Minutes of meeting regarding purchase of property in Beaver Street

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Report on statement made to mayor regarding congregation's property and revenue

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What consumers think, do and say about antibiotic use

Objective The objectives of this study were to investigate (1) the attitudes and behaviours of Australian consumers in antibiotic use, and (2) their understanding of antibiotic resistance. Methods Semi-structured interviews were conducted with consumers in May/June 2015. Convenience sampling was used to recruit consumers between 18–54 years old. Thirty-two consumers were interviewed. Transcripts were analysed to identify themes. Lessons Learned Dominant themes for attitudes and behaviours regarding antibiotics were (a) avoidance of antibiotic use unless clinically warranted; (b) antibiotics were useful but “weakened the body”; and (c) use of complementary medicines as adjuncts to antibiotics or to strengthen the immune system. Key information needs were (a) unambiguous instructions from GPs when prescribed antibiotics, to avoid inappropriate medicine-taking behaviour; (b) rationale for antibiotic selection; and (c) treatment duration. Antibiotic resistance was conceptualised in three ways: as a property of the body (body becomes resistant to antibiotics); the medication (antibiotic no longer effective); and the bacteria (bacteria is resistant). Antibiotic resistance was perceived as an issue that would only affect the wider community in the future, although most recognised that it is a current challenge for hospitals. Personal good health and/or avoidance of antibiotics were perceived as insurance against being adversely affected by antibiotic resistance. Implications A structured survey (discrete choice experiment) will be developed from these findings to investigate how consumers trade-off on factors influencing antibiotic use. Public health campaigns promoting conservation of antibiotics can benefit from these findings.

Synthesis and characterization of polyaniline salts with phenoxy acetic acids by emulsion polymerization

Polyaniline salts have been synthesized by chemical oxidative polymerization of aniline in the presence of phenoxy acetic acid and its two derivatives using emulsion method at room temperature and characterized by different techniques such as infrared, H-1 and C-13 NMR, UV-visible spectroscopy, SEM, wide angle X-ray diffractograms and conductivity measurements. These polyaniline salts have the desirable property of high solubility for processibility in solvents such as DNIF, DMSO and a mixture of CHCl3 and acetone and they exhibit fairly good conductivity of similar to 3.0 x 10(-3) S cm(-1). The variations in solubility, conductivity and morphology with the protonating strength of the dopants are examined.

Nature-based entrepreneurship in private forests – The preconditions for the sustainable co-operation between private forest owners and entrepreneurs

Nature-based tourism is one of the fastest growing tourism sectors at the moment. It is also the form of tourism that often benefits the economy of rural areas. In addition to state owned forests, nature-based tourism is in many countries situated in private forests, which are not owned by entrepreneurs themselves. Therefore, the ownership issues and property rights form central challenges for the business activities. The maintenance of good relationships between private forest owners and entrepreneurs, as well as combining their interests, becomes vital. These relationships are typically exceptionally asymmetrical, granting the forest owner unilateral rights regulating the business activities in their forests. Despite this, the co-operation is typically very informal and the existing economic compensation models do not necessarily cover all the forest owners’ costs. The ownership issues bring their own characteristics to the relationship. Therefore, we argue that different aspects of ownership, especially psychological ones, have to be more critically examined and taken into consideration in order to build truly successful relations between these parties. This is crucial for sustaining the business activities. The core of psychological ownership is the sense of possession. Psychological ownership can be defined as a state, in which individuals perceive the target of ownership, the object or idea, as “theirs”. The concept of psychological ownership has so far been mainly used in the context of professional organizations. In this research, it has been used to explain the relationships between private forest owners and nature-based entrepreneurs. The aim of this study is to provide new information concerning the effect of psychological ownership on the collaboration and to highlight the good practices. To address the complexity of the phenomenon, qualitative case study methods were adopted to understand the role of ownership at the level of subjective experience. The empirical data was based on 27 in-depth interviews with private forest owners and nature-based tourism entrepreneurs. The data was analysed by using the methods of qualitative analysis to construct different typologies to describe the essence of successful collaboration. As a result of the study, the special characteristics and the practical level expressions of the psychological ownership in the privately owned forest context were analysed. Four different strategies to perceive these ownership characteristics in co-operation relationships were found. By taking the psychological ownership into consideration via these strategies, the nature-based entrepreneurs aim to balance the co-operation relationship and minimise the risks in long term activities based on privately owned forests.

Building Information Modelling – Experts´ Views on Standardisation and Industry Deployment

The goal of the single building information model has existed for at least thirty years and various standards have been published leading up to the ten-year development of the Industry Foundation Classes. These have been initiatives from researchers, software developers and standards committees. Now large property owners are becoming aware of the benefits of moving IT tools from specific applications towards more comprehensive solutions. This study addresses the state of Building Information Models and the conditions necessary for them to become more widely used. It is a qualitative study based on information from a number of international experts and has asked a series of questions about the feasibility of BIMs, the conditions necessary for their success, and the role of standards with particular reference to the IFCs. Some key statements were distilled from the diverse answers received and indicate that BIM solutions appear too complex for many and may need to be applied in limited areas initially. Standards are generally supported but not applied rigorously and a range of these are relevant to BIM. Benefits will depend upon the building procurement methods used and there should be special roles within the project team to manage information. Case studies are starting to appear and these could be used for publicity. The IFCs are rather oversold and their complexities should be hidden within simple-to-use software. Inevitably major questions remain and property owners may be the key to answering some of these. A framework for presenting standards, backed up by case studies of successful projects, is the solution proposed to provide better information on where particular BIM standards and solutions should be applied in building projects.

Modelling and Forecasting Property Rents and Returns (summary section only)

Recently, focus of real estate investment has expanded from the building-specific level to the aggregate portfolio level. The portfolio perspective requires investment analysis for real estate which is comparable with that of other asset classes, such as stocks and bonds. Thus, despite its distinctive features, such as heterogeneity, high unit value, illiquidity and the use of valuations to measure performance, real estate should not be considered in isolation. This means that techniques which are widely used for other assets classes can also be applied to real estate. An important part of investment strategies which support decisions on multi-asset portfolios is identifying the fundamentals of movements in property rents and returns, and predicting them on the basis of these fundamentals. The main objective of this thesis is to find the key drivers and the best methods for modelling and forecasting property rents and returns in markets which have experienced structural changes. The Finnish property market, which is a small European market with structural changes and limited property data, is used as a case study. The findings in the thesis show that is it possible to use modern econometric tools for modelling and forecasting property markets. The thesis consists of an introduction part and four essays. Essays 1 and 3 model Helsinki office rents and returns, and assess the suitability of alternative techniques for forecasting these series. Simple time series techniques are able to account for structural changes in the way markets operate, and thus provide the best forecasting tool. Theory-based econometric models, in particular error correction models, which are constrained by long-run information, are better for explaining past movements in rents and returns than for predicting their future movements. Essay 2 proceeds by examining the key drivers of rent movements for several property types in a number of Finnish property markets. The essay shows that commercial rents in local markets can be modelled using national macroeconomic variables and a panel approach. Finally, Essay 4 investigates whether forecasting models can be improved by accounting for asymmetric responses of office returns to the business cycle. The essay finds that the forecast performance of time series models can be improved by introducing asymmetries, and the improvement is sufficient to justify the extra computational time and effort associated with the application of these techniques.

Guessing under source uncertainty with side information

We study the problem of guessing the realization of a finite alphabet source, when some side information is provided, in a setting where the only knowledge the guesser has about the source and the correlated side information is that the joint source is one among a family. We define a notion of redundancy, identify a quantity that measures this redundancy, and study its properties. We then identify good guessing strategies that minimize the supremum redundancy (over the family). The minimum value measures the richness of the uncertainty class.

Social networks for volunteered geographic information - A case study of OpenStreetMap

The world of mapping has changed. Earlier, only professional experts were responsible for map production, but today ordinary people without any training or experience can become map-makers. The number of online mapping sites, and the number of volunteer mappers has increased significantly. The development of the technology, such as satellite navigation systems, Web 2.0, broadband Internet connections, and smartphones, have had one of the key roles in enabling the rise of volunteered geographic information (VGI). As opening governmental data to public is a current topic in many countries, the opening of high quality geographical data has a central role in this study. The aim of this study is to investigate how is the quality of spatial data produced by volunteers by comparing it with the map data produced by public authorities, to follow what occurs when spatial data are opened for users, and to get acquainted with the user profile of these volunteer mappers. A central part of this study is OpenStreetMap project (OSM), which aim is to create a map of the entire world by volunteers. Anyone can become an OpenStreetMap contributor, and the data created by the volunteers are free to use for anyone without restricting copyrights or license charges. In this study OpenStreetMap is investigated from two viewpoints. In the first part of the study, the aim was to investigate the quality of volunteered geographic information. A pilot project was implemented by following what occurs when a high-resolution aerial imagery is released freely to the OpenStreetMap contributors. The quality of VGI was investigated by comparing the OSM datasets with the map data of The National Land Survey of Finland (NLS). The quality of OpenStreetMap data was investigated by inspecting the positional accuracy and the completeness of the road datasets, as well as the differences in the attribute datasets between the studied datasets. Also the OSM community was under analysis and the development of the map data of OpenStreetMap was investigated by visual analysis. The aim of the second part of the study was to analyse the user profile of OpenStreetMap contributors, and to investigate how the contributors act when collecting data and editing OpenStreetMap. The aim was also to investigate what motivates users to map and how is the quality of volunteered geographic information envisaged. The second part of the study was implemented by conducting a web inquiry to the OpenStreetMap contributors. The results of the study show that the quality of OpenStreetMap data compared with the data of National Land Survey of Finland can be defined as good. OpenStreetMap differs from the map of National Land Survey especially because of the amount of uncertainty, for example because of the completeness and uniformity of the map are not known. The results of the study reveal that opening spatial data increased notably the amount of the data in the study area, and both the positional accuracy and completeness improved significantly. The study confirms the earlier arguments that only few contributors have created the majority of the data in OpenStreetMap. The inquiry made for the OpenStreetMap users revealed that the data are most often collected by foot or by bicycle using GPS device, or by editing the map with the help of aerial imageries. According to the responses, the users take part to the OpenStreetMap project because they want to make maps better, and want to produce maps, which have information that is up-to-date and cannot be found from any other maps. Almost all of the users exploit the maps by themselves, most popular methods being downloading the map into a navigator or into a mobile device. The users regard the quality of OpenStreetMap as good, especially because of the up-to-dateness and the accuracy of the map.

Requirements for information management system in agricultural contracting

Menneinä vuosikymmeninä maatalouden työt ovat ensin koneellistuneet voimakkaasti ja sittemmin mukaan on tullut automaatio. Nykyään koneiden kokoa suurentamalla ei enää saada tuottavuutta nostettua merkittävästi, vaan työn tehostaminen täytyy tehdä olemassa olevien resurssien käyttöä tehostamalla. Tässä työssä tarkastelun kohteena on ajosilppuriketju nurmisäilörehun korjuussa. Säilörehun korjuun intensiivisyys ja koneyksiköiden runsas määrä ovat työnjohdon kannalta vaativa yhdistelmä. Työn tavoitteena oli selvittää vaatimuksia maatalouden urakoinnin tueksi kehitettävälle tiedonhallintajärjestelmälle. Tutkimusta varten haastateltiin yhteensä 12 urakoitsijaa tai yhteistyötä tekevää viljelijää. Tutkimuksen perusteella urakoitsijoilla on tarvetta tietojärjestelmille.Luonnollisesti urakoinnin laajuus ja järjestelyt vaikuttavat asiaan. Tutkimuksen perusteella keskeisimpiä vaatimuksia tiedonhallinnalle ovat: • mahdollisimman laaja, yksityiskohtainen ja automaattinen tiedon keruu tehtävästä työstä • karttapohjaisuus, kuljettajien opastus kohteisiin • asiakasrekisteri, työn tilaus sähköisesti • tarjouspyyntöpohjat, hintalaskurit • luotettavuus, tiedon säilyvyys • sovellettavuus monenlaisiin töihin • yhteensopivuus muiden järjestelmien kanssa Kehitettävän järjestelmän tulisi siis tutkimuksen perusteella sisältää seuraavia osia: helppokäyttöinen suunnittelu/asiakasrekisterityökalu, toimintoja koneiden seurantaan, opastukseen ja johtamiseen, työnaikainen tiedonkeruu sekä kerätyn tiedon käsittelytoimintoja. Kaikki käyttäjät eivät kuitenkaan tarvitse kaikkia toimintoja, joten urakoitsijan on voitava valita tarvitsemansa osat ja mahdollisesti lisätä toimintoja myöhemmin. Tiukoissa taloudellisissa ja ajallisissa raameissa toimivat urakoitsijat ovat vaativia asiakkaita, joiden käyttämän tekniikan tulee olla toimivaa ja luotettavaa. Toisaalta inhimillisiä virheitä sattuu kokeneillekin, joten hyvällä tietojärjestelmällä työstä tulee helpompaa ja tehokkaampaa.

Mining Land Cover Information Using Multilayer Perceptron and Decision Tree from MODIS Data

Land cover (LC) changes play a major role in global as well as at regional scale patterns of the climate and biogeochemistry of the Earth system. LC information presents critical insights in understanding of Earth surface phenomena, particularly useful when obtained synoptically from remote sensing data. However, for developing countries and those with large geographical extent, regular LC mapping is prohibitive with data from commercial sensors (high cost factor) of limited spatial coverage (low temporal resolution and band swath). In this context, free MODIS data with good spectro-temporal resolution meet the purpose. LC mapping from these data has continuously evolved with advances in classification algorithms. This paper presents a comparative study of two robust data mining techniques, the multilayer perceptron (MLP) and decision tree (DT) on different products of MODIS data corresponding to Kolar district, Karnataka, India. The MODIS classified images when compared at three different spatial scales (at district level, taluk level and pixel level) shows that MLP based classification on minimum noise fraction components on MODIS 36 bands provide the most accurate LC mapping with 86% accuracy, while DT on MODIS 36 bands principal components leads to less accurate classification (69%).

Forecasting rain for groundnut farmers�how good is good enough

: We illustrate how climatological information about adverse weather events and meteorological forecasts (when available) can be used to decide between alternative strategies so as to maximize the long-term average returns for rainfed groundnut in semi-arid parts of Karnataka, We show that until the skill of the forecast, i.e. probability of an adverse event occurring when it is forecast, is above a certain threshold, the forecast has no impact on the optimum strategy, This threshold is determined by the loss in yield due to the adverse weather event and the cost of the mitigatory measures, For the specific case of groundnut, it is found that while for combating some pests/diseases, climatological information is adequate, for others a forecast of sufficient skill would have a significant impact on the productivity.

A Convex Optimization Framework for Almost Budget Balanced Allocation of a Divisible Good

We address the problem of allocating a single divisible good to a number of agents. The agents have concave valuation functions parameterized by a scalar type. The agents report only the type. The goal is to find allocatively efficient, strategy proof, nearly budget balanced mechanisms within the Groves class. Near budget balance is attained by returning as much of the received payments as rebates to agents. Two performance criteria are of interest: the maximum ratio of budget surplus to efficient surplus, and the expected budget surplus, within the class of linear rebate functions. The goal is to minimize them. Assuming that the valuation functions are known, we show that both problems reduce to convex optimization problems, where the convex constraint sets are characterized by a continuum of half-plane constraints parameterized by the vector of reported types. We then propose a randomized relaxation of these problems by sampling constraints. The relaxed problem is a linear programming problem (LP). We then identify the number of samples needed for ``near-feasibility'' of the relaxed constraint set. Under some conditions on the valuation function, we show that value of the approximate LP is close to the optimal value. Simulation results show significant improvements of our proposed method over the Vickrey-Clarke-Groves (VCG) mechanism without rebates. In the special case of indivisible goods, the mechanisms in this paper fall back to those proposed by Moulin, by Guo and Conitzer, and by Gujar and Narahari, without any need for randomization. Extension of the proposed mechanisms to situations when the valuation functions are not known to the central planner are also discussed. Note to Practitioners-Our results will be useful in all resource allocation problems that involve gathering of information privately held by strategic users, where the utilities are any concave function of the allocations, and where the resource planner is not interested in maximizing revenue, but in efficient sharing of the resource. Such situations arise quite often in fair sharing of internet resources, fair sharing of funds across departments within the same parent organization, auctioning of public goods, etc. We study methods to achieve near budget balance by first collecting payments according to the celebrated VCG mechanism, and then returning as much of the collected money as rebates. Our focus on linear rebate functions allows for easy implementation. The resulting convex optimization problem is solved via relaxation to a randomized linear programming problem, for which several efficient solvers exist. This relaxation is enabled by constraint sampling. Keeping practitioners in mind, we identify the number of samples that assures a desired level of ``near-feasibility'' with the desired confidence level. Our methodology will occasionally require subsidy from outside the system. We however demonstrate via simulation that, if the mechanism is repeated several times over independent instances, then past surplus can support the subsidy requirements. We also extend our results to situations where the strategic users' utility functions are not known to the allocating entity, a common situation in the context of internet users and other problems.

On the Decidability of Model-Checking Information Flow Properties

Current standard security practices do not provide substantial assurance about information flow security: the end-to-end behavior of a computing system. Noninterference is the basic semantical condition used to account for information flow security. In the literature, there are many definitions of noninterference: Non-inference, Separability and so on. Mantel presented a framework of Basic Security Predicates (BSPs) for characterizing the definitions of noninterference in the literature. Model-checking these BSPs for finite state systems was shown to be decidable in [8]. In this paper, we show that verifying these BSPs for the more expressive system model of pushdown systems is undecidable. We also give an example of a simple security property which is undecidable even for finite-state systems: the property is a weak form of non-inference called WNI, which is not expressible in Mantel’s BSP framework.

Snakes with Ellipse-Reproducing Property

We present a new class of continuously defined parametric snakes using a special kind of exponential splines as basis functions. We have enforced our bases to have the shortestpossible support subject to some design constraints to maximize efficiency. While the resulting snakes are versatile enough to provide a good approximation of any closed curve in the plane, their most important feature is the fact that they admit ellipses within their span. Thus, they can perfectly generate circular and elliptical shapes. These features are appropriate to delineate cross sections of cylindrical-like conduits and to outline blob-like objects. We address the implementation details and illustrate the capabilities of our snake with synthetic and real data.