480 research outputs found
Policymakers’ Perceptions of the Benefits of Citizen-Budgeting Activities
Citizen budgeting has become an increasingly common practice in municipalities across the United States. It offers an alternative to traditionally technocratic budgeting processes, and can connect and engage citizens in decisions about services and funding. Little research has been conducted on how local policymakers perceive citizen budgeting and outcomes. This study examined the benefits local policymakers identified following two successive years of a citizen-budgeting process in a mid-sized Midwestern city. Interviews with 23 local policymakers (a mayor, city council members, and city department heads) identified nine types of benefits produced by the citizen-budgeting process. The study demonstrates that identifying perceived benefits of citizen budgeting processes can shed light on the question of the extent to which such budgeting methods are citizen-driven, leader-driven, or a combination of both
Correlations of milk and serum element concentrations with production and management traits in dairy cows
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This research, including the Langhill experiment at Crichton Dairy Research Centre, and all authors were funded by the Scottish Government Rural Affairs, Food, and the Environment Strategic Research Portfolio 2016–2021. Samples collected before 2016 were collected as part of a Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council project awarded to EW (grant no. BB/K002260/1) and TNM (grant no. BB/K002171/1). The authors gratefully acknowledge the high standard of work by all staff at Crichton Farm (Scotland's Rural College, Dumfries, Scotland) in the collection of samples and management of animals, and Ian Archibald (Scotland's Rural College, Edinburgh, Scotland) for managing the Langhill database and assisting with data extraction. The authors have not stated any conflicts of interest.Peer reviewedPublisher PD
On computational irreducibility and the predictability of complex physical systems
Using elementary cellular automata (CA) as an example, we show how to
coarse-grain CA in all classes of Wolfram's classification. We find that
computationally irreducible (CIR) physical processes can be predictable and
even computationally reducible at a coarse-grained level of description. The
resulting coarse-grained CA which we construct emulate the large-scale behavior
of the original systems without accounting for small-scale details. At least
one of the CA that can be coarse-grained is irreducible and known to be a
universal Turing machine.Comment: 4 pages, 2 figures, to be published in PR
Coarse-graining of cellular automata, emergence, and the predictability of complex systems
We study the predictability of emergent phenomena in complex systems. Using
nearest neighbor, one-dimensional Cellular Automata (CA) as an example, we show
how to construct local coarse-grained descriptions of CA in all classes of
Wolfram's classification. The resulting coarse-grained CA that we construct are
capable of emulating the large-scale behavior of the original systems without
accounting for small-scale details. Several CA that can be coarse-grained by
this construction are known to be universal Turing machines; they can emulate
any CA or other computing devices and are therefore undecidable. We thus show
that because in practice one only seeks coarse-grained information, complex
physical systems can be predictable and even decidable at some level of
description. The renormalization group flows that we construct induce a
hierarchy of CA rules. This hierarchy agrees well with apparent rule complexity
and is therefore a good candidate for a complexity measure and a classification
method. Finally we argue that the large scale dynamics of CA can be very
simple, at least when measured by the Kolmogorov complexity of the large scale
update rule, and moreover exhibits a novel scaling law. We show that because of
this large-scale simplicity, the probability of finding a coarse-grained
description of CA approaches unity as one goes to increasingly coarser scales.
We interpret this large scale simplicity as a pattern formation mechanism in
which large scale patterns are forced upon the system by the simplicity of the
rules that govern the large scale dynamics.Comment: 18 pages, 9 figure
The Clumping Transition in Niche Competition: a Robust Critical Phenomenon
We show analytically and numerically that the appearance of lumps and gaps in
the distribution of n competing species along a niche axis is a robust
phenomenon whenever the finiteness of the niche space is taken into account. In
this case depending if the niche width of the species is above or
below a threshold , which for large n coincides with 2/n, there are
two different regimes. For the lumpy pattern emerges
directly from the dominant eigenvector of the competition matrix because its
corresponding eigenvalue becomes negative. For the lumpy
pattern disappears. Furthermore, this clumping transition exhibits critical
slowing down as is approached from above. We also find that the number
of lumps of species vs. displays a stair-step structure. The positions
of these steps are distributed according to a power-law. It is thus
straightforward to predict the number of groups that can be packed along a
niche axis and it coincides with field measurements for a wide range of the
model parameters.Comment: 16 pages, 7 figures;
http://iopscience.iop.org/1742-5468/2010/05/P0500
Kansas State DMC Assessment
The Juvenile Justice Delinquency Prevention Act charges states to institute multipronged strategies not only to prevent delinquency but to improve the juvenile justice system and assure equal treatment of all youth. To successfully address Disproportionate Minority Contact (DMC), the U.S. Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention recommends a five-phase process, whereby jurisdictions: 1) identify whether disproportionality exists and the extent to which it exists at all contact stages of the juvenile justice system; 2) assess the contributing factors; 3) provide an intervention plan; 4) evaluate the efficacy of efforts to reduce DMC; and 5) monitor and track DMC trends over time to identify emerging critical issues and to determine whether there has been progress. The goal of this assessment is to identify the factors that contribute to DMC in the State of Kansas so that Kansas’ juvenile justice system stakeholders can design appropriate intervention strategies. To do this, DMC was examined at three key decision points: arrest, secure detention and case management placements. Because data were made available regarding juvenile intake and assessment (which intersect with both law enforcement and secure detention) this data point was also examined. Like many assessments of this type, we were limited by the availability and quality of data. However, the report and recommendations that follow identify ways in which Kansas can explore data-driven approaches to addressing the overrepresentation of minority youth in the Kansas juvenile justice system
Pseudoaneurysm of the left ventricle following apical approach TAVI
Symptomatic severe aortic stenosis carries a two year survival of only 50%. However many patients are unsuitable for conventional aortic valve replacement as they are considered too high risk due to significant co-morbidities. Transcatheter Aortic Valve Implantation (TAVI) offers a viable alternative for this high risk patient group, either by the femoral or apical route. This article reports a case of a pseudoaneurysm of the left ventricle following an apical approach TAVI in an elderly lady with severe aortic stenosis. To our knowledge pseduoaneuryms of the left ventricle have been reported infrequently in the literature and has yet to be established as a recognised complication of TAVI
Gauge invariance and finite width effects in radiative two-pion tau lepton decay
The contribution of the rho^{\pm} vector meson to the tau -> pi pi nu gamma
decay is considered as a potential source for the determination of the magnetic
dipole moment of this light vector meson. In order to keep gauge-invariance of
the whole decay amplitude, a procedure similar to the fermion loop-scheme for
charged gauge bosons is implemented to incorporate the finite width effects of
the rho^{\pm} vector meson. The absorptive pieces of the one-loop corrections
to the propagators and electromagnetic vertices of the rho^{\pm} meson and
W^{\pm} gauge boson have identical forms in the limit of massless particles in
the loops, suggesting this to be a universal feature of spin-one unstable
particles. Model-dependent contributions to the tau -> pi pi nu gamma decay are
suppressed by fixing the two-pion invariant mass distribution at the rho meson
mass value. The resulting photon energy and angular distribution is relatively
sensitive to the effects of the rho magnetic dipole moment.Comment: 22 pages, 4 postscript figures, references and comments on relevance
of perturbative treatment of rho electromagnetic vertex are added, accepted
for pub. in Phys. Rev.
A new Perspective on the Scalar meson Puzzle, from Spontaneous Chiral Symmetry Breaking Beyond BCS
We introduce coupled channels of Bethe-Salpeter mesons both in the boundstate
equation for mesons and in the mass gap equation for chiral symmetry.
Consistency is insured by the Ward Identities for axial currents, which
preserve the Goldstone boson nature of the pion and prevents a systematic shift
of the hadron spectrum. We study the decay of a scalar meson coupled to a pair
of pseudoscalars. We also show that coupled channels reduce the breaking of
chiral symmetry, with the same Feynman diagrams that appear in the coupling of
a scalar meson to a pair of pseudoscalar mesons. Exact calculations are
performed in a particular confining quark model, where we find that the
groundstate meson is the f_0(980) with a partial decay
width of 40MeV. We also find a 30% reduction of the chiral condensate due to
coupled channels.Comment: 17 pages, Revtex, 8 eps figures, and several eps diagrams in
equation
Attitudes and Performance: An Analysis of Russian Workers
This paper investigates the relationship between locus of control and performance among Russian employees, using survey data collected at 28 workplaces in 2002 in Taganrog and at 47 workplaces in 2003 in Ekaterinburg. We develop a measure that allows us to categorize the Russian employees participating in our survey as exhibiting an internal or external locus of control. We then assess the extent to which there are significant differences between “internals” and “externals” in work-related attitudes that may affect performance. In particular, we focus on (1) attitudes about outcomes associated with hard work, (2) level of job satisfaction, (3) expectation of receiving a desired reward, and (4) loyalty to and involvement with one’s organization. In each case we identify where gender and generational differences emerge. Our main objective is to determine whether Russian employees who exhibit an internal locus of control perform better than employees with an external locus of control. Our performance measures include earnings, expected promotions, and assessments of the quantity and quality of work in comparison to others at the same organization doing a similar job. Controlling for a variety of worker characteristics, we find that (1) individuals who exhibit an internal locus of control perform better, but this result is not always statistically significant; (2) even among “internals,” women earn significantly less than men and have a much lower expectation of promotion; (3) even among “internals,” experience with unemployment has a negative influence on performance.http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/40144/3/wp758.pd
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