Stepping Stone Mobility

People at the top of an occupational ladder earn more partly because they have spent time on lower rungs, where they have learned something. But what precisely do they learn? There are two contrasting views: First, the Bandit model assumes that people are different, that experience reveals their characteristics, and that consequently an occupational switch can result. Second, in our Stepping Stone model, experience raises a worker's productivity on a given task and the acquired skill can in part be transferred to other occupations, and this prompts movement. Safe activities (where mistakes destroy less output) are a natural training ground.

The Role of Brownfields and Their Revitalisation for the Functional Connectivity of the Urban Tree System in a Regrowing City

The connectivity of green infrastructure facilitating the movement of organisms is the key to strengthening biodiversity in cities. Brownfields are a valuable land resource, with their revitalisation as a Nature Based Solution high on the policy agenda. In supporting cities which simultaneously aim for densification and the maintenance or further development of greenery, this paper develops a model for identifying and prioritising the role of revitalised and prevailing brownfields for the connectivity of green infrastructure using the example of Leipzig, Germany. Comparing metrics between land use categories, brownfields have a central role as stepping stones, with a value of 13%, while revitalised brownfields substantially contribute to global connectivity, with a value of 87% being equally important, for example, with Leipzig’s central parks. This paper’s spatial-explicit network approach provides a complementary planning tool for prioritising brownfields and the added value of their renaturing by identifying (a) strategic functional corridors formed by brownfields, (b) the connectivity relevance and exposure of individual brownfields, and (c) how renatured brownfields would strengthen existing corridors and form alternative paths. This paper presents an approach using freely available software tools and high-resolution canopy data as a proxy for functional connectivity which serves as a standardised and comparable ex-ante evaluation of NBS strategies being implemented in other cities.CLEARING HOUSE (Collaborative Learning in Research, Information-sharing, and Governance on How Urban Forest-based Solutions Support Sino-European Urban Futures) Horizon 2020 projectNaturaConnect (Designing a Resilient and Coherent Trans-European Network for Nature and People) Horizon 2020 projectPeer Reviewe

The Lottery of Birth: Giving all Children an Equal Chance to Survive

Based on inaugural analysis of disaggregated data from 87 low and middle income countries around the world, this report reveals that in more than three quarters of these countries, inequalities in child survival rates are actually worsening, resulting in some groups of children making far slower progress than their better-off peers. In 78 percent of the countries covered in the report, at least one social or economic group has fallen behind and is therefore making slower progress in reducing child mortality, and in 16 percent of these countries, inequalities in child survival rates have increased across all social and economic groups. Save the Children's analysis suggests that, without a true step change in action, the lottery of birth will continue into the future, slowing progress towards the ultimate goal of ending preventable child deaths for generations to come. However, tackling this inequality is possible. Almost a fifth of the countries in the report, including Rwanda, Malawi, Mexico, and Bangladesh, have successfully combined rapid and inclusive reductions in child mortality, achieving faster progress than most countries, while at the same time ensuring that no groups of children are left behind.The agency calls for the international community to commit to ending preventable child deaths by 2030.The new development framework, which will replace the MDGs, will be agreed upon at the United Nations General Assembly in September 2015. This framework must set out ambitious child and maternal survival targets and commit to working towards universal health coverage

Introducing Diversion Graph for Real-Time Spatial Data Analysis with Location Based Social Networks

Neighbourhood graphs are useful for inferring the travel network between locations posted in the Location Based Social Networks (LBSNs). Existing neighbourhood graphs, such as the Stepping Stone Graph lack the ability to process a high volume of LBSN data in real time. We propose a neighbourhood graph named Diversion Graph, which uses an efficient edge filtering method from the Delaunay triangulation mechanism for fast processing of LBSN data. This mechanism enables Diversion Graph to achieve a similar accuracy level as Stepping Stone Graph for inferring travel networks, but with a reduction of the execution time of over 90%. Using LBSN data collected from Twitter and Flickr, we show that Diversion Graph is suitable for travel network processing in real time

The Role of Landscape Connectivity in Planning and Implementing Conservation and Restoration Priorities. Issues in Ecology

Landscape connectivity, the extent to which a landscape facilitates the movements of organisms and their genes, faces critical threats from both fragmentation and habitat loss. Many conservation efforts focus on protecting and enhancing connectivity to offset the impacts of habitat loss and fragmentation on biodiversity conservation, and to increase the resilience of reserve networks to potential threats associated with climate change. Loss of connectivity can reduce the size and quality of available habitat, impede and disrupt movement (including dispersal) to new habitats, and affect seasonal migration patterns. These changes can lead, in turn, to detrimental effects for populations and species, including decreased carrying capacity, population declines, loss of genetic variation, and ultimately species extinction. Measuring and mapping connectivity is facilitated by a growing number of quantitative approaches that can integrate large amounts of information about organisms’ life histories, habitat quality, and other features essential to evaluating connectivity for a given population or species. However, identifying effective approaches for maintaining and restoring connectivity poses several challenges, and our understanding of how connectivity should be designed to mitigate the impacts of climate change is, as yet, in its infancy. Scientists and managers must confront and overcome several challenges inherent in evaluating and planning for connectivity, including: •characterizing the biology of focal species; •understanding the strengths and the limitations of the models used to evaluate connectivity; •considering spatial and temporal extent in connectivity planning; •using caution in extrapolating results outside of observed conditions; •considering non-linear relationships that can complicate assumed or expected ecological responses; •accounting and planning for anthropogenic change in the landscape; •using well-defined goals and objectives to drive the selection of methods used for evaluating and planning for connectivity; •and communicating to the general public in clear and meaningful language the importance of connectivity to improve awareness and strengthen policies for ensuring conservation. Several aspects of connectivity science deserve additional attention in order to improve the effectiveness of design and implementation. Research on species persistence, behavioral ecology, and community structure is needed to reduce the uncertainty associated with connectivity models. Evaluating and testing connectivity responses to climate change will be critical to achieving conservation goals in the face of the rapid changes that will confront many communities and ecosystems. All of these potential areas of advancement will fall short of conservation goals if we do not effectively incorporate human activities into connectivity planning. While this Issue identifies substantial uncertainties in mapping connectivity and evaluating resilience to climate change, it is also clear that integrating human and natural landscape conservation planning to enhance habitat connectivity is essential for biodiversity conservation

Career Transitions and Trajectories: A Case Study in Computing

From artificial intelligence to network security to hardware design, it is well-known that computing research drives many important technological and societal advancements. However, less is known about the long-term career paths of the people behind these innovations. What do their careers reveal about the evolution of computing research? Which institutions were and are the most important in this field, and for what reasons? Can insights into computing career trajectories help predict employer retention? In this paper we analyze several decades of post-PhD computing careers using a large new dataset rich with professional information, and propose a versatile career network model, R^3, that captures temporal career dynamics. With R^3 we track important organizations in computing research history, analyze career movement between industry, academia, and government, and build a powerful predictive model for individual career transitions. Our study, the first of its kind, is a starting point for understanding computing research careers, and may inform employer recruitment and retention mechanisms at a time when the demand for specialized computational expertise far exceeds supply.Comment: To appear in KDD 201

Fantastic Educational Gaps and Where to Find Them: LERB – A Model to Classify Inequity and Inequality

In today’s world, education is less being considered as an outcome, but more as a journey. As the adventurers, our students are facing more and more complex challenges. Previously, the socio-economic status of a student’s family seemed to be one of the biggest factors among inequality causes. Nowadays, the chaotic situation of today's VUCA world (volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity) is generating more and more types of inequity and inequality. Thus, the purpose of the study is to develop LERB - a simple model to classify inequity and inequality, as a stepping-stone to build a gap detection framework. Through a structured literature review, the study identified the interconnection between equity and equality, as well as their transition toward students as an individual or as a group(s) and subgroup(s). The study can also be adapted to examine the correlation between different categories of equity, as well as to brainstorm and propose remedies to tackle those gaps

Improving Conservation Techniques Through Graph Theoretic Models

While concerns for local and global ecological issues increase, there is a growing need for the conservation of functioning ecosystems; as land management evolves in scope and emphasis, land managers are in need of new tools. Graph theory, a relatively efficient mathematical modeling approach, has been used for modeling and analyzing an array of networks and as a result proving itself as a potential framework for landscape modeling with its adaptable measures. Through an in-depth review of two unique examples of graph theoretic habitat modeling, we will see how these models compare to the more complex and biologically accurate spatially explicit population models, and what they can tell us about habitats that have had no previous analysis. It will then be seen that graph theoretic modeling approaches are important to habitat conservation research in various ways