The Trans-Pacific Partnership: Expanding International Regimes

The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) is on track to become the largest free trade agreement in history. The multilateral negotiations comprising twelve nations across the Pacific Rim seeks to create a robust, comprehensive trade accord for the 21st century. The regional trade deal was born in the midst of an international climate of rapidly expanding free trade agreements. The TPP is not merely the latest free trade agreement. Due to the size, scope, and focus on unconventional trade issues, the TPP, led by the United States, will expand particular international regimes beyond existing norms in two key areas: intellectual property and investor-state dispute settlements. This expansionist approach has implications for geostrategic partnerships in the Asia-Pacific region and emerging hegemonic trends

CF healthcare workers feel unprepared in providing suitable end of life care and desire more education: Results of a nationwide survey

INTRODUCTION: Little is known about the depth of knowledge and preparedness of CF caregivers in delivering end of life and palliative care to CF patients and families. METHOD: Nationwide survey questionnaires for CF care providers using the CF Foundation Listserv electronic web-based tool. RESULTS: The majority of non-physician CF care providers (55%) had more than 15years of experience in their discipline and 84% of physician had greater than 15years of experience. The majority reported that they felt somewhat or very involved in palliative or end of life care in their current role. Yet, when asked whether they felt adequately prepared to deliver palliative and end of life care, only 18% reported that they were fully prepared and 45% felt that they were only minimally or not prepared. Further, only one third of respondents received more than 10h of education in general palliative or end-of-life care, while only 10% had received more than 10h of education specific to CF end of life care. The majority (73%) of CF healthcare providers preferred more education specific to CF end of life care. CONCLUSION: CF healthcare providers are involved in CF end of life issues but a fair number did not understand their role and felt inadequately prepared in delivering suitable end of life and palliative care. Many desired more education in the provision of such care

Oil palm in the 2020s and beyond: challenges and solutions

Oil palm, Elaeis guineensis, is by far the most important global oil crop, supplying about 40\\% of all traded vegetable oil. Palm oils are key dietary components consumed daily by over three billion people, mostly in Asia, and also have a wide range of important non-food uses including in cleansing and sanitizing products.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Exploring the networks of government scientists using Social Network Analysis: a scoping study

Scientists working for the New South Wales (NSW) Office of Environment and Heritage (OEH) provide rigorous evidence and advice to support government priorities which include protecting the natural environment. They also collaborate with and attract non-government researchers to work on government priorities. In this scoping study, we used Social Network Analysis (SNA) to visualise the ego networks of six government scientists from OEH who work on biodiversity conservation and landscape management. This allowed us to explore the potential reach of their advice and information within OEH and beyond; and examine gaps and redundancy in the stacked ego networks

Detecting transient gravitational waves in non-Gaussian noise with partially redundant analysis methods

There is a broad class of astrophysical sources that produce detectable, transient, gravitational waves. Some searches for transient gravitational waves are tailored to known features of these sources. Other searches make few assumptions about the sources. Typically events are observable with multiple search techniques. This work describes how to combine the results of searches that are not independent, treating each search as a classifier for a given event. This will be shown to improve the overall sensitivity to gravitational-wave events while directly addressing the problem of consistent interpretation of multiple trials.Comment: 11 pages, 5 figure

Likelihood-ratio ranking of gravitational-wave candidates in a non-Gaussian background

We describe a general approach to detection of transient gravitational-wave signals in the presence of non-Gaussian background noise. We prove that under quite general conditions, the ratio of the likelihood of observed data to contain a signal to the likelihood of it being a noise fluctuation provides optimal ranking for the candidate events found in an experiment. The likelihood-ratio ranking allows us to combine different kinds of data into a single analysis. We apply the general framework to the problem of unifying the results of independent experiments and the problem of accounting for non-Gaussian artifacts in the searches for gravitational waves from compact binary coalescence in LIGO data. We show analytically and confirm through simulations that in both cases the likelihood ratio statistic results in an improved analysis.Comment: 10 pages, 6 figure

Impact of Electric Industry Structure on High Wind Penetration Potential

This paper attempts to evaluate which balancing area (BA) characteristics best accommodate wind energy

A burst search for gravitational waves from binary black holes

Compact binary coalescence (CBC) is one of the most promising sources of gravitational waves. These sources are usually searched for with matched filters which require accurate calculation of the GW waveforms and generation of large template banks. We present a complementary search technique based on algorithms used in un-modeled searches. Initially designed for detection of un-modeled bursts, which can span a very large set of waveform morphologies, the search algorithm presented here is constrained for targeted detection of the smaller subset of CBC signals. The constraint is based on the assumption of elliptical polarisation for signals received at the detector. We expect that the algorithm is sensitive to CBC signals in a wide range of masses, mass ratios, and spin parameters. In preparation for the analysis of data from the fifth LIGO-Virgo science run (S5), we performed preliminary studies of the algorithm on test data. We present the sensitivity of the search to different types of simulated CBC waveforms. Also, we discuss how to extend the results of the test run into a search over all of the current LIGO-Virgo data set.Comment: 12 pages, 4 figures, 2 tables, submitted for publication in CQG in the special issue for the conference proceedings of GWDAW13; corrected some typos, addressed some minor reviewer comments one section restructured and references updated and correcte

Facebook's Mobile Career

At the end of its first decade, Facebook’s identity, popularity, and characteristics are shaped in important ways by its becoming a form of mobile media, as much as it as platform associated with Internet and social media. This paper seeks to explore and understand Facebook as the important force in mobile media and communication it now is. It draws upon and combines perspectives from technology production, design, and economy, as well as user adoption, consumption, practices, affect, emotion, and resistance. The paper discusses the beginnings of mobile Facebook, and the early adoption of mobile Facebook associated with the rise of smartphones. The second part of the paper explores Facebook’s integration with photography (with Instagram) and social games (such as Zynga’s Farmville). The paper argues that Facebook’s mobile career is an accomplishment that has distinctively melded evolving affordances, everyday use across a wide range of settings, as well as political economies, corporate strategy, and design.Australian Research Counci