Young People with Learning Disabilities and the Development of Sexual Relationships

In modern society the needs of young people with learning disabilities to develop sexual relationships is increasingly recognised, and supported in legislation and social policy. The aim of this small scale, exploratory study was to understand whether young people with learning disabilities receive sex education and are given accessible information and support relating to sexualised behaviours. The study gained professional and parental views on this topic, together with those of the young people to understand their future aspirations and the barriers they may face. The research design involved semi-structured interviews with 12 purposively selected respondents including teachers, public health nurses, young people and their parents. Results indicated that this group of young people do receive sex education but that misunderstandings about sex and relationships are still prevalent. Professionals and parents may lack the knowledge and confidence to provide appropriate information in an accessible manner, and for professionals the emphasis is on managing inappropriate sexualised behaviours. When it comes to preparing young people for emotional relationships all those involved in the study struggled with this and the young people’s aspirations differed from those of their care givers. The study concludes that support in this particular area of personal development needs to be developed

Human Resource Practices and Organizational Commitment: A Deeper Examination

This paper examines newer conceptualizations of HRM practices in the HR-Performance Relationship as well as newer conceptualizations of commitment. Juxtaposing these categories of HR practices and types of commitment provides a clearer theoretical rational for at least some ways that HR practices can influence organizational performance, be that positive or negative. Implications for research are then discussed

Distributed Computing with Adaptive Heuristics

We use ideas from distributed computing to study dynamic environments in which computational nodes, or decision makers, follow adaptive heuristics (Hart 2005), i.e., simple and unsophisticated rules of behavior, e.g., repeatedly "best replying" to others' actions, and minimizing "regret", that have been extensively studied in game theory and economics. We explore when convergence of such simple dynamics to an equilibrium is guaranteed in asynchronous computational environments, where nodes can act at any time. Our research agenda, distributed computing with adaptive heuristics, lies on the borderline of computer science (including distributed computing and learning) and game theory (including game dynamics and adaptive heuristics). We exhibit a general non-termination result for a broad class of heuristics with bounded recall---that is, simple rules of behavior that depend only on recent history of interaction between nodes. We consider implications of our result across a wide variety of interesting and timely applications: game theory, circuit design, social networks, routing and congestion control. We also study the computational and communication complexity of asynchronous dynamics and present some basic observations regarding the effects of asynchrony on no-regret dynamics. We believe that our work opens a new avenue for research in both distributed computing and game theory.Comment: 36 pages, four figures. Expands both technical results and discussion of v1. Revised version will appear in the proceedings of Innovations in Computer Science 201

The Economics of Aesthetics at Southern California Edison

In August 1965, Electrical World ran a special issue on “Operation Beautility”, a dynamic program dedicated to improving the appearance of electrical facilities across the nation. Following on from President Lyndon B. Johnson’s high profile White House Conference on Natural Beauty held in May that year, Electrical World outlined the problem facing utility companies across the country: “energy itself is invisible,” but “we cannot have it without power plants, switching stations, substations, transmission and distribution networks” cluttering the environment. The campaign for “beautification” led by LBJ’s wife “Lady Bird” Johnson swept the nation in 1965, focusing attention on the tangle of overhead lines, billboards, litter and junkyards cluttering the American landscape, and leading to the Highway Beautification Act in 1965. The “beautification” movement ushered in a new phase for utility companies, increasingly under pressure from environmentalists, regulatory bodies and the public, who protested against the continued expansion of energy facilities into increasingly urbanized districts. During this period, private utilities, such as Southern California Edison, incorporated aesthetics into their public relations campaigns in an effort to manage an increasingly strained relationship with its consumer base. From 1965 onwards, Southern California Edison put into action a range of programs to improve the appearance of its electrical facilities, ranging from repainting to launching new design models for transmission lines and converting overhead lines to underground systems

The role of gelatinous zooplankton for marine ecosystems and the carbon cycle

There is increasing recognition of the importance of gelatinous zooplankton (GZ) within the ocean. However, observations of GZ and understanding of their ecosystem role, lags behind other zooplankton. Increasing pressures on the ocean, including climate change and overfishing, will likely impact GZ. This thesis aims to identify the role of GZ in the marine ecosystem and carbon cycle using observations and a model. This is achieved by (1) an analysis of GZ abundance and biomass from a global database, (2) the addition of GZ as a Plankton Functional Type in the global biogeochemical model PlankTOM11, (3) an analysis of the effect of GZ on carbon export in PlankTOM11 and (4) a case study on the effects of overfishing and climate change on GZ in PlankTOM11. Model developments made use of available vital rates and biomass data. Parameterisation of mortality was the largest source of uncertainty for GZ; therefore, mortality was tuned based on the resulting biomass generated by PlankTOM11. GZ had the largest influence on macrozooplankton biomass and influenced the whole plankton ecosystem through trophic cascades. PlankTOM11 showed trophic level as the most important characteristic of GZ for increasing export. There is evidence that GZ mortality plays an important role in export, but this is not replicated in PlankTOM11, likely due to particulate organic carbon (OC) representation as smaller and with slower sinking speeds than GZ carcases. Further partitioning of OC should improve the representation of GZ mortality and its influence on export. The case study found overfishing reduced GZ biomass, in opposition to other studies. The lack of fish predation on GZ may be a key factor. Climate and overfishing acted synergistically on the ecosystem. GZ play a key role in marine ecosystems by influencing plankton community structures through trophic cascades, thus influencing carbon export