The main theme for this issue of CentreLines is the controversial area of alcohol advertising and promotion. In Headspace NDRI Director Steve Allsop discusses some of the issues surrounding the relationship between alcohol promotion and hazardous drinking. In Issuing Forth, Rob Donovan, together with colleague Matthew Winter from Curtin’s School of Marketing, dispute the argument that alcohol a...

42 AI MAGAZINE ■ The 1993–95 period presented various “identity challenges” to the field of AI and to AAAI as a leading scientific society for the field. The euphoric days of the mid-1980s AI boom were over, various expectations of those times had not been met, and there was continuing concern about an AI “winter.” The major challenge of these years was to chart a path for AI, designed and endo...

The merchant was new in the valley and had built two sheds to collect firewood for sale in the winter. Since he was new in the area, he had no idea how cold the winter would be. So he sent his apprentice up the mountain to talk to the hermit, who knew a lot about nature. The apprentice came back all fired up: "Boss, the hermit says the winter will be very cold!" "Good," thought the merchant. "L...

This article begins with some notes on the intellectual climate in which the article of Winter (1968, “Towards a Neo-Schumpeterian Theory of the Firm,” The RAND Corporation; 2006, Industrial and Corporate Change, 15, 1) was first written. It identifies core ideas and contentions Sidney Winter helped put on the research agenda for scholars interested in complex business organization. We point ou...

Oxygen isotope ratios of pedogenic carbonates were analyzed along a climatic gradient in the Palouse region of eastern Washington State to evaluate changes in their isotopic composition with changing climate. A modern analog approach was used to assess the relationship between the istotope ratios in the pedogenic carbonates with those in soil water (measured in June when we anticipated carbonat...

The effects of grazing winter wheat (Triticum aestivum) by Canada geese (Branta canadensis) was assessed in 3 fields during 2 years of experimentation at the Wye Research and Education Center, Queenstown, Maryland. Randomly placed wire enclosures prevented goose grazing on 11.1 m sq. control plots. Grazed plots were marked in each field soon after the geese migrated in March. Grazed plots had c...

The first climatology of airmass origin in the Arctic is presented in terms of rigorously defined airmass fractions that partition air according to where it last contacted the planetary boundary layer (PBL). Results from a present-day climate integration of the Goddard Earth Observing System Chemistry–Climate Model (GEOSCCM) reveal that the majority of air in the Arctic below 700mb last contact...

Multiyear satellite observations are used to document a relationship between the large-scale variability in precipitation over the tropical Atlantic and aerosol traced to African sources. During boreal winter and spring there is a significant reduction in precipitation south of the Atlantic marine intertropical convergence zone (ITCZ) during months when aerosol concentrations are anomalously hi...

48 AI MAGAZINE ■ For many years, the very idea of artificial intelligence has been provocative and exciting. However, with a continually increasing focus on specialized subareas and somewhat narrow technical problems (both of which are inevitable and in many ways healthy), we may be torpedoing our core research agenda: the creation of a true synthetic intelligence. I reflect briefly on the esse...

The aim of this contribution is to highlight a new, complex, challenging scenario involving the design discipline when working on the design of mobile applications. New challenging usability issues have to be faced, as well as the social and economic impact of the designed products. In this multifaceted context, design has the chance to play a key strategic role: relating to and cooperating wit...