Towards stratarchy? European integration and the intra-party power of Austrian MEPs and delegation leaders

'Dieser Artikel untersucht die Auswirkung der EU-Mitgliedschaft auf die binnenparteiliche Macht österreichischer MEPs und Delegationsleiter. Er bietet eine erste Bewertung der österreich-spezifischen Daten der ersten systematischen und multinationalen Untersuchung der organisatorischen Anpassung sämtlicher 'relevanter' politischer Parteien Westeuropas an die europäische Integration. Die hauptsächliche Datenquelle bildet der vom Autor zwischen 2004 und 2005 durchgeführte österreichische Teil der standardisierten Umfrage eines multinationalen Projekts. Die Befunde werden weiter mittels Einsichten verdichtet, die der Autor aus mehreren für dasselbe Projekt mit österreichischen Parteieliten durchgeführten semi-strukturierten Interviews gewonnen hat (ebenfalls zwischen 2004 und 2005). Der Aufsatz befasst sich vor allem mit der Selektion von MEPs und Delegationsleitern, mit ihren politischen Karrieren vor und nach Aufnahme ihrer EU-Rolle sowie mit der Autonomie, die sie gegenüber ihren Parteien haben, wenn sie auf EU-Ebene tätig sind. In diesem Zusammenhang werden u.a. die ex ante und ex post Verantwortlichkeitsmechanismen sowie ihre Handlungsfreiheit untersucht. Der Artikel kommt zu dem Ergebnis, dass MEPs und Delegationsleiter, wenn sie auf EU-Ebene tätig sind, gegenüber ihren parteilichen 'Principals' beträchtliche Autonomie genießen, diese jedoch nur selten in breitere innerparteiliche Macht umwandeln können.' (Autorenreferat)'This article examines the impact of Austrian membership of the European Union on the intra-party power of MEP5 and EP delegation leaders. It provides a preliminary evaluation of the Austrian part of the first systematic cross-national study of politically 'relevant' west European parties' organizational adaptation to European integration. The main data source is the Austrian part of that study's standardised postal questionnaire, administered by the author to selected party elites in 2004 and 2005. Those findings are complemented by insights derived from the in-depth semi-structured interviews with Austrian party elites which he conducted for the study during the same period. The paper concentrates on MEP and delegation leader selection; these actors' career paths before and after their EU-level role and on the degree of autonomy from their party which MEPs and delegation leaders enjoy when acting at the EU level. This involves considering ex ante and ex post accountability mechanisms to which they are subjected, as well as their levels of discretion. The article finds that MEPs and delegation leaders enjoy considerable autonomy from their party principals when operating at the EU-level, but few are able to convert this into broader intra-party power.' (author's abstract

DoubleCheck: Designing Community-based Assessability for Historical Person Identification

Historical photos are valuable for their cultural and economic significance, but can be difficult to identify accurately due to various challenges such as low-quality images, lack of corroborating evidence, and limited research resources. Misidentified photos can have significant negative consequences, including lost economic value, incorrect historical records, and the spread of misinformation that can lead to perpetuating conspiracy theories. To accurately assess the credibility of a photo identification (ID), it may be necessary to conduct investigative research, use domain knowledge, and consult experts. In this paper, we introduce DoubleCheck, a quality assessment framework for verifying historical photo IDs on Civil War Photo Sleuth (CWPS), a popular online platform for identifying American Civil War-era photos using facial recognition and crowdsourcing. DoubleCheck focuses on improving CWPS's user experience and system architecture to display information useful for assessing the quality of historical photo IDs on CWPS. In a mixed-methods evaluation of DoubleCheck, we found that users contributed a wide diversity of sources for photo IDs, which helped facilitate the community's assessment of these IDs through DoubleCheck's provenance visualizations. Further, DoubleCheck's quality assessment badges and visualizations supported users in making accurate assessments of photo IDs, even in cases involving ID conflicts.Comment: Accepted to ACM Journal on Computing and Cultural Heritage (JOCCH

What Lies Beneath? Exploring the Impact of Underlying AI Model Updates in AI-Infused Systems

As AI models evolve, understanding the influence of underlying models on user experience and performance in AI-infused systems becomes critical, particularly while transitioning between different model versions. We studied the influence of model change by conducting two complementary studies in the context of AI-based facial recognition for historical person identification tasks. First, we ran an online experiment where crowd workers interacted with two different facial recognition models: an older version and a recently updated, developer-certified more accurate model. Second, we studied a real-world deployment of these models on a popular historical photo platform through a diary study with 10 users. Our findings sheds light on models affecting human-AI team performance, users' abilities to differentiate between different models, the folk theories they develop, and how these theories influence their preferences. Drawing from these insights, we discuss design implications for updating models in AI-infused systems

Designing for Schadenfreude (or, how to express well-being and see if you're boring people)

This position paper presents two studies of content not normally expressed in status updates—well-being and status feedback—and considers how they may be processed, valued and used for potential quality-of-life benefits in terms of personal and social reflection and awareness. Do I Tweet Good? (poor grammar intentional) is a site investigating more nuanced forms of status feedback than current microblogging sites allow, towards understanding self-identity, reflection, and online perception. Healthii is a tool for sharing physical and emotional well-being via status updates, investigating concepts of self-reflection and social awareness. Together, these projects consider furthering the value of microblogging on two fronts: 1) refining the online personal/social networking experience, and 2) using the status update for enhancing the personal/social experience in the offline world, and considering how to leverage that online/offline split. We offer results from two different methods of study and target groups—one co-workers in an academic setting, the other followers on Twitter—to consider how microblogging can become more than just a communication medium if it facilitates these types of reflective practice

Converged vs. Dedicated IPSec Encryption Testing in Gigabit Ethernet Networks

In January, 2005, Safenet, Inc. contacted the networking group to investigate the possibility of using our students for the purpose of comparing the performance of dedicated encryption device to an integrated encrypting device. The tests would also include a performance comparison between Data Link Layer (Layer 2) devices and Network Layer (Layer 3) devices. It was decided that the tests would consist of throughput, frame loss, and network latency. Two network topologies were used for the experiments: gigabit Ethernet and SONET OC-48. The equipment to be tested was Safenet’s High Assurance 4000 Gateway (HA4000) for the gigabit Ethernet topology and the SafeNet SSE Encryptor for the SONET topology. The Cisco Catalyst 6509 equipped with the Cisco VPN Accelerator was used for both topologies. An IXIA400T was used to generate the traffic for the performance tests. The procedure was straight forward. Baselines for each of the criteria (throughput, frame loss, and latency) by connecting the Cisco 6509’s back to back for each of the topologies to be tested. Once the baselines were established, the performance tests were performed for each of the encryption technologies and data was collected for each of the criteria

Synthesis and Characterization of Cyclic and Linear Phosphazenes with Phosphorus-Sulfur Linkages

Recent research at the INEEL has focused on the versatility inherent in polyphosphazene chemistry to membrane separations involving water transport through polymer materials.1 Polyphosphazenes, a hybrid organic and inorganic polymer, have been shown to be effective membranes in gas separation2 and liquid pervaporation applications.3 These characteristics are due to the inorganic nature of the backbone that provides these materials with remarkable chemical and mechanical stability. Additionally, phosphazene materials can be tailored to specific applications depending on the type of pendant groups that are attached to the phosphorus atoms of the backbone

Wikum: Bridging Discussion Forums and Wikis Using Recursive Summarization

Large-scale discussions between many participants abound on the internet today, on topics ranging from political arguments to group coordination. But as these discussions grow to tens of thousands of posts, they become ever more difficult for a reader to digest. In this article, we describe a workflow called recursive summarization, implemented in our Wikum prototype, that enables a large population of readers or editors to work in small doses to refine out the main points of the discussion. More than just a single summary, our workflow produces a summary tree that enables a reader to explore distinct subtopics at multiple levels of detail based on their interests. We describe lab evaluations showing that (i) Wikum can be used more effectively than a control to quickly construct a summary tree and (ii) the summary tree is more effective than the original discussion in helping readers identify and explore the main topics

Redistrict: designing a self-serve interactive boundary optimization system

The assignment of parcels of land affects many communal activities, from voting to public school assignments. This process creates unease and often has a strong impact on communities. We propose Redistrict, an interactive web-based system designed to support redistricting deliberations for public school zoning. Redistrict helps community members explore and experiment with the possible consequences of various zoning scenarios. This point-and-click digital discovery activity allows the user to understand long-term implications of proposed zonings and to provide feedback in an easy, intuitive way. By providing the opportunity for more people, individually or collectively, to look at the problem from different points of view, Redistrict promotes transparency, shared understanding, and cooperation. We designed Restrict to serve as a common information space to help cultivate trust and enable communities to grow stronger, smarter, and more resilient

Bosonization of interacting fermions in arbitrary dimension beyond the Gaussian approximation

We use our recently developed functional bosonization approach to bosonize interacting fermions in arbitrary dimension $d$ beyond the Gaussian approximation. Even in $d=1$ the finite curvature of the energy dispersion at the Fermi surface gives rise to interactions between the bosons. In higher dimensions scattering processes describing momentum transfer between different patches on the Fermi surface (around-the-corner processes) are an additional source for corrections to the Gaussian approximation. We derive an explicit expression for the leading correction to the bosonized Hamiltonian and the irreducible self-energy of the bosonic propagator that takes the finite curvature as well as around-the-corner processes into account. In the special case that around-the-corner scattering is negligible, we show that the self-energy correction to the Gaussian propagator is negligible if the dimensionless quantities $( \frac{q_{c} }{ k_{F}} )^d F_{0} [ 1 + F_{0} ]^{-1} \frac{\mu}{\nu^{\alpha}} | \frac{ \partial \nu^{\alpha} }{ \partial \mu} |$ are small compared with unity for all patches $\alpha$. Here $q_{c}$ is the cutoff of the interaction in wave-vector space, $k_{F}$ is the Fermi wave-vector, $\mu$ is the chemical potential, $F_{0}$ is the usual dimensionless Landau interaction-parameter, and $\nu^{\alpha}$ is the {\it{local}} density of states associated with patch $\alpha$. We also show that the well known cancellation between vertex- and self-energy corrections in one-dimensional systems, which is responsible for the fact that the random-phase approximation for the density-density correlation function is exact in $d=1$, exists also in $d> 1$, provided (1) the interaction cutoff $q_{c}$ is small compared with $k_{F}$, and (2) the energy dispersion is locally linearized at the Fermi the Fermi surface. Finally, we suggest a new systematic method to calculate corrections to the RPA, which is based on the perturbative calculation of the irreducible bosonic self-energy arising from the non-Gaussian terms of the bosonized Hamiltonian.Comment: The abstract has been rewritten. No major changes in the text