Trusting Groups in Coalition Formation using Social Distance

In environments where distributed team formation is key, and defections are possible, the use of trust as social capital allows social norms to be defied and compared. An agent can use this information, when invited to join a group or collation, to decide whether or not its utility will be increased by joining. In this work a social network approach is used to define and reason about the relationships contained in the agent community. Previous baseline work is extended with two decision making mechanisms. These are compared by simulating an abstract grid-like environment, and preliminary results are reported.

Parent Issues: How Life on Mars Negotiates a Television Generation Gap

In defining what he termed 'Television's Second Golden Age', Robert J.Thompson refers to characteristics such as being 'not regular TV', internal continuity, mixed genres but an aspiration towards 'realism', complex writing, self-consciousness and intertextuality. Such characteristics are displayed by the BBC series Life on Mars (2006-2007) which intermingles the Seventies tough cop show with psychological fantasy. This chapter examines the way that the series can be understood as a dramatisation of the negotiation that the creators undertook with their Seventies source material to update it for the values and qualities of contemporary television drama. It will emphasise the importance of television in the generation of the imagined 1973 and its characters, but also as an ongoing connection between the real and the imagined within the programme, including forming a breach of the boundaries between the two. Sam's actions within his Seventies world to remake it to include his own ideas of justice and due process while retaining the passion and freedom of action that the milieu provides will also be be examined in relation to the series' creators' needs to remake the Seventies tough-cop show in the light of modern social and media mores. The paper will also consider how Sam has to come to terms with his father's crimes, as the series' creators had to come to terms with the 'crimes' of taste, morality and approach of their 'parent' programmes from the Seventies' Golden Age.

Instrumental Parasites: Interfacing the Fragile and the Robust

The parasitical relationship between the grand piano and the myriad objects used in its preparation as pioneered by John Cage in the late 1940’s is here discussed from a perspective of free improvisation practice. Preparations can be defined as the use of a “non-instrument” object (screws, bolts, rubbers etc…) to alter or modify the behaviour of an instrument or part of an instrument. Although also present in instrumental practices based on the electric guitar or the drum kit, the piano provides a privileged space of exploration given its large‐scale resonant body. It also highlights the transgressive aspect of preparation (the piano to be prepared often belongs to a venue rather than to the pianist herself, hence highlighting relationships of trust, care and respect). Since 2007 I have used a guitar-object (a small wooden board with strings and pick ups) connected to a small amplifier to prepare the grand piano in my free improvisation practice. This paper addresses the different relationships afforded by this type preparation which is characterised by the fact that the object for preparation is in itself an instrument (albeit a simplified one), and the preparation is ephemeral and intrinsic to the performance. The paper also reflects on the process of designing an interface from and for a particular practice and in collaboration with a guitar luthier.

Parainflammation, chronic inflammation, and age-related macular degeneration

Inflammation is an adaptive response of the immune system to noxious insults to maintain homeostasis and restore functionality. The retina is considered an immune-privileged tissue as a result of its unique anatomic and physiologic properties. During aging, the retina suffers from a low-grade chronic oxidative insult, which sustains for decades and increases in level with advancing age. As a result, the retinal innate-immune system, particularly microglia and the complement system, undergoes low levels of activation (parainflammation). In many cases, this parainflammatory response can maintain homeostasis in the healthy aging eye. However, in patients with age-related macular degeneration, this parainflammatory response becomes dysregulated and contributes to macular damage. Factors contributing to the dysregulation of age-related retinal parainflammation include genetic predisposition, environmental risk factors, and old age. Dysregulated parainflammation (chronic inflammation) in age-related macular degeneration damages the blood retina barrier, resulting in the breach of retinal-immune privilege, leading to the development of retinal lesions. This review discusses the basic principles of retinal innate-immune responses to endogenous chronic insults in normal aging and in age-related macular degeneration and explores the difference between beneficial parainflammation and the detrimental chronic inflammation in the context of age-related macular degeneration.

Domestic Violence as a Human Rights Issue: Rumor v. Italy

The article focuses on the recent developments as regards domestic violence within the context of the Council of Europe. Since 2007 the European Court of Human Rights has issued a series of important judgments in cases involving domestic violence. The most recent of these is Rumor v. Italy, in which the Court issued its judgment on 27 May 2014. The article analyses this case in the context of the Court’s previous jurisprudence on domestic violence. In addition, on 1 August 2014 the Council of Europe Convention on preventing and combating violence against women and domestic violence entered into force, and the article will include a number of reflections on the potential held by this Convention. No violation of the European Convention on Human Rights was found in Rumor, however the question of whether Italy would have been in breach of the provisions of the new Convention, to which it is a party, had this Convention been in force at the time of the relevant events, will be examined.

"It's just not cricket". Or is it?

Considers the Wolverhampton County Court decision in Bartlett v English Cricket Board Association of Cricket Officials on whether cricket umpires at an amateur match were liable for injuries to a player based on their inspection of the condition of the cricket ground after heavy rain and their decision to allow play to proceed. Comments on the approach to the umpires' standard of care.

An Innovative Model for the Provision of Practice Learning Opportunities in Family and Child Care: Newry Student Unit, Southern Health and Social Care Trust.

This article describes the work of Newry Student Unit which operates in the Southern Health and Social Care Trust. The background to the unit is outlined and its development is discussed in the context of practice learning provision in Northern Ireland. The operation of the unit in providing Family and Child Care practice learning opportunities (PLOs) for student social workers is outlined and findings from evaluation questionnaires completed by students, college tutors and team leaders are presented. The paper highlights both the advantages and disadvantages of this model of PLO provision and concludes that it is a valuable resource for practice learning. Proposals for the development of the unit are discussed and it is suggested that the model has the potential be replicated in other areas of Northern Ireland.

Trust considerations on attitudes towards online purchasing: The moderating effect of privacy and security concerns

The research examines the relationships between three common trust considerations (vendor, Internet and third parties) and attitudes towards online purchasing. The study incorporates privacy and security concerns as a moderating variable and finds that these relationships vary depending on the level of concerns a consumer has when purchasing online. The study suggests that "fears" surrounding the Internet as a place to do business still hinder the use of it for e-commerce purposes, but that the presence of a reputable agent might in some manner mitigate this risk. In the context of business to consumer relationships trust in the vendor is important for the consumer to accept any risk associated with a transaction. Theoretical implications for online customer behavior theory are also discussed. © 2009 Elsevier Inc.

The Philosophy and Practice of Interpretivist Research in Entrepreneurship Quality, Validation, and Trust

Knowledge production in entrepreneurship requires inclusivity as well as diversity and pluralism in research perspectives and approaches. In this article, the authors address concerns about interpretivist research regarding validity, reliability, objectivity, generalizability, and communicability of results that militate against its more widespread acceptance. Following the nonfoundationalist argument that all observation is theory-laden, context specific, and that there are no external criteria against which to assess research design and execution and the data produced, the authors propose that quality must be internalized within the underlying research philosophy rather than something to be tested upon completion. This requires a shift from the notion of validity as an outcome to validation as a process. To elucidate this, they provide a guiding framework and present a case illustration that will assist an interpretivist entrepreneurship researcher to establish and demonstrate the quality of their work.

Contact, trust and social capital in Northern Ireland: a qualitative study of three mixed communities

In a recent paper, Robert Putnam (2007) challenges the contact hypothesis by arguing that ethnic diversity causes people to ‘hunker down’ and essentially withdraw themselves from society. Drawing on
qualitative data collected from three mixed communities in Northern Ireland, this paper explores the extent and quality of contact experienced by Protestants and Catholics in their everyday lives. Themes emerging from our data are generally consistent with the contact hypothesis. There is also some support for Putnam’s theory that mixed environments can induce ‘hunkering down’ and that inter-group trust may be compromised. However, our data challenge Putnam’s argument that these responses are a consequence of ‘anomie’ or ‘social malaise’. Rather, we find that withdrawal from social activity in the neighbourhoods we observed was a calculated response at times of threat, often aimed at protecting existent positive inter-ethnic relations.