"This was a learning experience for me," said Salman Khan

A 35-year old Indian woman, who was five months pregnant, was founded murdered in her apartment and her husband was found dead in an apparent suicide in the Hudson River near here, authorities said.

The death of a Dubai-based Indian industrialist, who died after falling from a high-rise building last week, was a case of suicide over financial problems, police confirmed after an investigation,...

NASA's first Mars helicopter has a name now and the credit goes to 17-year-old Indian-origin girl Vaneeza Rupani.

US President Donald Trump on Monday nominated an Indian-American attorney to a federal court in New York.

US President Donald Trump has nominated senior Indian-American diplomat Manisha Singh as his envoy to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).

An Indian-origin man in Singapore was on Wednesday sentenced to seven months in prison for verbally abusing police and safe-distancing enforcement officers who were urging compliance with the COVID-19...

Four top Republican senators have urged US President Donald Trump to suspend all new guest worker visas for 60 days and some of its categories, including the H-1B visa, for at least the next year or...

The US vice president's spokeswoman became the second White House staffer this week to test positive for coronavirus, officials said Friday, even as President Donald Trump continued to go mask-free at...

Democratic Party's presumptive presidential nominee and former US vice president Joe Biden alleged on Friday that President Donald Trump utterly failed to prepare for the COVID-19 pandemic and said...

Sania Mirza, much like other sportspersons across the country, is spending time at home amid the coronavirus lockdown.

The picture also features Alia Bhatt, Abhishek Bachchan, Neetu Kapoor and others

Gas leak was detected on a goods train transporting LPG on Saturday at Bhopal railway station in Madhya Pradesh, a Railways official said.

All the state universities in West Bengal will implement the academic calendar in their respective institutions within a month after the lockdown is lifted, Education Minister Partha Chatterjee said...

The Delhi High Court has asked the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) to ensure that dispensation of medicines from its pharmacy, which was functioning in limited capacity due to the...

The Congress on Saturday said there was "confusion" within the central government in its fight against the novel coronavirus and wondered how the country will tackle the pandemic if officials...

The Telangana Police will soon rollout an Artificial Intelligence (AI)- based system through CCTVs to check face mask norm violations.

Over 1 lakh migrant workers from Uttar Pradesh stranded in different parts of the country following the coronavirus-induced lockdown will return to the state by Saturday night on 114 trains, a senior...

As the government says India has been able to prevent community transmission of the coronavirus, there are concerns about at least three different clusters of cases in Delhi, in which the primary...

The coronavirus outbreak exposed "shortcomings" in China's public healthcare system, a top health official admitted Saturday, saying that reforms are underway to improve the country's disease...

A pharmacist died and his boss was left hospitalised after the pair drank a chemical concoction they had developed in an effort to treat coronavirus, police said Saturday. The men worked for a herbal...

Punjab cabinet ministers today walked out of a meeting with bureaucrats to decide a new excise policy, sources said. Finance Minister Manpreet Badal had an argument with Chief Secretary Karan Avatar...

The Delaware Division of Libraries and Delaware Department of Labor (DOL) rolled out the partnership in February 2019 to be able to reach out to more residents who may be in need of services but can’t travel to Department of Labor locations. With the many computers available at libraries, a staff member can offer residents […]

WILMINGTON, DE – The Delaware Department of Labor will be celebrating the Fifth Annual National Apprenticeship Week (NAW) with three open house events, one in each county throughout the state from 6 – 7 pm to showcase the value of apprenticeship in the community. Secretary Cerron Cade from The Delaware Department of Labor will be […]

DOVER (January 3, 2020): As part of a systems-wide upgrade to State of Delaware banking processes, the Office of State Treasurer Colleen C. Davis and the Department of Labor have announced improvements to unemployment benefit payment distribution. By the end of this month, the state will move unemployment debit cards to the U.S. Bank ReliaCard®, […]

Review of: Modelling Transitions: Virtues, Vices, Visions of the Future by Moallemi, Enayat A. and de Haan, Fjalar J. (Eds.), reviewed by Cesar Garcia-Diaz

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.

Victorien Barbet, Juliette Rouchier, Noé Guiraud and Vincent Laperrière: We present a model showing the evolution of an organization of agents who discuss democratically about good practices. This model feeds on a field study we did for about twelve years in France where we followed NPOs, called AMAP, and observed their construction through time at the regional and national level. Most of the hypothesis we make are here either based on the literature on opinion diffusion or on the results of our field study. By defining dynamics where agents influence each other, make collective decision at the group level, and decide to stay in or leave their respective groups, we analyse the effect of different forms of vertical communication that is meant to spread good practices within the organization. Our main indicators of the good functioning of the democratic dynamics are stability and representativeness. We show that if communication about norms is well designed, it has a positive impact on both stability and representativeness. Interestingly the effect of communication increases with the number of dimensions discussed in the groups. Communication about norms is thus a valuable tool to use in groups that wish to improve their democratic practices without jeopardizing stability.

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.

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.

Myong-Hun Chang and Joseph Harrington: The dynamics of social stigma are explored in the context of diffusion models. Our focus is on exploring the dynamic process through which the behavior of individuals and the interpersonal relationships among them influence the macro-social attitude towards the stigma. We find that a norm of tolerance is best promoted when the population comprises both those whose conduct is driven by compassion for the stigmatized and those whose focus is on conforming with others in their social networks. A second finding is that less insular social networks encourage de-stigmatization when most people are compassionate, but it is instead more insularity that promotes tolerance when society is dominated by conformity.

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.

Flaminio Squazzoni, J. Gareth Polhill, Bruce Edmonds, Petra Ahrweiler, Patrycja Antosz, Geeske Scholz, Émile Chappin, Melania Borit, Harko Verhagen, Francesca Giardini and Nigel Gilbert: The COVID-19 pandemic is causing a dramatic loss of lives worldwide, challenging the sustainability of our health care systems, threatening economic meltdown, and putting pressure on the mental health of individuals (due to social distancing and lock-down measures). The pandemic is also posing severe challenges to the scientific community, with scholars under pressure to respond to policymakers’ demands for advice despite the absence of adequate, trusted data. Understanding the pandemic requires fine-grained data representing specific local conditions and the social reactions of individuals. While experts have built simulation models to estimate disease trajectories that may be enough to guide decision-makers to formulate policy measures to limit the epidemic, they do not cover the full behavioural and social complexity of societies under pandemic crisis. Modelling that has such a large potential impact upon people’s lives is a great responsibility. This paper calls on the scientific community to improve the transparency, access, and rigour of their models. It also calls on stakeholders to improve the rapidity with which data from trusted sources are released to the community (in a fully responsible manner). Responding to the pandemic is a stress test of our collaborative capacity and the social/economic value of research.

The Delaware Office of Management and Budget will be holding three public hearings to gather public comment on regulations under Governor Markell’s Executive Order 36, a statewide review by all agencies to identify and remove regulatory hurdles.

All State of Delaware offices closed on Monday, October 29.

State offices to remain closed until 8 a.m. Tuesday

Closure of state offices extended until 4:30 p.m. Tuesday

OMB accepting public input on agency regulations through December 1.

Governor Markell ordered flags to be lowered between April 16 and 22 as a mark of respect for the victims of the April 15 bombings in Boston, Massachusetts.

DOVER – State of Delaware offices are closed today (Friday, January 3) during regular business hours 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Non-essential employees are not to report to work for this period. Essential employees are to report as scheduled.

State of Delaware offices are closing at noon today.

Governor Jack Markell unveiled a balanced budget proposal that promotes increased job and educational opportunities, supporting the theme of his State of the State address last week when he focused on ways to unleash the potential of all Delawareans.

State of Delaware closure update: State of Delaware offices will remain closed through 11:59 p.m., Monday, March 3, 2014. Non-essential employees who work during this time are not to report to work. Essential employees are to report as scheduled.

State of Delaware offices in Kent and Sussex counties are closed during regular business hours 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Non-essential employees who live or work in Kent or Sussex County are not to report to work for this period. Essential employees are to report as scheduled. State of Delaware offices in New Castle County will open at 10 a.m. Non-essential employees who live or work in New Castle County do not report until 10 a.m. Essential employees are to report as scheduled.

Governor Markell has ordered the American and Delaware flags at state buildings and facilities be flown at half-staff on Peace Officers Memorial Day, Thursday, May 15.

State of Delaware offices are opening today (January 27, 2015) as regularly scheduled. Employees are to report to work as scheduled​.

State of Delaware offices are closed today (February 17, 2015) during regular business hours 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Non-essential employees are not to report to work for this period. Essential employees are to report as scheduled. More Information

State of Delaware offices are closed today (February 17, 2015) during regular business hours 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Non-essential employees are not to report to work for this period. Essential employees are to report as scheduled. More Information

State of Delaware offices in New Castle County and Kent County will open at 10 a.m. Non-essential employees who live or work in New Castle County or Kent County do not report until 10 a.m. Essential employees are to report as scheduled. More Information

State of Delaware offices are closed during regular business hours 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Non-essential employees are not to report to work for this period. Essential employees are to report as scheduled. More Information