662 research outputs found
Tort Law - The Public Duty Doctrine: Should It Apply in the Face of Legislative Abrogation of Sovereign Immunity? - Coleman v. Cooper
This Note analyzes the Coleman case. The Note suggests that the court incorrectly applied the public duty doctrine where the defense of governmental immunity had been waived. First, the Note traces the background of the public duty doctrine. Second, the Note discusses the facts and holding of the Coleman case. Next, the note focuses on cases from other jurisdictions that have analyzed the public duty doctrine and its relation to governmental immunity. Finally, the Note addresses the issue of whether there is a real distinction between governmental immunity and the public duty doctrine
Successes and critical failures of neural networks in capturing human-like speech recognition
Natural and artificial audition can in principle evolve different solutions
to a given problem. The constraints of the task, however, can nudge the
cognitive science and engineering of audition to qualitatively converge,
suggesting that a closer mutual examination would improve artificial hearing
systems and process models of the mind and brain. Speech recognition - an area
ripe for such exploration - is inherently robust in humans to a number
transformations at various spectrotemporal granularities. To what extent are
these robustness profiles accounted for by high-performing neural network
systems? We bring together experiments in speech recognition under a single
synthesis framework to evaluate state-of-the-art neural networks as
stimulus-computable, optimized observers. In a series of experiments, we (1)
clarify how influential speech manipulations in the literature relate to each
other and to natural speech, (2) show the granularities at which machines
exhibit out-of-distribution robustness, reproducing classical perceptual
phenomena in humans, (3) identify the specific conditions where model
predictions of human performance differ, and (4) demonstrate a crucial failure
of all artificial systems to perceptually recover where humans do, suggesting a
key specification for theory and model building. These findings encourage a
tighter synergy between the cognitive science and engineering of audition
Should Radiology IT be Owned by the Chief Information Officer?
Considerable debate within the medical community has focused on the optimal location of information technology (IT) support groups on the organizational chart. The challenge has been to marry local accountability and physician acceptance of IT with the benefits gained by the economies of scale achieved by centralized knowledge and system best practices. In the picture archiving and communication systems (PACS) industry, a slight shift has recently occurred toward centralized control. Radiology departments, however, have begun to realize that no physicians in any other discipline are as dependent on IT as radiologists are on their PACS. The potential strengths and weaknesses of centralized control of the PACS is the topic of discussion for this month’s Point/Counterpoint
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Analysis of accreditation approaches in the Computing sector
This report for the Institute of Coding explores the extant accreditation regimes for Computing in the UK. It seeks to clarify the relationships between the main frameworks and standards, and how these map to some of the issues identified in the Shadbolt review.
Three primary perspectives are identified: academic, technical and competencies. Following an analysis of their key features, this report concludes by suggesting how they might be combined to help address some of the common issues with new graduates identified by Shadbolt
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Demonstrating the use of a professional skills framework to support the assessment of dispositions in IT education
The skills and competencies of IT professionals are often described using employer-led skills frameworks. They express competencies as technical knowledge and skills combined with a range of personal qualities. Employers have indicated the importance of developing such qualities for new graduates. In response, recent ACM/IEEE curricular recommendations have shifted their emphases from bodies of knowledge to the development of competencies. The IT2017 ACM/IEEE Curriculum Guidelines for Baccalaureate Degree Programs proposed a model of IT competency comprising three interrelated components: content knowledge, skills, and dispositions, where dispositions represent personal qualities desirable in the workplace. The ACM/IEEE Computing Curricula 2020 (CC2020) report enriched the IT2017 disposition concept by identifying eleven dispositions that all computing programs should include for the career preparation of their graduates. However, developing and assessing dispositions in a degree program remain challenges, often involving internships, work placements and similar student opportunities. A recent mapping of the eleven CC2020 dispositions to the responsibility characteristics of the Skills Framework for the Information Age (SFIA), a widely used professional skills framework, suggested a promising approach to addressing this challenge. Inspired by this mapping, this paper aims to help educators assess students' achievement of CC2020 dispositions by mapping real-world experiences they have recorded in individual portfolios against the SFIA responsibility characteristics. First, the selection of SFIA to operationalize the CC2020 dispositions is validated by demonstrating that alternative frameworks pose significant challenges for any assessment approach that needs to be independent of particular technical skills. A tool is described that maps demonstration of SFIA responsibility characteristics to CC2020 dispositions, applying a simple, consistent assessment algorithm. Finally, the assessment process and outcomes are illustrated using a fictional student portfolio, constructed to reflect one author's experience of work placement students' achievements
Comparative Direct Analysis of Type Ia Supernova Spectra. IV. Postmaximum
A comparative study of optical spectra of Type Ia supernovae (SNe Ia)
obtained near 1 week, 3 weeks, and 3 months after maximum light is presented.
Most members of the four groups that were defined on the basis of maximum light
spectra in Paper II (core normal, broad line, cool, and shallow silicon)
develop highly homogeneous postmaximum spectra, although there are interesting
exceptions. Comparisons with SYNOW synthetic spectra show that most of the
spectral features can be accounted for in a plausible way. The fits show that 3
months after maximum light, when SN Ia spectra are often said to be in the
nebular phase and to consist of forbidden emission lines, the spectra actually
remain dominated by resonance scattering features of permitted lines, primarily
those of Fe II. Even in SN 1991bg, which is said to have made a very early
transition to the nebular phase, there is no need to appeal to forbidden lines
at 3 weeks postmaximum, and at 3 months postmaximum the only clear
identification of a forbidden line is [Ca II] 7291, 7324. Recent studies of SN
Ia rates indicate that most of the SNe Ia that have ever occurred have been
"prompt" SNe Ia, produced by young (100,000,000 yr) stellar populations, while
most of the SNe Ia that occur at low redshift today are "tardy", produced by an
older (several Gyrs) population. We suggest that the shallow silicon SNe Ia
tend to be the prompt ones.Comment: Accepted by PAS
OH spectral evolution of oxygen-rich late-type stars
We investigated the main-line spectral evolution with shell thickness of
oxygen rich AGB stars. The study is based on a sample of 30 sources distributed
along the IRAS colour-colour diagram. The sources were chosen to trace the
Miras with thick shells and the whole range of OH/IR stars. The Miras exhibit a
1665 MHz emission strength comparable to that at 1667 MHz. Even though the
Miras of the study have quite thick shells, their spectral characteristics in
both main lines attest to a strong heterogeneity in their OH shell with, in
particular, the presence of significant turbulence and acceleration. The
expansion velocity has been found to be about the same at 1665 and 1667 MHz,
taking into account a possible velocity turbulence of 1-2km/s at the location
of the main-line maser emission. An increase in the intensity ratio 1667/1665
with shell thickness has been found. A plausible explanation for such a
phenomenon is that competitive gain in favour of the 1667 MHz line increases
when the shell is getting thicker. There is an evolution in the spectral
profile shape with the appearance of a substantial inter-peak signal when the
shell is getting thicker. Also, inter-peak components are found and can be as
strong as the external standard peaks when the shell is very thick. This trend
for an increase of the signal in between the two main peaks is thought to be
the result of an increase of the saturation with shell thickness. All sources
but two - a Mira and an OH/IR star from the lower part of the colour-colour
diagram - are weakly polarized. The strong polarization observed for those two
particular objects is thought to be the result of perturbations in their
shells.Comment: 19 pages, 12 figures, accepted for publication in A&
Baseline Chromatin Modification Levels May Predict Interindividual Variability in Ozone-Induced Gene Expression
Traditional toxicological paradigms have relied on factors such as age, genotype, and disease status to explain variability in responsiveness to toxicant exposure; however, these are neither sufficient to faithfully identify differentially responsive individuals nor are they modifiable factors that can be leveraged to mitigate the exposure effects. Unlike these factors, the epigenome is dynamic and shaped by an individual’s environment. We sought to determine whether baseline levels of specific chromatin modifications correlated with the interindividual variability in their ozone (O3)-mediated induction in an air–liquid interface model using primary human bronchial epithelial cells from a panel of 11 donors. We characterized the relationship between the baseline abundance of 6 epigenetic markers with established roles as key regulators of gene expression—histone H3 lysine 4 trimethylation (H3K4me3), H3K27 acetylation (H3K27ac), pan-acetyl H4 (H4ac), histone H3K27 di/trimethylation (H3K27me2/3), unmodified H3, and 5-hydroxymethylcytosine (5-hmC)—and the variability in the O3-induced expression of IL-8, IL-6, COX2, and HMOX1. Baseline levels of H3K4me3, H3K27me2/3, and 5-hmC, but not H3K27ac, H4ac, and total H3, correlated with the interindividual variability in O3-mediated induction of HMOX1 and COX2. In contrast, none of the chromatin modifications that we examined correlated with the induction of IL-8 and IL-6. From these findings, we propose an “epigenetic seed and soil” model in which chromatin modification states between individuals differ in the relative abundance of specific modifications (the “soil”) that govern how receptive the gene is to toxicant-mediated cellular signals (the “seed”) and thus regulate the magnitude of exposure-related gene induction
Genome sequence of Staphylococcus aureus strain CA-347, a USA600 methicillin-resistant isolate
The Staphylococcus aureus clonal lineage CC45 is a predominant colonizer of healthy individuals in northern Europe and constitutes a highly basal cluster of the S. aureus population. Here, we report the complete genome sequence of S. aureus strain CA-347 (NRS648), a representative of the methicillin-resistant USA600 clone predominantly found in the United States
Numerical Portrait of a Relativistic BCS Gapped Superfluid
We present results of numerical simulations of the 3+1 dimensional Nambu -
Jona-Lasinio (NJL) model with a non-zero baryon density enforced via the
introduction of a chemical potential mu not equal to 0. The triviality of the
model with a number of dimensions d>=4 is dealt with by fitting low energy
constants, calculated analytically in the large number of colors (Hartree)
limit, to phenomenological values. Non-perturbative measurements of local order
parameters for superfluidity and their related susceptibilities show that, in
contrast to the 2+1 dimensional model, the ground-state at high chemical
potential and low temperature is that of a traditional BCS superfluid. This
conclusion is supported by the direct observation of a gap in the dispersion
relation for 0.5<=(mu a)<=0.85, which at (mu a)=0.8 is found to be roughly 15%
the size of the vacuum fermion mass. We also present results of an initial
investigation of the stability of the BCS phase against thermal fluctuations.
Finally, we discuss the effect of splitting the Fermi surfaces of the pairing
partners by the introduction of a non-zero isospin chemical potential.Comment: 41 pages, 19 figures, uses axodraw.sty, v2: minor typographical
correction
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