Would you train me with my mental illness? Evidence from a discrete choice experiment

The low employment among people with disabilities in general, and mental disorders in particular, generates high costs to the society. This raises the need to develop effective vocational rehabilitation methods. Supported Education/Employment is effective in increasing sustainable employment for people with mental disorders. This vocational rehabilitation method places patients directly in realistic work settings instead of training them in a protected work environment. Supported Education and Employment has not yet been widely implemented. Using a discrete choice experiment, we demonstrate that one of the key problems is to find employers willing to provide training. Non-cognitive dysfunctions are the main deterrents.upported Vocational Education & Training; vocational rehabilitation; mental disorders; discrete choice experiment

Coexistence of a generalist owl with its intraguild predator: distance-sensitive or habitat-mediated avoidance?

Intraguild predation is increasingly reported as a population-limiting factor for vertebrate predators. However, long-term coexistence of the intraguild prey with its predator is a common occurrence usually maintained by some form of predator avoidance, which may be achieved through distance-sensitive avoidance (selection of sites as far as possible from the intraguild predator), and/or habitat-mediated avoidance (avoidance of habitats associated with high predation risk). The former is expected when the distribution of the predator is heterogeneous, leaving gaps which can be exploited by the prey, while the latter is expected at high predator densities, when few predation refugia are available. To date, few studies have focused on such switch in predator avoidance under changing scenarios of intraguild predator density. To test this hypothesis, we censused tawny owls (Strix aluco, body mass ∼0.4-0.7 kg) and their intraguild predator, the eagle owl (Bubo bubo, ∼1.5-4 kg), in 12 areas of the Alps. As predicted, tawny owls were indifferent to predator distance in an area of low predation risk, they switched to distance-sensitive avoidance in an area of medium predator density and to habitat-mediated avoidance in an area of high predator density with few available refugia. Actual predation rates were low, but increased with proximity to the intraguild predator nest. Similarly, tawny owl breeding output declined with closeness to an eagle owl nest. Habitat loss associated with predator avoidance translated into population effects, leading to a negative relationship between the densities of the two owl species. The spatial gaps in tawny owl distribution caused by eagle owls indirectly favoured other owl species, resulting in higher diversity of the overall owl community and suggesting that eagle owls acted as keystone predators. Our results suggest that intraguild predation may alter habitat choices and affect density, productivity and guild structure of vertebrate mesopredators. Such effects are probably more common than previously thought. © 2007 The Association for the Study of Animal Behaviour.Peer Reviewe

A Unified Trading Model Based on Robust Optimization for Day-Ahead and Real-Time Markets with Wind Power Integration

In a conventional electricity market, trading is conducted based on power forecasts in the day-ahead market, while the power imbalance is regulated in the real-time market, which is a separate trading scheme. With large-scale wind power connected into the power grid, power forecast errors increase in the day-ahead market which lowers the economic efficiency of the separate trading scheme. This paper proposes a robust unified trading model that includes the forecasts of real-time prices and imbalance power into the day-ahead trading scheme. The model is developed based on robust optimization in view of the undefined probability distribution of clearing prices of the real-time market. For the model to be used efficiently, an improved quantum-behaved particle swarm algorithm (IQPSO) is presented in the paper based on an in-depth analysis of the limitations of the static character of quantum-behaved particle swarm algorithm (QPSO). Finally, the impacts of associated parameters on the separate trading and unified trading model are analyzed to verify the superiority of the proposed model and algorithm