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Information Technology and Transport: What Research Needs to be Started Now?.

The ten week period from 9th October to 19th December 1982 was spent as Visiting Fellow at Leeds University at the Institute for Transport Studies; to examine the opportunities for research into the effects of information technology on transport and the interactions between them. This Fellowship was sponsored by the Science and Engineering Research Council (UK) and the Australian Road Research Board with additional support from Oxford Sytematics (Australia). This report reviews the scope for research in this area; with particular emphasis on identifying workable project directions in the Institute for Transport Studies (ITS). Appropriate contacts and related work are given. Topics covered include data acquisition systems (including the potential for hand-held data capture devices; and the use of aural, visual and micro-wave wavelengths in capturing data): data processing and comunications policy appropriate to the Institute' s requirements; the role of knowledge-based systems; and the analysis of the relation between communications and transport activities in respect of time-use and expenditure patterns. A number of the research proposals raised and put to ITS staff during the period are summarised in an Annex to this report (ITS technical Note TN 126). The summaries and texts of a series of seminars given during November-December 1982 at ITS are covered in a companion document (ITS Working Paper WP169)

Measuring Institutions: Indicators of Political Rights, Property Rights and Political Instability in Malawi

This paper aims to construct a new set of institutional indicators for Malawi. Our political freedom index correlates strongly with the Freedom House political rights and civil liberties indices, but consists of a far longer time series, which can be used to examine long-run issues with greater efficacy. The high correlations between the political freedoms index and the various property rights indices suggests that, in the Malawian case, lack of political freedom is associated with lack of economic freedom and security. However, our property rights indices correlate poorly with an index based on de facto property rights. This suggests that despite the governmentÂ’s legal power to abrogate property rights, these rights were generally respected. Cross-country comparisons suggest that political freedoms follow broadly similar patterns, particularly in Zimbabwe and Malawi. There is less of a match between countries on property rights issues, however.Institutions, Political freedom, Property rights and Malawi

Training of Social Workers in the Innovative Educational Environment of a University: Conceptual Ideas and Innovation Mechanisms

The study presents a reflection of the problem of innovation training of future social workers in Ukraine in the context of forming the innovative educational environment of higher educational institutions. Changes in the system of social workers training are characterized, frames of adding and widening their realization by conceptual ideas and mechanisms as to education in the field of social work are outlined. There is presented the multi-vector type of educational evolution in the field of social education that provides co-existence, development and interaction of conceptions, statements and views, different by their ideas as to the theoretical-methodological base of social workers training. Solving the problem of functioning of the innovative educational environment of social workers training provides a purpose-oriented preparation to elaboration and implementation of social work innovations, based on ideas of pedagogical innovation, competence-oriented and project teaching, social partnership. This process is specially organized, purpose-oriented, dynamic, which socio-pedagogical conditions are realized in the common activity of teaching subjects due to integration of innovative possibilities of the educational environment and personal potential of a specialist, support of students\u27 ideas and initiatives, introduction of the method of situational modeling of social situations, provision of teaching subjects\u27 interaction as a special type of social partnership of state institutions and public organizations. Such social workers training provides orientation on general scientific principles (system, open, variation, complex ones), concrete-scientific principles of organizing the educational environment (subjective activity, innovation, reflection, integration of the content of educational and other types of activity, principle of social partnership as realization of interaction between social institutions, organization of studio training). It has been proved, that renovation of social workers training as a process of purpose-oriented support of the innovative content of environment possibilities corresponds to the characteristics (practice-orientation, polyfunctionality, openness, innovativeness) and may be provided by organization-managerial, scientific-methodological, activity-practical mechanisms

The Failure of the Aetolian Deditio as a Didactic Cultural Clash in the Histories of Polybius (20.9-10)

This paper examines the Aetolian deditio in fidem of 191 as described by Polybius 20.9-10. Erich Gruen influentially interpreted Polybius’ description as inconsistent and exaggerated, on the grounds that Greeks and Romans from the 3rd and 2nd centuries BC had a common understanding of πίστις and fides and that Polybius’ own evidence on deditio was inconsistent. This paper reasserts the older view: that Greeks generally then had a hazy knowledge of Roman culture, including the practice of deditio, and that—even if weight be granted to factors such as the Roman commander’s personal character and ambitions or the historian’s supposed dislike of the Aetolians or his deployment of a degree of dramatic licence or a possible ‘hardening’ in the Romans’ general practice—this passage properly emphasises a genuine cultural clash, thereby promoting Polybius’ fundamental paideia-objective of teaching Greek readers, above all Greek politicians, how to respond competently to the realities of Roman power.Fil: Moreno Leoni, Álvaro Matías. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Córdoba. Centro de Investigaciones y Estudios sobre Cultura y Sociedad. Universidad Nacional de Córdoba. Centro de Investigaciones y Estudios sobre Cultura y Sociedad; Argentin

Developing Diplomats: Comparing Form and Culture Across Diplomatic Services, PRP 194

This study is a detailed and focused effort to broaden how we understand and conceptualize the recruitment, training, and development of professional diplomats in the twenty-first century. The goal is not to criticize processes in different countries, but to create a common foundation for comparing, learning, and even integrating training and career development models across nations.Public Affair

Adaptive learning, endogenous inattention, and changes in monetary policy

This paper develops an adaptive learning formulation of an extension to the Ball, Mankiw, and Reis (2005) sticky information model that incorporates endogenous inattention. We show that, following an exogenous increase in the policymaker’s preferences for price vs. output stability, the learning process can converge to a new equilibrium in which both output and price volatility are lower.Monetary policy ; Information theory

Being Omnipresent To Be Almighty: The Importance of The Global Web Evidence for Organizational Expert Finding

Modern expert nding algorithms are developed under the assumption that all possible expertise evidence for a person is concentrated in a company that currently employs the person. The evidence that can be acquired outside of an enterprise is traditionally unnoticed. At the same time, the Web is full of personal information which is sufficiently detailed to judge about a person's skills and knowledge. In this work, we review various sources of expertise evidence out-side of an organization and experiment with rankings built on the data acquired from six dierent sources, accessible through APIs of two major web search engines. We show that these rankings and their combinations are often more realistic and of higher quality than rankings built on organizational data only