

2014

Teaching speaking is an essential aspect of developing students’ sociolinguistic competence in a foreign language at any level. English studies at the tertiary level offer a variety of courses for practicing speaking and helping students reach the C1 and C2 level in BA and MA studies, respectively. However, it is not only the level that differentiates between BA and MA studies, but also aspects of register and style. Beginning with the subjects generally called Conversation, Speaking, Oral reproduction, Argumentation skills, Debating or Public speaking (BA studies), students gradually advance to Conversation based on academic texts (MA studies). This transition requires students to raise th…

Development and Validation of the OSA-CPAP Perceived Competence Evaluation Interview

2021

Continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP) is one of the most common therapies for Obstructive Sleep Apnea (OSA). We present a brief, patient-reported outcome measure used to assess patients' levels of adherence with CPAP treatment.A questionnaire was developed based on academic literature. We qualitatively tested a pool of 18 items. It was tested in a sample of 174 patients from the Hospital La Princesa. Next, 1021 patients from Catalonia were evaluated.5 items were removed. Nominal groups referred to three areas: general knowledge about OSA and its risks; CPAP treatment information and expectations; CPAP use, monitoring, and confidence with its use. The 13 retained items maintained the sa…

LU e-resursu repozitorija izmantošana

2020

Long-term phenological data set of multi-taxonomic groups, agrarian activities, and abiotic parameters from Latvia, northern Europe

2021

A phenological data set collected by citizen-scientists from 1970 to 2018 in Latvia is presented, comprising almost 47,000 individual observations of eight taxonomical groups, in addition to agrarian activities and abiotic parameters, covering in total 159 different phenological phases. These original data published offline in annual issues of the Nature and History Calendar (in Latvian, Dabas un vēstures kalendārs) have been digitized, harmonized and geo-referenced. Overall, the possible use of such data is extensive, as phenological data are excellent bioindicators for characterising climate change and can be used for the elaboration of adaptation strategies in agriculture, forestry, and …

Social-ecological trends: managing the vulnerability of coastal fishing communities

2019

The loss of biodiversity, including the collapse of fish stocks, affects the vulnerability of social-ecological systems (SESs) and threatens local livelihoods. Incorporating community-centered indicators and SES drivers and exposures of change into coastal management can help anticipate and mitigate human and/or coastal vulnerability. We have proposed a new index to measure the social-ecological vulnerability of coastal fishing communities (Index of Coastal Vulnerability [ICV]) based on species, ecosystem, and social indicators. The ICV varies from 0 (no vulnerability) to 1 (very high vulnerability) and is composed of 3 components: species vulnerability, i.e., fish biological traits; ecosys…

A methodology for the sustainability assessment of agri-food systems: an application to the Slow Food Presidia project

2014

New and alternative models for agri-food production and consumption have brought up questions regarding the effects they have on local development processes in terms of the economic exploitation of rural areas as well as environmental, cultural, and social factors. The agri-food system proposed by the Slow Food (SF) Presidia Project, which focuses on farm-to-market systems for local, high-quality, sustainable products, can respond to the new and emerging needs of both rural and urban populaces via several approaches in addition to food production itself. However, evaluating these parameters is challenging. The aim of this study was to develop an indicator-based tool to monitor the sustainab…

INVESTING IN SKILLS AND INNOVATION – NEW STRATEGIC TASKS FOR PUBLIC ADMINISTRATIONS

2014

Evidence shows that in the labour market the most demanded specialists are those with high-level vocational skills, implying also their competence for innovation. The latest EU policy initiatives explicitly call for innovation in vocational education and training (VET) systems. This is a relatively new VET policy development. At the same time, it is not yet sufficiently discussed how innovation in VET systems could be best translated in practical terms. Traditionally innovation has been related to the research and development domain, and little routine practices exist regarding the VET system. The present paper will explore the opinions and estimations by public administrators and experts r…

Urban Storm-Water Quality Management: Centralized versus Source Control

2010

The continuous growth of urban areas and the increasing public awareness of the environmental impacts of storm water have raised interest on the quality of the receiving water bodies. In the past two decades, many efforts have been directed at improving urban drainage systems by introducing mitigation measures to limit the negative environmental impacts of storm water. These mitigation measures are generally called best management practices (BMPs), sustainable urban drainage systems, or low impact developments, and they include practices such as infiltration and storage tanks that reduce the peak flow and retain some of the polluting materials. Choosing the best mitigation measure is still …

Innovation´s Processes and Strategy in the Service Sector

2018

STRUCTURED ABSTRACT1)      Objective: The present research aims to identify how the innovative strategy affects the organizational performance and quality in processes of service sector organizations in Colombia, taking into account their production process improvements, and organizational methods. 2)      Method: It was used the Survey of Development and Technological Innovation (EDIT) created by the Administrative National Department of Statistics DANE, collecting 19 subsectors and a total of 5.848  companies. 3)      Theoretical Framework: This research is settled in the competitive strategy, resource based view of the firm, and innovation theory. 4)      Results: Finding that the innova…

Comparison and analysis of the revenue-based adaptive queuing models

2006

This paper presents several adaptive resource sharing models that use a revenue criterion to allocate bandwidth in an optimal way. The models ensure QoS requirements of data flows and, at the same time, maximize the total revenue by adjusting parameters of the underlying schedulers. Besides, the adaptive models eliminate the need to find the optimal static weight values because they are calculated dynamically. The simulation consists of several cases that analyse the models and the way they provide the required QoS guarantees. The simulation reveals that the installation of the adaptive model increases the total revenue and ensures the QoS requirements for all service classes. The paper als…