Extend Commitment Protocols with Temporal Regulations: Why and How

The proposal of Elisa Marengo's thesis is to extend commitment protocols to explicitly account for temporal regulations. This extension will satisfy two needs: (1) it will allow representing, in a flexible and modular way, temporal regulations with a normative force, posed on the interaction, so as to represent conventions, laws and suchlike; (2) it will allow committing to complex conditions, which describe not only what will be achieved but to some extent also how. These two aspects will be deeply investigated in the proposal of a unified framework, which is part of the ongoing work and will be included in the thesis.Comment: Proceedings of the Doctoral Consortium and Poster Session of the 5th International Symposium on Rules (RuleML 2011@IJCAI), pages 1-8 (arXiv:1107.1686

Industrial Coal Demand in China: A Provincial Analysis

The general concern on the environmental implications of the rising demand for coal registered in China during the last few years has induced considerable research effort to produce accurate forecasts of China’s energy requirements. Nevertheless, no previous study has modelled the coal demand in China at provincial level. The aim of this paper is twofold. First, we estimate and forecast the Chinese demand for coal using panel data disaggregated by provinces and accounting for spatial heterogeneity. Second, given the spatial nature of the data, we explicitly capture the spatial autocorrelation among provinces using spatial econometrics. In particular, we specify the Chinese industrial coal demand at provincial level with a fixed-effect spatial lag model and a fixed-effect spatial error model. The fixedeffect spatial lag model seems to better capture the existing interdependence between provinces. This model forecasts an average annual increase in coal demand to 2010 of 4 percent.Energy demand in China, Coal demand in China, Chinese provinces, Panel data; Spatial econometrics, Forecasting

Delegating home care for the elderly to external caregivers? An empirical study on Italian data

We study care arrangement decisions in Italy, where families are increasingly delegating the role of primary caregiver to external (paid) people also for the provision of home care. We consider a sample of households with a dependent elderly person cared for either at home or in a residential home, extracted from a survey representative of the population of Italy’s Emilia-Romagna region. We investigate the determinants of a household’s decision to opt for one of the following three alternatives: the institutionalisation of elderly family members, informal home care, or paid home care. We estimate two model specifications, based on a simultaneous and a sequential decision process respectively, the results of which are fairly consistent. Disability related variables, rather than family characteristics, emerge as the main determinants of institutionalisation. On the other hand, household characteristics and socio-economic variables are more influential when it comes to choosing between informal and formal home care provisions

The 5th edition of the Roma-BZCAT. A short presentation

The 5th edition of the Roma-BZCAT Multifrequency Catalogue of Blazars is available in a printed version and online at the ASDC website (http://www.asdc.asi.it/bzcat); it is also in the NED database. It presents several relevant changes with respect to the past editions which are briefly described in this paper.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figures. Accepted for publication in Astrophysics and Space Scienc

Leben nach einem Schlaganfall ohne Stolpersteine : interprofessionelle Sturzprävention bei Personen nach Schlaganfall im ambulanten Setting

Hintergrund: Die interprofessionelle Sturzprävention im ambulanten Setting bei Personen nach einem Schlaganfall ist nicht abschliessend erklärt und umgesetzt. Dies zeigen aktuell bestehende Forschungslücken der Literatur auf. Zudem zeigen Erfahrungen aus der aktuellen Praxis, dass vorwiegend multiprofessionell gearbeitet wird. Um eine optimale ambulante Sturzprävention zu erreichen, muss die Zusammenarbeit und die Aufgabenaufteilung der Physio- und Ergotherapie geklärt werden. Ziel: Das Ziel dieser Arbeit ist es, Empfehlungen für die interprofessionelle Sturzprävention im ambulanten Bereich bei Personen nach Schlaganfall anhand der aktuellen Literatur abzuleiten. Methode: Für die Beantwortung der Fragestellung wurde eine systematische Literatursuche in den Datenbanken CINAHL, AMED, PubMed, Medline, OT-Seeker, OTDbase und Pedro durchgeführt. Anhand der definierten Ein- und Ausschlusskriterien wurden vier Hauptstudien inkludiert. Die Resultate der Hauptstudien werden angelehnt an die ICF (WHO, 2005) miteinander verglichen und grafisch dargestellt. Ergebnisse: Es werden einzelne signifikante Sturzpräventionsinterventionen nach Schlaganfall beschrieben. Die ambulante Zusammenarbeit der Professionen Ergound Physiotherapie im Bereich der Sturzprävention wird in den Studien nicht angesprochen. Es werden Empfehlungen zur interprofessionellen Zusammenarbeit hergeleitet. Schlussfolgerung: Der interprofessionelle Ansatz könnte in Zukunft im Bereich der ambulanten Sturzprävention an Bedeutung gewinnen. Für die Untermauerung dieser These ist weitere Forschung nötig