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Against Austerity
No full textArguments for open access are usually split along two axes: the educational and the financial. On the former, it is easy to see that the progress of science and scholarship is advanced by easy, free access to research. A more equitable system of educational access benefits everyone. However, on the second front, it is also argued that open access should be less expensive for libraries, signalling the end of the serials crisis. In this talk, using data from 7 million article records, I examine the publishing practices of scholarly publishers at different levels of revenue, clearly showing that professional publishers, with high levels of revenue, consistently perform better at tasks such as digital preservation. While remaining committed to not-for-profit and mission-driven solutions, I argue that there are more important challenges for open access publishing than merely reducing costs
Feedback on automatic digital preservation and self-healing DOIs
No full textResponses to my call for feedback on digital preservation system
Crossref Research and Development: Releasing our Tools from the Ground Up
No full textThis is the first post in a series designed to showcase what we do in the Crossref R&D group, also known as Crossref Labs, which over the last few years has been strengthened, first with Dominika Tkaczyk and Esha Datta, last year with part of Paul Davis’s time, and more recently, yours truly. Research and development are, obviously, crucial for any organization that doesn’t want to stand still. The R&D group builds prototypes, experimental solutions, and data-mining applications that can help us to understand our member base, in the service of future evolution of the organization. One of the strategic pillars of Crossref is that we want to contribute to an environment in which the scholarly research community identifies shared problems and co-creates solutions for broad benefit. We do this in all teams through research and engagement with our expanding community
New Wheels
No full textWell, it finally happened, as Queen once sang. But I am not going “slightly mad” as the song professes. Instead, I have decided that the time has come where I need a wheelchair to get around. My arthritic hip damage is substantial and painful – and it’s stopping me going places. I rarely want to go out anywhere “for a walk” because the pain is so great. A wheelchair will help with this
Odontoblast repertoire delivers significantly different dental tissues from pluripotent neural crest-derived cells
No full textOdontoblasts are known for depositing the dentine that comprises the internal structure of teeth and skin denticles (scales) as well as their embryonic source from cranial neural crest ectomesenchyme. Their unique cytology, including dominant single cytoplasmic processes embedded within the mineralised tissue (forming tubules), derived from their migratory character, makes them easily recognizable in adult tissues in both fossil and extant vertebrates. This allows odontoblasts to be identified as the main drivers not only of dentine formation, but also of the first-formed enameloid, not only in teeth and denticles, but also in feeding structures in the absence of teeth and of enameloid as in holocephalans. Odontoblasts are additionally critical cells in tissue repair through their migratory and invasive properties. This pluripotent repertoire makes odontoblasts unique among all mineralised tissues
The effect of sourcing strategies on supplier’s performance in the upstream oil and gas industry, Ghana
No full textThis quantitative study examined the oil and gas industry of Ghana. The aim is to investigate the effect of sourcing strategies (i.e., single sourcing, multiple sourcing, and partnership sourcing) on the
supplier's performance. We combined purposive sampling technique and simple random sampling to shortlist and gather data from twenty oil and gas companies. The reliability and validity of the data was confirmed as first step. Exploratory Factor Analysis enabled in summarizing the data to establish relationships between factors and understanding their patterns. The correlation was confirmed between the sourcing strategies and supplier's performance. Moreover, the regression analysis also confirmed that procurement process plays vital role in ensuring the on-time delivery of good
The reasons behind imbalanced ecosystem of Latin America: a comprehensive systematic review
No full textThis article examined the ecosystem of the Latin America, specifically focusing on the common challenges. Moreover, the reasons behind imbalance between the urban and rural sustainable development has been explored through the systematic review of the literature at hand. We used bibliometric analysis to extract the literature from the past one decade. Total 71 articles from Scopus Indexed peer-reviewed journals were considered. The findings revealed that deforestation, soil erosion, glaciers melting, water scarcity and water pollution, and rise in the Sea level are major five challenges faced by the majority of the Latin America. The findings also revealed that there is imbalanced sustainable development in the Latin America as the emphasis is more on the Urban Green Initiatives (UGI) while rural structural development has been given limited concentration. Moreover, the role of principal actors needs further clarity. Thus, we conclude that despite enrich ecosystem, the Latin America lags in the development of sustainable ecosystem. Recommendations are given at the end of the chapter
A structural theorem for local algorithms with applications to coding, testing, and privacy
Get PDFWe prove a general structural theorem for a wide family of local algorithms, which includes property testers, local decoders, and PCPs of proximity. Namely, we show that the structure of every algorithm that makes adaptive queries and satisfies a natural robustness condition admits a sample-based algorithm with sample complexity, following the definition of Goldreich and Ron (TOCT 2016). We prove that this transformation is nearly optimal. Our theorem also admits a scheme for constructing privacy-preserving local algorithms.
%Along the way, we obtain a sunflower-based combinatorial representation of robust local algorithms.
Using the unified view that our structural theorem provides, we obtain results regarding various types of local algorithms, including the following.
- We strengthen the state-of-the-art lower bound for relaxed locally decodable codes, obtaining an \emph{exponential} improvement on the dependency in query complexity; this resolves an open problem raised by Gur and Lachish (SICOMP 2021).
- We show that any (constant-query) testable property admits a sample-based tester with sublinear sample complexity; this resolves a problem left open in a work of Fischer, Lachish, and Vasudev (FOCS 2015), bypassing an exponential blowup caused by previous techniques in the case of adaptive testers.
- We prove that the known separation between proofs of proximity and testers is essentially maximal; this resolves a problem left open by Gur and Rothblum (ECCC 2013, Computational Complexity 2018) regarding sublinear-time delegation of computation.
Our techniques strongly rely on relaxed sunflower lemmas and the Hajnal–Szemer\'{e}di theorem
'Hutchison Port Holding's "Port of Felixstowe: Port of Britain": a Chinese private sector success?
No full textThis chapter analyses Chinese investments in the United Kingdom (UK)’s largest container port, Felixstowe, on the east coast of England. Multinational ports group, privately-owned and Hong Kong-based Hutchison Ports Holdings (HPH) bought the port in 1991 and expanded it thereafter in line with its pan-European and global network approach to port operations. Chinese investment has been crucial to the expansion of Felixstowe. This chapter argues that HPH, as part of a privately-owned diversified conglomerate, has faced no regulatory or strategic concerns over Chinese port ownership in the UK. This has allowed relatively smooth and profitable growth. This is due both to its parent company’s extensive and longstanding presence in other areas of Britain’s privatized infrastructure, as well as its origins in Hong Kong. This contrasts with investments by the state-owned China Merchants Group or COSCO in ports elsewhere, examined in other chapters in this volume. The chapter further demonstrates that Hutchison’s expansion of Felixstowe over three decades has accentuated both the port’s dominance of the UK container trade and Britain’s shipping ties with China, both reflecting and reinforcing the group’s global strategy
Labouring behind bars: assessing international law on working prisoners
Get PDFICPR’s new briefing paper, “Labouring Behind Bars”, explores work in prison through the lens of international human rights law. This is the first of a series of publications in the project ‘Unlocking potential: towards effective, sustainable, and ethical provision of work opportunities for prisoners and prison leavers’.
The briefing—along with a detailed Appendix—assesses and critiques the applicable law and highlights the outdated nature of key binding norms governing prison work. It also identifies gaps between claimed benefits and actual prisoner work conditions. It assesses the existing international legal framework, revealing conceptual gaps and inconsistencies across standards. These gaps, we suggest, may result in prisoners being exploited in ways unforeseen by the framers of international laws
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