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Experience with payments for ecosystem services (PES) highlights the effects of program design on landowner participation, impacting the program's ability to achieve environmental and, where applicable, social objectives. We conducted an exploratory study in western Panama at the initial stage of PES consideration to identify potential landowner interest in PES and factors that would affect landowner interest and eligibility. We report the results from a household survey of 344 farmers and ranchers (92% response rate). Eighty percent of the respondents expressed interest in PES participation. Respondents' stated interest was significantly related to farm size, income, age, land tenure, and previous involvement in conservation. We also found that alternative specifications for landowner eligibility requirements, targeting criteria, and other parameters could greatly affect landowners' ability to participate, most strongly for respondents lower in socioeconomic status. We provide a framework for exploring potential landowner interest in PES at the very first stage of program exploration, from which program design can be strategically advanced with realistic PES scenarios to explore efficient payment levels and projected environmental benefits. Our findings highlight the importance of making explicit trade-offs that result from alternative PES design choices in affecting landowners' interest and eligibility to participate. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Highlights: [•] A CF approach that establishes and exploits a two-faceted web of trust is proposed. [•] The approach mitigates the data sparsity problem and the cold start problem. [•] The approach captures the temporal nature of trust and interest. [•] The approach meets the required adaptivity of the CF system. [•] The experiment shows that the method usually outperforms other CF approaches. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: Literature about the relationship between attention and movement has reported mixed results regarding the effect that attention has on movement and in establishing the time course of the effect. We found a veering away effect from a distractor in a driving context with different input devices: a mouse and a joystick. By using a continuous temporal task, it was possible to establish the time course of the effect. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: Online learning may be particularly sensitive to self-regulatory trade-offs between maintaining interest and performance. Undergraduates in online or on-campus sections of the same course rated strategies used to motivate studying for the first exam, and interest after the first exam and at semester''s end. First exam and final class grades were obtained. We compared online and on-campus students in reported use of strategies to enhance the importance of studying-related outcomes (goals-defined) and to enhance the studying experience (experience-defined). The latter included an Internet-based strategy (i.e., making studying more enjoyable by exploring class web page). Online and on-campus students did not differ in reported use of outcome-focused strategies but online students were more likely to report exploring the class web page. For online students, greater exploration was associated with higher interest but lower first exam grades, which predicted final interest and grades. Implications for regulating interest and online learning are discussed. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: We develop a new decision making method by using induced aggregation operators in the Euclidean distance. We introduce a new aggregation operator called the induced Euclidean ordered weighted averaging distance (IEOWAD) operator. It is an aggregation operator that parameterizes a wide range of distance measures by using the induced OWA (IOWA) operator such as the maximum distance, the minimum distance, the normalized Euclidean distance (NED) and the weighted Euclidean distance (WED). The main advantage of this operator is that it is able to consider complex attitudinal characters of the decision maker by using order inducing variables in the aggregation of the Euclidean distance. As a result, we get a more general formulation of the Euclidean distance that considers the Euclidean distance as a particular case and a lot of other possible situations depending on the interests of the decision maker. We study some of its main properties giving special attention to the analysis of different particular types of IEOWAD operators. We apply this aggregation operator in a business decision making problem regarding the selection of investments. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: Over the last few years, advanced digital applications have become available to tourists. Some of these offer the possibility of creating personalised routes. This paper introduces a tourist expert system, called the City Trip Planner, that allows planning routes for five cities in Belgium. It is implemented as a web application that takes into account the interests and trip constraints of the user and matches these to a database of locations in order to predict personal interests. A fast and effective planning algorithm provides an on-the-fly suggestion of a personal trip for a requested number of days, taking into account opening hours of attractions and time for a (lunch) break. The expert system is discussed in detail. Usage statistics and user feedback demonstrate that it is highly appreciated by tourists. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: Community question answering (CQA) has recently become a popular social media where users can post questions on any topic of interest and get answers from enthusiasts. The variation of topics in questions and answers indicate the change of users’ interests over time. It can help users focus on the most popular products or events and track their changes by exploiting hot topics and analyzing the trend of a specific topic. In this paper, we present a hot topic detection and trend analysis system to capture hot topics in a CQA system and track their evolutions over time. Our system consists of hot term extraction, question clustering and trend analysis. Experimental results using datasets from Yahoo! Answers show that our system can discover meaningful hot topics. We also show that the evolution of topics over time can be accurately exploited by trend graphing. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: We investigate the substitution Frege () proof system and its relationship to extended Frege () in the context of modal and superintuitionistic (si) propositional logics. We show that is p-equivalent to tree-like , and we develop a “normal form” for -proofs. We establish connections between for a logic , and for certain bimodal expansions of . We then turn attention to specific families of modal and si logics. We prove p-equivalence of and for all extensions of , all tabular logics, all logics of finite depth and width, and typical examples of logics of finite width and infinite depth. In most cases, we actually show an equivalence with the usual system for classical logic with respect to a naturally defined translation. On the other hand, we establish exponential speed-up of over for all modal and si logics of infinite branching, extending recent lower bounds by P. Hrubeš. We develop a model-theoretical characterization of maximal logics of infinite branching to prove this result. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: This paper reviews three different types of challenges to adaptive control. The first group comprises challenges met in the subject’s development. They include difficulties associated with the MIT rule, bursting, the Rohr’s counterexample and unplanned instability in iterative identification and control. An understanding of these phenomena and mitigating strategies are now available. The second group comprises difficulties that are intrinsic to virtually any adaptive control algorithm, and that have frequently been overlooked. For example, if a plant is unknown, and a control objective is set, the objective may in practical terms be unachievable, and any adaptive control algorithm needs to deal with that possibility. The third group comprises some issues to which researchers are currently devoting significant attention, including multiple model adaptive control and model-free design. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Agricultural activities and associated land use change are a major contributor to global anthropogenic greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, making climate change mitigation in the agricultural sector all the more critical. However, farmers' willingness to adopt GHG abatement depends, to a large extent, on the financial implications of new practices. Climate change mitigation is unlikely to be adopted without external (financial, socio-cultural, or other) incentives. The research presented in this paper considers farmers' preferences for financing climate change mitigation practices through public crowdfunding. As a first study of its kind, we investigate farmers' attitudes towards climate change mitigation, knowledge of crowdfunding as a fundraising method, and interest in using public crowdfunding campaigns to finance on-farm mitigation practices. Based on a choice experiment survey with 443 Norwegian farmers, we show that knowledge about crowdfunding as an alternative finance method is generally low. Respondents who are interested in using crowdfunding prefer donation- or reward-based crowdfunding models that cover the full cost of mitigation over a loan-based model or campaigns that only fund a proportion of the costs. A financially secure farming business, previous exposure to crowdfunding, and a strong sense of responsibility to abate climate change are associated with higher farmers' interest in using crowdfunding. We find that farmers in Norway are hesitant to be publicly presented as recipients of crowdfunding, which suggests that crowdfunding is best set up as joint campaigns (e.g. with other farmers) that are run by intermediary organisations (rather than by individual farmers). Our findings highlight that, while opportunities to use crowdfunding as a fundraising method for agricultural climate change may be limited, properly designed campaigns can provide an effective instrument to engage certain groups of farmers in on-farm climate change mitigation. • Crowdfunding can be used to raise funds for agricultural climate change mitigation. • There is currently no research on farmers' interest in crowdfunding. • We conduct a choice experiment survey of Norwegian farmers. • About 25% of farmers would be interested in crowdfunding to finance mitigation measures. • Donation- or reward-based models, and campaigns that collaborate with other farmers are preferred. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: We consider Sinai’s walk in i.i.d. random scenery and focus our attention on a conjecture of Révész concerning the upper limits of Sinai’s walk in random scenery when the scenery is bounded from above. A close study of the competition between the concentration property for Sinai’s walk and negative values for the scenery enables us to prove that the conjecture is true if the scenery has “thin” negative tails and is false otherwise. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: The problem of fracture of the quasibrittle and brittle material such as glass when subject to indentation by a relatively rigid, square-ended uniform punch is considered, using classical energy principles. The strain energy needed to form a crack adjacent to the punch edge is found, and from this the load needed to initiate fracture given. The calculation is of practical interest in the design rating of bearing blocks supporting structural glass. Additionally, it implies also the potential possibility to set up a very simple and practical technique for evaluating some strength-related properties of materials such as the fracture toughness using specimens without macro-pre-existing cracks. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: Two harmonically excited systems having symmetrical rigid constraints are considered. Repeated impacts usually occur in these systems due to the rigid amplitude constraints. The impact forms occurring in two systems are different, i.e., the components of one system collide with each other, and one of components of the other system collides with rigid obstacles. Dynamics of these systems are studied with special attention to Neimark–Sacker bifurcations associated with several periodic-impact motions. Period-one double-impact symmetrical motions and associated Poincaré maps of two systems are derived analytically. Stability and local bifurcations of the period-one double-impact symmetrical motions are analyzed by using the Poincaré maps. Neimark–Sacker bifurcations associated with several periodic-impact motions are found by numerical simulation, and the corresponding routes from quasi-periodic impact motions to chaos are also stated. The influence of the clearance and excitation frequency on symmetrical double-impact periodic motion and bifurcations is analyzed. Studies show that the vibratory systems having symmetrical rigid amplitude constraints may exhibit complex and rich quasi-periodic impact behavior under different system parameter conditions. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: Concurrent and retrospective verbal protocol methods were used to collect thoughts from 18 participants during a manual handling task involving the repeated transfer of loads between locations at two tables. The effectiveness of qualitative and quantitative methods of analysing the reported information was tested in the study. A simple taxonomy was developed to investigate the content of the reports (including reports on postures and loads) and determine how the participants approached the task (whether they made plans, described actions or evaluated their completion of the task). References to posture were obtained in the verbal protocol reports, indicating that the participants had some awareness of their postures during parts of the task. There were similarities in the content of the concurrent and retrospective reports, but there were differences in the amount of detail between the methods and differences in the way the reports were constructed. There could be some scope for developing the quantitative analysis of the frequencies of references to classes of information, though this can only be recommended for concurrent reports on tasks of short duration. The analyses of qualitative data gave a deeper insight into the reports, such as identifying factors that can be important when planning to handle a load, or illustrating how participants can change their focus of attention periodically throughout the task. The relative strengths of the concurrent and retrospective methods are described, along with ideas for improving the quality of information collected in future studies. A number of potential problems with the interpretation of the reported information are explained. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: The cyclin-dependent kinase Cdk5 has attracted a great deal of attention both because of its roles in cell migration and axon patterning, and the extensive data implicating it in adult-onset neurodegeneration in mammals. Both the kinase activity and the biological effects of Cdk5 are absolutely dependent on association with an activating subunit, called p35. We show here that Drosophila lacking the Cdk5 activator, D-p35, display a wide range of defects in embryonic axon patterning. We further show that, while viable and fertile, p35 mutant adults display progressive, age-dependent loss of motor function and have a significantly shortened lifespan. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: The loci in many forensic multiplexes are often selected to avoid linked loci. However as the multiplices used increase in the number of loci represented instances are occurring of loci that are loosely linked. As yet little attention has been paid to the likely consequence of this. We begin the process of developing formulae to give the match probability at two linked loci for full and half siblings. The methodology proceeds from the previously published joint IBD states for two linked loci [B.K. Suarez, J. Rice, T. Reich, The generalized sib pair IBD distribution: its use in the detection of linkage, Ann. Hum. Genet. Lond. 42 (1978) 87; J.K. Haseman, R.C. Elston, The investigation of linkage between a quantitative trait and a marker locus, Behav. Genet. 2 (1972) 3–19]. Our formulation has the drawback of assuming linkage equilibrium. This assumption may be tenable as a first order approximation. We hope to stimulate work on developing better treatments. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: As more information becomes available on the Web, there has been a crescent interest in effective personalization techniques. Personal agents providing assistance based on the content of Web documents and the user interests emerged as a viable alternative to this problem. Provided that these agents rely on having knowledge about users contained into user profiles, i.e., models of user preferences and interests gathered by observation of user behavior, the capacity of acquiring and modeling user interest categories has become a critical component in personal agent design. User profiles have to summarize categories corresponding to diverse user information interests at different levels of abstraction in order to allow agents to decide on the relevance of new pieces of information. In accomplishing this goal, document clustering offers the advantage that an a priori knowledge of categories is not needed, therefore the categorization is completely unsupervised. In this paper we present a document clustering algorithm, named WebDCC (Web Document Conceptual Clustering), that carries out incremental, unsupervised concept learning over Web documents in order to acquire user profiles. Unlike most user profiling approaches, this algorithm offers comprehensible clustering solutions that can be easily interpreted and explored by both users and other agents. By extracting semantics from Web pages, this algorithm also produces intermediate results that can be finally integrated in a machine-understandable format such as an ontology. Empirical results of using this algorithm in the context of an intelligent Web search agent proved it can reach high levels of accuracy in suggesting Web pages. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: From a postmodernist perspective, it is possible to see crisis as a disruption in the dominant narrative that members of an organization''s power elite wish to perpetuate. The crisis itself often evolves into a multiplicity of competing narratives. Much standard advice given by crisis communication experts—such as to tell the truth, choose a single spokesperson, and establish a crisis command center to regain control of the crisis—sounds suspiciously like the self-protecting actions favored by the power elite within the organization. A postmodernist approach might instead favor mitigation of suffering, attention to dissent, and a polyvocal organizational response. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

During the past 25 years, attention has turned from the morphologic aspects of skin development which are well known, to the mechanisms that control this development. Although our knowledge of these mechanisms is still limited, some avenues of investigation appear promising, e.g., epithelial-mesenchymal interactions, cell communication and other cell surface phenomena, and certain aspects of the proliferative process. In the analysis of what controls growth and differentiation, skin, as the experimental system, has played a major role. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]