Transparent Implementation Research Articles

Cheddar: analysis and visualisation of ecological communities in R

Summary There has been a lack of software available to ecologists for the management, visualisation and analysis of ecological community and food web data. Researchers have been forced to implement their own data formats and software, often from scratch, resulting in duplicated effort and bespoke solutions that are difficult to apply to future analyses and comparative studies. We introduce Cheddar – an R package that provides standard, transparent implementations of a wide range of food web and community‐level analyses and plots, focussing on ecological network data that are augmented with estimates of body mass and/or numerical abundance. The package allows analysis of individual communities, as well as collections of communities, allowing examination of changes in structure through time, across environmental gradients, or due to experimental manipulations. Several commonly analysed food web data sets are included and used in worked examples. This is the first time these important features have been combined in a single package that helps improve research efficiency and serves as a unified framework for future development.

A Stochastic Portfolio Perspective on Utilizing Active and Passive Fund Management

The proliferation of liquid, transparent, and inexpensive index-based implementation means that investors of nearly all types of investors, individual and institutional, face a persistent implementation question: how much passive and how much active?Placing active fund management in the same framework of uncertainty that asset allocators utilize for other portfolio decisions provides a surprising and enlightening answer to the active vs. passive debate that does not match typical discourse on the matter. Instead of a binary “all or none” answer, reasonable (and even optimistic or pessimistic) expectations for active management imply a balanced implementation approach. Only extreme assumptions (e.g. very positive or negative levels of active return, very short or long time horizons) indicate a binary choice.

Transparent Synchronization Protocols for Compositional Real-Time Systems

Hierarchical scheduling frameworks (HSFs) provide means for composing complex real-time systems from well-defined, independently analyzed components. To support resource sharing in two-level HSFs, three synchronization protocols based on the stack resource policy (SRP) have recently been presented for single-processor execution platforms, i.e., HSRP, SIRAP, and BROE. This paper presents a transparent implementation of these three protocols side-by-side in an HSF-enabled real-time operating system. Transparent synchronization interfaces make it possible to select a protocol during integration time based on its relative strengths. A timing interface describes the required budget to execute a component on a shared platform and an accessor's maximum critical-section execution time to global shared resources. These resources are arbitrated based on the available budget of the accessing task. We enable this explicit synchronization of virtual time with global time by means of a novel virtual-timer mechanism. Moreover, we investigate system overheads caused by each synchronization protocol, so that these can be included in the system analysis. Based on the analytical and implementation overheads of each protocol, we present guidelines for the selection of a synchronization protocol during system integration. Finally, we show that unknown task-arrival times considerably complicate an efficient implementation of SIRAP's self-suspension mechanism. We briefly discuss the implementation complexity caused by these arrivals for bandwidth-preserving servers, e.g., deferrable servers and BROE.

Bridging the Gap Between Validation and Implementation of Non-Animal Veterinary Vaccine Potency Testing Methods.

Simple SummaryMany vaccines are tested for quality in experiments that require the use of large numbers of animals in procedures that often cause significant pain and distress. Newer technologies have fostered the development of vaccine quality control tests that reduce or eliminate the use of animals, but the availability of these newer methods has not guaranteed their acceptance by regulators or use by manufacturers. We discuss a strategic approach that has been used to assess and ultimately increase the use of non-animal vaccine quality tests in the U.S. and U.K.In recent years, technologically advanced high-throughput techniques have been developed that replace, reduce or refine animal use in vaccine quality control tests. Following validation, these tests are slowly being accepted for use by international regulatory authorities. Because regulatory acceptance itself has not guaranteed that approved humane methods are adopted by manufacturers, various organizations have sought to foster the preferential use of validated non-animal methods by interfacing with industry and regulatory authorities. After noticing this gap between regulation and uptake by industry, we began developing a paradigm that seeks to narrow the gap and quicken implementation of new replacement, refinement or reduction guidance. A systematic analysis of our experience in promoting the transparent implementation of validated non-animal vaccine potency assays has led to the refinement of our paradigmatic process, presented here, by which interested parties can assess the local regulatory acceptance of methods that reduce animal use and integrate them into quality control testing protocols, or ensure the elimination of peripheral barriers to their use, particularly for potency and other tests carried out on production batches.

Stable Charge-Transfer Doping of Transparent Single-Walled Carbon Nanotube Films

Single walled carbon nanotube (SWCNT) films are candidates for use as transparent electrodes, especially where low-cost, flexible materials are desired. Chemical doping is a critical step in fabricating conductive films as doping substantially decreases the sheet resistance within SWCNTs and at tube−tube junctions. Despite the importance of chemical doping, surprisingly little effort is devoted to developing doping chemistry. Concentrated acid solutions are typically used to dope SWCNT films. Although they are effective at reducing the sheet resistance of SWCNT films, this method is plagued by two critical drawbacks. The first is that concentrated acid baths, such as HNO3, are extremely harsh and will damage virtually any device technology. Second, the film resistance is unstable and rises dramatically over time. These drawbacks make implementation of SWCNT transparent, conducting films in technological applications extremely difficult. Here, we report an alternative doping scheme that utilizes a single-e...

Dynamic Transparency, Prudential Justice, and Corporate Transformation: Becoming Socially Responsible in the Internet Age

This article brings together two concepts of ethical practice into a single construct that describes how modern corporations can responsibly meet the information needs of their stakeholder networks in a way that promotes both corporate self-interest and widespread distributive justice. Internet technology is providing corporations with transformative tools that permit and encourage the exercise of social responsibility through “dynamic transparency.” “Prudential justice” is a concept representing a set of values that can provide an ethical justification for corporate implementation of dynamic transparency. This article argues that by using dynamic transparency in accordance with the provisions of prudential justice, firms can avoid many crises and manipulative or deceptive information transfers, can fulfill their responsibilities regarding stakeholders’ informational rights, and can undergo an organizational culture transformation that allows them to move from pure corporate egoism to a beneficial mix of self-interest and corporate social responsibility.

Corporate dynamic transparency: the new ICT-driven ethics?

The term "corporate transparency" is frequently used in scholarly discussions of business ethics and corporate social responsibility (CSR); however, it remains a volatile and imprecise term, often defined incompletely as "information disclosure" accomplished through standardized reporting. Based on the results of empirical studies of organizational behaviors, this paper identifies a new set of managerial practices based on the use of information and communication technologies (ICT) and particularly Internet-based tools. These practices are resulting in what can be termed "dynamic transparency." ICT allows for an informational environment characterized by two-way exchange between corporations and their stakeholders, which fosters a more collaborative marketplace. It is proposed that such dynamic information sharing, conducted by means of ICT, drives organizations to display greater openness and accountability, and more transparent operations, which benefit both the corporations and their constituents. One of the most important outcomes that will accrue to consumers and other individuals is the "right to know," especially about corporate strategies and activities that might directly affect their quality of life. This paper demonstrates that dynamic transparency is more desirable and more effective than the more common "static transparency" where firms' information disclosure is one-way, usually in response to government regulation. We present three ethical arguments to justify the implementation by business firms of dynamic transparency and demonstrate that their doing so is related to CSR and to augment and complement stakeholder engagement and dialogue. The paper concludes with a summary of the possible limits to and the problems involved in the implementation of dynamic transparency for corporations, and suggests some strategies to counter them.

WS‐Naming: location migration, replication, and failure transparency support for Web Services

AbstractNaming transparencies, i.e. abstracting the name and binding of the entity being used from the endpoints that are actually doing the work, are used in distributed systems to simplify application development by hiding the complexity of the environment. In this paper, we demonstrate how to apply traditional distributed systems naming and binding techniques in the Web Services realm. Specifically, we show how the WS‐Naming profile on WS‐Addressing Endpoint References can be used for identity, transparent failover, replication, and migration. We begin with a discussion of the traditional distributed systems transparencies. We then present four detailed use cases. Next, we provide a brief background on both WS‐Addressing and WS‐Naming. Finally, we show how WS‐Naming can be used to provide transparent implementations of our use cases. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Therapeutic ingredients in helping session episodes with observer-rated low and high empathic attunement: a content analysis of client and therapist postsession perceptions in three cases

The authors investigated the relationship between helping session episodes with different levels of empathic attunement and the therapeutic ingredients as experienced by client and therapist. Based on their theoretical micromodel of the empathic interaction process, the authors hypothesized that, with an increasing level of empathic attunement, an increase is expected in depth of exploration, experiential insight, empathy, and relational attitudes, which are interwoven with empathy; a decrease is expected for therapeutic ingredients that are an implementation of genuineness and transparency. As for exploration, insight, genuineness, and transparency, the model is reliably confirmed. As for experiencing empathy and the interwoven relational categories, no univocal differences are found. On the basis of their findings, the authors indicate that there seems to be no specific class of empathic helping episodes but that the different levels of empathic attunement represent different phases within the global empathic interaction process.

Implementation of the Transparency Directive--room for variations across the EEA

Implementation of the Transparency Directive--room for variations across the EEA

Neural-Network-Based Contact Force Observers for Haptic Applications

In the majority of robotic and haptic applications, including manipulation and human-robot interaction, contact force needs to be monitored and controlled. Transparent implementation of bilateral teleoperation or haptic controllers necessitates the exchange of operator and environment contact forces. This requires the use of expensive commercially available force/torque sensors, which are rather bulky, are vulnerable to impact forces, and increase system inertia and compliance. An alternative solution is the use of dynamic force observers, which estimate external forces using system dynamic model. However, due to the uncertainties in system dynamic structure and parameters, these model-based observers do not produce accurate force estimates, and often create a dynamic lag that may cause bandwidth limitation and instability. This paper proposes two neural-network-based force/torque observers that do not require a system dynamic model. The observers can estimate human hand force and environment contact force with up to 98.3% accuracy in the sense of mean-square error, and with negligible dynamic lag. The performance of the proposed observers are extensively analyzed in separate human-robot and robot-environment experimental settings, and in a two-channel bilateral teleoperation control loop with multiple runs with two Planar Twin-Pantograph haptic devices

Overseas nurses' experiences of equal opportunities in the NHS in England

To explore the experiences of overseas black and minority ethnic nurses in the National Health Service (NHS) in the south of England. Semi-structured in-depth interviews were conducted with 12 overseas black and minority ethnic nurses. All interviews were taped, transcribed verbatim and analysed using thematic analysis. All transcripts were read and re-read to elicit general themes. Qualitative data analysis was undertaken using Van Manen framework and this enabled a number of themes to be identified that were part of overseas black and minority ethnic nurses' experience, however, two main themes would be discussed in this study. Firstly, unequal opportunities in career advancement and secondly, unequal opportunities for skill development and training. Both themes affected overseas nurses chances of promotion in the NHS. RESEARCH LIMITATION/IMPLICATIONS: The study has identified a notably gap in the implementation of equal opportunity policies and suggests that a more transparent implementation of such policies is needed in the NHS in the UK where this study was conducted. Additionally, more research is needed to determine whether overseas nurses in other areas experience similar problems. The findings of this study could encourage managers to re-examine their equal opportunity policies in the light of these findings. Although this study has explored overseas nurses experiences, the findings cannot be generalised to the wider population. ORIGINALITY VALUE: The differences experienced by overseas nurses in relation to career opportunities and skill development and training.

Participatory Integrated Assessment in local level planning

The topic is introduced by a short but critical discussion of criteria and needs of Participatory Integrated Assessment (PIA) and participatory local planning. This paper depicts differences of participation in Integrated Assessment and in local level planning but provides also conditions and ideas how PIA can be used for local planning including implementation. A small review of PIA and participation in planning illustrates the relevance of PIA in a knowledge economy trying to adopt principles of good governance. A better incorporation of participatory research into local level planning seems to be crucial. The applicability of PIA in practices leading to participatory monitoring and evaluations are discussed. The outcomes of the paper show that possibilities exist for integrating PIA and participatory monitoring and evaluation into the implementation of the European Water Framework Directive (WFD). PIA adds local information to water management planning and supports individual learning processes. The setting up of such a monitoring and evaluation system may contribute towards a transparent implementation of the WFD, it enhances commitment of citizens towards local government planning and eventually it increases self-determination of citizens, a major objective of good governance.

NHS obtaining IS value via ASP strategy

Obtaining values from Information Technology (IT) is important for organisations to survive and flourish in the highly competitive economy of the 21st century. Especially when that organisation is the UK's National Health Service (NHS), to whom a heavy investment of about £7 bn is being injected to cope with pressures exerted within a more demanding population with constantly evolving healthcare needs. Healthcare organisations that create values through IT will be the winners in the 21st century. The authors show NHS looking to obtain values from Application Service Provision (ASP) through induced uniformity of configurations across the health sector, which might strengthen the mediating position of the NHS Information Authority and how well the technology is suited to the medical practitioners'. Findings from their study (funded by EPSRC) shows the need for a more transparent implementation for the Primary Service Provision (PSP) sceptics to assess its value paradox.

User transparency: a fully sequential programming model for efficient data parallel image processing

AbstractAlthough many image processing applications are ideally suited for parallel implementation, most researchers in imaging do not benefit from high‐performance computing on a daily basis. Essentially, this is due to the fact that no parallelization tools exist that truly match the image processing researcher's frame of reference. As it is unrealistic to expect imaging researchers to become experts in parallel computing, tools must be provided to allow them to develop high‐performance applications in a highly familiar manner. In an attempt to provide such a tool, we have designed a software architecture that allows transparent (i.e. sequential) implementation of data parallel imaging applications for execution on homogeneous distributed memory MIMD‐style multicomputers. This paper presents an extensive overview of the design rationale behind the software architecture, and gives an assessment of the architecture's effectiveness in providing significant performance gains. In particular, we describe the implementation and automatic parallelization of three well‐known example applications that contain many fundamental imaging operations: (1) template matching; (2) multi‐baseline stereo vision; and (3) line detection. Based on experimental results we conclude that our software architecture constitutes a powerful and user‐friendly tool for obtaining high performance in many important image processing research areas. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Regulatory Transparency in OECD Countries: Overview, Trends and Challenges

The concept of transparency has rapidly gained prominence in Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries. It is particularly associated with the rise of the governance agenda, as transparency is a core governance value. The regulatory activities of government constitute one of the main contexts within which transparency must be assured. There is a strong public demand for greater transparency, which is substantially related to the rapid increase in number and influence of nongovernmental organisations (NGOs) or ‘civil society groups’, as well as to increasingly well educated and diverse populations.Transparency initiatives now form a major part of the regulatory policies of many OECD countries: in 2000, 20 of the 30 OECD member countries had government‐wide transparency policies (OECD 2002a). Many OECD countries have now made substantial investments in improved regulatory transparency, and have reaped important gains in terms of regulatory quality, legitimacy and accountability.However, despite these gains, the results have in many cases fallen short of expectations. As well, the implementation of transparency has itself led to new stresses and problems within the regulatory process. This article considers why regulatory transparency is important and points to some of the main trends in improving regulatory transparency. It also considers a range of problems and issues that arise and suggests means of resolving these.

Justice and Reasonable Care in Negligence Law

The academic literature generally assumes that an aggregate-risk-utility test is employed to determine whether conduct was reasonable or negligent. This aggregate-risk-utility test is a transparent implementation of the basic impartiality and aggregation principles of utilitarianism and the most popular (Kaldor-Hicks) interpretation of economic efficiency. Thus, the test's assumed prevalence as the criterion of reasonableness in negligence law has been highlighted by legal economists as confirmation of the utilitarian efficiency foundations of tort law, while those, including Ronald Dworkin, who think that the law, including tort law, is or should be grounded on principles of justice have sought to demonstrate that, contrary to appearances, the aggregate-risk-utility test is consistent with and best explained and justified by the principles of justice. As this article discusses, the attempts to explain and justify the aggregate-risk-utility test as an elaboration of the principles of justice have all failed. The leading justice theorists all now acknowledge, indeed insist, that the aggregate-risk-utility test cannot be reconciled with the principles of justice. The attempts to affect such a reconciliation were and are based on a fundamental error: treating the basic principles of utilitarianism, which are in direct conflict with the equal-freedom norm that underlies the principles of justice, as principles of justice. These attempts were motivated by a misunderstanding of actual negligence law. As is discussed in related articles (also available on SSRN), the aggregate-risk-utility test, although pervasive in the secondary literature and mentioned by a small minority of courts, is almost never used by the courts to decide whether particular conduct was negligent. Instead, the courts employ, explicitly or implicitly, a number of different criteria, depending on the rights and relationships among the parties, that are based on the principles of justice. Why, then, is the aggregate-risk-utility test pervasive in the secondary literature? The secondary literature is primarily the province of legal academics. The aggregate-risk-utility test of negligence was invented by legal academics and inserted in the first Restatement during the first part of the twentieth century, when utilitarianism was a popular moral and political theory, and its adoption in the Restatement assured its prominence in the secondary literature, although it continued to be infrequently mentioned and almost never used by the courts. Although it is now rarely noted, the risk-utility test in the first and second Restatements was significantly qualified. For example, it emphasized socially valuable rather than purely private benefits, and its drafters seemed to view it as a prohibitive-cost test, which requires risks to be reduced to the maximum extent feasible without significantly impairing (much greater) social benefits, rather than a literal aggregate-risk-utility test. Unfortunately, these qualifications have all been abandoned in the draft Restatement Third, which, despite widespread criticism, for the first time sets forth an explicit, reductionist, aggregate-cost-benefit test of negligence and then implausibly claims that this transparently utilitarian test is consistent with the principles of justice.

Justice and Reasonable Care in Negligence Law

The academic literature generally assumes that an aggregate-risk-utility test is employed to determine whether conduct was reasonable or negligent. This aggregate-risk-utility test is a transparent implementation of the basic impartiality and aggregation principles of utilitarianism and the most popular (Kaldor-Hicks) interpretation of economic efficiency. Thus, the test's assumed prevalence as the criterion of reasonableness in negligence law has been highlighted by legal economists as confirmation of the utilitarian efficiency foundations of tort law, while those, including Ronald Dworkin, who think that the law, including tort law, is or should be grounded on principles of justice have sought to demonstrate that, contrary to appearances, the aggregate-risk-utility test is consistent with and best explained and justified by the principles of justice. As this article discusses, the attempts to explain and justify the aggregate-risk-utility test as an elaboration of the principles of justice have all failed. The leading justice theorists all now acknowledge, indeed insist, that the aggregate-risk-utility test cannot be reconciled with the principles of justice. The attempts to affect such a reconciliation were and are based on a fundamental error: treating the basic principles of utilitarianism, which are in direct conflict with the equal-freedom norm that underlies the principles of justice, as principles of justice. These attempts were motivated by a misunderstanding of actual negligence law. As is discussed in related articles (also available on SSRN), the aggregate-risk-utility test, although pervasive in the secondary literature and mentioned by a small minority of courts, is almost never used by the courts to decide whether particular conduct was negligent. Instead, the courts employ, explicitly or implicitly, a number of different criteria, depending on the rights and relationships among the parties, that are based on the principles of justice. Why, then, is the aggregate-risk-utility test pervasive in the secondary literature? The secondary literature is primarily the province of legal academics. The aggregate-risk-utility test of negligence was invented by legal academics and inserted in the first Restatement during the first part of the twentieth century, when utilitarianism was a popular moral and political theory, and its adoption in the Restatement assured its prominence in the secondary literature, although it continued to be infrequently mentioned and almost never used by the courts. Although it is now rarely noted, the risk-utility test in the first and second Restatements was significantly qualified. For example, it emphasized socially valuable rather than purely private benefits, and its drafters seemed to view it as a prohibitive-cost test, which requires risks to be reduced to the maximum extent feasible without significantly impairing (much greater) social benefits, rather than a literal aggregate-risk-utility test. Unfortunately, these qualifications have all been abandoned in the draft Restatement Third, which, despite widespread criticism, for the first time sets forth an explicit, reductionist, aggregate-cost-benefit test of negligence and then implausibly claims that this transparently utilitarian test is consistent with the principles of justice.

P-CAM: a framework for parallel complex systems simulations

History has taught that the design and implementation of an efficient parallel simulation program is a tedious and error prone process. Methods that can circumvent the parallelization steps in this process are usually warmly welcomed by parallel simulation architects. In this paper we introduce a Parallel Cellular Automata Modeling environment (P-CAM) for doing spatial load balancing on arbitrary connected grids or task graphs. This environment adopts an object oriented application framework in which we can instantiate a variety of simulation problems. We have implemented a kernel, based on this framework, which facilitates dynamic load balancing and supports process migration and irregular interprocess communication patterns. The design of the kernel enables a transparent implementation of complex systems models onto arbitrary parallel computer systems. We show that the design of a parallel simulation program can be assisted by using the P-CAM kernel.

Intrusion Detection: Making the Business Case

In the current atmosphere of large- scale corporate mergers and acquisitions, downsizing and eliminating redundant operations has become the norm. Couple this with massive one-time expenditures on EMU and the year 2000, the amount spent on mitigating information risk has grown in overall size but has shrunk in the area of data security. Information risk management, a term coined in the early '90s, has had to become leaner and more client-focused, implementing only what is absolutely necessary. This has left IT managers hard-pressed to cost-justify every dollar spent. With IT budgets in the millions and even billions for larger financial services companies, decisions regarding specific technology expenses can have far-reaching implications. Deploying a tool or technology across the enterprise must be thought through carefully in terms of its hard and soft costs and benefits. Thorough analysis up front can mean a faster approval cycle for the product and a more transparent implementation. The key is to present all the analysis in business terms.