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We present a framework for mobile service robot task planning and execution, based on the use of probabilistic verification techniques for the generation of optimal policies with attached formal performance guarantees. Our approach is based on a Markov decision process model of the robot in its environment, encompassing a topological map where nodes represent relevant locations in the environment, and a range of tasks that can be executed in different locations. The navigation in the topological map is modeled stochastically for a specific time of day. This is done by using spatio-temporal models that provide, for a given time of day, the probability of successfully navigating between two topological nodes, and the expected time to do so. We then present a methodology to generate cost optimal policies for tasks specified in co-safe linear temporal logic. Our key contribution is to address scenarios in which the task may not be achievable with probability one. We introduce a task progression function and present an approach to generate policies that are formally guaranteed to, in decreasing order of priority: maximize the probability of finishing the task; maximize progress towards completion, if this is not possible; and minimize the expected time or cost required. We illustrate and evaluate our approach with a scalability evaluation in a simulated scenario, and report on its implementation in a robot performing service tasks in an office environment for long periods of time.

Introduction: Osteotomy of the distal femur (DFO) to address symptomatic degeneration in the knee is a well-established procedure with good results reported in the literature . Broadly the osteotomy is based on either an opening or a closing wedge alignment technique. Several patient related parameters including age, gender, body mass index (BMI) and surgical factors such as osteotomy site, gap, and fixation technique amongst others have been demonstrated to influence the outcome of DFO. Preoperative planning based on imaging is vital to assess the type and extent of deformity correction to be undertaken in order to achieve optimal alignment. Computer-assisted surgery (CAS) has been extensively used as dynamic intraoperative alignment aid in knee arthroplasty providing good outcomes. Several investigators in the current literature have utilised computer navigation in proximal tibial osteotomy and reported improved accuracy in realising the planned alignment. However there is paucity of studies reporting the long-term outcomes of distal femur lateral opening-wedge (DFLOWO) using computer navigation. Through our study we aim to report on the long-term outcomes and survivorship of computer navigated DFLOWO. Hypotheses: We hypothesize that use of computer navigation will improve the survivorship of distal femoral osteotomy. Methods: Ethics committee approval was obtained for this study. Due consent was taken for the use of data from all the patients for this study. A retrospective analysis of prospectively collected data for patients with lateral compartment arthritis who underwent navigated lateral opening wedge distal femoral osteotomy from December 2006 to November 2012 was performed. Consecutive patients of lateral compartment knee arthrosis aged less than 55 years who failed to respond to conservative management were included in the study. Patients who had end stage arthritis with fixed flexion deformity of > 15 degrees, < 90 degrees of knee flexion or who did not consent for the procedure were excluded. Included patients were operated by one of the three senior surgeons attached to our research institute. The included patients were followed up with clinical and radiological evaluation at regular intervals (6 weeks / 6 months / 1 year / 5years). The final follow-up for the included patients was done using email questionnaire of the patient reported outcomes measures. Conversion to either UKA or TKA during the follow-up was the end point. Additionally, this information was verified from the Australian Orthopaedic Association National Joint Replacement Registry (AOANJRR) database Results: 19 DFLOWO with mean age of 46.6 ± 6.5 years formed the study cohort. The coronal alignment was corrected from a mean of 7.1º (2-11º) valgus to mean 2.1º (0.5º - 3º) varus. IKDC scores improved from mean of 39 pre-op to 53 at the mean long-term follow-up of 9.1 years. KOOS scores at the long-term follow-up were pain-71, symptoms-56, activities of daily living-82, sports and recreation-59, quality of life-43. Survivorship of DFLOWO was 78.9% at a follow-up of 9.1 years. Presence of ≥ grade 2 ICRS cartilage degeneration in the medial compartment of knee and >7⁰ pre-operative valgus deformity strongly correlated with conversion to TKA at the long-term follow-up (r - 0.66). Conclusion: Computer navigated DFLOWO has satisfactory clinical outcomes and 79% survivorship in long-term follow-up. Presence of more than ICRS ≥ grade 2 degenerative changes in the medial compartment of knee with > 7 degrees pre-operative valgus deformity negatively affects the survivorship of DFLOWO in the long-term follow-up.

Following over a century of development, Australian common law concerning the comparable sales method of valuation for land and property, within the context of compulsory acquisition and rating statutes, had evolved to provide a focus on individual elements within the method but did not provide a clear sequential process. However, three decisions of the NSW Land and Environment Court in 2012, which are described and critically analysed in this paper, formed a metamorphosis of the common law by clearly setting out the legal principles of the comparable sales method of valuation while leaving the valuation practice to expert witness valuers. With relatively little research undertaken into the legal aspects of the valuation of land and property, this paper forms an original contribution to the literature through the critical analysis and discussion of recent court decisions. Given the significant imminent development of major infrastructure projects in Australia, likely to necessitate the extensive compulsory acquisition of land and property, such metamorphosis is contended to be timely and potentially relevant to other common law jurisdictions having similar compulsory acquisition statutory regimes and land and property valuation practices. Refereed/Peer-reviewed

Summary The life span of persons with HIV has been greatly extended over the past 30 years due to novel therapies. In the developed world and urban settings, this results in a lifespan rivaling the lifespan of a person without HIV. A retrospective study was conducted on 459 patients of an urban, academic medical center who died between 2005 and 2013 in a medium-sized US city. Using the established Cause of Death Project (CoDe) protocol, we measured multiple factors including comorbidities, risk behaviours, contributing and underlying causes of death. This study is one of the few US-based studies using this validated protocol. Among the deaths, 25.9% were sudden and 15.2% were unexpected. Almost one-fifth were related to AIDS-related infections; 47.5% related to non-AIDS causes; with the remainder unknown. Statistically significant increases in CD4 counts and decreasing viral loads were observed over the study period. There were no statistically significant differences observed by HIV risk behaviour, race, gender, age at death, or on antiretrovirals at death. In support of the existing literature, improved HIV management appears to reduce the AIDS-related attributable death among patients observed in this study.

Background: Qualitative methods analyze contextualized, unstructured data. These methods are time and cost intensive, often resulting in small sample sizes and yielding findings that are complicated to replicate. Integrating natural language processing (NLP) into a qualitative project can increase efficiency through time and cost savings; increase sample sizes; and allow for validation through replication. This study compared the findings, costs, and time spent between a traditional qualitative method (Investigator only) to a method pairing a qualitative investigator with an NLP function (Investigator +NLP). Methods: Using secondary data from a previously published study, the investigators designed an NLP process in Python to yield a corpus, keywords, keyword influence, and the primary topics. A qualitative researcher reviewed and interpreted the output. These findings were compared to the previous study results. Results: Using comparative review, our results closely matched the original findings. The NLP + Investigator method reduced the project time by a minimum of 120 hours and costs by $1,500. Discussion: Qualitative research can evolve by incorporating NLP methods. These methods can increase sample size, reduce project time, and significantly reduce costs. The results of an integrated NLP process create a corpus and code which can be reviewed and verified, thus allowing a replicable, qualitative study. New data can be added over time and analyzed using the same interpretation and identification. Off the shelf qualitative software may be easier to use, but it can be expensive and may not offer a tailored approach or easily interpretable outcomes which further benefits researchers.

In many parts of the world, water is supplied by very small, local undertakings. In recent years, there has been a move to consolidation of these utilities in a number of countries. This paper looks at the economic effects of consolidation of Japanese water utilities in the period 1999–2006 using translog cost functions with a hedonic output specification. The results clarify what factors have been most affected in terms of the cost structure of the water utilities after consolidation. Overall, the finding is that consolidation has had some beneficial impact on cost effectiveness, but that the result is surprisingly limited. This appears to be because cost savings from an improvement in the use of scarce water resources have been offset by extra expenditure on supplying water to areas with lower population density.

In the context of current debates about integration and social cohesion, the authors examine religiously underpinned social capital—capable of both bonding and bridging parts of the community—in a deprived part of inner-city Birmingham. On the basis of a series of qualitative interviews with key social actors and a critical engagement with relevant sociological theory, they demonstrate that an understanding of the locality must encompass the following key dimensions. First, local social capital needs to be understood as a response to social exclusion and infrastructural deprivation. Second, there is evidence of local conflict and interethnic cooperation as well as of a local habitus of shared dispositions and strategies. Third, local, religiously inflected social capital significantly intersects with transnational concerns, connections and movements. Fourth, religion plays a crucial role both in facilitating networks/initiatives and as a key motivational force for local activists.

The impact of privatization on economic performance remains controversial. In this article, labour productivity gains pre- and post-privatization are compared using a sample of firms privatized in Taiwan between 1989 and 2002. To control for economic environmental effects independent of ownership, performance is assessed relative to the average performance of other firms in the same industry over the same period. Also, using an analysis of covariance (ANCOVA) model, the study examines the direct effects of competition, the continuing presence of state-appointed board members and the pre-privatization financial health of enterprises on productivity gains. In addition, the study considers how these different variables may interact to explain performance changes. The results underline the importance of competition in promoting productivity gains but, more surprisingly, find that continued majority government representation on boards seems to have no significant effect on labour productivity. The study does find a relationship between financial health under state control and productivity gains following privatization. Later in the article, performance is also measured in terms of profitability, and the results are the same.

In this article we analyse the emergence of Internet activity addressing the experiences of young people in two British communities: South Asian and Chinese. We focus on two web sites: www.barficulture.com and www.britishbornchinese.org.uk , drawing on interviews with site editors, content analysis of the discussion forums, and E-mail exchanges with site users.Our analysis of these two web sites shows how collective identities still matter, being redefined rather than erased by online interaction. We understand the site content through the notion of reflexive racialisation. We use this term to modify the stress given to individualisation in accounts of reflexive modernisation. In addition we question the allocation of racialised meaning from above implied by the concept of racialisation. Internet discussion forums can act as witnesses to social inequalities and through sharing experiences of racism and marginalisation, an oppositional social perspective may develop.The online exchanges have had offline consequences: social gatherings, charitable donations and campaigns against adverse media representations. These web sites have begun to change the terms of engagement between these ethnic groups and the wider society, and they have considerable potential to develop new forms of social action.

This article explores websites developed to express the interests and experiences of young Chinese people in Britain. Drawing on content analysis of site discussions and dialogues with site users, we argue these new communicative practices are best understood through a reworking of the social capital problematic. First, by recognizing the irreducibility of Internet-mediated connections to the calculative instrumentalism underlying many applications of social capital theory. Second, by providing a more differentiated account of social capital. The interactions we explore comprise a specifically ‘second generation’ form of social capital, cutting across the binary of bonding and bridging social capital. Third, judgement on the social capital consequences of Internet interactions must await a longer-term assessment of whether British Chinese institutions emerge to engage with the wider polity.

This article was sparked by the relative lack of attention the city of Birmingham has received in the global reception of `Birmingham cultural studies'. This oversight may reflect a more general trend in contemporary analysis of urban settings: a tendency to scenography. This refers to the filmic mode of address in recent studies of urban change which privilege a small number of dramatic, cinematic settings. Our article explores the city of Birmingham in its own terms, as an intense example of a wider set of processes: economic restructuring, place marketing amidst globalization. It investigates the politics of memory underlying the dominant competing visions of Birmingham which we call `the urban Arcadia' and `Birmingham forward'. Despite their manifest differences, these two alignments of historical imagery converge on a harmonious conception of community which excludes many of the city's residents.

Organizational changes are costly ventures that too often fail to deliver the expected outcomes. Psychological empowerment and affective commitment to change are proposed as especially important in turbulent contexts characterized by multiple and ongoing changes requiring employees’ continuing contributions. In such a context, employees’ beliefs that the changes are necessary, legitimate and will be supported, are presumed to increase psychological empowerment and affective commitment to change. In a three-wave longitudinal panel study of 819 employees, we examined autoregressive and cross-lagged relations among latent constructs reflecting change-related beliefs (necessity, legitimacy, support) and psychological reactions (psychological empowerment, affective commitment to change). Our findings suggest that psychological empowerment and affective commitment to change represent largely orthogonal reactions, that psychological empowerment is influenced more by beliefs regarding support, whereas affective commitment to change is shaped more by beliefs concerning necessity and legitimacy.

The editor of the newly revised Companion to Social Theory describes his volume as an 'attempt to offer the student a prescriptive and critical, rather than bland and neutral, pathway through the literature' (Turner 2000:xiv). The rest of the introduction certainly lives up to this promise. In a bold, incisive and sharply worded defence of sociology as a distinct mode of conceptualisation, with a unique object of enquiry - the social - Bryan Turner makes a passionate plea for social theory to engage with the central political issues of our times. Yet as I turned the pages of this skilfully edited, beautifully presented and lavishly referenced collection I grew increasingly uneasy. Then, in the opening of Terry LovelPs chapter on 'Feminisms of the Second Wave', I found my disquiet pointedly expressed. She recognises a further aspect of the role of a sociology text for students, the full appreciation of which is missing from several of the volumes under review. Citing Raymond Williams's notion of the 'selective tradition', Lovell writes: 'Reference books are social artifacts which may help in fixing disciplines and establishing or upsetting canons' (Lovell in Turner 2000:299). She tellingly asks readers to judge for themselves whether the feminist contribution to social theory has been well integrated into the volume. Unfortunately, I would have to say it has not. I would go further and argue that to varying degrees each of the books under discussion shies away from radically redrawing the teaching map, and leads the student reader into calm, conventional waters. These four texts are missed opportunities for the introduction of a British 213

There is a long history of state ownership of industry in Europe. Since the 1980s, however, privatization has been promoted by economists as the solution to difficulties experienced in managing state-owned enterprises. This study reviews privatization in each of the member states of the European Union. It identifies differences in the levels of privatization activity between countries. It also emphasizes four reasons for the level of interest in privatization within the EU at the present time, with expected economic efficiency gains being but one reason. The study then explains why privatization may not lead to efficiency gains because of the form privatization is taking and the nature of capital markets within the EU. Finally, the study distinguishes between economic efficiency gains and social welfare. Privatization implies a redistribution of income and wealth and therefore of economic power.

Mark: That's the down side of setting up a grand narrative of sociology, people read the books when they're thirty, become professors of sociology and then do about one book every five years … ‘What should we mean by the “classics of sociology”? Does the term “classical social theory” have some real force, or is it just a vague label of convenience? And are “classics” the same as “founders”?’ (Giddens, 1995: 4).Ashfaq: People are saying, some close friends of mine who I meet regularly, they say to me that the western disciplines, western education of social sciences, the whole framework which they follow is a non-starter for us and the whole thing has to change, change the rules of the game, goalposts … you name it.

The last few decades have witnessed a notable growth in literature addressing the politics and ethics of social research. Much of this literature has stressed difference between the researcher and the interviewee, and has addressed the importance of sensitising researchers to the difficulties and dilemmas encountered in in-depth interviewing crossing sex, class, and race boundaries. We argue that an examination of the cultural identities of the researcher and the interviewee, and how they may impact upon the interview process, needs further exploration. As two independent researchers of Chinese young people in Britain, we found that our interview experiences as mixed-descent Chinese-English and Korean-American researchers `positioned' us in terms of both commonality and difference vis-à-vis our interviewees. More attention needs to be given to how assumptions made by interviewees regarding the cultural identity of the researcher shapes interviewees' accounts. Interviewees could claim either commonality or difference with us, on the basis of gender, language, physical appearance and personal relationships.

The Conservative Government's 1988 Local Government Act extended compulsory tendering to a wide range of local authority services mainly supplied in the past by public departments in-house. This article reviews why the legislation was introduced; considers the evidence on efficiency savings from competitive tendering; details the services affected; and concludes by looking at the consequences for local government. Generally, there appears to be ample evidence to support the Government's claim that competitive tendering produces appreciable cost savings. Higher operating efficiency comes, however, from competition rather than 'privatisation'. The Act seems to be having a galvanising effect upon in-house suppliers who are reorganising and changing tneir 'culture' so as to compete effectively.

Privatization is now a key economic policy in a number of countries. Although the arguments surrounding privatization are well rehearsed, its underlying rationale is relatively under-explored. The purpose of this paper is to rectify this by considering the theoretical underpinnings of 'new right' thinking, both from procedural and instrumentalist perspectives. The procedural approach is soon rejected and the paper focuses upon issues relating to the operation of private markets and the relative efficiency of public and private provision, drawing upon recent research in these areas. The paper concludes that insofar as privatization as a policy both in the UK and elsewhere rests upon the arguments reviewed here, it appears to rest upon weak foundations.