1,407 research outputs found
The Renewed City. New Settlement Principles for the "Re-Construction" of the Urban Form in the Disused Areas
The paper will deal with the theme of "re-construction" of the urban form in the areas made available by the industrial, military or infrastructural dismantling processes. Assumed as a "resource" for the contemporary city (often for their "strategic" position), these areas offer the opportunity to focus and experiment new settlement principles capable not only to resolve (on the morphological, spatial and functional level) the relation between the parts of city that were previously divided but, above all, to combine the compact and continuous condition of the city with the presence of wide empty spaces of "nature", intentionally re-introduced into the new urban context. Accepting the challenge of re-building our cities in order to make them corresponding to the aspirations of our time (sustainability, livability, well-being), our research proposes an alternative response to the current settlement "practices". Against the principles of "dispersion", that means the "pervasive" occupation of the urban and suburban soil and the indifference to the peculiarities of the places, it proposes the principle of "densification" and "compaction" of the built volumes in morphologic units that, besides being evocative of the urban condition, are capable to confer to the empty spaces, inside or between them, the value of public places defined by their reciprocal relation. The purpose of this approach is to subtract the empty space (natural or artificial) to its destiny of residual undefined space between "solitary" buildings, in order to give it a higher value: to contribute to the definition of form of the city of our time
Perceptions of Teachers on Instructing Remedial Mathematics Students
Approximately 12% of students at the study middle school failed to reach proficient levels on state assessments in mathematics from 2010-2012. Poor performance on assessments can limit future mathematical trajectories and opportunities for students. One of the causes for failing to meet proficient levels on mathematics assessments could be the inconsistent use of teaching practices targeted at supporting lower achieving students; according to such reasoning, a consistent use of research-supported practices could result in improved student performance. Kolb\u27s experiential learning theory, Vygotsky\u27s social development theory, and Maslow\u27s motivation theory provided a framework for this case study. Interviews and observational data were used to ascertain 5 teachers\u27 perceptions concerning instruction for students who fail to reach proficient levels on state assessments. Research questions examined teachers\u27 perceptions regarding implementing best instructional practices and regarding number sense, computational, problem-solving, working memory, and self-efficacy needs of lower level basic skills students. Data from 10 teacher interviews and 15 observations were analyzed using typological coding and thematic analysis. Results indicated that teachers perceived that homogenous groupings prevented teachers from meeting needs of students scoring below the proficient level and from using research-based strategies. The resulting position paper outlines the recommendation to de-track mathematics classrooms into heterogeneous groupings. Study results can be used to help provide teachers with research-based strategies targeted toward improving instruction for basic skills students
Learning from Las Vegas: Unions and post-industrial urbanisation
Las Vegas is often portrayed as the apogee of postmodern urbanism, but we argue that you cannot understand Las Vegas without understanding the role of unions in the City’s political economy. By focusing on the social relations surrounding workplace, class, and gender we highlight alternative versions of Las Vegas’ history. The Culinary Union, a UNITE HERE local, has introduced new institutional forms and played an active role in the local growth coalition. They have set standards around work intensity, training, and job ladders. Highlighting the ability of the union to affect these issues contributes to a counter-narrative about the City which stresses the agency of labour to actively produce Las Vegas’ cultural and economic landscapes. The postmodern narrative about Las Vegas hides these important lessons. Learning from Las Vegas can transform issues of signs and symbolism to issues of union organising and institutional structures in the post-industrial economy. This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available via SAGE at http://usj.sagepub.com/content/early/2014/06/16/0042098014536787
How Do Fairness Definitions Fare? Examining Public Attitudes Towards Algorithmic Definitions of Fairness
What is the best way to define algorithmic fairness? While many definitions
of fairness have been proposed in the computer science literature, there is no
clear agreement over a particular definition. In this work, we investigate
ordinary people's perceptions of three of these fairness definitions. Across
two online experiments, we test which definitions people perceive to be the
fairest in the context of loan decisions, and whether fairness perceptions
change with the addition of sensitive information (i.e., race of the loan
applicants). Overall, one definition (calibrated fairness) tends to be more
preferred than the others, and the results also provide support for the
principle of affirmative action.Comment: To appear at AI Ethics and Society (AIES) 201
High-dimensional robust regression under heavy-tailed data: Asymptotics and Universality
We investigate the high-dimensional properties of robust regression
estimators in the presence of heavy-tailed contamination of both the covariates
and response functions. In particular, we provide a sharp asymptotic
characterisation of M-estimators trained on a family of elliptical covariate
and noise data distributions including cases where second and higher moments do
not exist. We show that, despite being consistent, the Huber loss with
optimally tuned location parameter is suboptimal in the
high-dimensional regime in the presence of heavy-tailed noise, highlighting the
necessity of further regularisation to achieve optimal performance. This result
also uncovers the existence of a curious transition in as a function
of the sample complexity and contamination. Moreover, we derive the decay rates
for the excess risk of ridge regression. We show that, while it is both optimal
and universal for noise distributions with finite second moment, its decay rate
can be considerably faster when the covariates' second moment does not exist.
Finally, we show that our formulas readily generalise to a richer family of
models and data distributions, such as generalised linear estimation with
arbitrary convex regularisation trained on mixture models.Comment: 9 pages + Supplementary informatio
Changes in land capacities and ownership structure on family farms in Croatia
Land capacities and ownership structure
on family farms in Croatia have changed
greatly in the last fifty years. Land
capacities are constantly decreasing, partly
as the result of agrarian measures, partly
also because of the long-lasting process of
deagrarization. At the same time the
ownership structure is changing, too, the
number of small farms increasing and the
number and total size of the larger ones
decreasing. The process of agricultural
fragmentation will certainly present a
serious difficulty in efforts to stimulate
the development of Croatian family
agriculture
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