Estimating intergenerational utility distribution preferences

Resource management decisions influence not only the output of the economy but also the distribution of utility between groups within the community. The theory of Benefit Cost Analysis provides a means of incorporating this distributional change through the application of distributional or welfare weights. This paper reports the results of research designed to estimate distributional weights suitable for inclusion in a Benefit Cost Analysis framework. The findings of a choice modelling experiment estimating community preferences with respect to intergenerational utility distribution are presented to illustrate this innovative application of a stated preference technique.

One-step coating of fluoro-containing silica nanoparticles for universal generation of surface superhydrophobicity

Stable superhydrophobic surfaces with water contact angles over 170 degrees and sliding angles below 7 degrees were produced by simply coating a particulate silica sol solution of co-hydrolysed TEOS/fluorinated alkyl silane with NH₃^.H₂O on various substrates, including textile fabrics (e.g. polyester, wool and cotton), electrospun nanofibre mats, filter papers, glass slides, and silicon wafers.

The utility of the personal wellbeing index intellectual disability scale in an Australian sample

Background Subjective wellbeing (SWB) in people with intellectual disabilities has been the focus of increased interest in the identification of support needs and as an outcome measure for interventions and service delivery evaluations. It is therefore important to conduct further research in this area, and to develop appropriate scales to measure SWB.

Methods A new scale, the Personal Wellbeing Index-Intellectual Disability (PWI-ID) was administered to 114 adults with mild (n = 82) or moderate (n = 32) level ID in Victoria, Australia.

Results The PWI-ID demonstrated good reliability and validity. A comparison of the findings with previous research indicates that participants' SWB levels are within the normative range, and are similar to those reported by the general population.

Conclusions The results support the notion that individuals with ID do not experience life quality lower than normal, which can be explained theoretically by the Theory of Subjective Wellbeing Homeostasis. The use of the PWI-ID may ultimately assist in ensuring that the needs of people with ID are being met and inform the planning and delivery of congruent resources and services.

Pregnant women's alcohol consumption : the predictive utility of intention to drink and prepregnancy drinking behaviour

Objective: This study had two aims: (1) to examine pregnant women's alcohol consumption across time from prepregnancy until childbirth and (2) to explore whether prepregnancy drinking and intention to drink predict prenatal alcohol consumption while controlling for relevant demographic variables.

Methods: At 17–21 weeks, 248 pregnant women completed questions about demographics, intention to drink alcohol during the subsequent pregnancy, and retrospective measures of prepregnancy and early pregnancy consumption. After this time, calendars were sent fortnightly assessing daily alcohol consumption until birth.

Results: For women who drank both prepregnancy and postpregnancy confirmation, average fortnight alcohol consumption in the first weeks of pregnancy was lower than during prepregnancy, and consumption continued to decrease between gestational weeks 1 and 8, particularly following pregnancy confirmation, after which it remained relatively stable. When predicting whether women drank in late pregnancy, intention accounted for unique variance after controlling for income and prepregnancy drinking. For women who drank after pregnancy confirmation, prepregnancy drinking quantity significantly predicted intention to drink, which in turn predicted fortnight alcohol consumption in later pregnancy, after controlling for prepregnancy drinking and income.

Conclusions: Findings highlight the need to measure alcohol consumption at multiple time points across pregnancy, the need for educating and supporting women to reduce consumption when planning pregnancies, and the usefulness of intention to drink as a predictor of drinking during pregnancy.

Predictors of timely doctoral student completions by type of attendance: the utility of a pragmatic approach

Federal government changes to the funding of doctoral students have focused the attention of university management on their completion rates. The aims of this paper are to inform the allocation of institutional resources in a manner that improves the likelihood of timely doctoral completions and to highlight a process that can also be used for analyses of other key indicators of progression and attrition. The analyses and model development used national data readily available to all universities, which are collected in a standard approach through the Graduate Destinations Survey (GDS). The findings show that the most important variable for timely completion was attendance (full-time compared with part-time), whereby in terms of full-time equivalent (FTE) years of study, part-time students were far more likely to complete quickly than full-time students. For the full-time students, the key predictors of timely completion were residency, field of study and English-speaking background (ESB). The timeliness of part-time students was predicted by field of study and ESB. This study confirms that there is considerable variation by discipline for timely doctoral completions. The pragmatic application and prospective test of the derived models present a variety of opportunities for research student administrators. For example, those full-time students scoring highly represented a concentration of timely graduates more than 7.5 times higher than the lowest-scoring group - almost an order of magnitude of difference. In short, university management could gain tremendous value from more widely using the data available.

The effects of a simplified tai-chi exercise program (STEP) on the physical health of older adults living in long-term care facilities : a single group design with multiple time points

Background
Studies support the positive effects that Tai Chi has on the physical health of older adults. However, many older adults residing in long-term care facilities feel too weak to practice traditional Tai Chi, and a more simplified style is preferred.
Objective
To test the effects of a newly-developed, Simplified Tai-Chi Exercise Program (STEP) on the physical health of older adults who resided in long-term care facilities.
Design
A single group design with multiple time points: three pre-tests, one month apart; four post-tests at one month, two months, three months, and six months after intervention started.
Settings
Two 300–400 bed veteran homes in Taiwan.
Participants
The 51 male older adults were recruited through convenience sampling, and 41 of them completed six-month study. Inclusion criteria included: (1) aged 65 and over; (2) no previous training in Tai Chi; (3) cognitively alert and had a score of at least eight on the Short Portable Mental Status Questionnaire; (4) able to walk without assistance; and (5) had a Barthel Index score of 61 or higher. Participants who had dementia, were wheel-chair bound, or had severe or acute cardiovascular, musculoskeletal, or pulmonary illnesses were excluded.
Methods
The STEP was implemented three times a week, 50 min per session for six months. The outcome measures included cardio-respiratory function, blood pressure, balance, hand-grip strength, lower body flexibility, and physical health actualization.
Results
A drop in systolic blood pressure (p=.017) and diastolic blood pressure (p<.001) was detected six months after intervention started. Increase in hand-grip strength from pre to post intervention was found (left hand: p<.001; right hand: p=.035). Participants also had better lower body flexibility after practicing STEP (p=.038).
Conclusions
Findings suggest that the STEP be incorporated as a floor activity in long-term care facilities to promote physical health of older adults.

Utility of real-time decision-making in commercial data stream mining domains

The objective is to measure utility of real-time commercial decision making. It is important due to a higher possibility of mistakes in real-time decisions, problems with recording actual occurrences, and significant costs associated with predictions produced by algorithms. The first contribution is to use overall utility and represent individual utility with a monetary value instead of a prediction. The second is to calculate the benefit from predictions using the utility-based decision threshold. The third is to incorporate cost of predictions. For experiments, overall utility is used to evaluate communal and spike detection, and their adaptive versions. The overall utility results show that with fewer alerts, communal detection is better than spike detection. With more alerts, adaptive communal and spike detection are better than their static versions. To maximise overall utility with all algorithms, only 1% to 4% in the highest predictions should be alerts.

A step toward a common measure of organizational fairness

The paper examines dimensions of organizational justice construct in a public sector context, utilizing an organizational justice measure developed and validated by Colquitt (2001). The present study substantiates the existing claims about the independence of interactional justice and the division of interactional justice into interpersonal and informational justice. The present investigation also contributes to the justice literature by providing evidence of a new factor, which is called procedural voice justice to reflect the possible association with the concept of voice effect. Although voice has been examined extensively in the justice research as an antecedent of procedural justice, little is known about if and how voice might integrate into procedural justice construct. The study proposes that future justice research further investigate dimensionality of organisational justice and aspire to developing a common measure of the justice construct.

Variable step-size LMS algorithm with a quotient form

An improved robust variable step-size least mean square (LMS) algorithm is developed in this paper. Unlike many existing approaches, we adjust the variable step-size using a quotient form of filtered versions of the quadratic error. The filtered estimates of the error are based on exponential windows, applying different decaying factors for the estimations in the numerator and denominator. The new algorithm, called more robust variable step-size (MRVSS), is able to reduce the sensitivity to the power of the measurement noise, and improve the steady-state performance for comparable transient behavior, with negligible increase in the computational cost. The mean convergence, the steady-state performance and the mean step-size behavior of the MRVSS algorithm are studied under a slow time-varying system model, which can be served as guidelines for the design of MRVSS algorithm in practical applications. Simulation results are demonstrated to corroborate the analytic results, and to compare MRVSS with the existing representative approaches. Superior properties of the MRVSS algorithm are indicated.

A class of modified variable step-size NLMS algorithms for system identification

This paper proposes a class of modified variable step-size normalized least mean square (VS NLMS) algorithms. The class of schemes are obtained from estimating the optimum step-size of NLMS that minimizes the mean square deviation (MSD). During the estimation, we consider the properties of the additive noise and the input excitation together. The developed class of VS NLMS algorithms have simple forms and give improved tradeoff of fast convergence rate and low misadjustment in system identification.

The bipolar depression rating scale (BDRS) : its development, validation and utility

Objectives: Unipolar and bipolar depression differ neurobiologically and in clinical presentation. Existing depression rating instruments, used in bipolar depression, fail to capture the necessary phenomenological nuances, as they are based on and skewed towards the characteristics of unipolar depression. Both clinically and in research there is a growing need for a new observer-rated scale that is specifically designed to assess bipolar depression.

Methods: An instrument reflecting the characteristics of bipolar depression was drafted by the authors, and administered to 122 participants aged 18–65 (44 males and 78 females) with a diagnosis of DSM-IV bipolar disorder, who were currently experiencing symptoms of depression. The Bipolar Depression Rating Scale (BDRS) was administered together with the Hamilton Depression Rating Scale (HAM-D), Montgomery Asberg Depression Rating Scale (MADRS) and Young Mania Rating Scale (YMRS).

Results: The BDRS has strong internal consistency (Cronbach's alpha = 0.917), and robust correlation coefficients with the MADRS (r = 0.906) and HAM-D (r = 0.744), and the mixed subscale correlated with the YMRS (r = 0.757). Exploratory factor analysis showed a three-factor solution gave the best account of the data. These factors corresponded to depression (somatic), depression (psychological) and mixed symptom clusters.

Conclusions: This study provides evidence for the validity of the BDRS for the measurement of depression in bipolar disorder. These results suggest good internal validity, provisional evidence of inter-rater reliability and strong correlations with other depression rating scales.

A method for evaluating workplace utility

Acquiring office buildings that provide the required level of utility, and maintaining the buildings in that state, should be a priority for any organisation. Failure to do so may give rise to increased churn, reduced productivity, higher employee turnover, increased staff absenteeism and rising health care costs related to heightened stress. There is, however, no single measure of office building utility. Discusses the development of a valid and reliable scale for measuring the utility of public sector office buildings. Data collection involved the use of focus groups and an online survey of 1,800 building occupants. The findings suggest that the utility of public sector office buildings can be measured using a 22-item scale comprising four dimensions. The potential applications of the scale and its use in current research are examined.