Individual voluntary participation in the United Kingdom: an overview of survey information

The measurement of voluntary activity is not straightforward; definitional and methodological questions affect the responses. This is true within the context of the UK but also in other countries of the developed world (Archambault 1993, Kendall and Knapp 1993, Gidron and Katz 1998, Salamon and Sokolowski 2001). The existence of definitional difficulties and ambiguities has a detrimental impact on the quality of academic research and policy-making in this sphere. Firstly, it impedes orderly collection of statistical information on volunteering in administrative sources. Also, it complicates the collection of survey information: the absence of well-understood and widely-agreed concepts of voluntarism in the public mind introduces uncertainty in people’s responses. To date, however, there has not been an attempt to compare findings of different surveys systematically. This paper aims to fill the gap in research by reviewing the available surveys for the UK. It focuses specifically on the methods used to obtain information on volunteering and the comparability of the results generated by different surveys

Towards an Indexical Model of Situated Language Comprehension for Cognitive Agents in Physical Worlds

We propose a computational model of situated language comprehension based on the Indexical Hypothesis that generates meaning representations by translating amodal linguistic symbols to modal representations of beliefs, knowledge, and experience external to the linguistic system. This Indexical Model incorporates multiple information sources, including perceptions, domain knowledge, and short-term and long-term experiences during comprehension. We show that exploiting diverse information sources can alleviate ambiguities that arise from contextual use of underspecific referring expressions and unexpressed argument alternations of verbs. The model is being used to support linguistic interactions in Rosie, an agent implemented in Soar that learns from instruction.Comment: Advances in Cognitive Systems 3 (2014

Through-Life Management of Built Facilities: Towards a Framework for Analysis

Although built facilities are required to cater to changing requirements over time, effective through life management is absent as an in-process activity from most large scale procurements. Through a review of key literature, several approaches which address aspects relevant to through-life management are discussed, and an attempt is made to create a unified view framework of understanding of what constitutes through-life management. Furthermore, an initial diagnostic style checklist is provided as a way of identifying the absence of through-life managemen

Position paper on theory in through life management

The objective of this position paper is to review, from a theoretical point of view, the practice of and research on through life management. It is argued that the rationale of TLM is elusive and its theoretical basis insufficient. Regarding information systems for through life management, an approach based on ethnomethodology is provided. Regarding learning from use, the embedded nature of effective learning is discussed. Regarding governance and management, the common denial to acknowledge production as a fundamental ingredient in TLM is considered. It is concluded that through life management is an under theorized domain, and further progress requires increased research efforts

State policies and public facility location: the hospital services of north east England, 1948 - 1982

Despite the importance of public facilities in everyday life, as yet there is little agreement on how a theory of public facility location is to be produced. Following a review and evaluation of previous research, it is argued that public facility location should be analysed within the context of a theory of society and of the state. This in turn necessitates an assessment of alternative theoretical propositions concerning the state. Following this, an account is presented of major developments in the hospital services in the area covered by the Newcastle RHB (Northern RHA from 1974). This account discusses the nature of and reasons for the changing character of state intervention in the British economy since the war, and traces the implications of these changes for spatial aspects of hospital provision. Detailed studies are presented of disputes on local hospital strategy. This material is structured thematically so as to facilitate commenting on the role of the state. A concluding chapter summarises the empirical material, assesses the relative merits of various approaches to theorising the state, and considers the implications of this research for public facility location theory

Making a difference? Student volunteerism, service learning and higher education in the USA

This paper reviews evidence concerning the recent growth of volunteerism among college students in the USA. It describes the various pressures to expand such activities and outlines steps being taken to promote them. Reforms of student financial aid can be used to facilitate service among students who would otherwise have to engage in substantial paid work to afford education, while educational institutions are taking numerous steps, most notably through integrating community service and academic study, to promote such involvement. The more general issues raised by all this are: the likely impacts on servers and served of this activity; whether education-based community service has demonstrable educational benefits; its impact on higher education institutions; and the wider impacts in terms of political attitudes and behaviour

Development of high resolution simulations of the atmospheric environment using the MASS model

Numerical simulations were performed with a very high resolution (7.25 km) version of the MASS model (Version 4.0) in an effort to diagnose the vertical wind shear and static stability structure during the Shuttle Challenger disaster which occurred on 28 January 1986. These meso-beta scale simulations reveal that the strongest vertical wind shears were concentrated in the 200 to 150 mb layer at 1630 GMT, i.e., at about the time of the disaster. These simulated vertical shears were the result of two primary dynamical processes. The juxtaposition of both of these processes produced a shallow (30 mb deep) region of strong vertical wind shear, and hence, low Richardson number values during the launch time period. Comparisons with the Cape Canaveral (XMR) rawinsonde indicates that the high resolution MASS 4.0 simulation more closely emulated nature than did previous simulations of the same event with the GMASS model