Preserving Communication Context. Virtual workspace and interpersonal space in Japanese CSCW.

The past decade has seen the development of a perspective\ud holding that technology is socially constructed (Mackenzie and Wacjman, 1985; Bijker, Hughes and Pinch, 1987; Bijker and Law, 1992). This paper examines the social construction of one group of technologies, systems for computer supported cooperative work (CSCW). It describes the design of CSCW in Japan, with particular attention to the influence of culture on the design process. Two case studies are presented to illustrate the argument that culture is an important factor in technology design, despite commonly held assumptions about the neutrality and objectivity of science and technology. The paper further argues that, by looking at\ud CSCW systems as texts which reflect the context of their production and the society from which they come, we may be better able to understand the transformations that operate when these texts are “read” in the contexts of their implementation

Assessing organic food quality: Is it better for you?

This report was presented at the UK Organic Research 2002 Conference. Any attempt to answer the question ‘is organic food better for you?’ requires an assessment of the safety, nutritional content and biological value aspects of food quality. Previous reviews have been unable to reach definitive conclusions after failing to ensure only valid comparisons are considered. When methodologically flawed studies are screened out and a complete assessment of nutritional quality is made, collectively, the available evidence supports the hypothesis that organically produced food is superior in terms of safety, nutritional content and nutritional value to that produced non-organically. More research is needed provide to more data further investigating the trends seen in the existing evidence

Abstracting Builtins for Groundness Analysis

This note clarifies how to handle solution gathering meta-calls, asserts and retracts in the groundness analysis of Prolog

Dynamic Factor Analysis with ARMA Factors

In this paper we present a new approach to the specification of dynamic factor models. Our model has three advantages over existing work. Firstly, it is based on a minimal-dimension state-space representation giving some gain in computational efficiency over existing methods. Secondly, it easily accommodates hypothesis tests about the order of the factor-filter. Thirdly, by allowing the factor-filter to have a common polynomial factor, ARMA-factor models may be estimated with little extra computational expense over the AR- factor case. We illustrate the use of our model with an application to business cycle analysis.

Notes on the Life cycle of \u3ci\u3eNemoria Rubrifrontaria\u3c/i\u3e (Lepidoptera: Geometridae)

(excerpt) While surveying for insect pests of sweet fern, Myrica aspleniifolia L., two unidentified eggs were detected on foliage samples collected in June 1972 near Barton City, Alcona County, Michigan. the eggs were transferred to petri dishes with sweet fern foliage for rearing. Subsequently, one of the larvae that emerged was reared to adulthood and identified as Nemoria rubrifrontaria Packard. This note describes the life cycle of this insect

Monopsony and Labor Supply in the Army and Navy

Because it is differentiated from other employers, the U.S. military enjoys some monopsony power. After reviewing existing estimates of the elasticity of labor supplied to the military, we obtain new estimates for the Army and Navy covering the period from 1998-2007. We employ a control function approach to account for the potential endogeneity of enlistment incentives. Our elasticity estimates of 2.4 for the Army and .4 for the Navy suggest that the services have substantial wage-setting ability. However, the Army faces higher supply elasticity since the invasion of Iraq and higher elasticity in states with weak support for obligatory military service.military, labor supply, monopsony papers