25,532 research outputs found
An Experimental Approach to Comparing Trust in Pastoral and Non-Pastoral Australia
It is generally held that rural Australians are more cooperative in character than their urban counterparts. To explore one aspect of this notion, we conducted an experiment which compared trust and trustworthiness among a sample of Australian senior high school students which included students with both pastoral and non-pastoral backgrounds. While student behaviour is unlikely to mimic adult behaviour, any significant differences between pastoral and non-pastoral students would suggest differences do exist between the social norms that guide pastoral and non-pastoral communities. We repeated our experiment at three different schools containing students from both pastoral and non-pastoral backgrounds, allowing us to draw comparisons. In total 78 students participated. Our experiments were based on similar experiments that have been applied across a range of contexts internationally (trust game/investment game). We did not find evidence of differences between students with pastoral and non-pastoral backgrounds, either in the level of trust in others or in trustworthiness, though our methods probably have a bias towards this conclusion. Our results concurred with other studies in showing that social distance is an important determinant of the level of cooperation.rural urban relations, economic behaviour, culture, arid zones, semiarid zones, pastoral society
Integrated Navigation System: Not a Sum of Its Parts
Similar to the evolutionary process for living organisms, marine navigation systems are becoming increasingly complex and sophisticated. Both by design and function, shipboard and shore-based navigation systems are no longer individual equipment components operating independently. Instead, the trend is toward integration, data fusion and synergy. One example of this are new Performance Standards being considered by IMO to achieve a āharmonizedā presentation of all navigation-related information on the display of an integrated navigation system (INS). Unlike a dedicated display for ECDIS or radar, the new INS displays will be a task-oriented composite presentations that enable the mariner to configure the display for an operational situation by selecting specific chart, radar, radar plotting aids (ARPA) and AIS information that is required for the task-at-hand. This paper gives a brief overview of the trend toward the development of INS. In addition to a brief summary of IMO performance standards for navigation equipment/systems, specific mention is made about a BSH (Germany) report on the āFunctional Scope and Model of INS.ā A discussion is provided about the challenges of providing navigation safety information that goes beyond traditional boundaries of products and services. Currently, many agencies continue to produce individual products and services on a component basis. Hydrographic offices grapple with trying to provide multiple products and services for paper charts, raster navigational charts (RNCs) and electronic navigational charts (ENCs) while a same time, Coast Guard and Maritime Safety agencies focus on improving Aids-to-Navigation (AtoN), Vessel Traffic Services (VTS), AIS networks -- and more recently, port security. In some respects, the continued concentration on separate products and services represents an organizational reluctance to change. This in turn, results in a fragmented, sub-optimal approach to the safety-of-navigation caused by the inability to provide mariners with āseamlessā information at reasonable cost. In particular, hydrographic offices must be willing to recognize that chart information can no longer be considered to be separate, individual products. When it comes to the provision and use of chart-related information for use in an INS, the focus needs to shift to what information is actually desired, how it will be provided, what other information it will be used with, and whether it is truly up-todate
Sensitivity of optimum solutions to problem parameters
Derivation of the sensitivity equations that yield the sensitivity derivatives directly, which avoids the costly and inaccurate perturb-and-reoptimize approach, is discussed and solvability of the equations is examined. The equations apply to optimum solutions obtained by direct search methods as well as those generated by procedures of the sequential unconstrained minimization technique class. Applications are discussed for the use of the sensitivity derivatives in extrapolation of the optimal objective function and design variable values for incremented parameters, optimization with multiple objectives, and decomposition of large optimization problems
In situ analysis for intelligent control
We report a pilot study on in situ analysis of backscatter data for intelligent control of a scientific instrument on an Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV) carried out at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI). The objective of the study is to investigate techniques which use machine intelligence to enable event-response scenarios. Specifically we analyse a set of techniques for automated sample acquisition in the water-column using an electro-mechanical "Gulper", designed at MBARI. This is a syringe-like sampling device, carried onboard an AUV. The techniques we use in this study are clustering algorithms, intended to identify the important distinguishing characteristics of bodies of points within a data sample. We demonstrate that the complementary features of two clustering approaches can offer robust identification of interesting features in the water-column, which, in turn, can support automatic event-response control in the use of the Gulper
Calibration of the NASA-GSFC high energy cosmic ray experiment
Calibration of high energy cosmic ray experimen
Non-Linear Effects in Non-Kerr spacetimes
There is a chance that the spacetime around massive compact objects which are
expected to be black holes is not described by the Kerr metric, but by a metric
which can be considered as a perturbation of the Kerr metric. These non-Kerr
spacetimes are also known as bumpy black hole spacetimes. We expect that, if
some kind of a bumpy black hole exists, the spacetime around it should possess
some features which will make the divergence from a Kerr spacetime detectable.
One of the differences is that these non-Kerr spacetimes do not posses all the
symmetries needed to make them integrable. We discuss how we can take advantage
of this fact by examining EMRIs into the Manko-Novikov spacetime.Comment: 8 pages, 3 Figures; to appear in the proceedings of the conference
"Relativity and Gravitation: 100 Years after Einstein in Prague" (2012
Characterization of complex quantum dynamics with a scalable NMR information processor
We present experimental results on the measurement of fidelity decay under
contrasting system dynamics using a nuclear magnetic resonance quantum
information processor. The measurements were performed by implementing a
scalable circuit in the model of deterministic quantum computation with only
one quantum bit. The results show measurable differences between regular and
complex behaviour and for complex dynamics are faithful to the expected
theoretical decay rate. Moreover, we illustrate how the experimental method can
be seen as an efficient way for either extracting coarse-grained information
about the dynamics of a large system, or measuring the decoherence rate from
engineered environments.Comment: 4pages, 3 figures, revtex4, updated with version closer to that
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