Investigating Hastily-Formed Collaborative Networks

This research explores both the human and technical aspects of the network centric environment in the context of a major disaster or incident of national significance. The National Incident Management System (NIMS) is viewed by the authors as a social network, and an organizational topology is developed to improve its effectiveness. A rapid Network Deployment Kit (RNDK) using commercial off the shelf (COTS) wireless networking technology is also proposed that facilitates immediate NIMS implementation. The integration of logical and technical analyses forms a comprehensive systems engineering proposal to facilitate collaboration in a net-centric environment. It is envisioned that the methodology used herein to derive and evaluate comprehensive networks proves extendable to other contexts thereby contributing to the netcentric body of knowledge

Public Sentiment and Discourse on Domestic Violence During the COVID-19 Pandemic in Australia: Analysis of Social Media Posts.

Background: Measuring public response during COVID-19 is an important way of ensuring the suitability and effectiveness of epidemic response efforts. An analysis of social media provides an approximation of public sentiment during an emergency like the current pandemic. The measures introduced across the globe to help curtail the spread of the coronavirus have led to the development of a situation labeled as a “perfect storm,” triggering a wave of domestic violence. As people use social media to communicate their experiences, analyzing public discourse and sentiment on social platforms offers a way to understand concerns and issues related to domestic violence during the COVID-19 pandemic. Objective: This study was based on an analysis of public discourse and sentiment related to domestic violence during the stay-at-home periods of the COVID-19 pandemic in Australia in 2020. It aimed to understand the more personal self-reported experiences, emotions, and reactions toward domestic violence that were not always classified or collected by official public bodies during the pandemic. Methods: We searched social media and news posts in Australia using key terms related to domestic violence and COVID-19 during 2020 via digital analytics tools to determine sentiments related to domestic violence during this period. Results: The study showed that the use of sentiment and discourse analysis to assess social media data is useful in measuring the public expression of feelings and sharing of resources in relation to the otherwise personal experience of domestic violence. There were a total of 63,800 posts across social media and news media. Within these posts, our analysis found that domestic violence was mentioned an average of 179 times a day. There were 30,100 tweets, 31,700 news reports, 1500 blog posts, 548 forum posts, and 7 comments (posted on news and blog websites). Negative or neutral sentiment centered on the sharp rise in domestic violence during different lockdown periods of the 2020 pandemic, and neutral and positive sentiments centered on praise for efforts that raised awareness of domestic violence as well as the positive actions of domestic violence charities and support groups in their campaigns. There were calls for a positive and proactive handling (rather than a mishandling) of the pandemic, and results indicated a high level of public discontent related to the rising rates of domestic violence and the lack of services during the pandemic. Conclusions: This study provided a timely understanding of public sentiment related to domestic violence during the COVID-19 lockdown periods in Australia using social media analysis. Social media represents an important avenue for the dissemination of information; posts can be widely dispersed and easily accessed by a range of different communities who are often difficult to reach. An improved understanding of these issues is important for future policy direction. Heightened awareness of this could help agencies tailor and target messaging to maximize impact

Effectiveness of tobacco control television advertisements with different types of emotional content on tobacco use in England, 2004–2010

Aim: To examine the effects of tobacco control television advertisements with positive and negative emotional content on adult smoking prevalence and cigarette consumption. Design: Analysis of monthly cross-sectional surveys using generalised additive models. Setting: England. Participants: 60 000 adults aged 18 years or over living in England and interviewed in the Opinions and Lifestyle Survey from 2004 to 2010. Measurements: Current smoking status, daily cigarette consumption, tobacco control gross rating points (GRPs—a measure of per capita advertising exposure), cigarette costliness, concurrent tobacco control policies, sociodemographic variables. Results: After adjusting for cigarette costliness, other tobacco control policies and individual characteristics, we found that a 400-point increase in positive emotive GRPs was associated with 7% lower odds of smoking (odds ratio (OR) 0.93, 95% CI 0.87 to 0.98) 1 month later and a similar increase in negative emotive GRPs was significantly associated with 4% lower odds of smoking (OR 0.96, 95% CI 0.92 to 0.999) 2 months later. An increase in negative emotive GRPs from 0 to 400 was also associated with a significant 3.3% (95% CI 1.1 to 5.6) decrease in average cigarette consumption. There was no evidence that the association between positive emotive GRPs and the outcomes differed depending on the intensity of negative emotive GRPs (and vice versa). Conclusions: This is the first study to explore the effects of campaigns with different types of emotive content on adult smoking prevalence and consumption. It suggests that both types of campaign (positive and negative) are effective in reducing smoking prevalence, whereas consumption among smokers was only affected by campaigns evoking negative emotions

Environment and Obesity in the National Children\u27s Study

Objective: In this review we describe the approach taken by the National Children’s Study (NCS), a 21-year prospective study of 100,000 American children, to understanding the role of environmental factors in the development of obesity. Data sources and extraction: We review the literature with regard to the two core hypotheses in the NCS that relate to environmental origins of obesity and describe strategies that will be used to test each hypothesis. Data synthesis: Although it is clear that obesity in an individual results from an imbalance between energy intake and expenditure, control of the obesity epidemic will require understanding of factors in the modern built environment and chemical exposures that may have the capacity to disrupt the link between energy intake and expenditure. The NCS is the largest prospective birth cohort study ever undertaken in the United States that is explicitly designed to seek information on the environmental causes of pediatric disease. Conclusions: Through its embrace of the life-course approach to epidemiology, the NCS will be able to study the origins of obesity from preconception through late adolescence, including factors ranging from genetic inheritance to individual behaviors to the social, built, and natural environment and chemical exposures. It will have sufficient statistical power to examine interactions among these multiple influences, including gene–environment and gene–obesity interactions. A major secondary benefit will derive from the banking of specimens for future analysis

The Cathode Strip Chamber Data Acquisition System for CMS

The Cathode Strip Chamber (CSC) [1] Data Acquisition (DAQ) system for the CMS [2] experiment at the LHC [3] will be described. The CSC system is large, consisting of 218K cathode channels and 183K anode channels. This leads to a substantial data rate of ~1.5GByte/s at LHC design luminosity (1034cm-2s-1) and the CMS first level trigger (L1A) rate of 100KHz. The DAQ system consists of three parts. The first part is on-chamber Cathode Front End Boards (CFEB)[4], which amplify, shape, store, and digitise chamber cathode signals, and Anode Front End Boards (AFEB)[5], which amplify, shape and discriminate chamber anode signals. The second part is the Peripheral Crate Data Acquisition Motherboards (DAQMB), which control the onchamber electronics and the readout of the chamber. The third part is the off-detector DAQ interface boards, which perform real time error checking, electronics reset requests and data concentration. It passes the resulting data to a CSC local DAQ farm, as well as CMS main DAQ [6]. All electronics in the system employ FPGAs allowing programmability. In addition, several high-speed serial interface technologies are employed

An E6_6 interpretation of an e+e−γγE ⁣ ⁣ ⁣/Te^+ e^- \gamma \gamma E\!\!\!/_T event

The lowest-dimensional representation of the group E$_6$ contains both the standard quarks and leptons and a set of exotic quarks and leptons whose decays can involve a series of chains ending in radiative decay of one light neutrino species to another. An example is given based on the decomposition E$_6 \to$ SU(2)$_I \times$ SU(6), where SU(2)$_I$ is an ``inert'' subgroup whose gauge bosons $W_I^{(\pm)}$ and $Z_I$ are all electromagnetically neutral, while SU(6) contains the conventional SU(5) grand-unified group. The possibility is explored that such a chain is responsible for an event observed by the Collider Detector at Fermilab (CDF) involving the production in proton-antiproton collisions at $E_{\rm c.m.} = 1.8$ TeV of an electron-positron pair, two photons, and missing energy ($e^+ e^- \gamma \gamma E \!\!\!/_T$).Comment: 14 pages, latex, no figures. Revised version submitted to PR

Forward-Backward Asymmetries in Hadronically Produced Lepton Pairs

It has now become possible to observe appreciable numbers of hadronically produced lepton pairs in mass ranges where the contributions of the photon and $Z^0$ are comparable. Consequently, in the reaction $p \bar p \to \ell^- \ell^+ + \ldots$, substantial forward-backward asymmetries can be seen. These asymmetries provide a test of the electroweak theory in a new regime of energies, and can serve as diagnostics for any new neutral vector bosons coupling both to quarks and to charged lepton pairs.Comment: 11 pages, latex, 4 uuencoded figures sent separately, Fig. 2 revise

Experimental Constraints on the Neutrino Oscillations and a Simple Model of Three Flavour Mixing

A simple model of the neutrino mixing is considered, which contains only one right-handed neutrino field, coupled via the mass term to the three usual left-handed fields. This is a simplest model that allows for three-flavour neutrino oscillations. The existing experimental limits on the neutrino oscillations are used to obtain constraints on the two free mixing parameters of the model. A specific sum rule relating the oscillation probabilities of different flavours is derived.Comment: 10 pages, 3 figures in post script, Latex, IFT 2/9

Frequency of educational computer use as a longitudinal predictor of educational outcomes in young people with specific language impairment

Computer use draws on linguistic abilities. Using this medium thus presents challenges for young people with Specific Language Impairment (SLI) and raises questions of whether computer-based tasks are appropriate for them. We consider theoretical arguments predicting impaired performance and negative outcomes relative to peers without SLI versus the possibility of positive gains. We examine the relationship between frequency of computer use (for leisure and educational purposes) and educational achievement; in particular examination performance at the end of compulsory education and level of educational progress two years later. Participants were 49 young people with SLI and 56 typically developing (TD) young people. At around age 17, the two groups did not differ in frequency of educational computer use or leisure computer use. There were no associations between computer use and educational outcomes in the TD group. In the SLI group, after PIQ was controlled for, educational computer use at around 17 years of age contributed substantially to the prediction of educational progress at 19 years. The findings suggest that educational uses of computers are conducive to educational progress in young people with SLI