Northeastern University London Repository
Not a member yet
1286 research outputs found
Sort by
How can risk of COVID-19 transmission be minimised in domiciliary care for older people: development, parameterisation and initial results of a simple mathematical model
Get PDFThis paper proposes and analyses a stochastic model for the spread of an infectious disease transmitted between clients and care workers in the UK domiciliary (home) care setting. Interactions between clients and care workers are modelled using specially generated networks, with network parameters reflecting realistic patterns of care needs and visit allocation. These networks are then used to simulate a susceptible-exposed-infected-recovered/dead (SEIR/D)-type epidemic dynamics with different numbers of infectious and recovery stages. The results indicate that with the same overall capacity provided by care workers, the minimum peak proportion of infection and the smallest overall size of infection are achieved for the highest proportion of overlap between visit allocation, i.e. when care workers have the highest chances of being allocated a visit to the same client they have visited before. An intuitive explanation of this is that while providing the required care coverage, maximising overlap in visit allocation reduces the possibility of an infectious care worker inadvertently spreading the infection to other clients. The model is generic and can be adapted to any directly transmitted infectious disease, such as, more recently, corona virus disease 2019, provided accurate estimates of disease parameters can be obtained from real data
Beyond COVID-19: network science and sustainable exit strategies
Get PDFOn May 28th and 29th, a two day workshop was held virtually, facilitated by the Beyond Center at
ASU and Moogsoft Inc. The aim was to bring together leading scientists with an interest in network
science and epidemiology to attempt to inform public policy in response to the COVID-19
pandemic. Epidemics are at their core a process that progresses dynamically upon a network, and
are a key area of study in network science. In the course of the workshop a wide survey of the state
of the subject was conducted. We summarize in this paper a series of perspectives of the subject,
and where the authors believe fruitful areas for future research are to be found
Northview: A Snapshot of Multiracial London during the Second World War
Get PDFNorthview was a low-rise development of flats built in the interwar period on the corner of the Tufnell Park and Holloway Roads in Islington. This chapter tells the fascinating story of some of its wartime residents. At number 21 lived Nigerian-born dance hall pianist Fela Sowande, his wife Mildred and their two young children. At number 33 lived Clara Deniz – a mixed-race Briton originally from Cardiff – and her fellow-musician husband Frank, whose father hailed from the Cape Verde Isles. This chapter examines how the Sowandes and Denizes came to Northview and what happened to them in the war and its aftermath. The result is a snapshot of an often overlooked multiracial dimension to wartime London that focuses on a suburban enclave and the wider city, in the process revealing the connection of these local worlds to international cross-currents of empire, migration and war
‘W(ystan) H(ugh) Auden’, ‘Charlotte Mary Sanford Barnes’, ‘Samuel Beckett’, ‘John Berryman’, ‘Edward Bond’, ‘Jorge Luis Borges’, ‘Bertolt Brecht’, ‘Amanda Craig’, ‘T(homas) S(tearns) Eliot’, ‘St John Greer Ervine’, ‘H(ilda) D(oolittle)’, ‘Ted Hughes’, ‘Doris May Lessing’, ‘David Malouf’, ‘Vladimir Nabokov’, ‘Eugene O’Neill’, ‘George “Dadie” Rylands’, ‘Delmore Schwartz’, ‘The 20th-Century Shakespearean Sonnet’, ‘Wole Soyinka’, ‘Bram Stoker’, ‘Ivan Turgenev’, ‘Mark Van Doren’, ‘David Foster Wallace’, ‘Sir Arnold Wesker’, ‘Lillie Buffum Chace Wyman’, ‘William Butler Yeats’ in *The Stanford Global Shakespeare Encyclopedia*
Get PDFEssays for *The Stanford Global Shakespeare Encyclopedia
Understanding User Perceptions of Trustworthiness in E-recruitment Systems
Get PDFAlgorithmic systems are increasingly deployed to make decisions that people used to make. Perceptions of these systems can significantly influence their adoption, yet, broadly speaking, users’ understanding of the internal working of these systems is limited. To explore users’ perceptions of algorithmic systems, we developed a prototype e-recruitment system called Algorithm Playground where we offer the users a look behind the scenes of such systems, and provide “how” and “why” explanations on how job applicants are ranked by their algorithms. Using an online study with 110 participants, we measured perceived fairness, transparency and trustworthiness of e-recruitment systems. Our results show that user understanding of the data and reasoning behind candidates’ rankings and selection evoked some positive attitudes as participants rated our platform to be fairer, more reliable, transparent and trustworthy than the e-recruitment systems they have used in the past
Conservation through conversation? Therapeutic engagement on biodiversity and extinction between NGOs and companies
Get PDFAdopting a theoretical framework from social narrative therapy, this paper examines how new realities are being constantly created as the corporate narrative is rewritten or ‘re-storied’ through engagement between NGO–therapists and corporate–clients. Detailed interviews are conducted with 21 NGOs operating in a developing economy and working with local and multi-national companies. The research reveals how the relationship between NGOs and companies has shifted from an adversarial one (reported in earlier studies) to one characterised by constructive dialogue, facilitation and mediation. The engagements have ‘therapeutic’ properties and offer one solution for tackling the impacts which modern business practices are having on biodiversity. An extensive review of narrative and social constructionist perspectives across business ethics, organisations and accounting is beyond the scope of this paper. The discussion and analysis are limited to the application of narrative approaches to counselling to NGO–company relationships
Spectrographic analysis of colourants of cultural items: from a qualitative to a semi-quantitative data treatment through BCTs
Get PDFWe propose to use current spectrographic techniques for detecting colourants in cultural items in a semi-quantitative way, by systematically utilising the notions of colour term, basic colour term (BCT), and by sampling the coloured areas of each BCT. Given for example two manuscripts (MSS), criteria for sampling the areas of the illuminations of a given BCT, and the detected colourants of those areas, it is possible to estimate a degree of colourant difference. Further, a unique identifier of the item colourants is proposed. For achieving this aim we discuss some steps of the analytical procedure, and borrow from ecology three homologous concepts for detecting colourants, i.e.: for a given BCT, the colourant richness, the colourant abundance distribution, and the evenness of this distribution. Further, we explore a procedure, the input of which is a generic picture, and the output is a map of the same object giving the BCTs distribution
Macrodynamic Modeling of Innovation Equilibria and Traps
Get PDFWe study the interplay between the decision of firms to innovate and human capital. Based on a dynamic evolutionary model, we show that in the pres- ence of a high stock of human capital, an advanced economy can remain caught in an “innovation trap”. Following the literature on endogenous growth, R & D investments and human capital are modeled as strategic complements. Skilled workers increase productivity and enjoy a wage premium if they are employed in the R & D sector, while they receive the same wage as unskilled workers if they are employed in the production sector. We model the evolutionary dynamics of the share of innovative firms and human capital to determine the conditions under which an economy converges to a high, low or mixed state of innovation
Use of the analytical hierarchy process to determine the steering direction for a powered wheelchair
No full textHome Intelligent Systems and Applications Conference paper
Use of the Analytical Hierarchy Process to Determine the Steering Direction for a Powered Wheelchair
Malik Haddad, David Sanders, Mohamad Thabet, Alexander Gegov, Favour Ikwan, Peter Omoarebun, Giles Tewkesbury & Mohamed Hassan
Conference paper
First Online: 25 August 2020
756 Accesses
6 Citations
Part of the Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing book series (AISC,volume 1252)
Abstract
The Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) is utilized to propose a driving course for a powered-wheelchair. A safe route for a wheelchair is proposed by a decision-making system that aims to avoid obstacles. Two ultrasonic transceivers are fitted onto a wheelchair. The area in front of a wheelchair is segmented to left and right zones. The system inputs are distance to an object from the midpoint of the chair, distance to an object from the left of the chair and distance to an object from the right of the chair. The resulting route is a blend between a provided direction from a user’s input device and a proposed direction from the decision-making system that steers a powered-wheelchair to safely avoid obstacles in the way of the wheelchair. The system helps a disabled user to navigate their wheelchair by deciding on a direction that is a compromise between a direction provided by the sensors and a direction desired by the driver. Sensitivity analysis investigates the effects of risk and uncertainty on the resulting directions. An appropriate direction is identified but a human driver can over-ride the decision if necessary