Electronic Voting System Characteristics and Voter Participation Intention

The rapid development of communication and information technology has made electronic voting techno- logically and economically feasible. In this study, we will examine the differential impact of four electronic voting system (EVS) characteristics (privacy, accessibility, mobility, and accuracy) on voter participation intention (i.e., EVS voting) and on preferred EVS mechanism (telephone, Web-based, or touch-screen) for electronic voting

Unanticipated Software Use by Adolescents Following Mandatory Adoption

This research proposes a model to predict unanticipated use of software by high school students after mandatory adoption. We define unanticipated use as voluntarily extending the use of a software product to new tasks and new settings after mandatory adoption for a specific task in a specific setting. We are basing our model on TAM2 (Venkatesh and Davis 2000), which is an extension of the original technology acceptance model (TAM) (Davis 1986). Typically, research in this area investigates technology acceptance in voluntary settings. However, a few studies have looked at acceptance in mandatory settings (Rawstorne et al. 2000). Our research involves actual behavior so we have removed the intention to use construct from the original TAM2 model. Due to the nature of our subjects and the educational setting, we have also removed the following original TAM2 constructs: output quality, voluntariness, and job relevance. We have added personal innovativeness in the domain of information technology (PIIT) (Agarwal and Prasad 1998) and computer self- efficacy (CSE) (Compeau and Higgins 1995)

Harmonized classification scheme of fire causes in the EU adopted for the European Fire Database of EFFIS

The information on the causes of forest fires is of paramount importance to support the environmental and civil protection policies and design appropriate prevention measure. At the European level a simple common scheme with 4 fire causes classes (deliberate, accident/negligence, natural and unknown) has been used to record information on fire causes since 1992. European countries use national schemes which in most cases are much more detailed than the simple 4 common classes, but they are not harmonized and detailed cross country comparisons are difficult. The need for a new EU scheme, more detailed than the 4 basic categories and harmonized across European countries, to be recorded in the Fire Database of the European Forest Fire Information System (EFFIS), has been identified to improve the information level and the common knowledge on the origin of forest fires in Europe. The new scheme has been conceived to be applicable with limited changes to the previous country settings, preserving as much as possible the historical data series of each country and exploiting at the same time as much as possible the level of detail of the information available. This report provides a detailed description of the new scheme, its main features with precise definition of each cause class and the mapping of the historical national systems to the new harmonized system. The scheme is hierarchical and is made of 29 fire cause classes, 8 groups and 6 categories. The explicit statement on the level of certainty in the attribution of the cause to a fire event has been introduced as a key element in the new scheme. This harmonized fire cause classification scheme is expected to be adopted by the countries participating to the EFFIS network in the coming years, and therefore be recorded in the European Fire Database, with a significant added value for the knowledge about the origin of forest fires in Europe.JRC.H.3-Forest Resources and Climat

hp-version discontinuous Galerkin methods for advection-diffusion-reaction problems on polytopic meshes

We consider the hp-version interior penalty discontinuous Galerkin finite element method (DGFEM) for the numerical approximation of the advection-diffusion-reaction equation on general computational meshes consisting of polygonal/polyhedral (polytopic) elements. In particular, new hp-version a priori error bounds are derived based on a specific choice of the interior penalty parameter which allows for edge/face-degeneration. The proposed method employs elemental polynomial bases of total degree p (P_p-basis) defined in the physical coordinate system, without requiring the mapping from a given reference or canonical frame. Numerical experiments highlighting the performance of the proposed DGFEM are presented. In particular, we study the competitiveness of the p-version DGFEM employing a P_p-basis on both polytopic and tensor-product elements with a (standard) DGFEM employing a (mapped) Q_p-basis. Moreover, a computational example is also presented which demonstrates the performance of the proposed hp-version DGFEM on general agglomerated meshes

Vowel discrimination by hearing infants as a function of number of spectral channels

Reduced spectral resolution negatively impacts speech perception, particularly perception of vowels and consonant place. This study assessed impact of number of spectral channels on vowel discrimination by 6-month-old infants with normal hearing by comparing three listening conditions: Unprocessed speech, 32 channels, and 16 channels. Auditory stimuli (/ti/ and /ta/) were spectrally reduced using a noiseband vocoder and presented to infants with normal hearing via visual habituation. Results supported a significant effect of number of channels on vowel discrimination by 6-month-old infants. No differences emerged between unprocessed and 32-channel conditions in which infants looked longer during novel stimulus trials (i.e., discrimination). The 16-channel condition yielded a significantly different pattern: Infants demonstrated no significant difference in looking time to familiar vs novel stimulus trials, suggesting infants cannot discriminate /ti/ and /ta/ with only 16 channels. Results support effects of spectral resolution on vowel discrimination. Relative to published reports, young infants need more spectral detail than older children and adults to perceive spectrally degraded speech. Results have implications for development of perception by infants with hearing loss who receive auditory prostheses

Novel insights into the genetic relationship between growth and disease resistance in an aquaculture strain of Coho salmon (Oncorhynchus kisutch)

Breeding for disease resistance has become a highly desirable strategy for mitigating infectious disease problems in aquaculture. However, knowledge of the genetic relationship between resistance and other economically important traits, such as growth, is important to assess prior to including disease resistance into the breeding goal. Our study assessed the genetic correlations between growth and survival traits in a large bacterial infection challenge experiment. A population of 2606 coho salmon individuals from 107 full-sibling families were challenged with the bacteria Piscirickettsia salmonis. Growth was measured as average daily gain prior (ADG0) and during (ADGi) the experimental infection and as harvest weight (HW). Resistance was measured as Survival time (ST) and binary survival (BS). Furthermore, individual measures of bacterial load (BL) were assessed as new resistance phenotypes and to provide an indication of genetic variation in tolerance in salmonid species. Resistant families showed lower bacterial load than those susceptible to P. salmonis. Furthermore, some surviving fish belonging to resistant families, were considered as bacterial-free because their bacterial load was below the detection threshold. Adding logBL as a covariate into the models for growth under infection and survival indicated significant genetic variation in tolerance. Significant moderate heritabilities were estimated for ADG0 (0.30 ± 0.05), HW (0.38 ± 0.03), and for the survival traits ST (0.16 ± 0.03) and BS (0.18 ± 0.03). In contrast, heritabilities for ADGi and log-transformed BL were low (0.07 ± 0.02 (significant) and 0.04 ± 0.03, respectively), although these increased to moderate significant levels (0.20 ± 0.09 and 0.12 ± 0.05, respectively) when traits were assessed in survivors only. Significant favorable genetic correlations were found between ADG0 and ADGi (0.40 ± 0.16), HW (0.64 ± 0.09), and with resistance as ST (0.43 ± 0.18), indicating that fish with higher genetic growth rate early on and prior to infection not only tend to maintain their genetic growth advantage until harvest, but also tend to grow faster and survive longer during infection. Although a significant unfavorable correlation (−0.50 ± 0.13) between HW and ST was found, this value decreased to −0.35 ± 0.20 using uncensored data from non-survivors only. Similarly, no robust unfavorable genetic correlations between ADG0 and LogBL, or ADG0 and any of the other traits considered in this study, was identified. These results suggest that selective breeding for early growth, in the current coho salmon population, would be expected to simultaneously increase survival time and growth performance during an infection with Piscirickettsia salmonis, without negatively impacting on pathogen burden

Genetic differences in host infectivity affect disease spread and survival in epidemics

Abstract Survival during an epidemic is partly determined by host genetics. While quantitative genetic studies typically consider survival as an indicator for disease resistance (an individual’s propensity to avoid becoming infected or diseased), mortality rates of populations undergoing an epidemic are also affected by endurance (the propensity of diseased individual to survive the infection) and infectivity (i.e. the propensity of an infected individual to transmit disease). Few studies have demonstrated genetic variation in disease endurance, and no study has demonstrated genetic variation in host infectivity, despite strong evidence for considerable phenotypic variation in this trait. Here we propose an experimental design and statistical models for estimating genetic diversity in all three host traits. Using an infection model in fish we provide, for the first time, direct evidence for genetic variation in host infectivity, in addition to variation in resistance and endurance. We also demonstrate how genetic differences in these three traits contribute to survival. Our results imply that animals can evolve different disease response types affecting epidemic survival rates, with important implications for understanding and controlling epidemics

Review of discontinuous Galerkin finite element methods for partial differential equations on complicated domains

The numerical approximation of partial differential equations (PDEs) posed on complicated geometries, which include a large number of small geometrical features or microstructures, represents a challenging computational problem. Indeed, the use of standard mesh generators, employing simplices or tensor product elements, for example, naturally leads to very fine finite element meshes, and hence the computational effort required to numerically approximate the underlying PDE problem may be prohibitively expensive. As an alternative approach, in this article we present a review of composite/agglomerated discontinuous Galerkin finite element methods (DGFEMs) which employ general polytopic elements. Here, the elements are typically constructed as the union of standard element shapes; in this way, the minimal dimension of the underlying composite finite element space is independent of the number of geometrical features. In particular, we provide an overview of hp-version inverse estimates and approximation results for general polytopic elements, which are sharp with respect to element facet degeneration. On the basis of these results, a priori error bounds for the hp-DGFEM approximation of both second-order elliptic and first-order hyperbolic PDEs will be derived. Finally, we present numerical experiments which highlight the practical application of DGFEMs on meshes consisting of general polytopic elements