User-centered development of a Virtual Research Environment to support collaborative research events

This paper discusses the user-centred development process within the Collaborative Research Events on the Web (CREW) project, funded under the JISC Virtual Research Environments (VRE) programme. After presenting the project, its aims and the functionality of the CREW VRE, we focus on the user engagement approach, grounded in the method of co-realisation. We describe the different research settings and requirements of our three embedded user groups and the respective activities conducted so far. Finally we elaborate on the main challenges of our user engagement approach and end with the project’s next steps

Ontology population for open-source intelligence: A GATE-based solution

Open-Source INTelligence is intelligence based on publicly available sources such as news sites, blogs, forums, etc. The Web is the primary source of information, but once data are crawled, they need to be interpreted and structured. Ontologies may play a crucial role in this process, but because of the vast amount of documents available, automatic mechanisms for their population are needed, starting from the crawled text. This paper presents an approach for the automatic population of predefined ontologies with data extracted from text and discusses the design and realization of a pipeline based on the General Architecture for Text Engineering system, which is interesting for both researchers and practitioners in the field. Some experimental results that are encouraging in terms of extracted correct instances of the ontology are also reported. Furthermore, the paper also describes an alternative approach and provides additional experiments for one of the phases of our pipeline, which requires the use of predefined dictionaries for relevant entities. Through such a variant, the manual workload required in this phase was reduced, still obtaining promising results

No one noticed, no one heard: a study of disclosures of childhood abuse

ReportThis report describes the childhood experiences of abuse of 60 young men and women and how they disclosed this abuse and sought help. These young people experienced high levels and different kinds of violence, including sexual abuse and family violence. It is often asserted that young people who experience abuse do not talk about it. The face to face interviews for this study show that a majority of young people did attempt to disclose their abuse to at least one person although this information was not identified in the surveys for this study. Eighty per cent – 48 of the 60 young people we spoke to – attempted to disclose the abuse before they were 18 years old. Some of these disclosures led to protective action and some did not. Research has suggested that sexual abuse is unlikely to be disclosed – and yet 38 of the 44 young people (86 per cent) who suffered from sexual abuse did disclose during childhood; 66 per cent attempted to disclose when the abuse was happening. However, just like many high profile cases, not all of these disclosures were “heard” or acted upon. Young people generally made more than one disclosure. Of the 203 disclosures in childhood that were made, 117 disclosures (58 per cent) were acted upon by recipients. Suffering from abuse is a distressing experience. It should be no surprise that disclosures that were ignored, denied or badly handled added to the negative experiences of the young people in this study. Policy-makers and people working with children should use the evidence in this report to support better identification of abuse by adults, reduce the barriers to disclosure and to improve the experience of disclosure for young people. Practitioners should particularly consider how they can change their practice to ensure that the experiences of the young people in this report are not repeate

The Cowl - v.34 - n.9 - Oct 28, 1981

The Cowl - student newspaper of Providence College. Volume 34 – October 28, 1981. 12 pages

The American Middle Class, Income Inequality, and the Strength of Our Economy

Analyzes 1979-2007 income growth by income group and how the state of the middle class and level of income inequality affect factors shaping the economy, such as human capital, demand for goods and services, entrepreneurship, and inclusive institutions

Employment in Poland 2007: Security on flexible labour market

This Report is a third in the series Employment in Poland. It consists of four Parts, devoted to empirical analysis of the impact of macroeconomic shocks on EU New Member States labour markets‘ in 1996-2006; utilization of flexible forms of employment on Polish labor market, determinants of wages and wage inequalities in Poland; effectiveness of ALMP in Poland, respectively. In Part I, we present how the cyclical upturn propagated on Polish labour market in 2003-2007 and how the performance of that market evolved relatively to other EU countries. Then we apply a panel SVECM to study propagation of macroeconomic shocks in eight CEE countries which joined the EU in 2004. We show that demand side shocks (foreign demand and labour demand shocks) were of foremost importance to unemployment and employment fluctuations in the region. At the same time, we argue that the wage shocks, thought of as wage rigidities, were important internal disturbances affecting the developments on the labour markets in the region. Part II is devoted to atypical forms of labour employment. We show that in all CEE countries the incidence of nonstandard employment arrangements is much lower than in Western Europe. Although Poland stands out in the whole EU with its dynamic spread of temporary employment and integration of temporary work agencies in the functioning of the labour market, in general the potential of atypical employment in Poland and other CEE is largely unfulfilled when it comes to work- life balance or supporting the economic activity of people who find it difficult to work full-time due to age or health reasons. In case of Poland, we study in more detailed way the legal, infrastructural and tax-related factors affecting the utilisation of nonstandard forms of employment. In Part III, we study wage developments in Poland from macro- and micro-perspective alike. We argue that wage growth in Poland exhibited a significant inertia during the transition period. We find that the concurrent rise of wage inequalities in Poland was due to the fact that rapid technological progress favoured some professional and social groups more than others. The increasing return on formal education and rising premiums on work in managerial positions as well as increasingly diverse individual and market characteristics of Polish workers seem to play the key role. The public sector stands out with higher wage compression than private sector. We show also that, in international comparison, the gender wage gap in Poland is relatively small. Notwithstanding the above, even if differences in individual and employer characteristics as well as working time are taken into consideration, women still earn about ten percent less than men. Part IV focuses active labour market policies (ALMP). We assess the ALMP spending and structure in Poland and we use the survey, conducted for the purposes of this Report, to study to effectiveness of ALMP. To our knowledge, it is the first attempt at producing a rigorous and comprehensive evaluation of ALMP effectiveness in Poland in the recent years. Applying Propensity Score Matching, we find that intervention and public works turn out to be completely inefficient when it comes to enhancing employment chances of the unemployed. At the same time, even for those programs that are characterised by positive net efficiency, such as internships and traineeships, the deadweight loss is also high, i.e. support is extended to groups whose situation is relatively good, whereas more difficult cases are neglected. Thus, the placement of ALMP participants in Poland is sub-optimal, which partly reflects very poor job broking and counseling done by PES. We complete the report with policy implications

A Community-Based Participatory Action Research for Roma Health Justice in a Deprived District in Spain

Addressing health disparities and promoting health equity for Roma has been a challenge. The Roma are the largest disadvantaged ethnic minority population in Europe and have been the victims of deep social and economic injustices, institutional discrimination, and structural antigypsyism over many centuries. This has resulted in a much worse health status than their non-Roma counterparts. Current strategies based on ameliorative and top-down approaches to service delivery have resulted in paradoxical e_ects that solidify health disparities, since they do not e_ectively address the problems of vulnerable Roma groups. Following a health justice approach, we present a community-based participatory action research case study generated by a community and university partnership intended to address power imbalances and build collaboration among local stakeholders. This case study involved a group of health providers, Roma residents, researchers, Roma community organizations, and other stakeholders in the Poligono Sur, a neighborhood of Seville, Spain. The case study comprises four phases: (1) identifying Roma health assets, (2) empowering Roma community through sociopolitical awareness, (3) promoting alliances between Roma and community resources/institutions, and (4) building a common agenda for promoting Roma health justice. We highlighted best practices for developing processes to influence Roma health equity in local health policy agendas

Counter-intelligence in a command economy

We provide the first thick description of the KGB’s counter-intelligence function in the Soviet command economy. Based on documentation from Lithuania, the paper considers KGB goals and resources in relation to the supervision of science, industry, and transport; the screening of business personnel; the management of economic emergencies; and the design of economic reforms. In contrast to a western market regulator, the role of the KGB was to enforce secrecy, monopoly, and discrimination. As in the western market context, regulation could give rise to perverse incentives with unintended consequences. Most important of these may have been adverse selection in the market for talent. There is no evidence that the KGB was interested in the costs of its regulation or in mitigating the negative consequences