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Destination 2010: regional economic strategy for the East Midlands 2003-2010
No full textDestination 2010 is the second regional economic strategy for the East Midlands. The strategy is a high level framework that sets out a vision for the East Midlands economy in 2010 and provides a blueprint for economic development activity in the region for the period 2003-2010
Stages of concern of managers about the adoption of satellite systems for training the Defense Finance and Accounting Service
No full textThe Defense Finance and Accounting Service (DFAS) is changing from traditional training methods to satellite delivery systems. According to the Stages of Concern about the Innovation (SoC), one dimension of the Concerns-Based Adoption Model (CBAM), individuals experience concerns during the process of adopting an innovation. Research supports that identification of concerns and appropriate interventions facilitate innovation adoption. However, little research has been published with respect to use of SoC other than in education since the conceptualization of CBAM in 1973.
The purposes of this study were : 1) identify the Stages of Concern of the civilian managers employed in the five DFAS Centers toward satellite education and training with the use of the SoC Questionnaire (SoCQ) and the Open-Ended Statement of Concern About an Innovation; 2) explore the utility of the SoC to this population; and 3) draw implications from the expressed concerns of the managers to determine appropriate interventions to assist the managers through the change process. The purposes were accomplished through a census survey with a response rate of 55% (N=370). A modified version of the original SoCQ and the Stages of Concern about the Innovation Open-Ended Statement identified both the managers' SoC and specific concerns.
Eighty-four percent (84%) of the respondents reported no experience with satellite education. SoC profiles typified a positive "nonuser" with highest Stages in 0 (Awareness), 1 (Informational), and 2 (Personal). A peaked Stage 5 in each SoC profile suggested "Collaboration" concerns, as would be anticipated from a population of managers. Chi-square showed no association between highest SoC and Center. Pearson r correlations showed no relationship between highest SoC and years of employment in the federal government, the financial management career field, or the number of employees within the managers' scope of responsibilities. Correlational analysis showed a weak relationship, r = .24, between highest SoC and number of courses completed by satellite. SoC group profiles by number of courses completed showed similar "nonuser" patterns. Written comments identified competing concerns between training programs and satellite medium. SoC constructs appeared to be operating throughout the findings which supported previous SoC research.Ph. D
Implicit Feature Selection with the Value Difference Metric
No full textThe nearest neighbour paradigm provides an effective approach to supervised learning. However, it is especially susceptible to the presence of irrelevant attributes. Whilst many approaches have been proposed that select only the most relevant attributes within a data set, these approaches involve pre-processing the data in some way, and can often be computationally complex. The Value Difference Metric (VDM) is a symbolic distance metric used by a number of different nearest neighbour learning algorithms. This paper demonstrates how the VDM can be used to reduce the impact of irrelevant attributes on classification accuracy without the need for pre-processing the data. We illustrate how this metric uses simple probabilistic techniques to weight features in the instance space, and then apply this weighting technique to an alternative symbolic distance metric. The resulting distance metrics are compared in terms of classification accuracy, on a number of real-world and artificial data sets
The Meaninglessness of the Plain Meaning Rule
No full textThe contemporary lawyer and judge confront, in the mine run of their daily work, a mountain of statutes. In an unprecedented way, law today is statute law, and few legal problems have escaped the tender mercies of the legislature. Statutory interpretation is a daily and pressing task for virtually every lawyer.
And yet, there is no generally accepted consistent theory to guide this work. The late Henry Hart and Dean Albert Sacks argue forcefully, [T]he hard truth of the matter is that American courts have no intelligible, generally\u27 accepted, and consistently applied theory of statutory interpretation. \u27 This conclusion is embedded in several hundred pages of case excerpts proving the point beyond dispute.
Good legal theory is not an intellectual luxury. If we lack good theory, we will be unable to explain judicial decisions and consumers of the output of our court systems will not believe they have been justly treated. Without the discipline of good theory, we cannot even critique and reform our own work product as lawyers.
My thesis in this article is that the so-called plain meaning rule is not only wrong in itself, but is also a major stumbling block hindering the adoption of a sound theory of statutory interpretation. Legal thinking in terms of the rule, whether to follow it or to find an exception, structures our whole approach to statutory interpretation; its repudiation is a present necessity.
I wish in this article to summarize criticisms of the plain meaning rule, suggest why it has survived despite criticism, and sketch a theory and practice of statutory interpretation which should replace it
Patents, Public-Private Partnerships or Prizes – How should we support pharmaceutical innovation?
No full textThe question as to how society should support pharmaceutical (‘pharma’) innovation is both pertinent and timely: Pharma drugs are an integral component of modern health care and hold the promise to treat more effectively various debilitating health problems. The productivity of the pharma R&D enterprise, however, has declined since the 1980s. Many observers question whether the patent system is conducive to pharma innovation and point to several promising alternative mechanisms. These mechanisms include both ‘push’ programs – subsidies directed towards the cost of pharma R&D – and ‘pull’ programs – lumpsum and royalty-based rewards for the outputs of pharma R&D, that is, new drugs. I review evidence why our current system of pharma patents is defective and outline the various alternative mechanisms that may spur pharma innovation more effectively.Pharmaceuticals, R&D, patents, prizes, innovation
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