International inter-school competition to encourage children to walk to school: a mixed methods feasibility study.

Background: Active travel to school can be an important contributor to the total physical activity of children but levels have declined and more novel approaches are required to stimulate this as an habitual behaviour. The aim of this mixed methods study was to investigate the feasibility of an international walk to school competition supported by novel swipecard technology to increase children's walking to/from school. Methods: Children aged 9-13 years old participated in an international walk to school competition to win points for themselves, their school and their country over a 4-week period. Walks to and from school were recorded using swipecard technology and a bespoke website. For each point earned by participants, 1 pence (£0.01) was donated to the charity of the school's choice. The primary outcome was number of walks to/from school objectively recorded using the swipecard tracking system over the intervention period. Other measures included attitudes towards walking collected at baseline and week 4 (post-intervention). A qualitative sub-study involving focus groups with children, parents and teachers provided further insight. Results: A total of 3817 children (mean age 11.5±SD 0.7) from 12 schools in three cities (London and Reading, England and Vancouver, Canada) took part in the intervention, representing a 95% intervention participation rate. Results show a gradual decline in the average number of children walking to and from school over the 4-week period (week 1 mean 29%±SD2.5; week 2 mean 18%±SD3.6; week 3 mean 14%±SD4.0; week 4 mean 12%±SD1.1). Post intervention, 97% of children felt that walking to school helped them stay healthy, feel happy (81%) and stay alert in class (76%). These results are supported by qualitative findings from children, parents and teachers. Key areas for improvement include the need to incorporate strategies for maintenance of behaviour change into the intervention and also to adopt novel methods of data collection to increase follow-up rates. Conclusions: This mixed methods study suggests that an international walk to school competition using innovative technology can be feasibly implemented and offers a novel way of engaging schools and motivating children to walk to school.

Gene selection by cooperative competition clustering

Clustering analysis of data from DNA microarray hybridization studies is an essential task for identifying biologically relevant groups of genes. Attribute cluster algorithm (ACA) has provided an attractive way to group and select meaningful genes. However, ACA needs much prior knowledge about the genes to set the number of clusters. In practical applications, if the number of clusters is misspecified, the performance of the ACA will deteriorate rapidly. In fact, it is a very demanding to do that because of our little knowledge. We propose the Cooperative Competition Cluster Algorithm (CCCA) in this paper. In the algorithm, we assume that both cooperation and competition exist simultaneously between clusters in the process of clustering. By using this principle of Cooperative Competition, the number of clusters can be found in the process of clustering. Experimental results on a synthetic and gene expression data are demonstrated. The results show that CCCA can choose the number of clusters automatically and get excellent performance with respect to other competing methods.

An information approach to international currencies

Models of currency competition focus on the 5% of trading attributable to balance-of-payments flows. We introduce an information approach that focuses on the other 95%. Important departures from traditional models arise when transactions convey information. First, prices reveal different information depending on whether trades are direct or though vehicle currencies. Second, missing markets arise due to insufficiently symmetric information, rather than insufficient transactions scale. Third, the indeterminacy of equilibrium that arises in traditional models is resolved: currency trade patterns no longer concentrate arbitrarily on market size. Empirically, we provide a first analysis of transactions across a full market triangle: the euro, yen and US dollar. The estimated transaction effects on prices support the information approach.

AVEC 2011–The First International Audio/Visual Emotion Challenge

The Audio/Visual Emotion Challenge and Workshop (AVEC 2011) is the first competition event aimed at comparison of multimedia processing and machine learning methods for automatic audio, visual and audiovisual emotion analysis, with all participants competing under strictly the same conditions. This paper first describes the challenge participation conditions. Next follows the data used – the SEMAINE corpus – and its partitioning into train, development, and test partitions for the challenge with labelling in four dimensions, namely activity, expectation, power, and valence. Further, audio and video baseline features are introduced as well as baseline results that use these features for the three sub-challenges of audio, video, and audiovisual emotion recognition.

Avoidance Techniques: State Related Defences in International Antitrust Cases

Despite its economic significance, competition law still remains fragmented, lacking an international framework allowing for dispute settlement. This, together with the growing importance of non-free-market economies in world trade require us to re-consider and re-evaluate the possibilities of bringing an antitrust suit against a foreign state. If the level playing field on the global marketplace is to be achieved, the possibility of hiding behind the bulwark of state sovereignty should be minimised. States should not be free to act in an anti-competitive way, but at present the legal framework seems ill-equipped to handle such challenges.

This paper deals with the defences available in litigation concerning transnational anti-competitive agreements involving or implicating foreign states. Four important legal doctrines are analysed: non-justiciability (political question doctrine), state immunity, act of state doctrine and foreign state compulsion. The paper addresses also the general problem of applicability of competition laws to a foreign state as such. This is a tale about repetitive unsuccessful efforts to sue OPEC and recent attempts in the US to deal with export cartels of Chinese state-owned enterprises

Inter-Agency Evidence Sharing in Competition Law Enforcement

While transnational antitrust enforcement is becoming only more common, the access to foreign-based evidence remains a considerable practical challenge. This article appraises considerations and concerns surrounding confidentiality, and looks into ways of their possible accommodation. It further identifies and critically evaluates the existing mechanisms allowing for inter-agency confidential information/ evidence sharing in competition law enforcement. The article outlines the shortcomings of the current framework and points to novel unilateral approaches. In the latter regard the focus is devoted to Australia, where the competition agency is empowered to share confidential information with foreign counterparts, also without any underlying bilateral agreement and on a non-reciprocal basis. This solution shows that a pragmatic and workable approach to inter-agency evidence sharing can be achieved.