Reconsidering online reputation systems

Social and socioeconomic interactions and transactions often require trust. In digital spaces, the main approach to facilitating trust has effectively been to try to reduce or even remove the need for it through the implementation of reputation systems. These generate metrics based on digital data such as ratings and reviews submitted by users, interaction histories, and so on, that are intended to label individuals as more or less reliable or trustworthy in a particular interaction context. We suggest that conventional approaches to the design of such systems are rooted in a capitalist, competitive paradigm, relying on methodological individualism, and that the reputation technologies themselves thus embody and enact this paradigm in whatever space they operate in. We question whether the politics, ethics and philosophy that contribute to this paradigm align with those of some of the contexts in which reputation systems are now being used, and suggest that alternative approaches to the establishment of trust and reputation in digital spaces need to be considered for alternative contexts

Energy saving potential in the New Zealand agricultural sector with emphasis on the vegetable greenhouse industry : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Applied Science in Natural Resource Management at Massey University

In the last decade, the energy demand of New Zealand's horticultural and agricultural sub sectors has increased as a result of land use conversion, intensity of production, the use of irrigation and an increase in energy intensive horticulture, such as greenhouse vegetable production. This has highlighted the sector's reliance on fossil fuels leaving it susceptible to future shortages, higher prices and the forthcoming carbon charge. As part of a contract with the Energy Efficiency Conservation Authority, which aimed to compile, estimate and analyse information from a wide variety of sources on energy end uses and patterns of energy consumption within the agricultural sub-sectors, available literature on energy demand by fuel type and the various uses to which energy is put in the New Zealand primary production sub-sectors was collated in matrices. Through the compilation of these matrices it was evident that limited energy related research was available relating to the greenhouse sub sector. The New Zealand greenhouse industry is a relatively energy intensive sub-sector of the primary production industry and relies heavily on the use of fossil fuels. The impending carbon charge may result in a cost which growers may be unable to pass on due to competition on the domestic and export markets from non-Kyoto countries. It follows that reducing energy consumption and consequently avoiding the emissions charge would be a means of increased viability for the industry. This part of the research was funded and conducted in conjunction with the New Zealand Vegetable and Potato Grower's Federation Inc. A walk-through energy audit was designed and conducted with 22 greenhouse vegetable growers. This provided an in-depth case study perspective in terms of what technologies and practices are currently used by the New Zealand's protected cropping industry. The findings from the energy audit show that location and the heating system type are significant factors in determining energy use. The main areas identified where potential energy saving could be made were minimising heat loss, through the cladding, the heat distribution system and the flue, and improving heating efficiency, through improved heater maintenance. An energy saving model was designed using Microsoft Excel for the purpose of encouraging the user to think about potential energy savings that could be made within their individual greenhouse operation, and also the potential cost of the carbon charge on to their business. Recommendations from the model were based on best practice and use of energy saving technologies identified through the energy audits, review of current literature and consultation with manufacturers

OERopoly: A game to generate collective intelligence around OER

Collective Intelligence (CI ) is a phenomenon that emerges at the crossroads of three worlds: Open Educational Resources (OER), Web 2.0 technologies and Online Learning Communities. Building CI for the OER movement means capturing the richness of information, experiences, knowledge and resources, that the movement is constantly generating, in a way that they can be shared and reused for the benefit of the movement itself. The organisation of CI starts from collecting the knowledge and experiences of OER's practitioners and scholars in new creative forms, and then situating this knowledge in a collective 'pot' from where it can be leveraged with new 'intelligent' meanings and toward new 'intelligent' goals. This workshop is an attempt to do so by engaging participants in a CI experience, in which they will contribute to, and at the same time take something from, the existing CI around OER, Web 2.0 technologies and Online Learning Communities

Creating personas for political and social consciousness in HCI design

Personas have become an important tool for Human-Computer Interaction professionals. However, they are not immune to limitations and critique, including stereotyping. We suggest that while some of the criticisms to personas are important, the use of personas is open to them in part because of an unquestioned focus on explicating user needs and goals in traditional persona research and creation. This focus, while helping designers, obscures some other potentially relevant aspects. In particular, when the goal of the product or software being designed is associated with social and political goals rather than with bringing a product to the market, it may be relevant to focus personas on political aspirations, social values and the will or capacity of personas to take action. We argue that it is possible when producing personas (and associated scenarios) to partially move away from representing needs and embrace personas which more explicitly represent political or social beliefs and values. We also suggest that a phenomenographic approach to user data analysis is one way to achieve this. We provide empirical evidence for our position from two large-scale European projects, the first one in the area of Social Innovation and the second in the area of eParticipation

Parental choice of primary school in England: what ‘type’ of school do parents choose?

We investigate the central premise of the theory of markets in education, namely that parents value academic standards. We ask what parents really want from schools and whether different types of parents have similar preferences. We examine parents’ stated preferences and revealed preferences for schools (their actual choice of school as opposed to what they say they value in a school). More educated and higher socio-economic status (SES) parents are more likely to cite academic standards, whilst less educated and lower SES parents are more likely to cite proximity. More advantaged parents choose better performing schools, particularly in areas with many schools and therefore a lot of potential school choice. More advantaged parents also choose schools with much lower proportions of pupils eligible for free school meals, relative to other schools available to them. Hence whilst parents do not admit to choosing schools on the basis of their social composition, this happens in practice. Most parents get their first choice of school (94%) and this holds both for more and less advantaged parents, though this is partially because poorer parents make more ‘realistic’, i.e. less ambitious, choices. If, in areas where there is a lot of potential competition between schools, more advantaged families have a higher chance of achieving their more ambitious choices that do poorer parents, this could tend to exacerbate social segregation in our schools.school preferences, school choice, parental choice

What parents want: school preferences and school choice

Parental demand for academic performance is a key element in the view that strengthening school choice will drive up school performance. In this paper we analyse what parents look for in choosing schools. We assemble a unique dataset combining survey information on parents' choices plus a rich set of socio-economic characteristics; administrative data on school characteristics, admissions criteria and allocation rules; and spatial data attached to a pupil census to define the de facto set of schools available to each family in the survey. To achieve identification, we focus on cities where the school place allocation system is truth-revealing ("equal preferences"). We take great care in trying to capture the set of schools that each family could realistically choose from. We also look at a large subset of parents who continued living in the same house as before the child was born, to avoid endogenous house/school moves. We then model the choices made in terms of the characteristics of schools and families and the distances involved. School characteristics include measures of academic performance, school socio-economic and ethnic composition, and its faith school status. Initial results showed strong differences in the set of choices available to parents in different socio-economic positions. Our central analysis uses multinomial logistic regression to show that families do indeed value academic performance in schools. They also value school composition -- preferring schools with low fractions of children from poor families. We compute trade-offs between these characteristics as well as between these and distance travelled. We are able to compare these trade-offs for different families. Our results suggest that preferences do not vary greatly between different socio-economic groups once constraints are fully accounted for.school preferences, school choice, parental choice

Higher and Further Education Students' Income, Expenditure and Debt in Scotland 2007-08

This report presents findings from the second study of the income, expenditure and debt of students studying higher education (HE) and further education (FE) in Scotland in 2007-08. The study was commissioned by the Scottish Government and conducted by the Scottish Centre for Employment Research at the University of Strathclyde Business School in conjunction with colleagues from the Business School and Department of Economics of the University of Glasgow. The aim of the study is to examine Scottish-domiciled higher and further education students' finances, particularly their income, expenditure, debt and savings, and their attitudes to the financing of study in Scotland. Where appropriate this data is then compared to the findings of the previous 2004-05 Scottish survey as well as a control group of young Scots who are not students

Early Interferon-γ Production in Human Lymphocyte Subsets in Response to Nontyphoidal Salmonella Demonstrates Inherent Capacity in Innate Cells

Background Nontyphoidal Salmonellae frequently cause life-threatening bacteremia in sub-Saharan Africa. Young children and HIV-infected adults are particularly susceptible. High case-fatality rates and increasing antibiotic resistance require new approaches to the management of this disease. Impaired cellular immunity caused by defects in the T helper 1 pathway lead to intracellular disease with Salmonella that can be countered by IFNγ administration. This report identifies the lymphocyte subsets that produce IFNγ early in Salmonella infection. Methodology Intracellular cytokine staining was used to identify IFNγ production in blood lymphocyte subsets of ten healthy adults with antibodies to Salmonella (as evidence of immunity to Salmonella), in response to stimulation with live and heat-killed preparations of the D23580 invasive African isolate of Salmonella Typhimurium. The absolute number of IFNγ-producing cells in innate, innate-like and adaptive lymphocyte subpopulations was determined. Principal Findings Early IFNγ production was found in the innate/innate-like lymphocyte subsets: γδ-T cells, NK cells and NK-like T cells. Significantly higher percentages of such cells produced IFNγ compared to adaptive αβ-T cells (Student's t test, P<0.001 and ≤0.02 for each innate subset compared, respectively, with CD4+- and CD8+-T cells). The absolute numbers of IFNγ-producing cells showed similar differences. The proportion of IFNγ-producing γδ-T cells, but not other lymphocytes, was significantly higher when stimulated with live compared with heat-killed bacteria (P<0.0001). Conclusion/Significance Our findings indicate an inherent capacity of innate/innate-like lymphocyte subsets to produce IFNγ early in the response to Salmonella infection. This may serve to control intracellular infection and reduce the threat of extracellular spread of disease with bacteremia which becomes life-threatening in the absence of protective antibody. These innate cells may also help mitigate against the effect on IFNγ production of depletion of Salmonella-specific CD4+-T lymphocytes in HIV infection

What Parents Want: School preferences and school choice

Parental demand for academic performance is a key element in the view that strengthening school choice will drive up school performance. In this paper we analyse what parents look for in choosing schools. We assemble a unique dataset combining survey information on parents’ choices plus a rich set of socio-economic characteristics; administrative data on school characteristics, admissions criteria and allocation rules; and spatial data attached to a pupil census to define the de facto set of schools available to each family in the survey. To achieve identification, we focus on cities where the school place allocation system is truth-revealing (“equal preferences”). We take great care in trying to capture the set of schools that each family could realistically choose from. We also look at a large subset of parents who continued living in the same house as before the child was born, to avoid endogenous house/school moves. We then model the choices made in terms of the characteristics of schools and families and the distances involved. School characteristics include measures of academic performance, school socio-economic and ethnic composition, and its faith school status. Initial results showed strong differences in the set of choices available to parents in different socio-economic positions. Our central analysis uses multinomial logistic regression to show that families do indeed value academic performance in schools. They also value school composition – preferring schools with low fractions of children from poor families. We compute trade-offs between these characteristics as well as between these and distance travelled. We are able to compare these trade-offs for different families. Our results suggest that preferences do not vary greatly between different socio-economic groups once constraints are fully accounted for.school preferences, school choice, parental choice