Are There Ethnic Disparities in Exposure to Workplace Hazards Among New Zealand Migrants to Australia?

Disparities in exposure to workplace hazards exist between Māori and non-Māori workers in New Zealand, with Māori workers generally incurring poorer conditions. This study aimed to determine if these ethnic disparities are similar after migration to Australia. A national cross-sectional telephone survey asked participants what tasks they undertook in their job to assess exposure to carcinogens as well as whether they experienced ethnic discrimination, bullying, job precariousness, or job strain. A total of 389 New Zealand Caucasians and 152 Māori/Pasifika workers were recruited. After adjustment, 79% of Māori/Pasifika compared with 67% of New Zealand Caucasian workers were assessed as being exposed to at least one carcinogen at work. Māori/Pasifika workers were also more likely to report ethnic discrimination and fair or poor current health than New Zealand Caucasians. Some ethnic disparities in exposure to workplace hazards in New Zealand are apparent after migration to Australia

Subjective cues to deception/honesty in a high stakes situation: An exploratory approach

This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in The Journal of Psychology: Interdisciplinary and Applied on 7/5/2014 available online: http://wwww.tandfonline.com/10.1080/00223980.2014.911140The low ecological validity of much of the research on deception detection is a limitation recognised by researchers in the field. Consequently, the present studies investigated subjective cues to deception using the real life, high stakes situation of people making public appeals for help with missing or murdered relatives. It was expected that cues related to affect would be particularly salient in this context. Study 1 was a qualitative investigation identifying cues to deception reportedly used by people accurate at detecting deception. Studies 2 and 3 were then empirical investigations which mainly employed the cues reported in Study 1. A number of subjective cues were found to discriminate between honest and deceptive appeals, including some previously unidentified cues, and cues likely to be context-specific. Most could be categorised under the themes of authenticity of emotion, and negative and positive affective reactions to the appealer. It is concluded that some cues to deception may emerge only in real life, high stakes situations; however, it is argued that some of these may be influenced by observers’ perceptions of the characteristics of offenders, rather than acts of deception per se.ESRC grant number ES/I90316X/

Synchronization in a System of Globally Coupled Oscillators with Time Delay

We study the synchronization phenomena in a system of globally coupled oscillators with time delay in the coupling. The self-consistency equations for the order parameter are derived, which depend explicitly on the amount of delay. Analysis of these equations reveals that the system in general exhibits discontinuous transitions in addition to the usual continuous transition, between the incoherent state and a multitude of coherent states with different synchronization frequencies. In particular, the phase diagram is obtained on the plane of the coupling strength and the delay time, and ubiquity of multistability as well as suppression of the synchronization frequency is manifested. Numerical simulations are also performed to give consistent results

Software Architecture and Dependability

International audienceDependable systems are characterized by a number of attributes including: reliability, availability, safety and security. For some attributes (namely for reliability, availability, safety), there exist probability- based theoretic foundations, enabling the application of dependability analysis techniques. The goal of dependability analysis is to forecast the values of dependability attributes, based on certain properties (e.g. failure rate, MTBF, etc.) that characterize the system's constituent elements. Nowadays, architects, designers and developers build systems based on an architecture-driven approach. They specify the system's software architecture using Architecture Description Languages or other standard modeling notations like UML. Given the previous, we examine what we need to specify at the architectural level to enable the automated generation of models for dependability analysis. In this paper, we further present a prototype implementation of the proposed approach, which relies on UML specifications of dependable systems' software architectures. Moreover, we exemplify our approach using a case study system

Biogeochemical silica mass balances in Lake Michigan and Lake Superior

Silica budgets for Lake Michigan and Lake Superior differ in several respects. Mass balance calculations for both lakes agree with previous studies in that permanent burial of biogenic silica in sediments may be only about 5% of the biogenic silica produced by diatoms. Because dissolution rates are large, good estimates of permanent burial of diatoms can not be obtained indirectly from the internal cycle of silica (silica uptake by diatoms and subsequent dissolution) but must be obtained from the sediment stratigraphy. The annual net production of biogenic silica in Lake Michigan requires 71% of the winter maximum silica reservoir which must be maintained primarily by internal cycling in this large lake whereas the comparable silica demand in Lake Superior is only 8.3%. The greater silica demand in Lake Michigan is the result of phosphorus enrichment which has increased diatom production. It is hypothesized that steady-state silica dynamics in Lake Michigan were disrupted by increased diatom production between 1955 and 1970 and that a new steady state based on silica-limited diatom production developed after 1970. Mass balance calculations for Lake Michigan show in contrast with previous work that the hypothesized water column silica depletion of 3.0 g · m −3 could have occurred even though 90% or more of the biogenic silica production is recycled.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/42471/1/10533_2004_Article_BF02187199.pd