17,418 research outputs found
Neither illness nor wellness
No full textAn article written by the listed author above as part of the "Writing Black Canadas" issue.Peer reviewedFinal article publishe
Redevelopment after the Abruzzo event
No full textNatural disasters raise quite a number of interdisciplinary issues concerning regional economic growth and local development, as well as public finance and sustainability, to mention only a few of them. These issues deserve special attention in our globalized world, given the expectation of a growing impact of climate-related disasters: no surprise that disaster management stands as a new discipline aimed at bridging the gap between theory and practice, so as to prevent natural disasters in the first place; afterwards, considerable efforts are required to accelerate business recovery, quickly restore vital energies, and hopefully carry out specific improvement projects as a sort of compensation for the (both personal and economic) losses suffered. Interesting lessons can be learned from natural disasters and can be shared as a payback to those who helped upon their occurrence. Actually, cooperation calls for cross-cultural activities that are likely to benefit from direct experience made by impacted scholars and practitioners: a case in point has to do with the earthquake that devastated L’Aquila and its environs on April 6, 2009 causing more than 300 deaths, apart from extensive damage in the Abruzzo region, in Central Italy; the Abruzzo event – as this natural disaster is currently referred to – fuels the debate on redevelopment problems to be faced under similar circumstances, that may obliterate the economic environment and attractiveness of an area in a few moments. Due to the huge amount of money needed to undertake appropriate strategies, finance plays a key role and useful insights can be gained by exploring the process of financial innovation. A supporting argument deals with the recourse to micro-finance in order to make the business and economic scenario revive after a natural disaster: micro-credit might be resorted to even within the framework of new financial engineering instruments, such as Urban Development Funds, recently promoted by the European Investment Bank; they include JESSICA (Joint European Support for Sustainable Investment in City Areas) and JEREMIE (Joint European Resources for Micro to Medium Enterprises), to be properly considered as strategic tools in sight of redeveloping L’Aquila and its surrounding boroughs.
Think Too Fast Nor Too Slow: The Computational Trade-off Between Planning And Reinforcement Learning
No full textPlanning and reinforcement learning are two key approaches to sequential decision making. Multi-step approximate real-time dynamic programming, a recently successful algorithm class of which AlphaZero [Silver et al., 2018] is an example, combines both by nesting planning within a learning loop. However, the combination of planning and learning introduces a new question: how should we balance time spend on planning, learning and acting? The importance of this trade-off has not been explicitly studied before. We show that it is actually of key importance, with computational results indicating that we should neither plan too long nor too short. Conceptually, we identify a new spectrum of planning-learning algorithms which ranges from exhaustive search (long planning) to model-free RL (no planning), with optimal performance achieved midway.Green Open Access added to TU Delft Institutional Repository ‘You share, we take care!’ – Taverne project https://www.openaccess.nl/en/you-share-we-take-care Otherwise as indicated in the copyright section: the publisher is the copyright holder of this work and the author uses the Dutch legislation to make this work public.Interactive IntelligenceTeam Bart De Schutte
An Architecture for Augmenting the SCORM Run-Time Environment with a Personalised Link Service
No full textAs the result of recent advances in the business of e-learning there has been a growing interest in e-learning standards, particularly SCORM (Sharable Content Object Reference Model). SCORM is a reference model that integrates a collection of e-learning resource standards and specifications. In a SCORM compliant courseware, content and the pedagogic approach to be taken are predefined by the course author. As a consequence, users are unable to learn according to their preferences, and implicitly they will all encounter the same learning experience. Recent attempts to personalise learning in SCORM often resulted in either modifying SCORM or substituting its course sequencing mechanism with Adaptive Hypermedia techniques. Nonetheless, SCORM is a widely-used solution to interoperability problems with e-learning resources and can realise not only content sharing and reusability but also a consistent sequencing of course content across different systems and tools. For these reasons, this thesis focuses on supplementing SCORM sequencing rather than redefining it. The novelty of this work is that it builds an adaptive environment around the existing SCORM, without extending or modifying SCORM itself. The work integrates Adaptive Hypermedia principles into the SCORM Run-Time Environment as an independent service to support the environment with learning materials that are preferable to both teachers (primary materials of their choice) and students (supplementary materials that are pre-selected to suit some aspects of their user models to assist their understanding of the primary materials). This SCORM-complementing approach can also enable the SCORM Run-Time Environment to include on-demand external resources into the environment in order to address SCORM’s limitation of static pool of learning resources. The novel contribution of this work is the design of an authoring architecture which enables the automatic generation of a concept map and consequently links to alternative learning resources, and a run-time service oriented architecture which delivers these alternative resources, alongside the SCORM defined resources, according to a dynamic user model
Dynamic augmentation of SCORM pre-authored course materials with adaptive links to supplementary resources
No full textIn a SCORM compliant courseware, content and the pedagogic approach to be taken are predefined by the course author. As a consequence, users are unable to learn according to their preferences, and implicitly they will all encounter the same learning experience. Recent attempts to personalise learning in SCORM often resulted in either modifying or substituting SCORM specification elements. Nonetheless, SCORM is a widely-used solution to interoperability problems. For this reason, this work focuses on supplementing SCORM rather than redefining it. This is accomplished by dynamically associating each pre-authored learning material in a SCORM package with adaptive links to relevant supplementary resources upon delivery. As a result, we have developed a Personalised Link Service (PLS) to deliver these links into user’s SCORM-compliant learning environment. In this paper, we present the design of a PLS authoring architecture which enables the automatic generation of a concept map from a SCORM package and consequently links to alternative learning resources, and a PLS run-time service oriented architecture which delivers these alternative resources, alongside the SCORM defined resources, according to a user model. We demonstrate the feasibility of our architecture by implementing a service to support a simple notion of a user model (Preferred Learning style)
A study of procurement behaviour in small firms
No full textThe purpose of this paper is to introduce research which analyses buyer-supplier relationships from the perspective of small and medium firms (SMEs). The study to be outlined shows that actors within a supply chain are not homogeneous in terms of their size, resources and business motives, which bring into question the validity and relevance of the purchasing literature when examining small firms. The paper will explain the usefulness and importance of studying purchasing behaviour in SMEs and explain how these relationships might differ depending on the nature of the firm. The methodology for the field research will be explained in the paper. The fieldwork draws principally from a series of interviews undertaken with owner-managers within plastic moulding companies in Lancashire. The empirical data will be explored in some depth with a particular focus on their implications for practice
Turbulent plane Couette flow with wall-transpiration
No full textIn the present abstract, DNS results obtained for turbulent plane Couette flow with wall-normal transpiration velocity are presented. Important equations valid in such a flow are derived, describing the total shear stress and the relation between the friction velocities at the lower and upper wall. These expressions are of importance, as there are neither experimental nor DNS data to compare with. Equally important, we derive a center region and a viscous sublayer velocity scaling for the suction wall, which were both validated using the DNS data
Free Zone Incentives in MERCOSUR Countries and WTO Law
No full textPublished source: Gabriel Gari, 'Free Zone Incentives in MERCOSUR Countries and WTO Law' (2011) 6 Global Trade and Customs Journal, Issue 5, pp. 223–244
ID: GTCJ2011031This article examines the consistency of the incentives offered by free zone regimes in Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, and Uruguay with World Trade Organization (WTO) law. It suggests that some of the incentives offered to free zone users are inconsistent with the Agreement on Subsidies and Countervailing Measures (ASCM) because they constitute a ‘subsidy’ within the meaning of the ASCM, subject de iure or de facto to export performance, most notably, exemptions of direct taxes, exemptions of custom duties on the import of capital goods, exemptions of payment of social welfare charges, unqualified exemptions on payment of indirect taxes, and the possibility to supply goods or services to free zone users at promotional rates. By contrast, this article suggests that there are no significant inconsistencies between free zone incentives and the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) but warns that the situation could change in the future if, as a result of multilateral negotiations, MERCOSUR countries opt for extending their GATS commitments to new sectors and modes of supply
MATHEMATICAL EXPLANATION TO SOLUTION FOR EX-NOR PROBLEM USING MLFFN
No full textThis paper is in continuation to what we did previously in the field of Soft Computing. In the previous work the author proposed several solutions to the XOR problem. In this paper we will see some solutions to the Ex-NOR problem using the concept of MLFFN. Ex-NOR problem is a non-linearly separable problem the solutions of which are discussed in this paper. The Artificial Neural Network proposed is mathematically proved to be successful in providing solution to the Ex-NOR problem. The solutions proposed are explained by means of Architectural Graph and Signal flow graph.</p
Adolescent bereavement and social support perception of need according to gender
No full textPlan BIn the empirical studies that have specifically addressed adolescent grief recovery, the issue of gender differences in perceptions of social support following bereavement has not been thoroughly examined. The purpose of this study was to determine the level of difference in perceptions of social support for bereaved adolescents according to gender. 50 males and 50 females from freshman psychology classes at the University of Wisconsin-Stout participated in the study. During their years in high school, all of them had experienced the death of at least one person who was close to them. The researcher used a self-constructed survey instrument to measure the subjects’ perceptions of the social support they received and the social support they desired following their loss. A student’s t-test for independent means was used to determine the statistical significance of the results. An alpha level of .05 was used for all statistical tests. The point-biserial correlation coefficient was used to describe the strength of statistically significant differences. The results of the study indicated that males and females were most likely to identify their parents, other family members, and peers as providing helpful support after their loss. Clergypersons/spiritual leaders, teachers, and school counselors were less likely to be identified as helpful support providers. The majority of males and females were likely to identify more than five people who provided helpful support. However, more males than females identified only one or two support people. Males were more likely than females to identify a parent, followed by a peer as their most helpful support person. Females were split evenly between naming a parent or peer as their most helpful support person. Males were likely to receive support for shorter periods of time, with half of them receiving only a few days of support. Females were more likely to receive support for a few weeks or more. However, the males were more likely to desire support for shorter periods of time, and most of them received the duration of support they desired. The females were more likely to desire a longer duration of support, and they were less likely to receive the duration of support they desired. A brief look at the statistically significant differences indicates that females were more likely than males to receive helpful support in the form of having someone listen, understand their feelings, express sorrow, hug them, let them cry, and share their experience of the loss. Males and females received similar levels of support in the form of being helped with problem solving, being distracted from the loss, sharing memories of the deceased, and being allowed to grieve alone. A brief look at the statistically differences indicates that females were more likely than males to want someone to listen, to help with problem solving, to understand their feelings, to express sorrow, to hug them, to let them cry, and to share their experiences of the loss. Males and females desired similar levels of support in the form of being distracted from the loss, sharing memories of the deceased, and being allowed to grieve alone. The author compared participants’ experiences and perceptions of loss and social support following the loss, integrating the findings with prior research on adolescent bereavement and grief support issues. Implications for professionals, such as educators and counselors, who work with adolescents are discussed, as well as suggestions for future research
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