Does one trust judgement fit all? Linking theory and empirics

Copyright @ 2010 The Authors. This is the accepted version of the following article: Fisher, J., Van Heerde, J. and Tucker, A. (2010), Does One Trust Judgement Fit All? Linking Theory and Empirics. The British Journal of Politics & International Relations, 12: 161–188, which has been published in final form at http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1467-856X.2009.00401.x/abstract.Few questions in political science have received more attention in recent times than the role of trust in democracy, democratic government and political participation. In Britain this has become a particular concern as levels of democratic engagement in traditional politics have declined, exacerbated by media reports of politicians' untrustworthy behaviour. A common feature of previous empirical work on political trust is that trust is treated as a single theoretical concept. Scholars have assumed that trust operates in a similar fashion across different political institutions—that citizens' trust mechanisms are the same for trusting parliament, the prime minister or the European Union. As a consequence, the operationalisation of trust has generally been through a single measure. In this article we draw on recent research from political theory, where different forms of judgements whether to trust—strategic, moral and deliberative—have been conceptualised, to argue that trust judgements may vary in application and significance depending upon the institution under examination. Using specially designed data sets generated from YouGov's weekly omnibus and the British Election Study's Continuous Monitoring Panel, we operationalise these three forms of trust judgements to examine trust in two British institutions—political parties and politicians. We find, as hypothesised, that different forms of trust judgements are of differing significance depending upon the institution under consideration

RGFGA: An efficient representation and crossover for grouping genetic algorithms

There is substantial research into genetic algorithms that are used to group large numbers of objects into mutually exclusive subsets based upon some fitness function. However, nearly all methods involve degeneracy to some degree. We introduce a new representation for grouping genetic algorithms, the restricted growth function genetic algorithm, that effectively removes all degeneracy, resulting in a more efficient search. A new crossover operator is also described that exploits a measure of similarity between chromosomes in a population. Using several synthetic datasets, we compare the performance of our representation and crossover with another well known state-of-the-art GA method, a strawman optimisation method and a well-established statistical clustering algorithm, with encouraging results

ICARUS: Intelligent coupon allocation for retailers using search

Many retailers run loyalty card schemes for their customers offering incentives in the form of money off coupons. The total value of the coupons depends on how much the customer has spent. This paper deals with the problem of finding the smallest set of coupons such that each possible total can be represented as the sum of a pre-defined number of coupons. A mathematical analysis of the problem leads to the development of a genetic algorithm solution. The algorithm is applied to real world data using several crossover operators and compared to well known straw-person methods. Results are promising showing that considerable time can be saved by using this method, reducing a few days worth of consultancy time to a few minutes of computation

Is the Water Sector Lagging behind Education and Health on Aid Effectiveness? Lessons from Bangladesh, Ethiopia and Uganda

A study in three countries (Bangladesh, Ethiopia and Uganda) assessed progress against the Paris Principles for Aid Effectiveness (AE) in three sectors – water, health and education – to test the assumption that the water sector is lagging behind. The findings show that it is too simplistic to say that the water sector is lagging, although this may well be the case in some countries. The study found that wider governance issues are more important for AE than having in place sector-specific mechanics such as Sector-Wide Approaches alone. National political leadership and governance are central drivers of sector AE, while national financial and procurement systems and the behaviour of actors who have not signed up to the Paris Principles – at both national and global levels – have implications for progress that cut across sectors. Sectors and sub-sectors do nonetheless have distinct features that must be considered in attempting to improve sector-level AE. In light of these findings, using political economy approaches to better understand and address governance and strengthening sector-level monitoring is recommended as part of efforts to improve AE and development results in the water sector

The scale of homogeneity in the Las Campanas Redshift Survey

We analyse the Las Campanas Redshift Survey using the integrated conditional density (or density of neighbors) in volume-limited subsamples up to unprecedented scales (200 Mpc/$h$) in order to determine without ambiguity the behavior of the density field. We find that the survey is well described by a fractal up to 20-30 Mpc/$h$, but flattens toward homogeneity at larger scales. Although the data are still insufficient to establish with high significance the expected homogeneous behavior, and therefore to rule out a fractal trend to larger scales, a fit with a CDM-like spectrum with high normalization well represents the data.Comment: 8 pages, 3 figures, accepted on Ap.J. Letter

Detections and Constraints on White Dwarf Variability from Time-Series GALEX Observations

We search for photometric variability in more than 23,000 known and candidate white dwarfs, the largest ultraviolet survey compiled for a single study of white dwarfs. We use gPhoton, a publicly available calibration/reduction pipeline, to generate time-series photometry of white dwarfs observed by GALEX. By implementing a system of weighted metrics, we select sources with variability due to pulsations and eclipses. Although GALEX observations have short baselines (< 30 min), we identify intrinsic variability in sources as faint as Gaia G = 20 mag. With our ranking algorithm, we identify 49 new variable white dwarfs (WDs) in archival GALEX observations. We detect 41 new pulsators: 37 have hydrogen-dominated atmospheres (DAVs), including one possible massive DAV, and four are helium-dominated pulsators (DBVs). We also detect eight new eclipsing systems; five are new discoveries, and three were previously known spectroscopic binaries. We perform synthetic injections of the light curve of WD 1145+017, a system with known transiting debris, to test our ability to recover similar systems. We find that the 3{\sigma} maximum occurrence rate of WD 1145+017-like transiting objects is < 0.5%.Comment: 17 pages, 13 figure

Using jet mass to discover vector quarks at the LHC

We illustrate the utility of jet mass distributions as probes of new physics at the LHC, focusing on a heavy vector-quark doublet that mixes with the top as a concrete example. For 1 TeV vector-quark masses, we find that signals with greater than 5 sigma significance can be achieved after 100 fb^-1. More generally, jet mass distributions have the potential to provide signals for heavy states that produce highly boosted weak gauge bosons and/or top quarks.Comment: 7pages, 5 figures; references adde

From Golden Spirals to Constant Slope Surfaces

In this paper, we find all constant slope surfaces in the Euclidean 3-space, namely those surfaces for which the position vector of a point of the surface makes constant angle with the normal at the surface in that point. These surfaces could be thought as the bi-dimensional analogue of the generalized helices. Some pictures are drawn by using the parametric equations we found.Comment: 11 pages, 8 figure

Understanding Rates of Marijuana Use and Consequences Among Adolescents in a Changing Legal Landscape.

Purpose of Review:There is not one answer to address whether marijuana use has increased, decreased, or stayed the same given changes in state legalization of medical and non-medical marijuana in the USA. Recent Findings:Evidence suggests some health benefits for medical marijuana; however, initiation of marijuana use is a risk factor for developing problem cannabis use. Though use rates have remained stable over recent years, about one in three 10th graders report marijuana use, most adolescents do not view the drug as harmful, and over 650,000 youth aged 12 to 17 struggle with cannabis use disorder. Summary:Although the health benefits of medical marijuana are becoming better understood, more research is needed. Intervention and prevention programs must better address effects of marijuana, acknowledging that while there may be some benefits medically, marijuana use can affect functioning during adolescence when the brain is still developing

The GSFC Mark-2 three band hand-held radiometer

A self-contained, portable, hand-radiometer designed for field usage was constructed and tested. The device, consisting of a hand-held probe containing three sensors and a strap supported electronic module, weighs 4 1/2 kilograms. It is powered by flashlight and transistor radio batteries, utilizes two silicon and one lead sulfide detectors, has three liquid crystal displays, sample and hold radiometric sampling, and its spectral configuration corresponds to LANDSAT-D's thematic mapper bands. The device was designed to support thematic mapper ground-truth data collection efforts and to facilitate 'in situ' ground-based remote sensing studies of natural materials. Prototype instruments were extensively tested under laboratory and field conditions with excellent results