What is the evidence for harm minimisation measures in gambling venues?

What techniques are currently being used for electronic gambling machine harm minimisation, and do they work? Overview The use of electronic gambling machines (EGMs) in Australia and New Zealand constitutes the largest sector of the gambling industry. The costs arising from the harms of gambling detract significantly from its benefits, and in all Australian jurisdictions various policy measures have been implemented to reduce these harms. If successful, these would maximise the net benefits associated with EGM gambling. This article reviews the available evidence for a range of these practices, particularly those implemented within EGM venues via ‘codes of practice’. These codes of practice are intended to give effect to the principles of ‘responsible gambling’ within EGM venues. These measures are: self-exclusion, signage, messages, interaction with gamblers, the removal of ATMs from gambling venues, and ‘responsible gambling’ assessed overall in a venue context. In addition, we review the evidence in support of two major recommendations of the Productivity Commission’s 2010 report into gambling, pre-commitment and one-dollar maximum wagers. We conclude that there is a modest level of evidence supporting some measures, notably self-exclusion and, to a greater extent, the removal of ATMs. There is also some evidence that ‘responsible gambling’ measures have, collectively, reduced the harms associated with gambling. However, there is limited evidence available to confirm the effectiveness of most individual ‘responsible gambling’ measures actually implemented in venues. Further, policy measures implemented outside the control of venues (such as ATM removal, reduction in bet limits, and the prohibition of smoking) appear to be associated with more significant effects, based on analysis of EGM revenue data in Victoria. The evidence for prospective measures is necessarily limited since the ultimate test is post-implementation efficacy, but there is growing evidence to suggest that pre-commitment, one-dollar maximum bets or other machine design changes may yield significantly more effective harm minimisation effects than in-venue practices such as signage or, indeed, self-exclusion. In considering evidence about the effects of existing or prospective measures it is important to emphasise that packages of measures might be more effective than single ones, and that an inability to confirm a statistically significant effect does not mean that no effect exists. Evidence Base, issue 2, 201

Sparse Image Representation with Epitomes

Sparse coding, which is the decomposition of a vector using only a few basis elements, is widely used in machine learning and image processing. The basis set, also called dictionary, is learned to adapt to specific data. This approach has proven to be very effective in many image processing tasks. Traditionally, the dictionary is an unstructured "flat" set of atoms. In this paper, we study structured dictionaries which are obtained from an epitome, or a set of epitomes. The epitome is itself a small image, and the atoms are all the patches of a chosen size inside this image. This considerably reduces the number of parameters to learn and provides sparse image decompositions with shiftinvariance properties. We propose a new formulation and an algorithm for learning the structured dictionaries associated with epitomes, and illustrate their use in image denoising tasks.Comment: Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition, Colorado Springs : United States (2011

A study of the relationship between the Quincy Child Guidance Clinic and the Quincy Public Schools as demonstrated by cases referred to the Clinic by the schools in 1943

Thesis (M.S.)--Boston University, 1946. This item was digitized by the Internet Archive

Taking stock of arctic sea ice and climate

Abstract The relationship among the cause-and-effect of the Arctic atmosphere, sea ice, and ocean is discussed. The increased vulnerability of the Arctic system to anomalous atmospheric forcing can be argued from the perspective that recent ice loss is the result of a long-term preconditioning to thinner ice. Such consequences demonstrate the difficulties inherent in ascertaining how the atmospheric circulation responds to Arctic, and global, climate change. Later-forming sea ice also leads to less protection from the waves of fall storms, affecting coastal communities such as Kivalina and Shishmaref. The coming decades will provide new insights into the complexities of the Arctic climate system and how changes will affect the biological and human communities within and beyond its boundaries

Understanding the educational needs of joint honour United Kingdom higher education sector.

The motivation for this research was to explore the lived experience of joint honours students, for whom there is little in the literature at present. The objective was to critique primary data collected from the students via a self-administered questionnaire. This phenomenological methodology permitted and unfiltered view of the students’ learning experiences to be explored. The research is based on a cross-university student survey, conducted over a period of six months. The online survey, which ran between June 2016 and January 2017, involved self-administered questionnaires designed to collect information on the learning experience of students on joint honours degrees, from four different Universities in England. A key finding of this paper is the need for university administrators to pay particular attention to joint honours degrees in their portfolios in the light of the growing and significant number of students opting to study these degrees and the general tendency amongst universities to focus attention on single honours degrees. Particular areas of concern are highlighted where students on joint honours degrees feel improvements in their educational experience could be made. The future scope of the survey results are discussed in the context of Britain exiting the European Union and in relation to the growing debate on the intrinsic value of university education and the increasing necessity for university management to recognise the unique nature of joint honours degrees and design policy to meet the needs of students enrolled on joint honours degrees.N/

Combined degrees & employability: a comparative analysis of single and joint honours graduates of UK universities.

Over the last decade, there has been an increase in the popularity and number of combined or joint degrees in English and Welsh Universities. Combined or joint honours represent 10% of all undergraduates. 50,000 out of 500,000 currently enrolled on all honours degrees. This significant and special way of learning therefore warrants scrutiny. Combined degrees enable students to enroll on two or more subjects, with varying levels of integration of the courses, which leads to either a BA or BSc honours joint award. The growing number of students on such degrees across universities in England and Wales has led to a debate as to the intrinsic value of such degrees especially in relation to graduate employability and career opportunities. This paper examines the nature and relative attractiveness of combined degrees and explores the employability of combined honours degree graduates in comparison with single honours degree graduates

Louise and Francis Newton to James Meredith (Undated)

https://egrove.olemiss.edu/mercorr_pro/1882/thumbnail.jp

The response of diatom central carbon metabolism to nitrogen starvation is different from that of green algae and higher plants

The availability of nitrogen varies greatly in the ocean and limits primary productivity over large areas. Diatoms, a group of phytoplankton that are responsible for about 20% of global carbon fixation, respond rapidly to influxes of nitrate and are highly successful in upwelling regions. Although recent diatom genome projects have highlighted clues to the success of this group, very little is known about their adaptive response to changing environmental conditions. Here, we compare the proteome of the marine diatom Thalassiosira pseudonana (CCMP 1335) at the onset of nitrogen starvation with that of nitrogen-replete cells using two-dimensional gel electrophoresis. In total, 3,310 protein spots were distinguishable, and we identified 42 proteins increasing and 23 decreasing in abundance (greater than 1.5-fold change; P < 0.005). Proteins involved in the metabolism of nitrogen, amino acids, proteins, and carbohydrates, photosynthesis, and chlorophyll biosynthesis were represented. Comparison of our proteomics data with the transcriptome response of this species under similar growth conditions showed good correlation and provided insight into different levels of response. The T. pseudonana response to nitrogen starvation was also compared with that of the higher plant Arabidopsis (Arabidopsis thaliana), the green alga Chlamydomonas reinhardtii, and the cyanobacterium Prochlorococcus marinus. We have found that the response of diatom carbon metabolism to nitrogen starvation is different from that of other photosynthetic eukaryotes and bears closer resemblance to the response of cyanobacteria

Influence of cavity lifetime on high-finesse microcavity two-photon absorption photodetectors

For optical pulse incidence as compared with continuous-wave incidence, the enhancement of two-photon absorption inside a high-finesse planar microcavity is reduced, the pulse inside the cavity and the cavity spectrum are broadened. The analysis shows that for transform-limited pulse incidence, the true pulsewidth and the cavity frequency resolution can be estimated if the cavity lifetime or the cavity bandwidth has been obtained from the reflection or transmission spectrum of the cavit

Design and fabrication of highly efficient non-linear optical devices for implementing high-speed optical processing

We present the design and fabrication of micro-cavity semiconductor devices for enhanced Two-Photon-Absorption response, and demonstrate the use of these devices for implementing sensitive autocorrelation measurements on pico-second optical pulses