Logics for Unranked Trees: An Overview

Labeled unranked trees are used as a model of XML documents, and logical languages for them have been studied actively over the past several years. Such logics have different purposes: some are better suited for extracting data, some for expressing navigational properties, and some make it easy to relate complex properties of trees to the existence of tree automata for those properties. Furthermore, logics differ significantly in their model-checking properties, their automata models, and their behavior on ordered and unordered trees. In this paper we present a survey of logics for unranked trees

Social Inclusion in a Hyperconnected World

Early ‘digital divide’ research focused on inequalities between those who had access to information technologies (IT) and those who did not. This research reflected the view that IT was creating a parallel reality, which people needed to connect to, or risk being left behind. Fast forward to 2013 and a ‘hyperconnected’ world has emerged, characterized by immediate access to information, institutions, and people. The central place of IT in this open, digital world creates a need to investigate the part IT plays in determining the extent to which people can participate in a hyperconnected society. To that end, this panel considers how information systems (IS) research can help reframe digital divide research to address broader issues related to social inclusion. The panel includes reflection on whether investigating the implications of hyperconnectivity for social inclusion requires IS researchers to expand their conceptualizations of ‘legitimate’ IS research questions, theories, and methods

Getting Information Systems Programs Classified as STEM: A U.S.-based Perspective from an AIS Task Force Study and Panel Discussion

Science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) is a designation for educational degree programs that have certain benefits that non-STEM programs do not. To achieve a STEM classification, a program must meet certain criteria. Programs in the natural sciences, engineering, and math departments often readily meet these criteria. However, although programs such as information systems, information technology, and business intelligence have technology at their core, these programs, especially in business colleges, often face difficulties in meeting the STEM criteria. In this paper, we review the STEM designation and provide insight into information systems and related degree programs that have received this designation based on findings from an AIS task force and an AMCIS panel discussion

The emergence of international food safety standards and guidelines: understanding the current landscape through a historical approach

Following the Second World War, the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the World Health Organization (WHO) teamed up to construct an International Codex Alimentarius (or 'food code') which emerged in 1963. The Codex Committee on Food Hygiene (CCFH) was charged with the task of developing microbial hygiene standards, although it found itself embroiled in debate with the WHO over the nature these standards should take. The WHO was increasingly relying upon the input of biometricians and especially the International Commission on Microbial Specifications for Foods (ICMSF) which had developed statistical sampling plans for determining the microbial counts in the final end products. The CCFH, however, was initially more focused on a qualitative approach which looked at the entire food production system and developed codes of practice as well as more descriptive end-product specifications which the WHO argued were 'not scientifically correct'. Drawing upon historical archival material (correspondence and reports) from the WHO and FAO, this article examines this debate over microbial hygiene standards and suggests that there are many lessons from history which could shed light upon current debates and efforts in international food safety management systems and approaches

Adaptive walks on time-dependent fitness landscapes

The idea of adaptive walks on fitness landscapes as a means of studying evolutionary processes on large time scales is extended to fitness landscapes that are slowly changing over time. The influence of ruggedness and of the amount of static fitness contributions are investigated for model landscapes derived from Kauffman's $NK$ landscapes. Depending on the amount of static fitness contributions in the landscape, the evolutionary dynamics can be divided into a percolating and a non-percolating phase. In the percolating phase, the walker performs a random walk over the regions of the landscape with high fitness.Comment: 7 pages, 6 eps-figures, RevTeX, submitted to Phys. Rev.

Exotic spacetimes, superconducting strings with linear momentum, and (not quite) all that

We derive the general exact vacuum metrics associated with a stationary (non static), non rotating, cylindrically symmetric source. An analysis of the geometry described by these vacuum metrics shows that they contain a subfamily of metrics that, although admitting a consistent time orientation, display "exotic" properties, such as "trapping" of geodesics and closed causal curves through every point. The possibility that such spacetimes could be generated by a superconducting string, endowed with a neutral current and momentum, has recently been considered by Thatcher and Morgan. Our results, however, differ from those found by Thatcher and Morgan, and the discrepancy is explained. We also analyze the general possibility of constructing physical sources for the exotic metrics, and find that, under certain restrictions, they must always violate the dominant energy condition (DEC). We illustrate our results by explicitly analyzing the case of concentric shells, where we find that in all cases the external vacuum metric is non exotic if the matter in the shells satisfies the DEC.Comment: 13 pages with no figures. Accepted in PR

Shaping the global communications milieu : the EU's influence on internet and telecommunications governance

This article evaluates the European Union's (EU) influence in shaping the global governance for telecommunications and the Internet. Through analysing EU behaviour within an actorness framework, we demonstrate how the external opportunity structure and the EU's internal environment has impacted on its ability to exert and maximize its presence in order to meet its goals and aims in these two very different sub-sectors of global communications in terms of evolution and development. Such a comparison of EU actorness, we argue, is revealing in terms of uncovering the underlying factors and conditions that allow the EU to influence two important and dynamic communications sub-sectors

Phase III randomised trial of doxorubicin-based chemotherapy compared with platinum-based chemotherapy in small-cell lung cancer

This randomised trial compared platinum-based to anthracycline-based chemotherapy in patients with small-cell lung cancer (limited or extensive stage) and ⩽2 adverse prognostic factors. Patients were randomised to receive six cycles of either ACE (doxorubicin 50 mg/m2 i.v., cyclophosphamide 1 g/m2 i.v. and etoposide 120 mg/m2 i.v. on day 1, then etoposide 240 mg/m2 orally for 2 days) or PE (cisplatin 80 mg/m2 and etoposide 120 mg/m2 i.v. on day 1, then etoposide 240 mg/m2 orally for 2 days) given for every 3 weeks. For patients where cisplatin was not suitable, carboplatin (AUC6) was substituted. A total of 280 patients were included (139 ACE, 141 PE). The response rates were 72% for ACE and 77% for PE. One-year survival rates were 34 and 38% (P=0.497), respectively and 2-year survival was the same (12%) for both arms. For LD patients, the median survival was 10.9 months for ACE and 12.6 months for PE (P=0.51); for ED patients median survival was 8.3 months and 7.5 months, respectively. More grades 3 and 4 neutropenia (90 vs 57%, P<0.005) and grades 3 and 4 infections (73 vs 29%, P<0.005) occurred with ACE, resulting in more days of hospitalisation and greater i.v. antibiotic use. ACE was associated with a higher risk of neutropenic sepsis than PE and with a trend towards worse outcome in patients with LD, and should not be studied further in this group of patients

On the binary nature of 1RXS J162848.1-415241

We present spectroscopy of the optical counterpart to 1RXS J162848.1-41524, also known as the microquasar candidate MCQC J162847-4152. All the data indicate that this X-ray source is not a microquasar, and that it is a single-lined chromospherically active binary system with a likely orbital period of 4.9 days. Our analysis supports a K3IV spectral classification for the star, which is dominant at optical wavelengths. The unseen binary component is most likely a late-type (K7-M) dwarf or a white dwarf. Using the high resolution spectra we have measured the K3 star's rotational broadening to be vsini = 43 +/- 3 km/s and determined a lower limit to the binary mass ratio of q(=M2/M1)>2.0. The high rotational broadening together with the strong CaII H & K / Halpha emission and high-amplitude photometric variations indicate that the evolved star is very chromospherically active and responsible for the X-ray/radio emission.Comment: 15 pages, 5 figures, accepted for publication in Ap