Homeostasis and Well Being

The paper suggests that maintenance of a homeostatic equilibrium provides a rationale for many actions of economic agents. Homeostatic equilibrium has physical, economic, emotional, psychological and environmental dimensions. The characteristics of this equilibrium include feelings of safety, trust, connectedness with friends, family and community, and a predictable and welcoming social and work environment. Individuals generally make decisions that help them move toward and achieve this state of equilibrium. Departure from homeostasis reduces well being and stimulates agents to take actions that will return them to a state of homeostasis. This hypothesis is tested with probit analysis using sample responses from the four waves of the World Values Surveys conducted between 1980 and 2002. Results generally support the homeostasis hypothesis. Variables that reflect departure from homeostasis such as divorce and poor health are highly significant, pointing to a reduction in well being. Variables that reflect the importance of friends, family, a trusting social and work environment have significant impacts to raise well being.

Indigenous Participation in Regional Labour Markets, 2001-06

This paper examines the extent to which Indigenous Australians have shared in the large expansion of the Australian workforce that is revealed by a comparison of 2001 and 2006 census results. It considers whether this is reflected in changes to regional patterns of Indigenous labour force status, income, occupation and industry of employment. As such, it provides the first comprehensive assessment of possible impacts of federal Indigenous employment policies introduced just prior to the 2001 Census and it contributes to the policy discourse on 'closing the gap' between Indigenous and other Australians. Conventional census measures of labour force status are established for each of 37 Indigenous Regions and administrative data are also deployed to produce a more accurate picture of the spread of CDEP program employment and the effect of this on labour force outcomes. Changes in occupational and industry segregation are established as is the effect of employment change on the gap in median incomes. In line with previous gap analyses conducted by CAEPR an attempt is made to estimate future job requirements using a projection of the Indigenous working-age population to 2016. This reveals a need for more than 70,000 additional jobs to meet current government target

Path Planning for Simple Robots using Soft Subdivision Search

The concept of resolution-exact path planning is a theoretically sound alternative to the standard exact algorithms, and provides much stronger guarantees than probabilistic or sampling algorithms. It opens the way for the introduction of soft predicates in the context of subdivision algorithm. Taking a leaf from the great success of the Probabilistic Road Map (PRM) framework, we formulate an analogous framework for subdivision, called Soft Subdivision Search (SSS). In this video, we illustrate the SSS framework for a trio of simple planar robots: disc, triangle and 2-links. These robots have, respectively, 2, 3 and 4 degrees of freedom. Our 2-link robot can also avoid self-crossing. These algorithms operate in realtime and are relatively easy to implement

Functional mapping of reaction norms to multiple environmental signals through nonparametric covariance estimation

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>The identification of genes or quantitative trait loci that are expressed in response to different environmental factors such as temperature and light, through functional mapping, critically relies on precise modeling of the covariance structure. Previous work used separable parametric covariance structures, such as a Kronecker product of autoregressive one [AR(1)] matrices, that do not account for interaction effects of different environmental factors.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>We implement a more robust nonparametric covariance estimator to model these interactions within the framework of functional mapping of reaction norms to two signals. Our results from Monte Carlo simulations show that this estimator can be useful in modeling interactions that exist between two environmental signals. The interactions are simulated using nonseparable covariance models with spatio-temporal structural forms that mimic interaction effects.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>The nonparametric covariance estimator has an advantage over separable parametric covariance estimators in the detection of QTL location, thus extending the breadth of use of functional mapping in practical settings.</p