Combating e-discrimination in the North West - final report

The Combating eDiscimination in the North West project examined over 100 websites advertising job opportunities both regionally and nationally, and found the vast majority to be largely inaccessible. Professional standards, such as using valid W3C code and adhering to the W3C Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, were largely not followed. The project also conducted interviews with both public and private sector web professionals, and focus groups of disabled computer users, to draw a broader picture of the accessibility of jobs websites. Interviews with leading web development companies in the Greater Manchester region, showed that there is a view there should not be any additional cost in making websites accessible, as the expertise to create a site professionally should be in place from the start, and that accessibility will follow from applying professional standards. However, through the process of trying to create a website for the project, with such a company, it was found that following professional standards is not sufficient to catch all the potential problems, and that user testing is an essential adjunct to professional practice. The main findings of the project are, thus, that: • Most websites in the job opportunities sector are not following professional standards of web development, and are largely inaccessible • Professional standards of web development need to be augmented with user testing to ensure proper accessibility

Refined Cauchy/Littlewood identities and six-vertex model partition functions: II. Proofs and new conjectures

We prove two identities of Hall-Littlewood polynomials, which appeared recently in a paper by two of the authors. We also conjecture, and in some cases prove, new identities which relate infinite sums of symmetric polynomials and partition functions associated with symmetry classes of alternating sign matrices. These identities generalize those already found in our earlier paper, via the introduction of additional parameters. The left hand side of each of our identities is a simple refinement of a relevant Cauchy or Littlewood identity. The right hand side of each identity is (one of the two factors present in) the partition function of the six-vertex model on a relevant domain.Comment: 34 pages, 14 figure

Three dimensional turbulent boundary layers: Data sets for two-space coordinate flows

Sets of data (flows) from eight original sources on three-dimensional turbulent boundary layers were reevaluated and tabulated in a common format. The flows studied were all of the type describable in only two space coordinates, e.g., flow over a swept wing of infinite span. The principal data in each set are profiles of the main and crossflow components of mean velocity. Turbulent shear stress vector profiles were available for two flows, Bradshaw and Terrell (1969) and Johnson (1970). Free stream pressure gradient, wall shear stress coefficient and angle, integral thickness and left and right hand sides of the momentum integral equations were evaluated in a consistent manner for each flow

Yang-Mills gravity in biconformal space

We write a gravity theory with Yang-Mills type action using the biconformal gauging of the conformal group. We show that the resulting biconformal Yang-Mills gravity theories describe 4-dim, scale-invariant general relativity in the case of slowly changing fields. In addition, we systematically extend arbitrary 4-dim Yang-Mills theories to biconformal space, providing a new arena for studying flat space Yang-Mills theories. By applying the biconformal extension to a 4-dim pure Yang-Mills theory with conformal symmetry, we establish a 1-1, onto mapping between a set of gravitational gauge theories and 4-dim, flat space gauge theories.Comment: 27 pages; paper emphasis shifted to focus on gravity; references adde

On-line planning and scheduling: an application to controlling modular printers

We present a case study of artificial intelligence techniques applied to the control of production printing equipment. Like many other real-world applications, this complex domain requires high-speed autonomous decision-making and robust continual operation. To our knowledge, this work represents the first successful industrial application of embedded domain-independent temporal planning. Our system handles execution failures and multi-objective preferences. At its heart is an on-line algorithm that combines techniques from state-space planning and partial-order scheduling. We suggest that this general architecture may prove useful in other applications as more intelligent systems operate in continual, on-line settings. Our system has been used to drive several commercial prototypes and has enabled a new product architecture for our industrial partner. When compared with state-of-the-art off-line planners, our system is hundreds of times faster and often finds better plans. Our experience demonstrates that domain-independent AI planning based on heuristic search can flexibly handle time, resources, replanning, and multiple objectives in a high-speed practical application without requiring hand-coded control knowledge

Enhancing the Social Work Role in HIV/AIDS Education, Intervention and Prevention with Vulnerable Groups

The University Archives has determined that this item is of continuing value to OSU's history.Wheeler, Darrell P., Ph.D., M.P.H., University of North Carolina, Greensboro - "Enhancing the Social Work Role in HIV/AIDS Education, Intervention and Prevention with Vulnerable Groups"The Ohio State University College of Social Wor