Borderless Space - Ideas for Regional Collaboration

Regional planning initiatives emerge in response to a growing number of land use and related issues that transcent political and jurisdictional boundaries and often involve business and non-profit organizations. Cities are no longer central is planning discussions. Urban networks reflect better the new spatial dynamics. Regional planning strategies are sought to link the public and private spheres of this urban networks action. An important starting point is to organize relations between the relevant and different governmental bodies in the multi-level and multi agency society. How can the abundance of subterritorial governmental bodies be connected, especially within the light of decentralisation processes that are going on? In addition an important question is how this public sphere can be linked to the sphere of private regional action. What are important elements in strategies of ‘organizing connectivity’? Will ‘pragmatic regionalism with a purpose’ be an interesting strategy? In the light of this growing interest in acting regionally, this paper offers insights in motives for such regionalism. A framework to identify and promote best practices for regional collaboration, with attention for vertical as well as horizontal connectedness within the public sphere, as well as linking this public to the private sphere of regional action will be central. Several motives and principles that might be beneficiary for regional collaboration are dealt with. The case of Schiphol and Amsterdam in the Netherlands, as an important international transport cluster, will function as illustration.

Information in Networks and Political Economy: Three Models

This thesis spans over topics that share a need for theoretical insights. Taking a game theoretical approach, I study the link between social media and the quality of digital news; the role of a communication network in the provision of information; and the mechanisms behind diversionary conflicts. The quality of information provided in a network is endogenous to it. The first chapter studies the news producers' role in it. Social media create a new type of incentives for producers. Consumers share content, influence the visibility of articles and determine the advertisement revenues ensuing. I study these incentives and evaluate the potential quality of ad-funded online news. Producers rely on a subset of rational and unbiased consumers to spread news articles. The resulting news has low precision and ambiguous welfare effects. Producers' incentive to invest in quality increases with the private knowledge of the topic; hence, when information is most needed, the generated news tends to be of lesser quality. Competition does not necessarily improve news quality – it does so only if the network is sufficiently dense. While ad-funded online news occasionally helps consumers take better decisions, it creates welfare mostly through entertainment. Some interventions, such as flagging wrong articles, substantially improve the outcome; other approaches, such as quality certification, do not. The second chapter tackles the issue of the provision of information by a designer with misaligned interests. A sender wants to induce connected receivers to take some actions by committing to a signal structure about a payoff-relevant state. I wonder about the role of the network on information provision when signals are shared among neighbors. Receivers differ in their priors; the sender wants to persuade some receivers without dissuading the others. I present and characterize novel strategies through which the network is exploited. Were receivers' priors homogenous, such strategies would underperform with respect to a public signal. However, when priors are heterogenous, these strategies can prove useful to the sender. In particular, if the average degree of the nodes who should not be dissuaded is sufficiently low, strategies exploiting the network convince more receivers than public signals, conditional on the adverse state realizing. Furthermore, connectivity can be beneficial to the sender, in particular in segregated networks; and strategies exploiting the network perform better when one group is especially hard to persuade. The last chapter offers a different approach: its main objective is to formalize a mechanism and micro-found well-documented behavior. It revisits the diversionary argument of war by proposing a new mechanism: a population that rebels during a conflict weakens the country's military position; this threat discourages the population to attempt a coup. Being at war thus allows a leader to impose demanding policies without being overthrown. I show how rally-around-the-flag reactions to conflict can be both rational and efficient. Furthermore, purely diversionary incentives exist: international tensions can be initiated with the only goal of raising popular support about the conflict. Finally, long-run effects are addressed. When rebellion means are flexible, the population can voluntarily renounce to the freedom to rebel; alternatively, conflicts occur in equilibrium. The strength of the enemy's threat increases the prevalence of barriers to rebellion, while open conflicts are non-monotonically linked to it

L2 Acquisition of English by Persian L1 Speakers. Comparing Morphology, Syntax and Semantics The Bottleneck Hypothesis in L2 acquisition

In this thesis, I test the Bottleneck Hypothesis (Slabakova, 2008, 2013, 2016) in L2 acquisition of English by Persian L1 speakers. The Bottleneck Hypothesis (BH) examines what is difficult and what is easy to acquire in a second language. According to this hypothesis, functional morphology is the most challenging part for second language learners to acquire, while narrow syntax and semantics are easier to acquire. In the current study, I test four linguistic conditions within three linguistic modules (morphology, syntax and semantics): Subject-verb agreement, Past tense –ed, Adjective-Noun (Adj-N) word order and Pronominal gender. Subject-verb agreement and Past tense –ed represent knowledge of functional morphology, Adj-N word order and Pronominal gender represent knowledge of syntax and semantics respectively. The study consisted of a timed acceptability judgement task with 50 test items, a background questionnaire, and a proficiency test with 29 multiple choice test items, which were administered to Persian learners in two age groups of 10 (n=129) and 12 (n=123). The results of the statistical analysis indicate that the participants struggle more with identifying Pronominal gender than they do with Subject-verb agreement, Past tense –ed and Adj-N word order. Moreover, the results show that Pronominal gender is a more persistent problem and is not acquired well with either of the groups. Furthermore, the findings demonstrate that Past tense –ed is not only easier to acquire than Subject-verb agreement, but also it is easier than Pronominal gender and Adj-N word order. I conclude that the findings do not support the BH

UJI VIABILITAS DAN VIGOR TUMBUH BEBERAPA VARIETAS BENIH KACANG TANAH (ARACHIS HYPOGAEA L.) PADA CEKAMAN SALINITAS

Abstrak. Kacang tanah (Arachis hypogaea L.) mempunyai peran yang sangat penting dalam memperbaiki gizi masyarakat. Penurunan produksi kacang tanah diikuti dengan keterbatasan lahan dan faktor lingkungan yang dibutuhkan untuk pertanaman kacang tanah. Penelitian ini bertujuan untuk mengetahui viabilitas dan vigor tumbuh beberapa varietas benih kacang tanah pada berbagai tingkat cekaman salinitas dengan beberapa konsentrasi larutan NaCl.Penelitian ini menggunakan rancangan acak lengkap (RAL) 4 x 5 dengan tiga ulangan.Faktor pertama adalah varietas yaitu varietas Lokal, Talam 2, Kancil dan Kelinci. Faktor kedua adalah salinitas yaitu kontrol, 1 g L-1, 3 g L-1, 5 g L-1, dan 7 g L-1. Varietas Talam 2 dan Kelinci menunjukkan toleransi yang lebih baik terhadap cekaman salinitas apabila dibandingkan dengan varietas Kancil dan Lokal berdasarkan semua tolok ukur parameter yang diamati.Kata kunci : Kacang tanah, varietas, cekaman salinitas, viabilitas, vigor

Making Sense of Negative Outcomes: The Role of Perceived Attributional Stability

When receiving a negative outcome (e.g., rejection in a job interview), people tend to attribute it to different causes. For members of stigmatised groups, discrimination is a plausible cause for a negative outcome. However, because discrimination has become relatively subtle (Ellemers & Barreto, 2015), members of stigmatised groups always live in an attributional ambiguity where they constantly wonder whether discrimination was the cause of the received negative outcome. Some researchers argue that this attributional ambiguity leads members of stigmatised groups to make attributions to discrimination. In doing so, individuals would protect themselves by discounting their own role in the negative outcome they received. In other words, in order to protect their sense of competence, members of stigmatised groups prefer to make attributions to discrimination rather than their lack of deservingness (i.e., attributions to lack of ability; Crocker & Major, 1989; Major, Kaiser, & McCoy, 2003). On the other hand, other researchers argue that making attributions to discrimination is not necessarily self-protective as perceived discrimination can have negative consequences for individuals. It has been suggested that attributional stability plays a key role in determining the extent to which attributions to discrimination and to lack of ability are perceived as a threat to individuals (Branscombe & Schmitt, & Harvey, 1999; Schmitt & Branscombe, 2002; Dweck & Leggett, 1988). In three studies, I examined the extent to which attributions to discrimination and to lack of ability are threatening/challenging as a function of stability of those attributions. Threat and challenge were measured both via self-reported data and cardiovascular markers. The results confirmed the role of attributional stability in perceived threat/challenge. In addition, in another study I examined whether attributional stability influences the extent to which attributions to discrimination and to lack of ability are made. However, the results of this study did not confirm my expectations, instead, participants consistently made more attributions to their lack of ability irrespective of information about attributional stability

Developing unbiased artificial intelligence in recruitment and selection : a processual framework : a dissertation presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Management at Massey University, Albany, Auckland, New Zealand

For several generations, scientists have attempted to build enhanced intelligence into computer systems. Recently, progress in developing and implementing Artificial Intelligence (AI) has quickened. AI is now attracting the attention of business and government leaders as a potential way to optimise decisions and performance across all management levels from operational to strategic. One of the business areas where AI is being used widely is the Recruitment and Selection (R&S) process. However, in spite of this tremendous growth in interest in AI, there is a serious lack of understanding of the potential impact of AI on human life, society and culture. One of the most significant issues is the danger of biases being built into the gathering and analysis of data and subsequent decision-making. Cognitive biases occur in algorithmic models by reflecting the implicit values of the humans involved in defining, coding, collecting, selecting or using data to train the algorithm. The biases can then be self-reinforcing using machine learning, causing AI to engage in ‘biased’ decisions. In order to use AI systems to guide managers in making effective decisions, unbiased AI is required. This study adopted an exploratory and qualitative research design to explore potential biases in the R&S process and how cognitive biases can be mitigated in the development of AI-Recruitment Systems (AIRS). The classic grounded theory was used to guide the study design, data gathering and analysis. Thirty-nine HR managers and AI developers globally were interviewed. The findings empirically represent the development process of AIRS, as well as technical and non-technical techniques in each stage of the process to mitigate cognitive biases. The study contributes to the theory of information system design by explaining the phase of retraining that correlates with continuous mutability in developing AI. AI is developed through retraining the machine learning models as part of the development process, which shows the mutability of the system. The learning process over many training cycles improves the algorithms’ accuracy. This study also extends the knowledge sharing concepts by highlighting the importance of HR managers’ and AI developers’ cross-functional knowledge sharing to mitigate cognitive biases in developing AIRS. Knowledge sharing in developing AIRS can occur in understanding the essential criteria for each job position, preparing datasets for training ML models, testing ML models, and giving feedback, retraining, and improving ML models. Finally, this study contributes to our understanding of the concept of AI transparency by identifying two known cognitive biases similar-to-me bias and stereotype bias in the R&S process that assist in assessing the ML model outcome. In addition, the AIRS process model provides a good understanding of data collection, data preparation and training and retraining the ML model and indicates the role of HR managers and AI developers to mitigate biases and their accountability for AIRS decisions. The development process of unbiased AIRS offers significant implications for the human resource field as well as other fields/industries where AI is used today, such as the education system and insurance services, to mitigate cognitive biases in the development process of AI. In addition, this study provides information about the limitations of AI systems and educates human decision makers (i.e. HR managers) to avoid building biases into their systems in the first place

A Low-Power, Highly Stabilized Three-Electrode Potentiostat Using Subthreshold Techniques

Implantable micro- and nano- sensors and implantable microdevices (IMDs) have demonstrated potential for monitoring various physiological parameters such as glucose, lactate, CO2 [carbon dioxide], pH, etc. Potentiostats are essential components of electrochemical sensors such as glucose monitoring devices for diabetic patients. Diabetes is a metabolic disorder associated with insufficient production or inefficient utilization of insulin. The most important role of this enzyme is to regulate the metabolic breakdown of glucose generating the necessary energy for human activities. Diabetic patients typically monitor their blood glucose levels by pricking a fingertip with a lancing device and applying the blood to a glucose meter. This painful process may need to be repeated once before each meal and once 1- 4 hour after meal. Patients may need to inject insulin manually to keep the blood glucose level at 3.9-6.7 mmol [mili mol] /liter. Frequent glucose measurement can help reduce the long term complication of this disease which includes kidney disease, nerve damage, heart and blood vessel diseases, gum disease, glaucoma and etc. Having an implanted close loop insulin delivery system can help increase the frequency of glucose measurement and the accuracy of insulin injection. The implanted close loop system consists of three main blocks: (1) an electrochemical sensor in conjunction with a potentiostat to measure the blood glucose level, (2) a control block that defines the level of insulin injection and (3) an implanted insulin pump. To provide a continuous health-care monitoring the implantable unit has to be powered up using wireless techniques. Minimizing the power consumption associated with the implantable system can improve the battery life times or minimize the power transfer through the human body. The focus of this work is on the design of low-power potentiostats for the implantable glucose monitoring system. This work addresses the conventional structures in potentiostat design and the problems associated with these designs. Based on this discussion a modification is made to improve the stability without increasing the complexity of the system. The proposed design adopts a subthreshold biasing scheme for the design of a highly-stabilized, low-power potentiostats