Reactive nitrogen loss from agricultural fertilizer use remains a crucial environmental problem in the United States, contributing to ecosystem degradation and global climate change. This intractable problem requires a coupled human and natural systems approach that combines biophysical, sociological, and economic knowledge into an integrative analysis. Much is known about the biogeochemistry o...

This volume examines issues related to decisionmaking in criminal justice. We began with the idea of producing a volume that would examine “changes in decisionmaking and discretion in the criminal justice system.” However, we quickly recognized that such a focus suggests a far too narrow, traditional view of decisionmaking, in which criminal justice officials make choices about processing indiv...

The Wisdom of Crowds is a phenomenon described in social science that suggests four criteria applicable to groups of people. It is claimed that, if these criteria are satisfied, then the aggregate decisions made by a group will often be better than those of its individual members. Inspired by this concept, we present a novel feedback framework for the cluster ensemble problem, which we call Wis...

Automotive components made from composite materials can result in significant weight savings over steel and aluminum. The main purpose of this article is to study about the selection of suitable composite material for automobile torsion bar which possess good strength to weight ratio and yield considerable weight savings. The conventional approaches to material selection problem tend to be less...

This paper reports on an ongoing research project, consisting of formalizing rules of order for group decision making, and implementing them as a procedural component of automated mediation systems for group decision making. The component should ultimately assist a human mediator in maintaining order at electronic meetings, and in giving advice to the participants on their options, rights and o...

In March 1998 the Office of Bioethics Education and Research at Dalhousie University hosted a multidisciplinary workshop, “Assent and Dissent in Research Involving Children.” The overall objectives for the meeting were: first, to promote and protect the health and well-being of children by ensuring that potentially beneficial biomedical and health research involving children was not inappropria...