Mis-measure of animal contests.

Contests between rivals placing similar value on the resource at stake are commonly won by the rival having greater 'resource holding potential' (RHP). Mutual assessment of RHP difference between rivals is usually expected as an economical means of resolution; weaker rivals can retreat when they detect their relative inferiority, thereby avoiding costly, futile persistence. Models of contest resolution that entail retreat decisions based on estimates of RHP difference predict that contest duration diminishes as RHP difference between rivals increases because the asymmetry is more readily detected. This prediction appears to have been fulfilled in contests of diverse taxa, generating widespread support for assessment of RHP differences in contests. But few studies have considered alternatives in which each rival simply persists in accord with its own RHP ('own RHP-dependent persistence'). In contests decided by own RHP-dependent persistence, in which costs accrue only through each rival's own actions, weaker rivals retreat first because they are inherently less persistent, and contest duration depends primarily on the weaker (losing) rival's RHP rather than RHP difference between the rivals. We show here that the analyses most commonly used to detect effects of RHP difference cannot discriminate between these alternatives. Because RHP difference between rivals tends to be correlated with RHP of the weaker rival in a pair, a negative relation between RHP difference and contest duration may be generated even when decisions of retreat are not based on estimated RHP difference. Many studies purporting to show a negative relation between RHP difference and contest duration may actually reflect an incidental association between weaker rival RHP and RHP difference. We suggest statistical and experimental approaches that may help to discriminate between effects of weaker rival RHP and true effects of RHP difference. We also discuss whether 'true' negative effects of RHP difference on contest duration always reflect retreat decisions based on estimated RHP differences. Copyright 2003 Published by Elsevier Science Ltd on behalf of The Association for the Study of Animal Behaviour.

Physicochemical and mineralogical characteristics of soil/saprolite cores from a field research site, Tennessee

Site characterization is an essential initial step in determining the feasibility of remedial alternatives at hazardous waste sites. Physicochemical and mineralogical characterization of U-contaminated soils in deeply weathered saprolite at Area 2 of the DOE Field Research Center (FRC) site, Oak Ridge, TN, was accomplished to examine the feasibility of bioremediation. Concentrations of U in soil–saprolite (up to 291 mg kg–1 in oxalate-extractable Uo) were closely related to low pH (ca. 4–5), high effective cation exchange capacity without Ca (64.7–83.2 cmolc kg–1), amorphous Mn content (up to 9910 mg kg–1), and the decreased presence of relative clay mineral contents in the bulk samples (i.e., illite 2.5–12 wt. %, average 32 wt. %). The pH of the fill material ranged from 7.0 to 10.5, whereas the pH of the saprolite ranged from 4.5 to 8. Uranium concentration was highest (about 300 mg kg–1) at around 6 m below land surface near the saprolite–fill interface. The pH of ground water at Area 2 tended to be between 6 and 7 with U concentrations of about 0.9 to 1.7 mg L–1. These site specific characteristics of Area 2, which has lower U and nitrate contamination levels and more neutral ground water pH compared with FRC Areas 1 and 3 (ca. 5.5 and

'American hegemony after September 11: Allies, rivals and contradictions'

11 September heralded and provided a pretext for a more aggressive but increasingly contradictory American hegemony. Some of the consequences are contrary to the United States' own interests. Its new doctrine of 'preemptive strike' against other sovereign states encourages similarly belligerent behaviour by other governments, and yet more terrorism by nonstate actors, the very threats which were to be eradicated by a re-asserted US hegemony. This essay focuses on three partly overlapping themes: different strategies towards allies - multilateral and unilateral; different forms of power - civil and military; and different ideologies of globalisation - neoliberal and neo-conservative. It argues that while US policy may oscillate between such poles, it often combines the different elements. The overall strategy of the Bush administration is best characterised as unilateral multilateralism. The main issue for US hegemonists is the ways in which their hegemony might best be exercised, maintained and strengthened vis à vis allies and rivals. But for a safer, more democratic world, the choice does not lie between one faction of US hegemonists and another: we need other alternatives such as cosmopolitan democracy and a genuine internationalist movement which would give it some much-needed substance.

Shaping the Future of Mental Health Policy and Legislation in Northern Ireland: The Impact of Service User and Professional Social Work Discourses

This paper explores the complex interrelationship between service user and professional social work discourses and provides a critical commentary on their respective contributions to the recent review of mental health policy and legislation in Northern Ireland. The analysis indicates that dominant trends in mental health care, as mediated through service structures and institutional identities, have tended to prioritize the more coercive aspects of the social work role and reinforce existing power inequalities with service users. It is argued that such developments underline the need for a ‘refocusing’ debate in mental health social work to consider how a more appropriate balance can be achieved between its participatory/empowering and regulatory/coercive functions. Whilst highlighting both congruence and dissonance between respective discourses, the paper concludes that opportunities exist within the current change process for service users and social workers to build closer alliances in working together to reconstruct practice, safeguard human rights and develop innovative alternatives to a traditional bio-medical model of treatment.

Fast model based feature matching technique applied to airport lighting

The use of image processing techniques to assess the performance of airport landing lighting using images of it collected from an aircraft-mounted camera is documented. In order to assess the performance of the lighting, it is necessary to uniquely identify each luminaire within an image and then track the luminaires through the entire sequence and store the relevant information for each luminaire, that is, the total number of pixels that each luminaire covers and the total grey level of these pixels. This pixel grey level can then be used for performance assessment. The authors propose a robust model-based (MB) featurematching technique by which the performance is assessed. The development of this matching technique is the key to the automated performance assessment of airport lighting. The MB matching technique utilises projective geometry in addition to accurate template of the 3D model of a landing-lighting system. The template is projected onto the image data and an optimum match found, using nonlinear least-squares optimisation. The MB matching software is compared with standard feature extraction and tracking techniques known within the community, these being the Kanade–Lucus–Tomasi (KLT) and scaleinvariant feature transform (SIFT) techniques. The new MB matching technique compares favourably with the SIFT and KLT feature-tracking alternatives. As such, it provides a solid foundation to achieve the central aim of this research which is to automatically assess the performance of airport lighting.

Dramatic liquid-phase dehydrogenation rate enhancements using gas-phase hydrogen acceptors

The dehydrogenation of 1,2,3,4-tetrahydrocarbazole (THCZ) to form carbazole (CZ) over supported palladium catalysts was examined in the presence of hydrogen acceptors. As expected, liquid hydrogen acceptors increased the rate of reaction but, importantly, gaseous hydrogen acceptors also have been used. Ethene, propene, and but-1-ene showed up to a fivefold increase in the rate of dehydrogenation. Moreover, compared with the analogous liquid systems, the gaseous alternatives are a potentially more economic method of enhancing the activity and provide a simpler workup. The mechanism for the increase in rate was examined by density functional theory calculations, which showed that the propene hydrogenation competes effectively with the back-hydrogenation of the intermediates formed during the THCZ dehydrogenation, resulting in a shift in the equilibrium toward to the formation of CZ. (C) 2007 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Credit and community: working class debt in the UK since 1880

This book examines credit in working class communities since 1880, focusing on forms of borrowing that were dependent on personal relationships and social networks. It provides an extended historical discussion of credit unions, legal and illegal moneylenders (loan sharks), and looks at the concept of ‘financial exclusion’. Initially, the book focuses on the history of tallymen, check traders, and their eventual movement into moneylending following the loss of their more affluent customers, due to increased spending power and an increasingly liberalized credit market. They also faced growing competition from mail order companies operating through networks of female agents, whose success owed much to the reciprocal cultural and economic conventions that lay at the heart of traditional working class credit relationships. Discussion of these forms of credit is related to theoretical debates about cultural aspects of credit exchange that ensured the continuing success of such forms of lending, despite persistent controversies about their use. The book contrasts commercial forms of credit with formal and informal co-operative alternatives, such as the mutuality clubs operated by co-operative retailers and credit unions. It charts the impact of post-war immigration upon credit patterns, particularly in relation to the migrant (Irish and Caribbean) origins of many credit unions and explains the relative lack of success of the credit union movement. The book contributes to anti-debt debates by exploring the historical difficulties of developing legislation in relation to the millions of borrowers who have patronized what has come to be termed the sub-prime sector.

The Combination of Multiple Classifiers Using an Evidential Reasoning Approach

In many domains when we have several competing classifiers available we want to synthesize them or some of them to get a more accurate classifier by a combination function. In this paper we propose a ‘class-indifferent’ method for combining classifier decisions represented by evidential structures called triplet and quartet, using Dempster's rule of combination. This method is unique in that it distinguishes important elements from the trivial ones in representing classifier decisions, makes use of more information than others in calculating the support for class labels and provides a practical way to apply the theoretically appealing Dempster–Shafer theory of evidence to the problem of ensemble learning. We present a formalism for modelling classifier decisions as triplet mass functions and we establish a range of formulae for combining these mass functions in order to arrive at a consensus decision. In addition we carry out a comparative study with the alternatives of simplet and dichotomous structure and also compare two combination methods, Dempster's rule and majority voting, over the UCI benchmark data, to demonstrate the advantage our approach offers. (A continuation of the work in this area that was published in IEEE Trans on KDE, and conferences)

Efficient, halide free synthesis of new, low cost ionic liquids: 1,3-dialkylimidazolium salts containing methyl- and ethyl-sulfate anions

New low-cost ionic liquids containing methyl- and ethyl-sulfate anions can be easily and efficiently prepared under ambient conditions by the reaction of 1-alkylimidazoles with dimethyl sulfate and diethyl sulfate. The preparation and characterization of a series of 1,3-dialkylimidazolium alkyl sulfate and 1,2,3-trialkylimidazolium alkyl sulfate salts are reported. 1,3-Dialkylimidazolium salts containing at least one non-methyl N-alkyl substituent are liquids at, or below room, temperature. Three salts were crystalline at room temperature, the single crystal X-ray structure of 1,3-dimethylimidazolium methyl sulfate was determined and shows the formation of discrete ribbons comprising of two anion-cation hydrogen-bonded chains linked via intra-chain hydrogen-bonding, but little, or no inter-ribbon hydrogen-bonding. The salts are stable, water soluble, inherently 'chloride-free', display an electrochemical window of greater than 4 V, and can be used as alternatives to the corresponding halide salts in metathesis reactions to prepare other ionic liquids including 1-butyl-3-methylimidazolium hexafluorophosphate.

Industrial applications of ionic liquids

The potential to use Ionic Liquids (ILs) as novel solvents or fluids for a diverse range of applications has become increasingly rent as researchers in academia and try respond to challenges from atmospheric emissions and disposal of many common solvents by evaluating novel reaction media. The intrinsic non-volatile nature of ILs provides an opportunity to reduce, or even completely eliminate, hazardous and toxic emissions to the atmosphere, thus providing the promise for significant environmental benefits. In synthesis and catalysis, ILs have been used as solvents (or solvents and catalysts), with the greatest current effort on using the ILs as alternatives to VOCs. In contrast, electrochemical studies hove utills'ed the fact that ILs are liquid rather than solids to provide liquid electrolytes without needing to odd an additional solvent. is overview appraiso an appraisal of potential to use ILs in industrial applications, illustrating some areas where practical uses are being developed, and how, throuqh understanding ionic liquids in a conceptuo level, new opportunities ore continuing to evolve.

Appearance of the frequency-doubling stimulus at threshold.

PURPOSE. It has been argued that the threshold for detecting frequency-doubling (FD) technology perimeter stimuli differs from the threshold for perceiving spatial structure (pattern) in the same targets. Thresholds for perceiving spatial structure have typically been assessed using orientation-identification experiments. The authors investigated the influence of orientation, edge profile, and psychophysical method on the origin of the reported differences in detection and orientation-identification thresholds for FD gratings.

METHODS. Detection and orientation-identification thresholds were determined in 12 observers with the use of FD stimuli (0.25 cyc/deg, 25 Hz) presented centrally and at 15° eccentricity. Edge profile (square- and Gaussian-windowed) and orientation (horizontal, vertical, and oblique) were independently modified. Detection thresholds were also measured for spatially uniform flickering targets (25 Hz). Orientation-identification thresholds using a two-alternative forced choice (2-AFC) and a two-interval forced choice (2-IFC) method were also compared in five experienced observers.

RESULTS. Orientation-identification and detection thresholds did not significantly differ under any condition tested. Orientation-identification thresholds obtained with 2-AFC were not significantly different from those obtained with 2-IFC. Thresholds for spatially uniform flicker were significantly lower than for FD stimuli.

CONCLUSIONS. The authors found that orientation-identification and detection thresholds for FD gratings did not differ and argue that recent findings to the contrary arise from the inappropriate use of spatially uniform flicker targets as alternatives in 2-IFC experiments.

Predicting intentions to purchase organic food: The role of affective and moral attitudes in the Theory of Planned Behaviour

This study examined the usefulness of integrating measures of affective and moral attitudes into the Theory of Planned Behaviour (TPB)-model in predicting purchase intentions or organic foods. Moral attitude was operationalised Lis positive self-rewarding feelings of doing the right thing. Questionnaire data were gathered in three countries: Italy (N = 202), Finland (N = 270) and UK (N = 200) in March 2004. Questions focussed on intentions to purchase organic apples and organic ready-to-cook pizza instead of their conventional alternatives. Data were analysed using Structural Equation Modelling by simultaneous multi-group analysis of the three Countries. Along with attitudes, moral attitude and subjective norms explained considerable shares of variances in intentions. The relative influences of these variables varied between the Countries, such that in the UK and Italy moral attitude rather than subjective norms had stronger explanatory power. In Finland it was other way around. Inclusion of moral attitude improved the model fit and predictive ability of the model, although only marginally in Finland. Thus the results partially Support the usefulness of incorporating moral measures as well as affective items for attitude into the framework of TPB. (c) 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.