Trust and Privacy Permissions for an Ambient World

Ambient intelligence (AmI) and ubiquitous computing allow us to consider a future where computation is embedded into our daily social lives. This vision raises its own important questions and augments the need to understand how people will trust such systems and at the same time achieve and maintain privacy. As a result, we have recently conducted a wide reaching study of people’s attitudes to potential AmI scenarios with a view to eliciting their privacy concerns. This chapter describes recent research related to privacy and trust with regard to ambient technology. The method used in the study is described and findings discussed

INTEGRATION AND INTERDEPENDENCE IN THE U.S. AND CANADIAN LIVE CATTLE AND BEEF SECTORS

The live cattle and beef markets of Canada and the United States are well integrated and highly interdependent, but in an unequal fashion. This paper assesses the role of trade agreements and domestic policies in increasing market integration and analyses the impact of remaining barriers to integration. In this paper, we use integration in the context of forming or blending markets into a whole. When the Canada-United States Free Trade Agreement (CFTA) was implemented in 1989, tariffs on both live cattle and beef were reduced and within a few years many were eliminated. In 1996, the United States imported 1.5 million head of slaughter and feeder cattle from Canada, nearly a sixfold increase in the number of cattle imported prior to CFTA, which numbered 262,091 in 1987. However, live cattle imports are still extremely small compared to the U.S. market, with imports of live cattle in 1996 (carcass weight equivalent) constituting around 4 percent of U.S. beef consumption. The United States is a much more important market for Canada than vice versa, with 60 percent of Canada's beef exports destined to the United States in 1996, but only 16 percent of U.S. beef exports destined to Canada. As impediments to trade between Canada and the United States were removed, north-south trade increased. As the feedlot and packing industries in Alberta expand, it is anticipated that fewer Canadian slaughter cattle will be exported to the United States. In fact, U.S. feeder cattle may be exported to Alberta. Subsidies for beef producers in Canada have been significantly higher than for the United States, at times twice as high, although the level of support for beef and veal is lower than that for other commodities. Both the United States and Canada protect their domestic industries through tariffs, although this protection will decline moderately with the implementation of the 1994 Uruguay Round Agreement. Both countries subsidize their industries through provision of inspection services, research and advisory programs, and marketing and promotion programs; however, the importance of these government policies varies between countries. Canada has eliminated a number of programs previously used to assist the beef industry, including an insurance program, the National Tripartite Stabilization Program. The United States does not have a regular program of income support for stockgrowers. The United States does have several programs that promote beef exports. To the extent that export promotion programs result in higher U.S. market prices, they may also increase U.S. imports of live cattle and beef from Canada. Due to the large size of the United States market relative to Canada, it is commonly argued that cattle and beef prices are determined in the U.S. market, with Canadian prices reflecting differences in exchange rates and transportation costs. U.S. slaughter prices were found to be an extremely important determinant of Canadian slaughter prices. A weaker relationship was found between U.S. and Canadian barley prices. Mutual recognition of the equivalency of U.S. and Canadian meat grading systems has not occurred and this has ramifications for U.S.-Canadian trade in beef. Canadian packers are forced to sell beef at greatly reduced prices in the United States, resulting in lower boxed beef exports to the United States and higher exports of carcasses than would occur with grade equivalency. The same is true for U.S. packers. Because U.S. beef cannot be sold into the eastern Canadian market without a large reduction in price, the U.S. beef industry is deprived of a lucrative outlet for the lean beef that is preferred in eastern Canada. The increasing level of integration in Canadian and U.S. cattle and beef markets has been accompanied by a corresponding increase in their interdependence. Policymakers in both countries must recognize that domestic and export policies need to account for open borders between the two countries, limiting the choice of policies available to achieve a particular goal. Transportation costs will always limit the choice of packers that producers can sell to. However, within these bounds, a single market means that there are more choices for producers. The beef industries in both the United States and Canada are increasingly dependent on export markets, particularly the Pacific Rim. Both countries have a mutual interest in increasing access to third country markets. Integration of U.S. and Canadian live cattle and beef markets is well advanced, and it is perhaps the most integrated market of the major agricultural commodities. Supply management of the Canadian dairy, egg, and poultry industries and the implementation of high tariffs after the removal of quotas have prevented integration in those markets. For grains, marketing institutions and systems in Canada prevent complete market integration. For cattle and beef, the lack of trade barriers and relative unimportance of government intervention in the sector have facilitated movement toward a single market.live cattle trade, U.S. cattle and beef, Canadian cattle and beef, International Relations/Trade, F1,

Data-driven through-life costing to support product lifecycle management solutions in innovative product development

Innovative product usually refers to product that comprises of creativity and new ideas. In the development of such a new product, there is often a lack of historical knowledge and data available to be used to perform cost estimation accurately. This is due to the fact that traditional cost estimation methods are used to predict costs only after a product model has been built, and not at an early design stage when there is little data and information available. In light of this, original equipment manufacturers are also facing critical challenges of becoming globally competitive and increasing demands from customer for continuous innovation. To alleviate these situations this research has identified a new approach to cost modelling with the inclusion of product lifecycle management solutions to address innovative product development.The aim of this paper, therefore, is to discuss methods of developing an extended-enterprise data-driven through-life cost estimating method for innovative product development

Through life costing in defence electronic systems: an integrated data-driven multi-level approach

Cost estimating is a business process that is critical to the defence sector, where many products have low volumes and long life cycles. The nature of a defence system is often unique (for example, a naval platform) which consists of a number of sub-systems and components. For the design of such a system cost estimating is a critical task, in particular the requirement to predict the cost throughout the systems lifetime. The aim of this paper therefore is to discuss an integrated approach that provides a general framework for through life costing in defence systems via the development of: (1) a generic data library to support designers and cost estimators, (2) data searching and transfer mechanisms to support a top-down and bottom-up hybrid cost modelling approach, (3) capturing reliability data to support product services. The paper is divided into several sections, first, a review of relevant research projects concerning integration and data capture for cost modelling. This is followed by a section, which highlights problems of performing cost estimates for low volume products, and subsequently the proposed solution, methods of cost estimation and example applications. Perhaps most importantly, the methods created in this research are able to enhance decision-making and accelerate the responsiveness of the business bidding process

Data Modelling and Optimization in Cost Estimation for Innovative Low Volume Product Development

This paper reports on the progress of the research and development of a data modelling and optimization method to support cost estimation in the product development process. This paper forms part of an investigation into Through-Life Costing of innovative low volume long life defence electronic systems. The paper briefly covers the literature review in the area of cost estimation in product development, in particularly the data sets needed to perform cost estimation and the method of modelling the data and the optimization techniques. The propose approach will be used to support cost estimation in product development decisions of innovative low volume product development

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Analyzing Chromosomes, Ion Channels and Novel Nucleic Acid Structures by AFM

The atomic force microscope (AFM) is proving to be a powerful tool for analysis of biological samples. We provide three examples of the application of AFM to the study of biological questions. First, polytene chromosomes from Drosophila are imaged and manipulated by the AFM. Second, the localization of calcium channels on the release face of a nerve terminal is described. Finally, analyses of a new form of DNA, the G-wire, is presented. These examples illustrate the wide variety of biological questions to which AFM can contribute

Glass : a multi-platform specimen supporting substrate for precision single molecule studies of membrane proteins : [abstract]

Abstract only."852-Pos Board B632.""Page 170a, Sunday, February 8, 2015."--At top of page.Abstract in program book: High resolution (~ 1 nm lateral resolution) biological AFM imaging has been carried out almost exclusively using freshly cleaved mica as a specimen supporting surface, but mica suffers from a fundamental limitation that has hindered AFM’s broader integration with many modern optical methods. Mica exhibits biaxial birefringence; indeed, this naturally occurring material is used commercially for constructing optical wave plates. In general, propagation through birefringent material alters the polarization state and bifurcates the propagation direction of light in a manner which varies with thickness. This makes it challenging to incorporate freshly cleaved mica substrates with modern optical methods, many of which employ highly focused and polarized laser beams passing through then specimen plane. Using bacteriorhodopsin from Halobacterium salinarum and the translocon SecYEG from Escherichia coli, we demonstrate that faithful images of 2D crystalline and non-crystalline membrane proteins in lipid bilayers can be obtained on common microscope cover glass following a straight-forward cleaning procedure. Direct comparison between data obtained on glass and on mica show no significant differences in AFM image fidelity. This work opens the door for combining high resolution biological AFM with powerful optical methods that require optically isotropic substrates such as ultra-stable1 and direct 3D AFM2. In turn, this capability should enable long timescale conformational dynamics measurements of membrane proteins in near-native conditions