What Should the Goals Be? Employment Equity for Female Faculty in Canada

This paper investigates the process of setting employment equity goals and timetables for female faculty in Canadian universities. First, the paper identifies the conditions under which a goal of a 50-50 balance between men and women faculty members by the year 2000 can be achieved. Second, it identifies criteria for evaluating the reasonableness of this goal. Third, given that such criteria as external availability, impact on labour demand and fairness suggest that this goal may not be reasonable, the question becomes: what should the goals be? The paper addresses this question by analyzing the impact of alternative hiring targets (reflecting alternative assumptions about external availability) on the gender composition of faculty in the year 2000. These hiring targets range from an extremely conservative 16.8% female to an optimistic 44.4% female. Under appropriate assumptions, these yield gender composition estimates ranging from 17.5% to 35.4%. While recognizing that availability will vary across universities, it is hoped that the estimates provided herein will inform debates on setting employment equity goals: l)by illustrating and elaborating on a methodology for establishing goals and timetables; and 2) by providing lower-bound and upper-bound estimates (along with estimates based upon moderate assumptions) to illustrate the range of possibilities under Canadian employment equity policy.Cet article porte sur le mode d'établissement d'objectifs et de calendriers relatifs à l'équité en matière d'emploi pour les professeurs féminins dans les universités canadiennes. Il définit d'abord dans quel contexte on peut réaliser d'ici l'an 2000 l'équilibre entre le nombre d'hommes et celui de femmes chez les professeurs d'université. Il établit ensuite des critères servant à déterminer si cet objectif est raisonnable. En troisième lieu, puisque des critères comme la disponibilité externe, les effets sur la demande de professeurs et la justice laissent supposer que cet objectif pourrait ne pas être raisonnable, la question devient celle-ci : quels objectifs devrait-on fixer? Le document traite de cette question en analysant les effets de différents objectifs en matière d'embauche (reflétant différentes hypothè-ses quant à la disponibilité externe) sur la composition d'après le sexe du corps professoral, en l'an 2000. Ces objectifs en matière d'embauche varient d'une proportion extrêmement conservatrice de 16,8 % de femmes jusqu'à une proportion optimiste de 44,4% de femmes. Des hypothèses valables nous donnent des estimations variant de 17,5 % à 35,4 %. Tout en reconnaissant que la disponibilité variera d'une université à l'autre, on espère que les estimations fournies permettront des discussions éclairées sur l'établissement d'objectifs relatifs à l'équité en matière d'emploi 1) en élaborant et en illustrant une méthodologie pour définir des objectifs et des calendriers, et 2) en fournissant des estimations extrêmes (ainsi que d'autres fondées sur des hypothèses modérées) afin d'illustrer les diverses possibilités qui s'offrent dans le cadre de la politique canadienne sur l'équité en matière d'emploi

Experimental demonstration of four-party quantum secret sharing

Secret sharing is a multiparty cryptographic task in which some secret information is splitted into several pieces which are distributed among the participants such that only an authorized set of participants can reconstruct the original secret. Similar to quantum key distribution, in quantum secret sharing, the secrecy of the shared information relies not on computational assumptions, but on laws of quantum physics. Here, we present an experimental demonstration of four-party quantum secret sharing via the resource of four-photon entanglement

The Impact of Foreign Postings on Accompanying Military Spouses: An Ethnographic Study.

As part of an ethnographic study, the impact of foreign postings on spouses who accompany military personnel was explored. Individual interviews and focus groups with 34 British military spouses based in one location in southern Europe were conducted. Key findings suggested that reaction to a foreign posting was a reflection of personal attitudes, prior experiences, support, ability to adjust to change and strength of relationship with the serving spouse and community. For many the experience was positive due to the increased opportunity for family time, for others this helped to compensate for the difficulties experienced. Some military spouses experienced significant distress on the posting, particularly if the family was not well-supported. The potential implications of military spouses not adapting to foreign postings have significant implications for healthcare practice. Provision of more appropriate support resources before and during the posting would facilitate the transition for the military spouse and their family

Logic-based AI for Interpretable Board Game Winner Prediction with Tsetlin Machine

Hex is a turn-based two-player connection game with a high branching factor, making the game arbitrarily complex with increasing board sizes. As such, top-performing algorithms for playing Hex rely on accurate evaluation of board positions using neural networks. However, the limited interpretability of neural networks is problematic when the user wants to understand the reasoning behind the predictions made. In this paper, we propose to use propositional logic expressions to describe winning and losing board game positions, facilitating precise visual interpretation. We employ a Tsetlin Machine (TM) to learn these expressions from previously played games, describing where pieces must be located or not located for a board position to be strong. Extensive experiments on $6\times6$ boards compare our TM-based solution with popular machine learning algorithms like XGBoost, InterpretML, decision trees, and neural networks, considering various board configurations with $2$ to $22$ moves played. On average, the TM testing accuracy is $92.1\%$, outperforming all the other evaluated algorithms. We further demonstrate the global interpretation of the logical expressions and map them down to particular board game configurations to investigate local interpretability. We believe the resulting interpretability establishes building blocks for accurate assistive AI and human-AI collaboration, also for more complex prediction tasks

Controlled Quantum Secret Sharing

We present a new protocol in which a secret multiqubit quantum state $\ket{\Psi}$ is shared by $n$ players and $m$ controllers, where $\ket{\Psi}$ is the encoding state of a quantum secret sharing scheme. The players may be considered as field agents responsible for carrying out a task, using the secret information encrypted in $\ket{\Psi}$, while the controllers are superiors who decide if and when the task should be carried out and who to do it. Our protocol only requires ancillary Bell states and Bell-basis measurements.Comment: 6 pages, 0 figure, RevTeX4; published version with minor change

Removal of a frameshift between the hsdM and hsdS genes of the EcoKI Type IA DNA restriction and modification system produces a new type of system and links the different families of Type I systems

The EcoKI DNA methyltransferase is a trimeric protein comprised of two modification subunits (M) and one sequence specificity subunit (S). This enzyme forms the core of the EcoKI restriction/modification (RM) enzyme. The 3′ end of the gene encoding the M subunit overlaps by 1 nt the start of the gene for the S subunit. Translation from the two different open reading frames is translationally coupled. Mutagenesis to remove the frameshift and fuse the two subunits together produces a functional RM enzyme in vivo with the same properties as the natural EcoKI system. The fusion protein can be purified and forms an active restriction enzyme upon addition of restriction subunits and of additional M subunit. The Type I RM systems are grouped into families, IA to IE, defined by complementation, hybridization and sequence similarity. The fusion protein forms an evolutionary intermediate form lying between the Type IA family of RM enzymes and the Type IB family of RM enzymes which have the frameshift located at a different part of the gene sequence

The relationship between self-monitoring and organizational citizenship behavior

Organizational citizenship behavior is behavior which is discretionary on the part of the individual, not recognized by the organizational reward system, yet contributes to the effectiveness of the organization. In this study the relationship between self-monitoring and organizational citizenship behavior was examined. Support was found for the hypothesis that individuals high in self-monitoring are also more likely to perform organizational citizenships behaviors. Implications for management and future research are discussed

RefConcile – automated online reconciliation of bibliographic references

Comprehensive bibliographies often rely on community contributions. In such a setting, de-duplication is mandatory for the bibliography to be useful. Ideally, it works online, i.e., during the addition of new references, so the bibliography remains duplicate-free at all times. While de-duplication is well researched, generic approaches do not achieve the result quality required for automated reconciliation. To overcome this problem, we propose a new duplicate detection and reconciliation technique called RefConcile. Aimed specifically at bibliographic references, it uses dedicated blocking and matching techniques tailored to this type of data. Our evaluation based on a large real-world collection of bibliographic references shows that RefConcile scales well, and that it detects and reconciles duplicates highly accurately