The Scottish Parliament will next week (Tuesday 10 March) be invited to nominate Stephen Boyle to Her Majesty the Queen for appointment as the new Auditor General for Scotland.

On Tuesday (24 March), MSPs from across the Scottish Parliament will scrutinise the proposed UK-wide Emergency Coronavirus Bill

The Alumni Spotlight is a monthly feature in Bridges, highlighting College of Education alumni who are making a difference in the lives of the people around them. This edition features Rob Longwell-Grice, who draws upon personal experience to help students who are also the first in their families to pursue a college degree.

Two years ago, one of the main networks of evangelical churches in France launched the Nouvelles Générations (New Generations) project to train young Christians for the work of ministry and to build up of the body of Christ.

Next-generation sequencing has revolutionized the diagnostic process, making broadscale testing affordable and applicable to almost all specialties; however, there remain several challenges in its widespread implementation. Barriers such as lack of infrastructure or expertise within local health systems and complex result interpretation or counseling make it harder for frontline clinicians to incorporate genomic testing in their existing workflow. The general population is more informed and interested in pursuing genetic testing, and this has been coupled with the increasing accessibility of direct-to-consumer testing. As a result of these changes, primary care physicians and nongenetics specialty providers find themselves seeing patients for whom genetic testing would be beneficial but managing genetic test results that are out of their scope of practice. In this report, we present a practical and centralized approach to providing genomic services through an independent, enterprise-wide clinical service model. We present 4 years of clinical experience, with >3400 referrals, toward designing and implementing the clinical service, maximizing resources, identifying barriers, and improving patient care. We provide a framework that can be implemented at other institutions to support and integrate genomic services across the enterprise.

Penn State researchers have developed a comprehensive online tutor to educate the general public about the science behind COVID-19 and appropriate steps anyone can take to help reduce its transmission.

A new study finds that extracurricular activities have differing positive effects for rural boys compared to girls.

While there's a chance for SA to be downgraded to non-investment grade in November, rating firms may wait for the outcome of the ANC elective conference, says economist Kim Silberman.

Argentina beat Russia 5-4 despite three Eder Lima goals in a meeting of two first-time finalists in Colombia while Portugal were pipped to bronze by Iran.

While its "business unusual" in the SA residential property market, it is also the best buyer's market in a decade, says the chair of the Seeff Property Group.

Millennials and Generation Z make up 48 percent of the US workforce. Here are some insights on how businesses can better connect with these employees and engage this dominant market segment.

Statewide Emergency Repair Program launches from Delaware State Housing Authority MILFORD – Qualified homeowners in need of assistance to keep their homes livable can apply for assistance from the new Statewide Emergency Repair Program announced today by Governor John Carney and the Delaware State Housing Authority. “No one should live in a home with broken […]

Disguised in different roles–from rebellious teenagers to homeless people to prostitutes and pimps–community members responsible for the onshore segment of The Agency experience act out the types of least reached people in society.

Each year the Center for Sexual and Gender Diversity presents awards to Penn State students, staff, and faculty who are interested in and have shown a commitment to the Penn State LGBTQ+ community.

By manipulating the expression of one gene, geneticists can induce a form of “stress memory” in plants that is inherited by some progeny, giving them the potential for more vigorous, hardy and productive growth, according to Penn State researchers, who suggest the discovery has significant implications for plant breeding.

The mobile workstation version of Lenovo's ThinkPad X1 Extreme, the P1 lacks the sheer might of the company's ThinkPad P53, but it is considerably easier to carry. It's a winner for traveling design pros or content creators.

The cockpit glasses promise to give you a bird's eye view from the Anafi drone's 180-degree camera. The Anafi FPV bundle will go on sale early this month.

TeenStreet challenges teens in Brazil to have a true friendship with Jesus and reflect His love.

In a recent video message, transgender teachers urge school leaders to make schools more welcoming by examining their own biases and implementing inclusive policies.

Roma have a 1-0 first-leg lead to protect as they seek a place in the UEFA Europa League round of 16 at the expense of Belgian hosts Gent.

The champions of Scotland and Denmark go into their second leg level at one goal apiece after a pulsating first leg in Copenhagen.

İstanbul Başakşehir and F. C. Copenhagen are each aiming to reach the quarter-finals of a European competition for the first time.

Copenhagen welcome İstanbul Başakşehir to Denmark with the Turkish club holding a 1-0 lead as both clubs seek a first European quarter-final appearance.

The National Youth Development Agency will request funding of more than R1bn from the government in the current financial year, its CEO Steven Ngubeni says.

Coalition of 21 attorneys general argues changes violate federal law and judicial precedent Attorney General Kathy Jennings joined Friday a group of 21 state attorneys general to challenge the Trump administration’s proposed changes to asylum standards. If implemented, these changes would allow the Executive branch to arbitrarily deny asylum claims to immigrants seeking haven from […]

Attorney General Kathy Jennings today announced that she is joining a lawsuit opposing the Trump Administration’s new rule circumventing the Flores Settlement Agreement, which has governed the treatment of children in immigration custody since 1997. In the complaint before the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California, the coalition argues that the rule eliminates several critical protections […]

Fraudulent companies include shells owned by Manafort, Gates, and Cohen; others used to undermine democratic processes and launder drug money Attorney General Kathy Jennings announced Thursday that the she has filed actions in the state Court of Chancery to dissolve 15 Delaware business entities for involvement in criminal activities. State law allows the Attorney General […]

Attorney General Kathy Jennings today released the following statement after a jury returned a guilty verdict against Clay Conaway for Rape 4th Degree: “The message today is no means no. I am grateful for the jury’s decision, for the work of our excellent trial team, for the investigative work of the Delaware State Police, and […]

Delaware Attorney General Kathleen Jennings announced Thursday a multistate settlement with Johnson & Johnson and its subsidiary, Ethicon, Inc., for their deceptive marketing of transvaginal surgical mesh devices. A multistate investigation found the companies violated state consumer protection laws by misrepresenting the safety and effectiveness of the devices and failing to sufficiently disclose risks associated […]

A broker-dealer operating in Delaware, Horace Mann Investors, Inc., has agreed to provide settlement payments to numerous customers with IRA accounts opened by one of its registered representatives, Dieter Hofmann.

Governor John Carney, Secretary of State Jeffrey Bullock and other officials and dignitaries joined US NewGenzyme President and CEO Gaofeng Liu to and members of the Global Delaware team Thursday at a ribbon-cutting ceremony to officially open the company’s Newport facility.

Volkswagen and Northvolt formed a strategic alliance last year for making lithium-ion batteries on a larger scale in Germany. The joint venture seems to be getting a further momentum wherein...

Hyundai, the South Korean car manufacturer is currently working on the new generation Tucson SUV, which has been spotted doing rounds on the home soil. The SUV yet again has been spied testing in...

During the COVID-19 pandemic, however, the daily work routine for tailors and apprentices looks a bit different than usual: for several weeks, they have been producing hand-crafted masks for use of...

It’s not that the world is suddenly and cruelly bereft of writers, but let’s be honest: there aren’t too many of them coming to advertising.

Langoor was founded in 2010 and is now present across India, the Middle East and Australia. This is Havas Group’s second digital agency acquisition in India in the year, the first being Think Design.

Success in today’s digital-first world depends on a marketing organisation’s ability to create and activate hyper-relevant, data-driven and omnichannel customer experiences, says Nikki Mendonca.

Queen Elizabeth II on Friday invoked the wartime spirit to "never despair" as Britain marked 75 years since the end of World War II in Europe under the shadow of coronavirus.

Review of: Multi-Agent-Based Simulation XIX. 19th International Workshop, MABS 2018, Stockholm, Sweden, July 14, 2018, Revised Selected Papers by Davidsson, Paul, Verhagen, Harko (Eds.), reviewed by Patrycja Antosz

J Jumadi, Nick Malleson, Steve Carver and Duncan Quincey: Managing disasters caused by natural events, especially volcanic crises, requires a range of approaches, including risk modelling and analysis. Risk modelling is commonly conducted at the community/regional scale using GIS. However, people and objects move in response to a crisis, so static approaches cannot capture the dynamics of the risk properly, as they do not accommodate objects’ movements within time and space. The emergence of Agent-Based Modelling makes it possible to model the risk at an individual level as it evolves over space and time. We propose a new approach of Spatio-Temporal Dynamics Model of Risk (STDMR) by integrating multi-criteria evaluation (MCE) within a georeferenced agent-based model, using Mt. Merapi, Indonesia, as a case study. The model makes it possible to simulate the spatio-temporal dynamics of those at risk during a volcanic crisis. Importantly, individual vulnerability is heterogeneous and depends on the characteristics of the individuals concerned. The risk for the individuals is dynamic and changes along with the hazard and their location. The model is able to highlight a small number of high-risk spatio-temporal positions where, due to the behaviour of individuals who are evacuating the volcano and the dynamics of the hazard itself, the overall risk in those times and places is extremely high. These outcomes are extremely relevant for the stakeholders, and the work of coupling an ABM, MCE, and dynamic volcanic hazard is both novel and contextually relevant.

Qing Xu, Sylvie Huet, Eric Perret and Guillaume Deffuant: The drivers of conversion to organic farming, which is still a residual choice in agriculture, are poorly understood. Many scholars argue that farm characteristics can determine this choice but do not exclude the role of social dynamics. To study this issue, we developed an agent-based model in which agents' decisions to shift to organic farming are based on a comparison between satisfaction with the current situation and potential satisfaction with an alternative farming strategy. A farmer agent’s satisfaction is modelled using the Theory of Reasoned Action. This makes it necessary to compare an agent's productions over time with those of other agents to whom the former attributes considerable credibility (“important others”). Moreover, farmers make technical changes that affect their productions by imitating other credible farmers. While we first used this model to examine simple and abstract farm populations, here we also adapted it for use with data from an Agricultural Census concerning the farm characteristics of dairy farming in 27 French “cantons”. Based on domain expertise, data and previous research, we propose certain laws for modelling the impact of conversion on the farm production of milk and the environment. The simulations with “real” populations of farms confirm the important impact of farm characteristics. However, our results also suggest a complex impact of social dynamics that can favour or impede the diffusion of organic farming through dynamic implicit networks of similarity and credibility. We confirm the great importance of demographic changes in farm characteristics.

Bruno Pietzsch, Sebastian Fiedler, Kai G. Mertens, Markus Richter, Cédric Scherer, Kirana Widyastuti, Marie-Christin Wimmler, Liubov Zakharova and Uta Berger: The recent advancement of agent-based modeling is characterized by higher demands on the parameterization, evaluation and documentation of these computationally expensive models. Accordingly, there is also a growing request for "easy to go" applications just mimicking the input-output behavior of such models. Metamodels are being increasingly used for these tasks. In this paper, we provide an overview of common metamodel types and the purposes of their usage in an agent-based modeling context. To guide modelers in the selection and application of metamodels for their own needs, we further assessed their implementation effort and performance. We performed a literature research in January 2019 using four different databases. Five different terms paraphrasing metamodels (approximation, emulator, meta-model, metamodel and surrogate) were used to capture the whole range of relevant literature in all disciplines. All metamodel applications found were then categorized into specific metamodel types and rated by different junior and senior researches from varying disciplines (including forest sciences, landscape ecology, or economics) regarding the implementation effort and performance. Specifically, we captured the metamodel performance according to (i) the consideration of uncertainties, (ii) the suitability assessment provided by the authors for the particular purpose, and (iii) the number of valuation criteria provided for suitability assessment. We selected 40 distinct metamodel applications from studies published in peer-reviewed journals from 2005 to 2019. These were used for the sensitivity analysis, calibration and upscaling of agent-based models, as well to mimic their prediction for different scenarios. This review provides information about the most applicable metamodel types for each purpose and forms a first guidance for the implementation and validation of metamodels for agent-based models.

Katarzyna Growiec, Jakub Growiec and Bogumił Kamiński: We study the impact of endogenous creation and destruction of social ties in an artificial society on aggregate outcomes such as generalized trust, willingness to cooperate, social utility and economic performance. To this end we put forward a computational multi-agent model where agents of overlapping generations interact in a dynamically evolving social network. In the model, four distinct dimensions of individuals’ social capital: degree, centrality, heterophilous and homophilous interactions, determine their generalized trust and willingness to cooperate, altogether helping them achieve certain levels of social utility (i.e., utility from social contacts) and economic performance. We find that the stationary state of the simulated social network exhibits realistic small-world topology. We also observe that societies whose social networks are relatively frequently reconfigured, display relatively higher generalized trust, willingness to cooperate, and economic performance – at the cost of lower social utility. Similar outcomes are found for societies where social tie dissolution is relatively weakly linked to family closeness.

Szymon Talaga and Andrzej Nowak: Real-world social networks often exhibit high levels of clustering, positive degree assortativity, short average path lengths (small-world property) and right-skewed but rarely power law degree distributions. On the other hand homophily, defined as the propensity of similar agents to connect to each other, is one of the most fundamental social processes observed in many human and animal societies. In this paper we examine the extent to which homophily is sufficient to produce the typical structural properties of social networks. To do so, we conduct a simulation study based on the Social Distance Attachment (SDA) model, a particular kind of Random Geometric Graph (RGG), in which nodes are embedded in a social space and connection probabilities depend functionally on distances between nodes. We derive the form of the model from first principles based on existing analytical results and argue that the mathematical construction of RGGs corresponds directly to the homophily principle, so they provide a good model for it. We find that homophily, especially when combined with a random edge rewiring, is sufficient to reproduce many of the characteristic features of social networks. Additionally, we devise a hybrid model combining SDA with the configuration model that allows generating homophilic networks with arbitrary degree sequences and we use it to study interactions of homophily with processes imposing constraints on degree distributions. We show that the effects of homophily on clustering are robust with respect to distribution constraints, while degree assortativity can be highly dependent on the particular kind of enforced degree sequence.

Volker Grimm, Steven F. Railsback, Christian E. Vincenot, Uta Berger, Cara Gallagher, Donald L. DeAngelis, Bruce Edmonds, Jiaqi Ge, Jarl Giske, Jürgen Groeneveld, Alice S.A. Johnston, Alexander Milles, Jacob Nabe-Nielsen, J. Gareth Polhill, Viktoriia Radchuk, Marie-Sophie Rohwäder, Richard A. Stillman, Jan C. Thiele and Daniel Ayllón: The Overview, Design concepts and Details (ODD) protocol for describing Individual- and Agent-Based Models (ABMs) is now widely accepted and used to document such models in journal articles. As a standardized document for providing a consistent, logical and readable account of the structure and dynamics of ABMs, some research groups also find it useful as a workflow for model design. Even so, there are still limitations to ODD that obstruct its more widespread adoption. Such limitations are discussed and addressed in this paper: the limited availability of guidance on how to use ODD; the length of ODD documents; limitations of ODD for highly complex models; lack of sufficient details of many ODDs to enable reimplementation without access to the model code; and the lack of provision for sections in the document structure covering model design rationale, the model’s underlying narrative, and the means by which the model’s fitness for purpose is evaluated. We document the steps we have taken to provide better guidance on: structuring complex ODDs and an ODD summary for inclusion in a journal article (with full details in supplementary material; Table 1); using ODD to point readers to relevant sections of the model code; update the document structure to include sections on model rationale and evaluation. We also further advocate the need for standard descriptions of simulation experiments and argue that ODD can in principle be used for any type of simulation model. Thereby ODD would provide a lingua franca for simulation modelling.

The Delaware Department of Agriculture, DNREC’s Mosquito Control Section and the Delaware Beekeepers Association urge anyone who keeps bees in Delaware to register their bee hives and sign up for all the apps that are available that can help protect the state’s valuable pollinators.

DOVER, Del. — Too much rain at the wrong time, like Delaware experienced in April and May, has destroyed several high dollar crops and threatens the yield of many others, leaving farmers to wonder what the future holds. In surveying the state and listening to farmers, Secretary of Agriculture Michael T. Scuse made a request […]

Photos are available for media use on Flickr. Dover, Del. – The Delaware Department of Agriculture (DDA) announced today that they are quarantining eleven zip codes in New Castle County to eradicate, control, and prevent the spread of spotted lanternfly in Delaware and to surrounding states. The spotted lanternfly is a destructive invasive plant hopper […]

Agency: DOT Closing Date: 5/12/2020