631 research outputs found
Prudent Politics: The International Criminal Court, International Relations, and Prosecutorial Independence
I contend that the political environment affects international prosecutors’ professional decisions. Admittedly, it is difficult for me to provide irrefutable proof of that claim—unless a former prosecutor of the ICTY, ICTR, ICC, or other internationalized criminal court improbably publishes a memoir in which he or she acknowledges that political considerations played an important role in the exercise of his or her prosecutorial functions. I will nevertheless seek to offer some examples of cases in which international criminal courts appeared to have acted, at least in part, on the basis of political considerations in carrying out their work. But beyond the claim that prosecutors do take politics into account, my stronger claim is that prosecutors should take politics into account. They should do so, though, in reflective, deliberative ways, not in the reactive and counterproductive ways we have at times witnessed in at least a few cases
Food Policy Council Self-Assessment Tool: Development, Testing, and Results
A large number of food policy councils (FPCs) exist in the United States, Canada, and Tribal Nations (N = 278), yet there are no tools designed to measure their members' perceptions of organizational capacity, social capital, and council effectiveness. Without such tools, it is challenging to determine best practices for FPCs and to measure change within and across councils over time. This study describes the development, testing, and findings from the Food Policy Council Self-Assessment Tool (FPC-SAT). The assessment measures council practices and council members' perceptions of the following concepts: leadership, breadth of active membership, council climate, formality of council structure, knowledge sharing, relationships, member empowerment, community context, synergy, and impacts on the food system. All 278 FPCs listed on the Food Policy Network's Online Directory were recruited to complete the FPC-SAT. Internal reliability (Cronbach's α) and inter-rater reliability (AD, rWG(J), ICC [intraclass correlations][1], ICC[2]) were calculated, and exploratory and a confirmatory factor analyses were conducted. Responses from 354 FPC members from 94 councils were used to test the assessment. Cronbach's α ranged from 0.79 to 0.93 for the scales. FPC members reported the lowest mean scores on the breadth of active membership scale (2.49; standard deviation [SD], 0.62), indicating room for improvement, and highest on the leadership scale (3.45; SD, 0.45). The valid FPC-SAT can be used to identify FPC strengths and areas for improvement, measure differences across FPCs, and measure change in FPCs over time
TADPOLE Challenge: Accurate Alzheimer's disease prediction through crowdsourced forecasting of future data
The TADPOLE Challenge compares the performance of algorithms at predicting
the future evolution of individuals at risk of Alzheimer's disease. TADPOLE
Challenge participants train their models and algorithms on historical data
from the Alzheimer's Disease Neuroimaging Initiative (ADNI) study. Participants
are then required to make forecasts of three key outcomes for ADNI-3 rollover
participants: clinical diagnosis, ADAS-Cog 13, and total volume of the
ventricles -- which are then compared with future measurements. Strong points
of the challenge are that the test data did not exist at the time of
forecasting (it was acquired afterwards), and that it focuses on the
challenging problem of cohort selection for clinical trials by identifying fast
progressors. The submission phase of TADPOLE was open until 15 November 2017;
since then data has been acquired until April 2019 from 219 subjects with 223
clinical visits and 150 Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) scans, which was used
for the evaluation of the participants' predictions. Thirty-three teams
participated with a total of 92 submissions. No single submission was best at
predicting all three outcomes. For diagnosis prediction, the best forecast
(team Frog), which was based on gradient boosting, obtained a multiclass area
under the receiver-operating curve (MAUC) of 0.931, while for ventricle
prediction the best forecast (team EMC1), which was based on disease
progression modelling and spline regression, obtained mean absolute error of
0.41% of total intracranial volume (ICV). For ADAS-Cog 13, no forecast was
considerably better than the benchmark mixed effects model (BenchmarkME),
provided to participants before the submission deadline. Further analysis can
help understand which input features and algorithms are most suitable for
Alzheimer's disease prediction and for aiding patient stratification in
clinical trials.Comment: 10 pages, 1 figure, 4 tables. arXiv admin note: substantial text
overlap with arXiv:1805.0390
Optical creation of vibrational intrinsic localized modes in anharmonic lattices with realistic interatomic potentials
Using an efficient optimal control scheme to determine the exciting fields,
we theoretically demonstrate the optical creation of vibrational intrinsic
localized modes (ILMs) in anharmonic perfect lattices with realistic
interatomic potentials. For systems with finite size, we show that ILMs can be
excited directly by applying a sequence of femtosecond visible laser pulses at
THz repetition rates. For periodic lattices, ILMs can be created indirectly via
decay of an unstable extended lattice mode which is excited optically either by
a sequence of pulses as described above or by a single picosecond far-infrared
laser pulse with linearly chirped frequency. In light of recent advances in
experimental laser pulse shaping capabilities, the approach is experimentally
promising.Comment: 20 pages, 7 eps figures. Accepted, Phys. Rev.
‘Get yourself some nice, neat, matching box files’: research administrators and occupational identity work
To date, qualitative research into occupational groups and cultures within academia has been relatively scarce, with an almost exclusive concentration upon teaching staff within universities and colleges. This article seeks to address this lacuna and applies the interactionist concept of ‘identity work’ in order to examine one specific group to date under-researched: graduate research administrators.
This occupational group is of sociological interest as many of its members appear to span the putative divide between ‘academic’ and ‘administrative’ occupational worlds within higher education. An exploratory, qualitative research project was undertaken, based upon interviews with
27 research administrators. The study analyses how research administrators utilise various forms of identity work to sustain credible occupational identities, often in the face of considerable challenge from their academic colleagues
Quantum and Semiclassical Calculations of Cold Atom Collisions in Light Fields
We derive and apply an optical Bloch equation (OBE) model for describing
collisions of ground and excited laser cooled alkali atoms in the presence of
near-resonant light. Typically these collisions lead to loss of atoms from
traps. We compare the results obtained with a quantum mechanical complex
potential treatment, semiclassical Landau-Zener models with decay, and a
quantum time-dependent Monte-Carlo wave packet (MCWP) calculation. We formulate
the OBE method in both adiabatic and diabatic representations. We calculate the
laser intensity dependence of collision probabilities and find that the
adiabatic OBE results agree quantitatively with those of the MCWP calculation,
and qualitatively with the semiclassical Landau-Zener model with delayed decay,
but that the complex potential method or the traditional Landau-Zener model
fail in the saturation limit.Comment: 21 pages, RevTex, 7 eps figures embedded using psfig, see also
http://www.physics.helsinki.fi/~kasuomin
Marking gender studies:the (Radical) value of creative-critical assessment
Feminist pedagogies have established the need to query power structures in terms of curriculum content and teaching praxis. However, the topic of student assessment poses difficulties: it is a means through which students’ performance is evaluated and quantified according to set institutionalised criteria that values particular forms of hegemonic knowledge. The following article presents a self-reflexive exploration of assessment within a Gender Studies module taught in the Autumn semesters of the 2017/18 and 2018/19 academic years at a UK university. The module was a core component of the institution’s MA in Gender Studies. This was an exciting opportunity to experiment with assessment styles corresponding to feminist pedagogies to help develop students’ and instructors’ disciplinary scope and explore the radical potential for creative-critical approaches to assessment. This article outlines some the challenges of employing alternative modes of learning and teaching from a feminist perspective and suggests some strategies to address these
Automated Morphological Classification of SDSS Red Sequence Galaxies
(abridged) In the last decade, the advent of enormous galaxy surveys has
motivated the development of automated morphological classification schemes to
deal with large data volumes. Existing automated schemes can successfully
distinguish between early and late type galaxies and identify merger
candidates, but are inadequate for studying detailed morphologies of red
sequence galaxies. To fill this need, we present a new automated classification
scheme that focuses on making finer distinctions between early types roughly
corresponding to Hubble types E, S0, and Sa. We visually classify a sample of
984 non-starforming SDSS galaxies with apparent sizes >14". We then develop an
automated method to closely reproduce the visual classifications, which both
provides a check on the visual results and makes it possible to extend
morphological analysis to much larger samples. We visually classify the
galaxies into three bulge classes (BC) by the shape of the light profile in the
outer regions: discs have sharp edges and bulges do not, while some galaxies
are intermediate. We separately identify galaxies with features: spiral arms,
bars, clumps, rings, and dust. We find general agreement between BC and the
bulge fraction B/T measured by the galaxy modeling package GIM2D, but many
visual discs have B/T>0.5. Three additional automated parameters -- smoothness,
axis ratio, and concentration -- can identify many of these high-B/T discs to
yield automated classifications that agree ~70% with the visual classifications
(>90% within one BC). Both methods are used to study the bulge vs. disc
frequency as a function of four measures of galaxy 'size': luminosity, stellar
mass, velocity dispersion, and radius. All size indicators show a fall in disc
fraction and a rise in bulge fraction among larger galaxies.Comment: 24 pages, 20 figures, MNRAS accepte
Sensitivity and Insensitivity of Galaxy Cluster Surveys to New Physics
We study the implications and limitations of galaxy cluster surveys for
constraining models of particle physics and gravity beyond the Standard Model.
Flux limited cluster counts probe the history of large scale structure
formation in the universe, and as such provide useful constraints on
cosmological parameters. As a result of uncertainties in some aspects of
cluster dynamics, cluster surveys are currently more useful for analyzing
physics that would affect the formation of structure than physics that would
modify the appearance of clusters. As an example we consider the Lambda-CDM
cosmology and dimming mechanisms, such as photon-axion mixing.Comment: 24 pages, 8 eps figures. References added, discussion of scatter in
relations between cluster observables lengthene
A theoretical framework and research agenda for studying team attributions in sport
The attributions made for group outcomes have attracted a great deal of interest in recent years. In this article we bring together much of the current research on attribution theory in sport and outline a new conceptual framework and research agenda for investigating the attributions of team members. The proposed framework draws on multiple conceptual approaches including models of attribution, group dynamics and stress responses to provide a detailed hypothetical description of athletes' physiological, cognitive and affective responses to group competition. In describing this model we outline important antecedents of team attributions before hypothesising how attributions can impact hormonal and cardiovascular responses of athletes, together with cognitive (goals, choices, expectations), affective (self-esteem, emotions), and behavioural (approach-avoidance actions) responses of groups and group members. We conclude by outlining important methodological considerations and implications for structured context specific attribution-based interventions
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