Analysis of single particle trajectories: when things go wrong

To recover the long-time behavior and the statistics of molecular trajectories from the large number (tens of thousands) of their short fragments, obtained by super-resolution methods at the single molecule level, data analysis based on a stochastic model of their non-equilibrium motion is required. Recently, we characterized the local biophysical properties underlying receptor motion based on coarse-grained long-range interactions, corresponding to attracting potential wells of large sizes. The purpose of this letter is to discuss optimal estimators and show what happens when thing goes wrong.Comment: 4 page

When Things Go Wrong: the Political Economy of Market Breakdown

Prepublication version of ‘When things go wrong: the Political Economy of Market Breakdown’ in Westra; R and Alan Zuege (Eds) (2003) Value and the World Economy Today: Production; Finance and Globalization; pp91-118. London:MacMillan; ISBN: 1 40390 002 7 This paper constructs a theoretical framework for understanding what happens when markets break down. It argues that when this happens; the ‘invisible hand becomes visible’ and conscious agencies (classes; states; governments; etc) intervene in the economy. ‘External Intervention’ into the market is thus not an imposition on the market but a product of the market. The paper grapples with what is arguably the most basic question in economics: are breakdown and recovery endogenous or exogenous? Do markets fall or are they pushed? Conversely; do they mend themselves; or does someone have to stick them back together? The primary ‘finding’ of all dominant economic theories is that the market works: that breakdown is exogenous and recovery is endogenous. I show that this finding arises from the shared starting point of these theories; the equilibrium or comparative static paradigm. This is equivalent to assuming that; the market works so perfectly that nothing needs to change. It then becomes impossible to deduce endogenous market failure. This why is one of the primary shortcomings of mainstream economic theory is its inability to two-way causal links between political institutions and the market.Keywords: Divergence; stagnation; World Economy; Kondratieff; Development; Europe; US; value; price; TSSI; temporalism; profit rate; polarisation; inequality; globalisation; deregulation; imperialism; World Systems Theory; unequal exchange; dependency; North-South

Understanding and responding when things go wrong: key principles for primary care educators

Learning from events with unwanted outcomes is an important part of workplace based education and providing evidence for medical appraisal and revalidation. It has been suggested that adopting a ‘systems approach’ could enhance learning and effective change. We believe the following key principles should be understood by all healthcare staff, especially those with a role in developing and delivering educational content for safety and improvement in primary care. When things go wrong, professional accountability involves accepting there has been a problem, apologising if necessary and committing to learn and change. This is easier in a ‘Just Culture’ where wilful disregard of safe practice is not tolerated but where decisions commensurate with training and experience do not result in blame and punishment. People usually attempt to achieve successful outcomes, but when things go wrong the contribution of hindsight and attribution bias as well as a lack of understanding of conditions and available information (local rationality) can lead to inappropriately blame ‘human error’. System complexity makes reduction into component parts difficult; thus attempting to ‘find-and-fix’ malfunctioning components may not always be a valid approach. Finally, performance variability by staff is often needed to meet demands or cope with resource constraints. We believe understanding these core principles is a necessary precursor to adopting a ‘systems approach’ that can increase learning and reduce the damaging effects on morale when ‘human error’ is blamed. This may result in ‘human error’ becoming the starting point of an investigation and not the endpoint

Every team deserves a second chance:Identifying when things go wrong

Voting among different agents is a powerful tool in problem solving, and it has been widely applied to improve the performance in finding the correct answer to complex problems. We present a novel benefit of voting, that has not been observed before: we can use the voting patterns to assess the performance of a team and predict their final outcome. This prediction can be executed at any moment during problem-solving and it is completely domain independent. We present a theoretical explanation of why our prediction method works. Further, contrary to what would be expected based on a simpler explanation using classical voting models, we argue that we can make accurate predictions irrespective of the strength (i.e., performance) of the teams, and that in fact, the prediction can work better for diverse teams composed of different agents than uniform teams made of copies of the best agent. We perform experiments in the Computer Go domain, where we obtain a high accuracy in predicting the final outcome of the games. We analyze the prediction accuracy for three different teams with different levels of diversity and strength, and we show that the prediction works significantly better for a diverse team. Since our approach is domain independent, it can be easily applied to a variety of domains

When Things Go Wrong: Village Elections as a Process Creating Contention

At the heart of the big story of Chinese rural democracy is the many millions of smaller stories of those who have been touched by this immense process. Before looking at village elections, therefore, here is one single story, of one man, who tried to stand in a village election, and of what happened to him. It is concrete experiences of engaging in the whole process of rural democracy like this that give village democracy its tremendous significance and interest. This section is based on papers obtained in Beijing in August 2009

Representing Difficult People

[Excerpt] Few stewards would argue that most of their union work flows directly from problems with management. Contract misinterpretations and outright violations, thoughtless supervision, paperwork foulups and a million other things go wrong all the time, adding up to a real handful for stewards. That’s why it can be such a frustration when some of your most difficult problems come not from management, but from your own ranks

Male puberty and spermatic development

Presentation about • Overview of the male reproductive system • Spermatogenesis • Normal puberty in boys • When things go wrong • Other clinical indications for assessing pubert