Ensemble Concerts: Symphony Orchestra Concert, December 13, 1973

University AuditoriumThursday EveningDecember 13, 19738:00 p.m

Recollections of gay men: Retrospectively exploring how school-based supports lessen the effects of victimization for gay high school students

LGBTQ (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer) adolescents experience pervasive victimization in the high school environment that has a negative effect on their psychosocial well-being. These adolescents are at an increased risk of depression, suicide, substance abuse, absenteeism from school, dropping out of school, and frequently face alienation from peers and teachers/administrators. Therefore, targeted interventions and a greater sense of inclusiveness in the high school environment are essential to reversing current trends. This study seeks to retrospectively explore high school experiences of victimization of gay men in their 30’s and their recollection of school personnel response and support. The experiences of the participants are then compared to the current literature on the LGBTQ youth experience in schools to see if there have been advances in these areas and where there are gaps. The study was administered using in-person interviews, and each participant was interviewed according to an open-ended, semi-structured interview guide. Participants were recruited through both convenience sampling and snowball sampling methods. Results indicated that participants experienced similar struggles to what the literature is describing about today’s youth experience 12-20 years ago, such as verbal and physical victimization, feelings of low self-esteem, suicidal ideation, alienation, heterosexism/homophobia, and a lack of teacher/administrator response to peer victimization. A comparison of the sample group of gay men to the literature reveals that not much has changed in the high school environment in the past 12-20 years. Three overarching themes emerged from the responses: the sources and nature of victimization, pervasive effects of victimization during the high school years and afterward, and perceptions of the current high school climate and recommendations for intervention in these environments today. The stories of these participants could also have been the stories of adolescents today. A comparison with the literature today reflects that adolescents still experience similar risk factors and a lack of social support. Implications for social work education and practice are discussed, with an emphasis on LGBTQ targeted interventions and a greater inclusiveness of these issues into university curricula.No embarg

Dynamic scheduling of recreational rental vehicles with revenue management extensions

The rental fleet scheduling problem (RFSP) arises in vehicle-rental operations that offer a wide variety of vehicle types to customers, and allow a rented vehicle to migrate to a setdown depot other than the pickup depot. When there is a shortage of vehicles of a particular type at a depot, vehicles may be relocated to that depot, or vehicles of similar types may be substituted. The RFSP involves assigning vehicles to rentals so as to minimise the costs of these operations, and arises in both static and online contexts. The authors have adapted a well-known assignment algorithm for application in the online context. In addition, a network-flow algorithm with more comprehensive coverage of problem conditions is used to investigate the determination of rental pricing using revenue management principles. The paper concludes with an outline of the algorithms use in supporting the operations of a large recreational vehicle rental company

Faculty Recital: Philip Hillstrom, Horn; Ed Livingston, Tuba; Harold Gray, Piano; May 9, 1972

Capen AuditoriumTuesday EveningMay 9, 19728:15 p.m

Faculty Artist Recital: Philip Hillstrom, Horn; Kathryn Gray, Violin; Harold Gray, Piano; July 16, 1973

Centennial East Recital HallMonday EveningJuly 16, 19738:15 p.m

Using Sequential Statistical Tests for Efficient Hyperparameter Tuning

Hyperparameter tuning is one of the the most time-consuming parts in machine learning. Despite the existence of modern optimization algorithms that minimize the number of evaluations needed, evaluations of a single setting may still be expensive. Usually a resampling technique is used, where the machine learning method has to be fitted a fixed number of k times on different training datasets. The respective mean performance of the k fits is then used as performance estimator. Many hyperparameter settings could be discarded after less than k resampling iterations if they are clearly inferior to high-performing settings. However, resampling is often performed until the very end, wasting a lot of computational effort. To this end, we propose the Sequential Random Search (SQRS) which extends the regular random search algorithm by a sequential testing procedure aimed at detecting and eliminating inferior parameter configurations early. We compared our SQRS with regular random search using multiple publicly available regression and classification datasets. Our simulation study showed that the SQRS is able to find similarly well-performing parameter settings while requiring noticeably fewer evaluations. Our results underscore the potential for integrating sequential tests into hyperparameter tuning

Critical analysis from an international law perspective of the United Kingdom's regulatory framework of Space and High-Altitude Activities in the context of changing technology and evolving geopolitical tensions.

This thesis addresses the absence of a comprehensive critical analysis of UK space policy and law. The central research question is to determine whether the UK’s legal and regulatory structure can achieve the government’s objective of growing the UK space economy. This has been addressed by using the concept of regulatory competition to determine how effective the UK’s space strategy is, and whether the policies pursued, and the laws and regulations put in place, are consistent with that strategy. Subsidiary research questions focus on the potential and motivation for regulatory competition; the critical path that provides the framework for UK space policy; the competitiveness of the UK space economy; and the policies required for effective regulatory competition. Although UK space law is derived from the UN space treaties, those obligations are loosely defined which creates the opportunity for regulatory competition. Optimistic economic forecasts provide the motivation for regulatory competition. A Strength Weakness Opportunity Threat analysis concludes that the UK is in a weak position to achieve its space economy aspirations. The UK’s space policy from 1967 to 2009 was characterised by parsimony expressed through opposition to the formation of a space agency, human space flight programs, and a national launch capability. Parsimony reflected a lack of financial resources, which is why the UK focused on the practical exploitation of space applications. These three pillars of UK space policy were abandoned after 2010 due to the influence of public relations concerns on policy. This resulted in the Space Industry Act 2018 and the Space Industry Regulations 2021. Though the core regulatory framework for the licencing of spaceport, range control and launch licences, raise no concerns as to clarity, certainty, complexity, or cost, there is inadequate detail for the licensing of orbital space-activities. The research identified that the Civil Aviation Authority’s (CAA) approach to risk, to process, and timing, were problematical. The legislation and the associated regulations are too complex, and too many organisations are involved in the process. There is also a lack of clarity in the regulations as to the interpretation of key words and phrases. In addition, the regulations give the regulator wide, discretionary powers, and the appeals process lacks transparency and independence. The adoption of an ‘adaptable, outcomes-based regulatory regime’ does not address critical gaps in the CAA’s competence. The scope of national security law, and the risk of broadening of environmental policy in pursuit of ‘thought leadership’, further undermine the attractions of the UK space economy. The CAA lacks the flexibility and authority to balance the requirements needed to prioritise growth over other policy objectives. Though these regulatory weaknesses could be addressed over time, international entrepreneurs are unlikely to finance the CAA’s learning curve. The failure to develop critical Space Domain Awareness capabilities further undermines the claim of competing through regulation. Since 2010, the UK has aspired to securing 10% of the global space economy by 2030. The research concludes that the regulatory framework is not competitive, and so the UK will not achieve that target

Faculty Recital: Benny B. Kemp, PIano; Miriam Oppelt, Violin; Philip Hillstrom, French Horn; May 24, 1971

Capen AuditoriumMay 24, 19718:15 p.m

Automatic Extraction of Protein Point Mutations Using a Graph Bigram Association

Protein point mutations are an essential component of the evolutionary and experimental analysis of protein structure and function. While many manually curated databases attempt to index point mutations, most experimentally generated point mutations and the biological impacts of the changes are described in the peer-reviewed published literature. We describe an application, Mutation GraB (Graph Bigram), that identifies, extracts, and verifies point mutations from biomedical literature. The principal problem of point mutation extraction is to link the point mutation with its associated protein and organism of origin. Our algorithm uses a graph-based bigram traversal to identify these relevant associations and exploits the Swiss-Prot protein database to verify this information. The graph bigram method is different from other models for point mutation extraction in that it incorporates frequency and positional data of all terms in an article to drive the point mutation–protein association. Our method was tested on 589 articles describing point mutations from the G protein–coupled receptor (GPCR), tyrosine kinase, and ion channel protein families. We evaluated our graph bigram metric against a word-proximity metric for term association on datasets of full-text literature in these three different protein families. Our testing shows that the graph bigram metric achieves a higher F-measure for the GPCRs (0.79 versus 0.76), protein tyrosine kinases (0.72 versus 0.69), and ion channel transporters (0.76 versus 0.74). Importantly, in situations where more than one protein can be assigned to a point mutation and disambiguation is required, the graph bigram metric achieves a precision of 0.84 compared with the word distance metric precision of 0.73. We believe the graph bigram search metric to be a significant improvement over previous search metrics for point mutation extraction and to be applicable to text-mining application requiring the association of words

Faculty Woodwind Quintet: Max Schoenfeld, Flute; David Sheaffer, Oboe; Herbert Sanders, Clarinet; James Thornton, Bassoon; Philip Hillstrom, Horn; December 2, 1971

Hayden AuditoriumThursday EveningDecember 2, 19718:15 p.m