EC Community Research Articles

“If we can’t advocate for ourselves, nobody else will”: Teacher agency during early childhood reform

The Victorian Government has engaged in multiple reforms in early childhood education and care, marketed to support quality education and increase investment in social reform. Initiatives accompanying reforms, aiming to assist teacher knowledge and skills. However, with each new initiative more pressures are placed on early childhood professionals. Throughout 2021 and 2022, a group of early childhood teachers employed in kindergartens across Melbourne participated in focus groups and interviews, sharing experiences of working with these initiatives and providing recommendations for their roll out. The Capability Approach has been used to analyse their experiences and recommendations to identify how teacher's agency was enabled and constrained. We identified three key recommendations for Governments to consider during current and future early childhood reforms to support an agentic profession. Specifically, focused support for teachers, an urgent need for increased consultation with the EC community and new opportunities for career progression were identified.

Fairness and equity in resource allocation and decision-making

Fairness and equity considerations in the allocation of social goods and the development of algorithmic systems pose new challenges for decision-makers and interesting questions for the EC community. We overview a list of papers that point towards emerging directions in this research area.

Human-Competitive awards 2018

The GECCO 2018 conference in Kyoto, Japan hosted the 15th annual "Humies" Awards. The first annual "Humies" competition was held at the 2004 Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference (GECCO-2004) in Seattle (USA). With its generous prize money (provided by John Koza) it has become a staple of the Genetic and Evolutioary Computing calendar. The Humies offer the opportunity to the EC community to showcase its best work, work, which by definition, is better than human.

MIT press welcomes Emma Hart as the new EiC of evolutionary computation

I think it has helped to take as many opportunities as possible to be actively involved in the EC community---this has enabled me to get to know a lot of people across the world. I've moved gradually from chairing workshops in smaller conferences to more prominent roles such as Track Chair at GECCO (Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference), Technical Chair at CEC (IEEE Congress on Evolutionary Computation), and General Chair of PPSN (International Conference on Parallel Problem Solving from Nature) in 2016. I also serve on the SIGEVO (ACM Special Interest Group on Genetic and Evolutionary Computation) board and edit the SIGEVO newsletter, which has helped raise my profile. Of course, acting as an Associate Editor of Evolutionary Computation for several years has been incredibly useful in getting a better understanding of how the journal works!

A Legal Historical Review of the EU Competition Rules

The article reviews the history of the European Union competition rules: Article 101 TFEU, in particular the historical and comparative context of the 'object' and 'effect' distinction; the possibility of a gap under Article 102 TFEU; the relationship between unfair competition and the prohibition of discrimination, and the broader meaning of distortions of competition. It reveals new insights based on the consideration of several historical documents starting with the Schuman Plan, the Founding Treaty establishing the EC Community of Steel and Coal (ECSC) and the negotiations of the Treaty of Rome.

Development of key soil health indicators for the Australian banana industry

To improve the sustainability and environmental accountability of the banana industry there is a need to develop a set of soil health indicators that integrate physical, chemical and biological soil properties. These indicators would allow banana growers, extension and research workers to improve soil health management practices. To determine changes in soil properties due to the cultivation of bananas, a paired site survey was conducted comparing soil properties under conventional banana systems to less intensively managed vegetation systems, such as pastures and forest. Measurements were made on physical, chemical and biological soil properties at seven locations in tropical and sub-tropical banana producing areas. Soil nematode community composition was used as a bioindicator of the biological properties of the soil. Soils under conventional banana production tended to have a greater soil bulk density, with less soil organic carbon (C) (both total C and labile C), greater exchangeable cations, higher extractable P, greater numbers of plant-parasitic nematodes and less nematode diversity, relative to less intensively managed plant systems. The organic banana production systems at two locations had greater labile C, relative to conventional banana systems, but there was no significant change in nematode community composition. There were significant interactions between physical, chemical and nematode community measurements in the soil, particularly with soil C measurements, confirming the need for a holistic set of indicators to aid soil management. There was no single indicator of soil health for the Australian banana industry, but a set of soil health indicators, which would allow the measurement of soil improvements should include: bulk density, soil C, pH, EC, total N, extractable P, ECEC and soil nematode community structure.

Where is evolutionary computation going? A temporal analysis of the EC community

Studying an evolving complex system and drawing some conclusions from it is an integral part of nature-inspired computing; being a part of that complex system, some insight can also be gained from our knowledge of it. In this paper we study the evolution of the evolutionary computation co-authorship network using social network analysis tools, with the aim of extracting some conclusions on its mechanisms. In order to do this, we first examine the evolution of macroscopic properties of the EC co-authorship graph, and then we look at its community structure and its corresponding change along time. The EC network is shown to be in a strongly expansive phase, exhibiting distinctive growth patterns, both at the macroscopic and the mesoscopic level.

Mainstreaming Equality in the European Union: Education, Training and Labour Market Policies

1. Introduction 2. The context 3. Conceptualising equal opportunities 4. The European Union and equal opportunities 5. Key issues in women's education and training in the UK 6. Skill shortages, women, and training for the new information technologies 7. EC community action programmes on education and training 8. The European Social Fund and LEONARDO DA VINCI 9. Competitiveness, social exclusion and the learning society: EO and the White Papers 10. Mainstreaming equality

Tax authority to the European Parliament?

In this paper we analyze whether countries of the EC community should plead for a decentralized system to finance the European funds rather than using a uniform tax imposed by the European parliament. The analysis is within a multistage game-theoretic framework in which the implication of the financing system of a confederation on the investment behavior in the respective states is considered. The paper is in the tradition of the literature which claims that from a view of global efficiency property-rights structures inducing ex-post efficient allocations may be worse than a system leading to an ex-post inefficient allocation. For this specific economic issue we elucidate the tradeoff between incentive effect and distributional policy. Especially we demonstrate that rather homogeneous countries benefit by installing a central tax institution. If the countries are rather heterogeneous, the countries may have opposing interests with respect to the answer of the question which is presented in the title. It is possible that the “high-developed” country prefers to install a central tax authority while the “low-developed” country does not. However, in general the reverse ordering which is more in line with our intuition results.

Interlaboratory study for the improvement of tributyltin determination in harbour sediment (rm 424)

AbstractFollowing two interlaboratory studies on tributyltin species (TBT) in water and TBT‐spiked sediment, the EC Community Bureau of Reference (BCR) (Measurements and Testing Programme) organized in 1992 an interlaboratory study on TBT in a harbour sediment (RM 424) to investigate sources of error possibly occurring in the analysis of a complicated matrix and to attempt to certify this material. The sediment was collected in the Sado Estuary (P), then carefully prepared, and its homogeneity and stability were verified. The low TBT content encountered in this material, and the high level of interferences, created difficulties with the techniques using hydride generation, whereas better agreement was obtained for other derivatization techniques with GC/FPD and GC/MS. This paper presents the results of the interlaboratory study. The reference value for TBT in this material is 20±5 ng g−1 (as TBT cation) and the indicative values for dibutyltin (DBT) and monobutyltin (MBT) are 53±19 ng g−1 (as DBT cation) and 257±54 ng g−1 (as MBT cation), respectively. Owing to the difficulties encountered, the reference material was not certified and is considered as a research material to be used for the evaluation of the performance of analytical techniques for the determination of low TBT levels in a difficult matrix.

Certified reference material (CRM 462) for the quality control of dibutyl‐ and tributyl‐tin determinations in coastal sediment

AbstractDeterminations of tributyltin (TBT) species, along with the degradation products mono‐ and dibutyltin (MBT and DBT), are routinely carried out by a number of laboratories to ascertain the level of organotin contamination of the marine enviroment, particularly in water, sediment and biota. In order to improve and control the quality of such analyses the EC Community Bureau of Reference, BCR (Measurements and Testing Programme), has organized two interlaboratory studies on TBT in water and TBT in a spiked sediment which were followed by a certification campaign for butyltins in a coastal sediment (CRM 462). This material was collected in the Arcachon Bay (France), then carefully prepared (controlled oven drying) and its homogeneity and long‐term stability were verified. This paper presents the certification work performed. The certified values for TBT and DBT are 70±14 ng g−1 (as TBT cation) and 128±16 ng g−1 (as DBT cation), respectively.

Development of standard measurement methods for essential properties of ultrasound therapy equipment

In a European collaborative project, partly funded by the EC Community Bureau of Reference (BCR), reliable methods of measurement for characterising the output and performance of ultrasound physiotherapy equipment have been developed. Experimental investigations using miniature hydrophones to scan the distribution of pressure in therapeutic fields have been undertaken in combination with theoretical simulations of the sound fields. Important parameters such as Beam Cross Sectional Area (BCSA), Effective Radiating Area (ERA) and Beam Nonuniformity Ratio (BNR) (characterising “Hot-spots”: potentially harmful to patients) have been redefined, and these new definitions have been incorporated in a revision of IEC 150:1963. The reproducibility and accuracy of measurements of ERA based on these procedures are presented in detail for a variety of therapy fields. Furthermore, it is shown that the value of the BNR for any treatment head should not exceed 8. Values of effective intensity derived using the new procedures are shown to be significantly higher than those obtained using FDA (USA) definitions, a conclusion in agreement with the theoretical expectations. Measurements on four treatment heads were used to validate the procedures of the proposed revised standard. Values of ERA derived by the two laboratories were in agreement to within 2.5%.

Accurate thermometry by means of industrial platinum resistance thermometers

The continuous improvement of the manufacturing techniques of sensing elements for industrial platinum resistance thermometers and assembling techniques makes it possible to use these thermometers for measurements to better than ±0.1°C in the temperature range 0 to 630°C. A selection test and a suitable calibration are necessary to achieve such a goal. The paper addresses both aspects on the grounds of the results obtained in an experiment carried out with the grants of the EC Community Bureau of Reference (BCR) and with the cooperation of most European manufacturers. As regards the calibration, care was exercised to detect hysteresis and to interpolate the results. The conclusion is that elements using wire coils in alumina capillaries do not show appreciable hysteresis when used in the temperature range 0 to 630°C, whereas they do when heated to 850°C. A least-square-fitted quadratic equation is suitable to achieve the goal of an uncertainty of ±0.06°C in the temperature range 0 to 630°C. The uncertainty decreases by more than a factor of two fitting a fourth-degree polynomial to the differences with respect to a reference table. No comparable result was obtained with the IPRTs used up to 850°C. A procedure is outlined to convert the IEC reference table in order to account for the new International Temperature Scale of 1990.

Co-operation between Higher Education and Industry in the European Community: An Overview

The need for more effective co-operation between higher education and industry was recognised by most West European governments during the 1980s. This article provides an overview of the measures initiated to strengthen the relationship. The aim has not been to discuss such measures in depth, but to outline the main themes to emerge and, where appropriate, draw attention to questions which remain unanswered. The paper draws heavilly for its factual information on reports prepared by national experts as part of the EC Community programme in Education and Training for Technology (COMETT). [1]

Regional policy in EC countries and Community Regional Policy: A note on problems and perspectives in developing depressed rural regions

Regional policy in EC countries and Community Regional Policy: A note on problems and perspectives in developing depressed rural regions Get access GIUSEPPE ORLANDO, GIUSEPPE ORLANDO University of RomeItalyUniversitá di Roma, via del Castro Laurenziano 91-00100 Roma, Italy Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar GERVASIO ANTONELLI GERVASIO ANTONELLI Universitá di Roma, via del Castro Laurenziano 91-00100 Roma, Italy Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar European Review of Agricultural Economics, Volume 8, Issue 2-3, 1981, Pages 213–246, https://doi.org/10.1093/erae/8.2-3.213 Published: 01 September 1981