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    42267 research outputs found

    Poststructuralist Feminist Approaches in Sport Management Research

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    Is the 'Appropriate Adult' appropriate?

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    It is recognised that children are particularly vulnerable within the criminal justice system and therefore should be afforded ‘appropriate assistance’ pursuant to Article 37 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC). Within England and Wales, the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 states that all individuals under the age of 18 must be provided with an appropriate adult to provide advice and assistance, facilitate communication and ensure the child is being treated fairly. This chapter considers whether the appropriate adult, who can be a family member, social worker or volunteer, is appropriate to safeguard the child’s rights, entitlements and welfare whilst they are in police custody. The chapter will examine whether lawyers, as a consequence of their legal knowledge and skills, are better placed to protect the interests of a child in police custody, and if so, whether the role of the appropriate adult should be redefined to support the child’s emotional welfare and facilitate their relationship with the lawyer

    Managing designing for safety: a framework for whole-team decision making and risk control

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    Designing for Safety (DfS) aims to make designs inherently safer to build, operate and maintain, but any residual risk must be controlled, something essential to realising the benefits of inherently safer designs. Here, a conceptual decision-making framework to support DfS, developed in conjunction with industry, is introduced. It aims to assist designers in communicating risk, residual risk and actions needed to support DfS, in a way easily understood by non-specialists such as clients and business leaders. The framework proposes a qualitative categorisation for DfS linked to a clear numerical scale, which embraces the complexity of engineering assessment across the full asset lifecycle, while using a form of language (numbers) that can be readily understood by all. The framework was empirically explored through an operational design workshop with the four engineers leading design and planning teams on the framework. It was found to bring a range of benefits for DfS at the design stage: it provided structure for the discussion of DfS, made the consideration of DfS objective, gave a new vernacular which improved the collective thought process, and made the debate and the resultant design decisions more accessible to non-specialists. The framework provides a tool to support the implementation of DfS across the entire lifecycle of an asset, enhancing DfS communication within the decision making process from the initial strategic definition stage onwards

    The current state of concussion knowledge and attitudes in British American Football

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    Objectives To examine concussion knowledge and concussion attitudes of players, coaches, and support staff in British American Football (BAF). Methods Data from players, coaches and support staff (n = 236) were collected from across all leagues in BAF. An online survey tool was used which included the Rosenbaum Concussion Knowledge and Attitudes Survey (RoCKAS), and questions examining concussion education and perceived risk of participating in football. Results The mean score on the RoCKAS concussion knowledge was 21.0 ± 2.1 of a possible score of 25 reflecting good knowledge. Of a possible score of 65, the mean concussion attitude score was 55.6 ± 6.1 showing safe attitude. Whilst an overall safe attitude was seen, almost half of participants (45.3%) noted they would continue to play with a concussion. No relationship was found between CAI and prior concussion history. Fifty seven percent of participants agreed the benefits of playing football outweighed the risks. Forty eight percent reported that they had received no concussion-related education in the past 12 months. Conclusion BAF participants have good concussion knowledge and safe attitudes. However, risky behavior is demonstrated through unsafe likelihood to report and attitude to long-term health risks. Access to the British American Football Association (BAFA) concussion policy and education was poor raising questions over what sources of information stakeholders are drawing their knowledge from. These findings can help form the foundation of educational interventions (e.g. coaching workshops) to challenge current misconceptions and improve likelihood to report concussion in BAF

    Coordinated Electric Vehicle Active and Reactive Power Control for Active Distribution Networks

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    The deployment of renewable energy in power systems may raise serious voltage instabilities. Electric vehicles (EVs), owing to their mobility and flexibility characteristics, can provide various ancillary services including active and reactive power. However, the distributed control of EVs under such scenarios is a complex decision-making problem with enormous dynamics and uncertainties. Most existing literature employs model-based approaches to formulate the active and reactive power control problems, which require full models and are time-consuming. This paper proposes a multi-agent reinforcement learning method featuring actor-critic networks and a parameter sharing framework to solve the EVs coordinated active and reactive power control problem towards both demand-side response and voltage regulations. The proposed method can further enhance the learning stability and scalability with privacy perseverance via the location marginal prices. Simulation results based on a modified IEEE 15-bus network are developed to validate its effectiveness in providing system charging and voltage regulation services

    Leaderlessness in Social Movements: Advancing Space, Symbols, and Spectacle as Modes of “Leadership”

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    The emergence of the Occupy movements along with other social movements in 2011 elevated the idea of radically decentralized “leaderless” social movement organizations. We argue that looking at such an alternative, horizontalist form of organizing presents an opportunity to reframe how we understand leadership. This paper illustrates how the coordination of the Occupy London movement was accomplished horizontally in the absence of formal organization, leadership, or authority structures. Using an ethnographic approach, we show how this movement generated a “multimodal” repertoire of protest that included (1) the politically effective occupation of urban space; (2) the ability to deploy symbols as compelling forms of aesthetic questioning; and (3) the creation of politically charged spectacles that allowed the movement to appropriate the news agendas of established broadcast media. The findings of this paper challenge the language of leadership and contribute to understandings of feminist forms of leadership and leaderless organizing by explaining one way that “leadership” occurs in horizontal organizational structures such as social movements. Namely we demonstrate how the modes of space, symbols, and spectacles effectively replace the role of “leader” in the absence of formal organizational structures

    Interaction-aware Decision-making for Automated Vehicles using Social Value Orientation

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    Motion control algorithms in the presence of pedestrians are critical for the development of safe and reliable Autonomous Vehicles (AVs). Traditional motion control algorithms rely on manually designed decision-making policies which neglect the mutual interactions between AVs and pedestrians. On the other hand, recent advances in Deep Reinforcement Learning allow for the automatic learning of policies without manual designs. To tackle the problem of decision-making in the presence of pedestrians, the authors introduce a framework based on Social Value Orientation and Deep Reinforcement Learning (DRL) that is capable of generating decision-making policies with different driving styles. The policy is trained using stateof- the-art DRL algorithms in a simulated environment. A novel computationally-efficient pedestrian model that is suitable for DRL training is also introduced. We perform experiments to validate our framework and we conduct a comparative analysis of the policies obtained with two different model-free Deep Reinforcement Learning Algorithms. Simulations results show how the developed model exhibits natural driving behaviours, such as short-stopping, to facilitate the pedestrian’s crossing

    Stop answering centrist questions: the left can only win when it answers the questions it was founded to pose

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    This article summarises a series of findings from a programme of research on the viability of Universal Basic Income as a transformative public policy. The findings suggest that the left should stop answering liberal questions. This means no longer being preoccupied by who currently votes and their assumed ‘inherent’ values. Instead, as the left’s founding figures thought, it must consider how the vast majority of the population who would benefit from transformative material change can be persuaded of the benefit of voting for left policies. Our findings suggest that workers are keenly aware of the need for transformative material change and can be persuaded to support that change electorally through narratives that demonstrate specific benefits to specific groups. The findings ought to grant hope to progressive policymakers: change is possible and incrementalism is not an inevitable strategy

    Bereaved UK military families: A mixed methods study on the provision of practical and emotional support

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    Traumatic deaths of military personnel can have tragic consequences for the lives and health of bereaved significant others. To mitigate the effects, the UK Armed Forces enhanced the support for bereaved military families. However, little is known about whether the support has been satisfactory. The present research applied mixed methods to explore the experiences of bereaved UK military families (N = 264) with different types of support and how it historically changed over time. The findings suggest that although support has improved, further improvements are required in the provision of financial information, administrative support, and access to psychological support for all bereaved family members

    The power of relationship-based supervision in supporting social work retention: A case study from long-term ethnographic research in child protection

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    Supervision is a core component of professional support and development in social work. In many settings, and perhaps particularly in children’s services, it is valued as crucial in safe decision-making, practice reflection, professional development and staff support. Research has demonstrated that supervision and staff support also contribute to social worker retention in child welfare services. Drawing on data gathered in a 15-month ethnographic, longitudinal study of child protection work that included observations of supervision, we were able to observe the impact of supportive supervisory relationships on social workers’ decision-making about staying in their current workplace. This article presents a single case that demonstrates the potential impact of effective relationship-based supervision on retention and calls for a more humane approach to social work supervision against dominant managerial themes that have increasingly burdened the profession

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