51 research outputs found
The loss of personal privacy and its consequences for social research
No full textThis article chronicles more than 30 years of public opinion, politics, and law and policy on privacy and confidentiality that have had far-reaching consequences for access by the social research community to administrative and statistical records produced by government. A hostile political environment, public controversy over the decennial census long form, media coverage, and public fears about the vast accumulations of personal information by the private sector were catalysts for a recent proposal by the U.S. Bureau of the Census that would have significantly altered the contents of the 2000 census Public Use Microdata Sample (PUMS). These events show clearly that science does not operate independently from the political sphere but may be transformed by a political world where powerful interests lead government agencies to assume responsibility for privacy protection that can result in reducing access to statistical data
Social scientists at work on the electronic network
No full textThe purpose of this article is to contribute to our stock of knowledge about who uses networks, how they are used, and what contribution the networks make to advancing the scientific enterprise. Between 1985 and 1990, the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP) ACCESS data facility at the University of Wisconsin-Madison provided social scientists in the United States and elsewhere with access through the electronic networks to complex and dynamic statistical data; the 1984 SIPP is a longitudinal panel survey designed to examine economic well-being in the United States. This article describes the conceptual framework and design of SIPP ACCESS; examines how network users communicated with the SIPP ACCESS profect staff about the SIPP data; and evaluates one outcome derived from the communications, the improvement of the quality of the SIPP data. The direct and indirect benefits to social scientists of electronic networks are discussed. The author concludes with a series of policy recommendations that link the assessment of our inadequate knowledge base for evaluating how electronic networks advance the scientific enterprise and the SIPP ACCESS research network experience to the policy initiatives of the High Performance Computing Act of 1991 (P.L. 102-194) and the related extensive recommendations embodied in Grand Challenges 1993 High Performance Computing and Communications (The FY 1993 U.S. Research and Development Program)
Input of fully 3D FE soil-structure modelling to the operational analysis of jack-up structures
No full textJack-ups are mobile structures widely employed in the offshore industry as drilling rigs or installation/maintenance vessels (e.g. for offshore wind farms). To assure safety at each location, site-specific assessment is required to predict the performance of the unit during installation and operations. The response of jack-ups to environmental loads is highly affected by the interaction between all footings (spudcans) and the underlying soil, an interaction still challenging to describe under general 3D loading. This work emphasises the potential of 3D continuum simulations to capture non-linear soil-structural interaction in jack-up units. An integrated jack-up–spudcans-soil 3D finite element (FE) model is set up by including strain-hardening soil plasticity and geometrical non-linearity (P−Δ effects). After preliminary calibration of soil parameters, the FE model is successfully validated against literature results, namely obtained through (i) small-scale centrifuge experiments and (ii) numerical simulations based on macroelement foundation modelling. The validated FE model is then used to inspect several implications of soil modelling assumptions, as well as the response of the jack-up to relevant 3D loading combinations. The results presented support 3D continuum modelling as a suitable approach to analyse spudcan fixity and, overall, the operational performance of jack-ups. Despite higher conceptual/computational difficulties, fully 3D simulations can valuably complement the insight from (rare) integrated physical modelling, and contribute to the improvement of soil-spudcan macroelement models.Geo-engineerin
Seeking explanation in theory: Reflections on the social practices of organizations that distribute public use microdata files for research purposes
No full textPublic concern about personal privacy has recently focused on issues of Internet data security and personal information as big business. The scientific discourse about information privacy focuses on the cross-pressures of maintaining confidentiality and ensuring access in the context of the production of statistical data for public policy and social research and the associated technical solutions for releasing statistical data. This article reports some of the key findings from a small-scale survey of organizational practices to limit disclosure of confidential information prior to publishing public use microdata files, and illustrates how the rules for preserving confidentiality were applied in practice. Explanation for the apparent deficits and wide variations in the extent of knowledge about statistical disclosure limitation (SDL) methods is located in theories of organizational life and communities of practice. The article concludes with suggestions for improving communication between communities of practice to enhance the knowledge base of those responsible for producing public use microdata files
Communication Activism: Vol. 1, Communication for Social Change
No full textRobbin Crabtree is a contributing author, Chapter 6.
Book description: The need for communication scholars to engage in direct vigorous action in support of needed social change has never been more apparent and important, for there is no shortage of social issues and problems that demand attention. In short, communication scholars need to engage in communication activism. The two volumes showcase how scholars have engaged in communication activism to assist individuals, groups, organizations, and communities to secure social reform. Volume 1 presents research studies that promote public dialogue, debate, and discussion and that demonstrate how communication consulting can be used to accomplish needed social change. Together the two texts demonstrate the significant effects that communication scholars, working from many different theoretical and methodological traditions within the discipline, can have on promoting social change, especially for those who are most marginalized, when they engage in communication activism. – Publisher Descriptionhttps://digitalcommons.fairfield.edu/communications-books/1002/thumbnail.jp
The Cohomological Meaning of Maslov's Lagrangian Path Intersection Index
No full textWe study the relation between the complete Maslov index defined by Leray and the author, and the Lagrangian path intersection index defined by Robbin and Salamon, and used by McDuff and Salamon in their study of symplectic topology.</p
A Preliminary Inquiry into the Methodologies Employed in Research on ICTs and Society: Prologue (“An Alternate View of Knowledge Negotiation”)
No full textThis paper originates in a commitment to write a panel presentation on the methodologies employed in published research on ICTs and society for the 2009 ICTs, Society, and Human Beings conference. The author recognized that this task was not feasible without a rethinking of how to proceed. This paper describes how the author reconceptualized her thinking about how to fulfill her original commitment and offers an example of how we begin to understand what our research question is about.</jats:p
Adapting CBM to optimize the Sum of Costs
No full textIn the Multi-Agent Pathfinding with Matching (MAPFM) problem, agents from a team are matched with and routed towards one of their team's goals without colliding with other agents. The sum of path costs of all agents is minimized. In prior works, Conflict Based Min-Cost-Flow (CBM) has been proposed. This algorithm solves a similar problem that instead minimizes the maximum path length. In this paper, an extension upon CBM is presented, called CBMxSOC. It consists of several changes to CBM that allow it to minimize the sum of path costs. CBMxSOC is experimentally compared to other MAPFM solvers and is shown to be able to scale to many agents when there are few conflicts between different teams.CSE3000 Research ProjectComputer Science and Engineerin
Hydrodynamic Modeling of Estuarine Clay Mineral Distribution: The Ravenglass Estuary Analogue
No full textRelationship Between Construction Costs and Reliability of Quay Walls
No full textStructures have to meet a particular level of safety. Therefore, in the European design codes (Eurocodes), three reliability classes (RC) are introduced based on the potential consequence of failure of the structure. For each of the RC a maximum allowable probability of failure is introduced, corresponding to a reliability index. In recent research by Roubos et al. (2018), it is suggested that the marginal costs of safety investments for quay walls is quite low. Therefore, it is questionable whether the current reliability classes and the corresponding set of partial factors, as defined in the Eurocodes and CUR 211, are functional for quay walls. This gave rise to the present study. This thesis investigates the relationship between the construction costs and the reliability index for two quay walls located in the Port of Rotterdam; 1) a double anchored combi-wall and 2) a combi-wall with a relieving platform.In this study, more insight is acquired into the relationship between the construction costs and the reliability index of quay walls. Firstly, the two quay walls are designed semi-probabilistic in RC1, RC2 and RC3, using D-Sheet Piling for the double anchored combi-wall and using Plaxis 2D for the combi-wall with a relieving platform. Thereafter, the construction costs of these designs are calculated and compared. Besides that, the influence of the partial safety factors, which are defined in the Eurocodes and distinguish the reliability classes, on the construction costs is quantified. The same was done for the influence of three of the critical failure mechanisms; ‘passive resistance inadequate’, ‘sheet pile profile fails’ and ‘tension member anchorage fails’. For these failure mechanisms the reliability indices are estimated using the reliability analyses module of D-Sheet Piling, which is based on a probabilistic level II analysis, the First Order Reliability Method (FORM).It appeared that the marginal costs of safety investments for both quay walls is relatively low, even significantly lower than suggested by Roubos et al. (2018). It followed that the differentiation in construction costs between the reliability classes is considerably less than the differentiation in construction costs between quay walls in practice. Therefore, it seems that the current reliability classes and the corresponding set of partial safety factors, as defined in the Eurocodes and CUR 211, are non-functional for quay walls. Besides that, it can be concluded that when designing a quay wall, the determination of the angle of internal friction of the soil strongly influences the construction costs, followed by the surface- and crane loads. The influence of the cohesion of the soil and the bollard load on the construction costs is very small. Furthermore, the influence of the failure mechanisms ‘passive resistance inadequate’ and ‘tension member anchorage fails’ on the construction costs of the double anchored combi-wall is relatively low. Therefore, it is suggested that the reliability index of the quay wall can be increased in a economically attractive manner by increasing the length of the tubular piles of the combi-wall or the steel sectional area of the anchor rod. Due to these influences, it can be economically beneficial to increase the target reliability index of the failure mechanism ‘passive resistance inadequate’ and decrease the target reliability index of ‘sheet pile profile fails’.Civil Engineering | Hydraulic Engineering | Hydraulic Structures and Flood Ris
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