Division Rules Research Articles

By the Fox or the Little Eagle: What Remains Not Regional?

By the Fox or the Little Eagle: What Remains Not Regional?

Contradictions in information technology mediated work in long-term care: An activity theoretic ethnographic study

BackgroundThe growing demand for aged care services coupled with a global shortage of skilled nursing staff has hindered long-term care facilities’ ability to provide necessary services to their residents. Healthcare information technology is expected to mitigate this challenge by streamlining nursing work, while also improving quality of care and productivity. ObjectivesThis study set out to examine how nurses and care workers work, the role of information technology (IT) in their work and what contradictions they face in their IT mediated work. DesignEthnographic study informed by six components of activity theory: subject, object, tool, rule, community and division of labor. SettingEight care units in two long-term care facilities in Australia. ParticipantsEleven staff from two long-term care facilities including registered nurses (n = 2), endorsed enrolled nurses (n = 5) and personal care workers (n = 4) participated in this study. MethodsParticipants were shadowed during morning shifts (6:30 am to 3:00 pm). A total of 24 morning shifts were observed over four months. Field notes were created based on observational data and informal interviews, in addition to document review. ResultsThrough the lens of activity theory, the work activity system of nurses and care workers in the long-term care facilities consisted of the subject (nurses and care workers), their object (resident care), tools used for work including IT, rules of work, community, and division of labor. These components interacted through work processes; therefore, a “process” component was added in the activity system. Special attention was given to the role of IT as the conduit of information in the work processes. Although IT helped track medication rounds, automated documentation and communication among the staff, it introduced contradictions. Seven contradictions involving IT were identified, including contradictions within the IT tool, between the IT tool and the object of work, between the subjects and documentation rules, between the work activity system using paper records and the system using IT, and between the activity system within the long-term care facility and the pharmacists’ work activity system outside the facility. ConclusionsActivity theory provided a theoretic framework to model the work activity system of nurses and care workers. Information technology played an important role in supporting information flow in this system, however it also caused contradictions.

Causation in Section 15 of the Property (Relationships) Act 1976: Analysing the New Zealand Supreme Court's "Working Assumption" - Is it Really Working?

Scott v Williams concerned s 15 of the Property (Relationships) Act 1976. In situations of significant economic disparity post-separation, s 15 empowers courts to depart from the default rule of equal division of relationship property to compensate the disadvantaged partner. Causation is one of the jurisdictional hurdles. Only disparity "because of" the division of functions (DOF) is compensable. Thus far, courts have adopted a strict causation approach by placing a costly and often unattainable evidential burden on claimants. Consequently, compensation has been beyond reach for deserving claimants. Responding to this disquiet, Scott's majority propounded a "working assumption" of causation in relationships conducted along traditional lines, where one party assumes primary responsibility for domestic duties and the other for income-earning. In such situations, Scott's majority would assume causation at jurisdiction and attribute the entire disparity to the DOF when determining the quantum award. This article concludes that the working assumption is a positive development in terms of jurisdiction. However, unlike the majority, it argues that striking the correct balance between s 15's "because of" wording and broad policy rationale requires an apportionment of causes at quantum. Furthermore, Scott's "traditional lines" and "non-career partner" terminology creates unnecessary confusion and should be eschewed.

Claim games for estate division problems

The estate division problem considers the issue of dividing an estate when the sum of entitlements is larger than the estate. This paper studies the estate division problem from a noncooperative perspective. The integer claim game introduced by O'Neill (1982) and extended by Atlamaz et al. (2011) is generalized by specifying a sharing rule to divide every interval among the claimants. We show that for all problems for which the sum of entitlements is at most twice the estate the existence of a Nash equilibrium is guaranteed for a general class of sharing rules. Moreover, the corresponding set of equilibrium payoffs is independent of which sharing rule in the class is used. Well-known division rules that always assign a payoff vector in this set of equilibrium payoffs are the adjusted proportional rule, the random arrival rule and the Talmud rule.

КЛАСИФІКАЦІЯ ДЕРЖАВНОГО ФІНАНСОВОГО КОНТРОЛЮ: ПРОБЛЕМИ ПОБУДОВИ ТА НАПРЯМКИ ВДОСКОНАЛЕННЯ

Стаття присвячена проблемам побудови класифікації державного фінансового контролю та шляхам їх подолання. Встановлено, що ключовими проблемами побудови класифікацій державного фінансового контролю є: відсутність мети; труднощі у виборі та застосуванні методів побудови класифікації; ототожнення державного фінансового контролю з іншими родинними поняттями; розпливчастість формулювань класифікаційних ознак та видів державного фінансового контролю; відсутність чіткого уявлення про основні правила та вимоги до побудови класифікації. Для вирішення зазначеного спектру проблем у роботі запропоновано склад організаційних заходів, поетапне виконання яких дасть змогу упорядкувати процес створення класифікації державного фінансового контролю, оцінити її якість та придатність; та сформульовано перелік ключових вимог до побудови класифікації державного фінансового контролю, які ґрунтуються на теорії множин та загальних правилах поділу понять у логіці, що дасть змогу уникнути подвійної класифікації та взаємного перекриття видів державного фінансового контролю за окремими ознаками.У роботі удосконалено класифікацію видів державного фінансового контролю шляхом модифікації існуючих та введення нових теоретично обґрунтованих і практично значущих ознак: «підпорядкованість об’єкта контролю суб’єкту контрольних дій», «рівень делегування контрольних повноважень», «ініціатива проведення контрольних заходів», «регулярність (періодичність) проведення контрольних заходів», «тривалість проведення контрольних заходів», «момент часу проведення контрольних заходів по відношенню до стадії здійснення господарських операцій на підконтрольному об’єкті» та «спосіб перевірки господарських операцій та бухгалтерської документації об’єкта контролю», що сприятиме упорядкуванню рівнів інформаційної значущості окремих видів державного фінансового контролю та розвитку його інструментарію для своєчасного і ефективного попередження порушень у сфері управління державними фінансовими ресурсами.

P systems with proteins: a new frontier when membrane division disappears

P systems with active membranes are usually defined as devices hierarchically structured that evolve through rewriting rules. These rules take the inspiration on the chemical reactions that happen within a cell and the role of both the inner and the plasma membranes as a “filter”, letting components pass or not. Classically, these systems are non-cooperative, that is, the left-hand side of the rules has at most one object. Using polarizations, dissolution or cooperation, these systems have been proved to have enough power to efficiently solve computationally hard problems, obtaining new complexity frontiers with respect to their non-cooperative counterparts. In this paper, division rules are interchanged by separation rules. While the first ones produce two new membranes and two new objects, duplicating the objects within the original one, separation rules distribute the objects of the original membrane into the two new created membranes, so no new objects are created in this way. To obtain new objects, a rule of the type $$[ \, a \rightarrow a^{2} \, ]$$ would be needed to accomplish that feature that seems to be necessary to obtain efficient solutions to NP-complete problems. Here, we present the limits when using separation rules instead of division rules.

Family Law Property Settlements: A Liberal Theoretical Framework for Law Reform

This article sets out a law reform framework for family property settlements, drawn expressly from a theoretical foundation. It applies Rawls’ theory of justice, which falls under a liberal philosophical umbrella. It explains the choice of a liberal theory for use in family property settlements and constituent elements of Rawls' theory of justice. Drawn from Rawls' theory, four foundation principles emerge. These are the rule of law (including transparency, consistency, and clear purpose), non-discrimination between spouses, recognition of financial disadvantage, and priority to the economic interests of children. From those principles, this article constructs the elements of a potential alternative property settlement law combining a rule of equal division while retaining judicial discretion for specific purposes.

Current Constitutional Changes in Poland Against the Background of Polish Political and Legal Traditions

The article is dedicated to the assessment of the current constitutional changes in Poland and viewing them to explain them in the context of Polish political and legal traditions. The adoption of the Constitution in 1997, based on the principles of political pluralism, democratic rule of law and division of powers, fished the process of the democratic transformation. However, in 2015, by way of statutory legislation and constitutional practice, in cooperation with the President, the new ruling forces started the process of the destruction of Polish constitutional system. A reference to the interwar period is an important motive for the ideology of the leader of the current ruling majority. On the other hand, the concept of the ‘political decision-making centre’ of the state located outside the state apparatus is anchored in the facade of constitutional solutions from the period of the socialist system.

Global Topological Order Emerges through Local Mechanical Control of Cell Divisions in the Arabidopsis Shoot Apical Meristem.

SummaryThe control of cell position and division act in concert to dictate multicellular organization in tissues and organs. How these processes shape global order and molecular movement across organs is an outstanding problem in biology. Using live 3D imaging and computational analyses, we extracted networks capturing cellular connectivity dynamics across the Arabidopsis shoot apical meristem (SAM) and topologically analyzed the local and global properties of cellular architecture. Locally generated cell division rules lead to the emergence of global tissue-scale organization of the SAM, facilitating robust global communication. Cells that lie upon more shorter paths have an increased propensity to divide, with division plane placement acting to limit the number of shortest paths their daughter cells lie upon. Cell shape heterogeneity and global cellular organization requires KATANIN, providing a multiscale link between cell geometry, mechanical cell-cell interactions, and global tissue order.

Role of Self-Loop in Cell-Cycle Network of Budding Yeast

Study of network dynamics is very active area in biological and social sciences. However, the relationship between the network structure and the attractors of the dynamics has not been fully understood yet. In this study, we numerically investigated the role of degenerate self-loops on the attractors and its basin size using the budding yeast cell-cycle network model. In the network, all self-loops negatively surpress the node (self-inhibition loops) and the attractors are only fixed points, i.e. point attractors. It is found that there is a simple division rule of the state space by removing the self-loops when the attractors consist only of point attractors. The point attractor with largest basin size is robust against the change of the self-inhibition loop. Furthermore, some limit cycles of period 2 appear as new attractor when a self-activation loop is added to the original network. It is also shown that even in that case, the point attractor with largest basin size is robust.

On the Shapley value and its application to the Italian VQR research assessment exercise

Abstract Research assessment exercises have now become common evaluation tools in a number of countries. These exercises have the goal of guiding merit-based public funds allocation, stimulating improvement of research productivity through competition and assessing the impact of adopted research support policies. One case in point is Italy's most recent research assessment effort, VQR 2011–2014 (Research Quality Evaluation), which, in addition to research institutions, also evaluated university departments, and individuals in some cases (i.e., recently hired research staff and members of PhD committees). However, the way an institution's score was divided, according to VQR rules, between its constituent departments or its staff members does not enjoy many desirable properties well known from coalitional game theory (e.g., budget balance, fairness, marginality). We propose, instead, an alternative score division rule that is based on the notion of Shapley value, a well known solution concept in coalitional game theory, which enjoys the desirable properties mentioned above. For a significant test case (namely, Sapienza University of Rome, the largest university in Italy), we present a detailed comparison of the scores obtained, for substructures and individuals, by applying the official VQR rules, with those resulting from Shapley value computations. We show that there are significant differences in the resulting scores, making room for improvements in the allocation rules used in research assessment exercises.

A characterization of the random arrival rule for bankruptcy problems

It is known that no additive division rules exist for bankruptcy problems. In this paper, we study a restricted additivity property which we call “feasible set additivity” (FSA). This property requires division rules to be additive when the set of feasible allocation vectors for a sum of problems does not include allocations that were unfeasible when considering each problem separately.In addition, we characterize the random arrival rule as the only division rule satisfying FSA and equal treatment of equals for two and three-agent cases. We also show that this characterization holds when the endowment is small enough in relation to the claims, while the question of whether it holds in general remains open.

Cell size control driven by the circadian clock and environment in cyanobacteria

How cells maintain their size has been extensively studied under constant conditions. In the wild, however, cells rarely experience constant environments. Here, we examine how the 24-h circadian clock and environmental cycles modulate cell size control and division timings in the cyanobacterium Synechococcus elongatus using single-cell time-lapse microscopy. Under constant light, wild-type cells follow an apparent sizer-like principle. Closer inspection reveals that the clock generates two subpopulations, with cells born in the subjective day following different division rules from cells born in subjective night. A stochastic model explains how this behavior emerges from the interaction of cell size control with the clock. We demonstrate that the clock continuously modulates the probability of cell division throughout day and night, rather than solely applying an on-off gate to division, as previously proposed. Iterating between modeling and experiments, we go on to identify an effective coupling of the division rate to time of day through the combined effects of the environment and the clock on cell division. Under naturally graded light-dark cycles, this coupling narrows the time window of cell divisions and shifts divisions away from when light levels are low and cell growth is reduced. Our analysis allows us to disentangle, and predict the effects of, the complex interactions between the environment, clock, and cell size control.

The Min Oscillator Defines Sites of Asymmetric Cell Division in Cyanobacteria during Stress Recovery.

When resources are abundant, many rod-shaped bacteria reproduce through precise, symmetric divisions. However, realistic environments entail fluctuations between restrictive and permissive growth conditions. Here, we use time-lapse microscopy to study the division of the cyanobacterium Synechococcus elongatus as illumination intensity varies. We find that dim conditions produce elongated cells whose divisions follow a simple rule: cells shorter than ∼8μm divide symmetrically, but above this length divisions become asymmetric, typically producing a short ∼3-μm daughter. We show that this division strategy is implemented by the Min system, which generates multi-node patterns and traveling waves in longer cells that favor the production of a short daughter. Mathematical modeling reveals that the feedback loops that create oscillatory Min patterns are needed to implement these generalized cell division rules. Thus, the Min system, which enforces symmetric divisions in short cells, acts to strongly suppress mid-cell divisions when S.elongatus cells are long.

Rapid Estimation of Stomatal Density and Stomatal Area of Plant Leaves Based on Object-Oriented Classification and Its Ecological Trade-Off Strategy Analysis

Leaf stomata are important structures used for exchanging matter between plants and the environment, and they are very sensitive to environmental changes. The method of efficiently extracting stomata, as well as measuring stomatal density and area, still lacks established techniques. This study focused on the leaves of Fraxinus pennsylvanica Marshall, Ailanthus altissima (Mill.) Swingle, and Sophora japonica (L.) Schott grown on different underlying surfaces and carried out an analysis of stomatal information using multiscale segmentation and classification recognition as well as microscopy images of leaf stomata via eCognition Developer 64 software (Munich, Germany). Using this method, we further analyzed the ecological significance of stomata. The results were as follows: (1) The best parameters of stomatal division and automatic extraction rules were scale parameter 120–125 + shape parameter 0.7 + compactness parameter 0.9 + brightness value 160–220 + red light band >95 + shape–density index 1.5–2.2; the accuracy of stomatal density and stomatal area using this method were 98.2% and 95.4%, respectively. (2) There was a very significant correlation among stomatal density, stomatal area, and stomatal shape index under different growing environments. When the stomatal density increased, the stomatal area lowered remarkably and the stomatal shape tended to be flat, suggesting that the plants had adopted some regulatory behavior at the stomatal level that might be an ecological trade-off strategy for plants to adapt to a particular growing environment. These findings provide a new approach and applicable parameters for stomata extraction, which can further calculate the stomatal density and stomatal area and deepen our understanding of the relationship between stomata and the environment. The study provides useful information for urban planners on the breeding and introduction of high-temperature-resistant urban plants.

Legal editor’s foreword

Welcome to volume 44 number 4 of the Commonwealth Law Bulletin. Established in 1974, the CLB is the flagship publication of the Rule of Law Division of the Commonwealth Secretariat and is published...

The Effect of Learners’ Knowledge of the Divisibility Rules on their Gaze Behaviour

The Department of Basic Education in South Africa has identified factorisation as a problem area in Mathematics teaching. Learners in earlier grades are exposed to mathematical tasks, involving concepts, such as factors of integers, fractions, equivalent fractions and prime numbers, that are easier to solve when the divisibility rules are applied. An experiment was designed to investigate the effect of learners’ knowledge and their application of the divisibility rules on their gaze behaviour. Seventy-eight learners in Grades 4–7 participated in an eye-tracking study where questions on divisibility were presented on a computer screen. Learners were expected to indicate whether a five-digit dividend was divisible by a divisor and provide reasons for their answers. Gaze behaviour (expressed as the percentage of total fixation time that was spent on each digit), along with learners’ verbal responses were used to determine whether a given divisibility rule was applied correctly. The findings show that learners apply different strategies to inspect the dividend when they know the divisibility rules and apply them correctly as opposed to when they do not know the rules and/or apply them incorrectly. It is argued that, since knowledge of the divisibility rules is a reliable predictor for gaze behaviour, gaze behaviour can in turn be used to assist teachers to identify a lack of knowledge and/or the incorrect application of the divisibility rules. Teachers can then cautiously intervene with revision to assist learners whose gaze behaviour indicates that they need assistance.

Resource-monotonicity and population-monotonicity in connected cake-cutting

In the classic cake-cutting problem (Steinhaus, 1948), a heterogeneous resource has to be divided among n agents with different valuations in a proportional way —giving each agent a piece with a value of at least 1∕n of the total. In many applications, such as dividing a land-estate or a time-interval, it is also important that the pieces are connected. We propose two additional requirements: resource-monotonicity (RM) and population-monotonicity (PM). When either the cake or the set of agents grows or shrinks and the cake is re-divided using the same rule, the utility of all remaining agents must change in the same direction. Classic cake-cutting protocols are neither RM nor PM. Moreover, we prove that no Pareto-optimal proportional division rule can be either RM or PM. Motivated by this negative result, we search for division rules that are weakly-Pareto-optimal — no other division is strictly better for all agents. We present two such rules. The relative-equitable rule, which assigns the maximum possible relative value equal for all agents, is proportional and PM. The so-called rightmost mark rule, which is an improved version of the Cut and Choose protocol, is proportional and RM for two agents.

항공위험물터미널의 안전관리 개선 방안에 관한 연구

The Incheon International Airport Terminal is equipped with a system that safely stores and transports imported and exported dangerous goods, and classified as a general cargo terminal and a dangerous goods terminal that complying with the technical standards for transportation of airborne dangerous goods. However, there are many potential dangers because difference of classification, division and storage rules of domestic dangerous goods regulation and International Air Transport Association(IATA), and management by various laws and regulations that are mixed. Therefore, study classification, division and storage rules of domestic and foreign air transport dangerous goods, discover problems and improvement points of The Incheon International Airport Terminal, and suggest for improvement of classification, division and storage rules of advanced dangerous goods.

항공위험물터미널의 안전관리 개선 방안에 관한 연구

The Incheon International Airport Terminal is equipped with a system that safely stores and transports imported and exported dangerous goods, and classified as a general cargo terminal and a dangerous goods terminal that complying with the technical standards for transportation of airborne dangerous goods. However, there are many potential dangers because difference of classification, division and storage rules of domestic dangerous goods regulation and International Air Transport Association(IATA), and management by various laws and regulations that are mixed. Therefore, study classification, division and storage rules of domestic and foreign air transport dangerous goods, discover problems and improvement points of The Incheon International Airport Terminal, and suggest for improvement of classification, division and storage rules of advanced dangerous goods.