Integrating Knowledge for River Basin Management: Progress in Thailand

Resource /Energy Economics and Policy,

Lean interfaces for integrated catchment management models: rapid development using ICMS

A move towards the development of lean, issue-focused interfaces is being explored to provide a rapid delivery mechanism to transfer catchment science to managers and custodians. This approach is a move away from development of large decision support systems which attempt to anticipate a myriad of management questions. It relies on having a modelling system which supports the rapid building and integration of catchment models, and is independent of the interface. ICMS (Interactive Component Modelling System) is a PC-based software tool which has been developed with this in mind. The kernel of the ICMS system, ICMSBuilder, provides the modeller’s view of the world, on top of which can be built any number of interfaces which provide the targetted audience’s view of the world. This paper presents an ICMS prototype to demonstrate the power and flexibility of such an approach. It describes an ICMS project - a suite of linked models which explore the relationships between hydrology, water allocation and extraction rules, and on-farm decision making; and an ICMS View - an interface for that project tailored to address specific management scenarios. Interestingly, the ability to interact with parts of the models through the View gave managers the confidence to delve into the underlying models and data, something often denied to them by traditional decision support systems

Signal Processing

Contains reports on one research project.Clarence J. LeBel Fun

iPosture: The Size of Electronic Consumer Devices Affects our Behavior

We examined whether incidental body posture, prompted by working on electronic devices of different sizes, affects power-related behaviors. Grounded in research showing that adopting expansive body postures increases psychological power, we hypothesized that working on larger devices, which forces people to physically expand, causes users to behave more assertively. Participants were randomly assigned to interact with one of four electronic devices that varied in size: an iPod Touch, an iPad, a MacBook Pro (laptop computer), or an iMac (desktop computer). As hypothesized, compared to participants working on larger devices (e.g., an iMac), participants who worked on smaller devices (e.g., an iPad) behaved less assertively – waiting longer to interrupt an experimenter who had made them wait, or not interrupting at all

Cocaine, treatment and public health: A case study in Merseyside and Cheshire

Originating from the coca plant in South America, the prevalence of cocaine use has increased in recent times and it has become a global commodity. It is the second most trafficked illicit drug in the world, after cannabis, with world seizures in 2006 amounting to 706 tonnes (EMCDDA, 2008). General population surveys show an increase in cocaine use in many European countries, especially among young people, though this may now be slowing in countries with the highest rates of use. Indicators of cocaine availability in Europe, including seizures of the drug and amounts seized have also increased dramatically in recent years, with the demand for treatment for cocaine use increasing substantially in recent years in some European countries. There is evidence to suggest that the proportions of adults (15-64 year olds) in the UK using the drug are within the top 5% in Europe (EMCDDA, 2007) and the 2008/9 British Crime Survey found that 3.0% of adults had used cocaine in the past year compared to 2.3% in 2007/8 (Hoare, 2009)

DIP Merseyside Demographic Report 2013/14: An evaluation of DIP’s Impact on Offending.

The main objective of the Drug Interventions Programme (DIP) is to identify and engage with drug using offenders in the criminal justice system (CJS) in order to channel them into appropriate treatment services. In line with research evidence it assumes that if this treatment is effective it will result in reduced drug use and therefore reduced levels of offending. This report aims to provide the Merseyside DIP teams and commissioners with summary information regarding the characteristics of the clients who were assessed between April 2011 and March 2014

The Benefit of Power Posing Before a High-Stakes Social Evaluation

The current experiment tested whether changing one‘s nonverbal behavior prior to a high-stakes social evaluation could improve performance in the evaluated task. Participants adopted expansive, open (high-power) poses, or contractive, closed (low-power) poses, and then prepared and delivered a speech to two evaluators as part of a mock job interview, a prototypical social evaluation. All speeches were videotaped and coded for overall performance and hireability, and the potential mediators of speech quality (e.g., content, structure) and presentation quality (e.g., captivating, confident). As predicted, high power posers performed better and were more likely to be chosen for hire, and this relationship was mediated only by presentation quality, not speech quality. Power pose condition had no effect on body posture during the social evaluation, thus highlighting the relationship between preparatory nonverbal behavior and subsequent performance

Clinical features of low back pain in people with hip osteoarthritis: A cross sectional study.

BACKGROUND: Low back pain (LBP) is commonly reported in people with hip osteoarthritis (OA) and is a poor prognostic indicator of outcome in OA. This study aimed to identify the clinical features associated with LBP in people with hip OA attending orthopaedic and rheumatology clinics. METHODS: A cross-sectional study was undertaken. Twenty-four people with radiographically confirmed OA were recruited and completed self-report questionnaires for hip and LBP severity (Visual Analogue Scale), hip-related disability (Western Ontario and McMaster Universities Osteoarthritis Index) and back-related disability (Roland Morris Disability Questionnaire). Physical examination comprised spinal palpation, pelvic girdle pain provocation tests and hip and spinal range of motion tests. Between-group (presence/absence of LBP) differences in self-report and physical examination items were compared using Mann-Whitney U and Chi-squared tests. RESULTS: A total of 16/24 (66.7%) patients reported LBP. Those with LBP were younger, reported more pain locations and had higher self-report pain and disability. On physical examination, people with LBP and OA hip had reduced hip flexion, greater pain provocation with hip abduction, hip lateral rotation, spinal palpation and a greater number of painful pelvic girdle tests and spinal level palpation. CONCLUSIONS: Assessment of patients with hip OA should incorporate examination of the lumbar spine and pelvic regions. It appears from our study that LBP is a common co-morbidity in those with OA of the hip and may indicate greater severity of hip disease, although the small sample size limits interpretation of results. Further research should investigate the exact relationships between presence of LBP and hip OA