VALUASI AIR TANAH DAN AIR PDAM UNTUK KEGIATAN RUMAH TANGGA MENGGUNAKAN METODE VALUASI CONTINGENT

Sebanyak 100 responden di Perumahan Antapani telah diwawancarai, berkaitan dengan kesanggupan untuk membayar (willingness to pay / WTP) setiap m3 penggunaan air tanah dan air PDAM. Studi ini dilakukan untuk mengetahui gambaran tentang sikap, pandangan dan penilaian umum masyarakat terhadap air tanah serta untuk mengetahui sejauh mana tingkat pendapatan, pendidikan, jumlah anggota keluarga dan kualitas air berpengaruh terhadap kesanggupan masyarakat membayar biaya penggunaan air tanah. Metode yang digunakan pada studi ini adalah Metode Valuasi Contingent (MVC) dimana MVC adalah metode teknik survey untuk menanyakan kepada penduduk tentang nilai atau harga yang mereka berikan terhadap komoditi yang tidak memiliki pasar seperti barang lingkungan. Berdasarkan hasil wawancara dapat diketahui bahwa WTP rata-rata untuk penggunaan air tanah sebesar Rp 525,- per m3 walaupun masih ada beberapa responden yang tidak mau sama sekali membayar, sedangkan untuk penggunaan air PDAM sebesar Rp 1.675,- per m3, dari hasil studi dapat diketahui bahwa WTP tersebut dipengaruhi oleh beberapa faktor yaitu tingkat pendapatan (I), pendidikan (E), jumlah anggota keluarga (C), kualitas air (Q), serta variabel model untuk penggunaan air, yaitu untuk penggunaan air untuk minum/memasak (D1), untuk mandi (D2), untuk mencuci pakaian (D3), untuk mencuci peralatan dapur (D4), untuk mencuci kendaraan (D5) dan untuk menyiram tanaman (D6). Sehingga dari variabel-variabel tersebut diperoleh sebuah persamaan regresi, yaitu untuk WTP air tanah : WTP = -4754,916 + 276,355 Ln I + 105,940 E + 52,088 C + 189,127 Q + 117,771 D1 + 71,869 D2 + 58,252 D3 + 3,740 D4 + 33,195 D5 + 9,740 D6 g dan untuk WTP air PDAM : WTP = -12943,424 + 935,383 Ln I + 235,883 E + 85,764 C + 168,309 Q - 792,049 D2 – 51,849 D3 + 101,851 D4 – 34,051 D5 – 124,926 D6 Terdapatnya sejumlah faktor yang mempengaruhi besar kecilnya nilai WTP membuktikan bahwa saat ini air telah menjadi komoditi ekonomi yang mengikuti mekanisme pasar serta menunjukkan sifat kelangkaannya. Hal penting yang perlu diperhatikan adalah adanya kesanggupan responden membayar pemakaian air tanah yang digunakannya, menunjukkan adanya tingkat kesadaran dan partisipasi masyarakat di Perumahan Antapani dalam rangka penghematan cadangan air tanah

A systematic review of the effectiveness of docetaxel and mitoxantrone for the treatment of metastatic hormone-refractory prostate cancer

A systematic review was performed to evaluate the clinical effectiveness of docetaxel in combination with prednisolone (docetaxel is licensed in the UK for use in combination with prednisone or prednisolone for the treatment of patients with metastatic hormone-refractory prostate cancer. Prednisone is not used in the UK, but it is reasonable to use docetaxel plus prednisone data in this review of docetaxel plus prednisolone) for the treatment of metastatic hormone-refractory prostate cancer. A scoping search identified a trial of docetaxel plus prednisone vs mitoxantrone plus prednisone, but did not identify any trials comparing docetaxel plus prednisolone/prednisone with any other treatments. Therefore, we considered additional indirect evidence that would enable a comparison of docetaxel plus prednisolone/prednisone with other chemotherapy regimens and active supportive care. Systematic searching (upto April 2005) identified seven randomised controlled trials. One large well-conducted trial assessed docetaxel plus prednisone vs mitoxantrone plus prednisone; this showed statistically significant improvements with 3-weekly docetaxel in terms of overall survival, quality of life, pain response and PSA decline. Two other chemotherapy regimens that included docetaxel with estramustine also showed improved outcomes in comparison with mitoxantrone plus prednisone. Three trials that compared mitoxantrone plus corticosteroids with corticosteroids alone were identified and their results for overall survival combined, which showed very little difference between the two groups. The addition of clodronate to mitoxantrone plus prednisone showed no significant differences in comparison with mitoxantrone plus prednisone alone. The evidence suggests that chemotherapy regimens containing 3-weekly docetaxel are superior to mitoxantrone or corticosteroids alone

How do you say ‘hello’? Personality impressions from brief novel voices

On hearing a novel voice, listeners readily form personality impressions of that speaker. Accurate or not, these impressions are known to affect subsequent interactions; yet the underlying psychological and acoustical bases remain poorly understood. Furthermore, hitherto studies have focussed on extended speech as opposed to analysing the instantaneous impressions we obtain from first experience. In this paper, through a mass online rating experiment, 320 participants rated 64 sub-second vocal utterances of the word ‘hello’ on one of 10 personality traits. We show that: (1) personality judgements of brief utterances from unfamiliar speakers are consistent across listeners; (2) a two-dimensional ‘social voice space’ with axes mapping Valence (Trust, Likeability) and Dominance, each driven by differing combinations of vocal acoustics, adequately summarises ratings in both male and female voices; and (3) a positive combination of Valence and Dominance results in increased perceived male vocal Attractiveness, whereas perceived female vocal Attractiveness is largely controlled by increasing Valence. Results are discussed in relation to the rapid evaluation of personality and, in turn, the intent of others, as being driven by survival mechanisms via approach or avoidance behaviours. These findings provide empirical bases for predicting personality impressions from acoustical analyses of short utterances and for generating desired personality impressions in artificial voices

Immigrant community integration in world cities

As a consequence of the accelerated globalization process, today major cities all over the world are characterized by an increasing multiculturalism. The integration of immigrant communities may be affected by social polarization and spatial segregation. How are these dynamics evolving over time? To what extent the different policies launched to tackle these problems are working? These are critical questions traditionally addressed by studies based on surveys and census data. Such sources are safe to avoid spurious biases, but the data collection becomes an intensive and rather expensive work. Here, we conduct a comprehensive study on immigrant integration in 53 world cities by introducing an innovative approach: an analysis of the spatio-temporal communication patterns of immigrant and local communities based on language detection in Twitter and on novel metrics of spatial integration. We quantify the "Power of Integration" of cities --their capacity to spatially integrate diverse cultures-- and characterize the relations between different cultures when acting as hosts or immigrants.Comment: 13 pages, 5 figures + Appendi

THE JCMT GOULD BELT SURVEY: DENSE CORE CLUSTERS IN ORION A

The Orion A molecular cloud is one of the most well-studied nearby star-forming regions, and includes regions of both highly clustered and more dispersed star formation across its full extent. Here, we analyze dense, star-forming cores identified in the 850 and 450 μm SCUBA-2 maps from the JCMT Gould Belt Legacy Survey. We identify dense cores in a uniform manner across the Orion A cloud and analyze their clustering properties. Using two independent lines of analysis, we find evidence that clusters of dense cores tend to be mass segregated, suggesting that stellar clusters may have some amount of primordial mass segregation already imprinted in them at an early stage. We also demonstrate that the dense core clusters have a tendency to be elongated, perhaps indicating a formation mechanism linked to the filamentary structure within molecular clouds

Quantum Simulation of Tunneling in Small Systems

A number of quantum algorithms have been performed on small quantum computers; these include Shor's prime factorization algorithm, error correction, Grover's search algorithm and a number of analog and digital quantum simulations. Because of the number of gates and qubits necessary, however, digital quantum particle simulations remain untested. A contributing factor to the system size required is the number of ancillary qubits needed to implement matrix exponentials of the potential operator. Here, we show that a set of tunneling problems may be investigated with no ancillary qubits and a cost of one single-qubit operator per time step for the potential evolution. We show that physically interesting simulations of tunneling using 2 qubits (i.e. on 4 lattice point grids) may be performed with 40 single and two-qubit gates. Approximately 70 to 140 gates are needed to see interesting tunneling dynamics in three-qubit (8 lattice point) simulations.Comment: 4 pages, 2 figure

Impaired perception of facial motion in autism spectrum disorder

Copyright: © 2014 O’Brien et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.This article has been made available through the Brunel Open Access Publishing Fund.Facial motion is a special type of biological motion that transmits cues for socio-emotional communication and enables the discrimination of properties such as gender and identity. We used animated average faces to examine the ability of adults with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) to perceive facial motion. Participants completed increasingly difficult tasks involving the discrimination of (1) sequences of facial motion, (2) the identity of individuals based on their facial motion and (3) the gender of individuals. Stimuli were presented in both upright and upside-down orientations to test for the difference in inversion effects often found when comparing ASD with controls in face perception. The ASD group’s performance was impaired relative to the control group in all three tasks and unlike the control group, the individuals with ASD failed to show an inversion effect. These results point to a deficit in facial biological motion processing in people with autism, which we suggest is linked to deficits in lower level motion processing we have previously reported