309 research outputs found
Triggers, Remedies, and Tariff Cuts: Assessing the Impact of a Special Safeguard Mechanism for Developing Countries
No full textThe WTO negotiations broke down on July 30th, 2008 because members could not bridge their differences over the operation of a Special Safeguard Mechanism (SSM). This article evaluates the latest SSM proposal using the world wheat market as our case study. Whether low-income WTO members should be allowed to breach their pre-Doha bound tariffs is a key element of our analysis. The SSM leads to sizeable additional duties but is not very trade distorting, even when pre-Doha bound rates are breached. Moreover, the extent to which low-income countries should be allowed to exceed pre-Doha bound rates depends heavily on the product under consideration, the ambition of the tariff cutting exercise, and the gap between members’ bound and applied tariffs.agriculture, Doha Development Agenda, July Package, Special Safeguard Mechanism, World Trade Organization, International Relations/Trade,
Soft systems methodology analysis for scoping in environmental impact statement in Israel
No full textThe current working paper will focus on Soft System Methodology (SSM) analysis of the process of issuing guidelines for Environmental Impact Statements (EIS) to developers in the Israeli context. The paper’s goal is to make the reader familiar with the terminology and the concepts of SSM, while serving as a case study for practising SSM. The paper starts with a “crash” introduction to SSM, followed by a general description of the process in the centre of the discussion - the Israeli EIS process. After these two introductory sections, the paper turns to the main issue - a SSM analysis of the problem situation - the creation of guidelines for EIS in the Israeli context. This specific case study have been selected due to the author’s familiarity with it (is served as the main research field for his MA thesis). Also the author has the shorthand transcripts from a series workshops that were held as part of an evaluation study that the environmental planning department in the ministry of environment (EPD-MoE) have commissioned on the Israeli EIS system. Unless stated otherwise, the sources for SSM are “Information Systems Development: Methodologies, Techniques and Tools” (Avison and Fitzgerald, 1995), “Practical Soft Systems Analysis” (Patching, 1990), on-line lecture notes for the UCL “System Analysis and Design” course (Sasse and Fultun, 1997) and “Soft Systems Methodology: An Alternative Approach to Knowledge Elicitation in Complex and Poorly Defined Systems” (Finegan, 1994)
The future of SSM given Generative AI:the power of ‘purpose’ and its context (or “A Grok 3 enabled story regarding a future for systems thinking and practice”)
No full textThis paper presents a recent discussion between the author and Grok 3, a Generative AI programme. The ‘conversation’ begins with the author ‘testing’ the software to discover its ability to describe three related systems concepts: the idea that “all perception is selection” (Youngson, 1996), Vickers’ concept of an “appreciative system” (1965) and Checkland’s Soft Systems Methodology (SSM) (1981). The software produces a surprisingly discerning description of the three concepts and their associated ideas. However, it goes a step further than mere description and evaluation of these ideas by inviting the author to consider a “thought experiment” where it applies SSM to the historical context discussed by Youngson. This unexpected experiment prompts the author to explore the software’s ability to implement SSM-type modelling: the author requests Grok 3 to use SSM’s Root Definitions (RDs) to provide insight into different stakeholders’ views of the current Ukraine-Russia conflict (as of 04/03/2025). The software offers a range of different RDs and their associated CATWOE elements. One RD is selected for refinement and the development of a Conceptual Model (CM) through an iterative process which is documented. The purpose of the exercise presented is to explore the potential future role of SSM and associated systems of inquiry (such as the Appreciative Inquiry Method) given the increasingly powerful AI programmes available. The conclusion is that AI is not only able to offer innovative analysis of existing ideas but also more than capable of undertaking the sophisticated modelling of ‘purpose’ (T) within its wider appreciative context (W) that lies at the heart of SSM. Consequently, we no longer need the skills to produce such models - we merely need to know how to use the models to create appropriate and useful inquiry
The SSM with Suppressed SUSY Charge
No full textAn earlier paper showed that it is possible to write down new SUSY Actions in which it is not possible to define a Supersymmetry Charge. SUSY is defined in these new Actions by the fact that they satisfy Master Equations. The new SUSY Actions are very easy to write down. One simply takes a Chiral SUSY Action, coupled to Gauge and other Chiral Multiplets, and even SuperGravity, if desired. Then one creates a new Action from this by exchanging all or part of the Scalar Field for a new Zinn Source , and the corresponding part of the Zinn Source for a new Antighost Field . Since the original Action satisfies a Master Equation, this exchange guarantees that the new Action will satisfy the new Master Equation. As was shown in the earlier paper, the new multiplets have fewer bosonic degrees of freedom than fermionic degrees of freedom. This is possible because they do not have a Supercharge.
The resulting new SSM has no need for Squarks or Sleptons. It does not need spontaneous breaking of SUSY, so that the cosmological constant problem does not arise (at least at tree level). It mimics the usual non-supersymmetric Standard Model very well, and the absence of large flavour changing neutral currents is natural. There is no need for a hidden sector, or a messenger sector, or explicit `soft\u27 breaking of SUSY. Spontaneous Gauge Symmetry Breaking implies the existence of two new very heavy Higgs Bosons with mass 13.4 TeV, slightly smaller than the energy of the LHC at 14 TeV. There is also a curious set of Gauginos and Higgsinos which have exactly the same masses as the Higgs and Gauge Bosons. These do not couple to the Quarks and Leptons, except through the Higgs and Gauge Bosons.19 pages. This version contains a better explanation of why and how this theory can exis
Gender-specific associations between involvement in team sport culture and canadian adolescents’ substance-use behavior
No full textDetection of Drought, Flood and Snow Anomalies with 37GHz Passive Microwave Space-borne Data: The SSM/I case study over Europe
No full textEurope is a continent with diverse climatic conditions. The dominant climates are the Oceanic, the Mediterranean and the Continental ones. The western part of Europe has an oceanic climate, southern Europe has a Mediterranean climate and eastern Europe has a continental climate. Because of such heterogeneities, a vast range of extreme climatic events might occur in different areas. We define extreme climatic events the droughts, floods and heavy snowfall. Those events will be generically referred to in this research as anomalies. The purpose of this study is the identification of these extreme climatic events in the area of Europe, with the use of Special Sensor Microwave Imager (SSM/I) data at 37GHz frequency. The data that are used are Brightness Temperature (TB) values. The detection of the events will be achieved with the Polarization Difference Brightness Temperature (PDBT). The PDBT values can be related to changes to surface wetness and the surface geometry. It could be used as an indicator of an anomaly, because the higher the values of PDBT the higher the surface wetness. The methodological steps of the work consist in a statistical analysis of the SSM/I time-series, in the design of a detection algorithm of the anomalies under investigation and on the debate of its performance. The analysis of the temporally long SSM/I data will provide a first understanding of the data sensitivity to events under investigation and of their distribution for the statistical modelling of the Normalized Polarization Difference Brightness Temperature (NPDBT) indicator. The calculation of the NPDBT exploits the same principles as the well-known z-score index. The detection of the anomalies will be then achieved through thresholding the NPDBT index. Further information for the detection of anomalies is provided by the soil moisture time series from the Soil Moisture Active Passive (SMAP) sensor and the precipitation data from the Global Satellite Mapping of Precipitation (GSMAP). The soil moisture data appear to be more useful for the dry events, whereas the precipitation data for the flooding and the heavy snowfall events.Geoscience and Remote Sensin
Posture normalisation of 3D body scans
No full textFor product developers that design near-body products, virtual mannequins that represent realistic body shapes, are valuable tools. With statistical shape modelling, the variability of such body shapes can be described. Shape variation captured by statistical shape models (SSMs) is often polluted by posture variations, leading to less compact models. In this paper, we propose a framework that has low computational complexity to build a posture invariant SSM, by capturing and correcting the posture of an instance. The posture-normalised SSM is shown to be substantially more compact than the non-posture-normalised SSM. Practitioner summary: Statistical shape modelling is a technique to map out the variability of (body) shapes. This variability is often polluted by variations in posture. In this paper, we propose a framework to build a posture invariant statistical shape model. Abbreviations: SSM: statistical shape model; 1D: one-dimensional; 3D: three-dimensional; DHM: digital human model; LBS: linear blend skinning; PCA: princial component analysis; PC: principal component; TTR: thumb tip reach.Accepted author manuscriptApplied Ergonomics and Desig
A novel application of a data mining technique to study intersections in the social determinants of mental health among young Canadians
No full textObjectives
Adolescent mental health is an emergent clinical and public health priority in Canada. Gender-based differences in mental health are well established. The objective of this study was to evaluate a new data mining technique to identify social locations of young Canadians where differences in mental health between adolescent males and females were most pronounced.
Methods
We examined reports from 21,221 young Canadians aged 11–15 years (10,349 males, 10,872 females) who had responded to a 2018 national health and health behaviours survey. Using recursive partitioning for subgroup identification (SIDES), we identified social locations that were associated with the strongest differences between males and females for three reported mental health outcomes: positive psychosomatic health, symptoms of depression, and having a diagnosed mental illness.
Results
The SIDES algorithm identified both established and new intersections of social factors that were associated with gender-based differences in mental health experiences, most favouring males.
Discussion
This analysis represents a novel proof-of-concept to demonstrate the utility of a subgroup identification algorithm to reveal important differences in mental health experiences between adolescent males and females. The algorithm detected new social locations (i.e., where gender intersected with other characteristics) associated with poor mental health outcomes. These findings set the stage for further intersectional research, involving both quantitative and qualitative analyses, to explore how axes of discrimination may intersect to shape potential gender-based health inequalities that emerge during childhood
Sampling the mu nu SSM for displaced decays of the tau left sneutrino LSP at the LHC
No full textWithin the framework of the mu nu SSM, a displaced dilepton signal is expected at the LHC from the decay of a tau left sneutrino as the lightest supersymmetric particle (LSP) with a mass in the range 45-100 GeV. We compare the predictions of this scenario with the ATLAS search for long-lived particles using displaced lepton pairs in pp collisions, considering an optimization of the trigger requirements by means of a high level trigger that exploits tracker information. The analysis is carried out in the general case of three families of right-handed neutrino superfields, where all the neutrinos get contributions to their masses at tree level. To analyze the parameter space, we sample the mu nu SSM for a tau left sneutrino LSP with proper decay length c tau>0.1mm using a likelihood data-driven method, and paying special attention to reproduce the current experimental data on neutrino and Higgs physics, as well as flavor observables. The sneutrino is special in the mu nu SSM since its couplings have to be chosen so that the neutrino oscillation data are reproduced. We find that important regions of the parameter space can be probed at the LHC run 3.© The Author(s) 201911Nsciescopu
Automated Expansion of Statistical Shape Model Training Set for Femur
No full textActive Shape Model (ASM) uses Statistical Shape Model (SSM) to fit the manually labeled landmark point in Magnetic Resonance Image (MRI) scan and segment the femur from the MRI scan. The SSM is trained from a training set containing 275 complete femur meshes. In general, with more femur meshes in the training set, there would be more shape variance information in SSM, and the segmentation result would be more accurate. Currently, it is hard to get complete femur meshes. However, 2000 partial femur meshes are available. A method to incorporate these partial femur meshes to the SSM training set is proposed. This method includes building point to point correspondence between partial femur and complete femur, filling missing values to perform Principal Component Analysis(PCA) and designing the mechanism to utilize the content in partial femurs. Before incorporation, a rejection criteria is set to reject the unsatisfactory partial femur meshes that cannot contribute to the SSM. A evaluation method is designed and performed to validate the incorporation method. The evaluation results show the accuracy of outliers of SSM fit can be improved by incorporating partial femurs to the SSM training set.Digital Media TechnologyIntelligent SystemsElectrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Scienc
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