Placement of Job-seekers with Disabilities - Elements of an Effective Service

Since this guide was first published in 1999 for use by policy-makers andmanagers in the Asian and Pacific Region, the role of placement servicesin assisting people with disabilities to enter the labour market has beenthe focus of increasing global attention. Measures to strengthen employment placement services for persons withdisabilities must be set in a solid policy framework and if necessary, backedby legislation. A clear operational strategy should also be designed toguide implementation. In addition, the employment service needs to formlinkages with other government ministries and agencies at a policy level,to ensure that obstacles which disabled people may face are minimized,and that the skills which they offer are relevant to labour marketopportunities. This edition complements the ILO publication “Assisting Disabled Personsin Finding Employment - A Practical Guide” intended for placement andvocational guidance personnel. To increase its relevance to countries in different regions, the guide hasbeen customized to reflect the legislative and policy frameworks in placein different parts of the world. The original publication from which the currentversion has been drawn was developed for use in Asia and was preparedby Barbara Murray, Senior Specialist in Vocational Rehabilitation, andRobert Heron, former Senior Labour Administration Specialist. The ILO ispleased to publish this Caribbean edition, which was customized with theassistance of Dr. Marva Ribeiro and participants at an ILO Workshoporganized by the ILO Subregional Office for the Caribbean in November2002

Markov Chains for Collaboration

Consider a system of $n$ players in which each initially starts on a different team. At each time step, we select an individual winner and an individual loser randomly and the loser joins the winner's team. The resulting Markov chain and stochastic matrix clearly have one absorbing state, in which all players are on the same team, but the combinatorics along the way are surprisingly elegant. The expected number of time steps until each team is eliminated is a ratio of binomial coefficients. When a team is eliminated, the probabilities that the players are configured in various partitions of $n$ into $t$ teams are given by multinomial coefficients. The expected value of the time to absorbtion is $(n-1)^2$ steps. The results depend on elementary combinatorics, linear algebra, and the theory of Markov chains

Ten Micron Photometry of 25 Stars from B8 To M7

A photometer employing a liquid hydrogen-cooled mercury-doped germanium photoconductor whose spectral response is limited to the 8 - 14 µ region by a low pass interference filter and a BaF_2 window coupled with the cell's threshold wavelength has been placed at the east arm Cassegrain focus of the 200 inch Hale telescope. Twenty-five stars have been measured. The earliest star for which two measurements have been obtained is the B8Ia star β Orionis. The latest star is the M7e star X Cygni. The brightest star, L37 X 10^(-14) watts/cm^2, is α Orionis. The carbon star DS Peg was also measured. In a two-color diagram formed with B and V there is an intrinsic increase in dispersion going to later type stars and a systematic trend away from the blackbody relation. The ratios of the stellar fluxes to those expected from blackbodies at the published stellar effective-temperatures and angular diameters are not far from one. A systematic trend exhibited may not be real because of the assumptions involved in inteferometric diameter determinations. DS Peg does not appear overly peculiar in the two-color plots, but X,Cygni falls on the opposite side of the blackbody curve ("blue excess") compared with most of the late type stars. The fluxes presented here have not been corrected for presently uncertain telescope transmission losses which may be important

Exponential stabilization of driftless nonlinear control systems using homogeneous feedback

This paper focuses on the problem of exponential stabilization of controllable, driftless systems using time-varying, homogeneous feedback. The analysis is performed with respect to a homogeneous norm in a nonstandard dilation that is compatible with the algebraic structure of the control Lie algebra. It can be shown that any continuous, time-varying controller that achieves exponential stability relative to the Euclidean norm is necessarily non-Lipschitz. Despite these restrictions, we provide a set of constructive, sufficient conditions for extending smooth, asymptotic stabilizers to homogeneous, exponential stabilizers. The modified feedbacks are everywhere continuous, smooth away from the origin, and can be extended to a large class of systems with torque inputs. The feedback laws are applied to an experimental mobile robot and show significant improvement in convergence rate over smooth stabilizers

Surface Temperature Variations during the Lunar Nighttime

A new photometer incorporating a mercury-doped germanium photoconductor has been used with a 19-inch telescope to measure the 8-14- brightness temperatures of the shaded lunar surface. Right- ascension scans carried into the lunar nighttime from the terminator show a characteristic of cooling inconsistent with the occurrence of a thick homogeneous dust layer. It appears th more highiy conducting material either is exposed commonly on the surface or constitutes a substratum generally covered by no more than a centimeter or so of the strongly insulating dust. No difference in nighttime temperature distribution was observed between maria and uplands. However, local areas of higher-thanaverage brightness temperature were encountered. These indicate extensive exposures of consolidated material. Local temperature anomalies of this type are associated with the bright-rayed craters Tycho and Copernicus, but they are distributed over an area larger than that represented by the respective craters. Two other groups of temperature anomalies were found in otherwise undistinguished mare border areas. These observations and others suggest that surface redistribution processes are operative on the lunar surface over at least a 10-meter range, but are not important over distances much in excess of a kilometer

An Iterative Abstraction Algorithm for Reactive Correct-by-Construction Controller Synthesis

In this paper, we consider the problem of synthesizing correct-by-construction controllers for discrete-time dynamical systems. A commonly adopted approach in the literature is to abstract the dynamical system into a Finite Transition System (FTS) and thus convert the problem into a two player game between the environment and the system on the FTS. The controller design problem can then be solved using synthesis tools for general linear temporal logic or generalized reactivity(1) specifications. In this article, we propose a new abstraction algorithm. Instead of generating a single FTS to represent the system, we generate two FTSs, which are under- and over-approximations of the original dynamical system. We further develop an iterative abstraction scheme by exploiting the concept of winning sets, i.e., the sets of states for which there exists a winning strategy for the system. Finally, the efficiency of the new abstraction algorithm is illustrated by numerical examples.Comment: A shorter version has been accepted for publication in the 54th IEEE Conference on Decision and Control (held Tuesday through Friday, December 15-18, 2015 at the Osaka International Convention Center, Osaka, Japan

Using parallel computation to improve Independent Metropolis--Hastings based estimation

In this paper, we consider the implications of the fact that parallel raw-power can be exploited by a generic Metropolis--Hastings algorithm if the proposed values are independent. In particular, we present improvements to the independent Metropolis--Hastings algorithm that significantly decrease the variance of any estimator derived from the MCMC output, for a null computing cost since those improvements are based on a fixed number of target density evaluations. Furthermore, the techniques developed in this paper do not jeopardize the Markovian convergence properties of the algorithm, since they are based on the Rao--Blackwell principles of Gelfand and Smith (1990), already exploited in Casella and Robert (1996), Atchade and Perron (2005) and Douc and Robert (2010). We illustrate those improvements both on a toy normal example and on a classical probit regression model, but stress the fact that they are applicable in any case where the independent Metropolis-Hastings is applicable.Comment: 19 pages, 8 figures, to appear in Journal of Computational and Graphical Statistic

The value of a breast care nurse in supporting rural and remote cancer patients in Queensland

The role of the Breast Care Nurse in Queensland's Supporting Rural Women with Breast Cancer Project was evaluated by mixed methodology. Through questionnaire and interview patients provided views about the nurse's role under categories of Awareness, Access, Coordination, Information and Psychosocial, Emotional and Practical support. Of the 51 participants 37 resided in rural and remote areas with 18 living between 100 and 500 miles from specialised breast care services. The BCN met with patients at their regular hospital visits and was available by telephone at any time. There was overwhelming agreement among the participants that the timing of contact, ease of accessibility, information provided and support offered were extremely valuable in making their treatment and recovery easier. The vast majority of participants would recommend hospitals with a BCN to their friends. Members of the multidisciplinary care team provided views on Awareness of the BCN, Influence on Care Management, Communication and Patient Outcomes. They recognised the benefits of the BCN to patients and to coordination and liaison of the team. The findings concur with unpublished Australian reports that demonstrate the success of dedicated Breast Care Nurses. The BCN model of care could be used successfully to support other medical conditions