Averting Denver Airports on a Chip

As a result of recent advances in software engineering capabilities, we are now in a more stable environment. De-facto hardware and software standards are emerging. Work on software architecture and design patterns signals a consensus on the importance of early system-level design decisions, and agreements on the uses of certain paradigmatic software structures. We now routinely build systems that would have been risky or infeasible a few years ago. Unfortunately, technological developments threaten to destabilize software design again. Systems designed around novel computing and peripheral devices will spark ambitious new projects that will stress current software design and engineering capabilities. Micro-electro-mechanical systems (MEMS) and related technologies provide the physical basis for new systems with the potential to produce this kind of destabilizing effect. One important response to anticipated software engineering and design difficulties is carefully directed engineering-scientific research. Two specific problems meriting substantial research attention are: A lack of sufficient means to build software systems by generating, extending, specializing, and integrating large-scale reusable components; and a lack of adequate computational and analytic tools to extend and aid engineers in maintaining intellectual control over complex software designs

China Healthcare ICT: Reinventing China’s National Healthcare System through Electronic Medical Records, Telecom Networks and Advanced IT Services

In January 2009 China announced a RMB 850 billion ($124 billion) stimulus package over three years to fundamentally reshape the nation\u27s healthcare sector. A key element of the plan is to modernize healthcare services with digital hospitalization, electronic medical records, and next-generation information networks. The goal is to dramatically improve healthcare service quality and, importantly, to enable virtual healthcare services that can overcome service disparities between rich areas and poor. But the lack of technical standardization complicates take-up and adoption of unified e-healthcare solutions. The stakes are high for the government and for international technology companies seeking position in this large and fast-moving market

Setting the Agenda: The World Bank and International Labour Organisation’s Battle to Shape Global Pension Policy

Throughout the 1990s and 2000s, the World Bank and the International Labour Organisation (ILO) competed to shape the global pension reform agenda. Inspired by the privatisation of Chile’s pension system in 1981 and its spread across Latin America, the World Bank promoted a partial privatisation of public pension systems across the globe. It was vehemently opposed by the ILO. The World Bank was able to use its lending capacity as leverage into the pension reform debates of the countries of Central Eastern Europe during their transition to market-based capitalism. It supplanted the ILO as the dominant international organisation in the pension reform arena as most countries in the region adopted the World Bank’s preferred pension model. However, at the onset of the of the global economic crisis, the trend went into reverse. Most countries in Latin American and Central and Eastern Europe either scaled back on their privatisation or completely abandoned it. This thesis investigates the impact of these reversals on global pension policy. It draws on an analysis of 104 pension documents and 25 elite interviews from senior policy makers in the World Bank, ILO and Central and Eastern Europe to analyse global pension policy. It deploys an Agency, Structure, Institutions, Discourse (ASID) framework to explore the process of pension reform and counter-reform in Central and Eastern Europe, the development of the pension policies of the ILO and World Bank, and the relationship between them. The thesis tells the story of how the ILO has managed to reassert itself in the global debate and international agenda-setting process through the promotion of its flagship national social protection floors. It now works much more closely with the World Bank, which abandoned its pension privatisation campaign and works closely with the ILO to extend pensions coverage

Y2K Interruption: Can the Doomsday Scenario Be Averted?

The management philosophy until recent years has been to replace the workers with computers, which are available 24 hours a day, need no benefits, no insurance and never complain. But as the year 2000 approached, along with it came the fear of the millennium bug, generally known as Y2K, and the computers threatened to strike!!!! Y2K, though an abbreviation of year 2000, generally refers to the computer glitches which are associated with the year 2000. Computer companies, in order to save memory and money, adopted a voluntary standard in the beginning of the computer era that all computers automatically convert any year designated by two numbers such as 99 into 1999 by adding the digits 19. This saved enormous amount of memory, and thus money, because large databases containing birth dates or other dates only needed to contain the last two digits such as 65 or 86. But it also created a built in flaw that could make the computers inoperable from January 2000. The problem is that most of these old computers are programmed to convert 00 (for the year 2000) into 1900 and not 2000. The trouble could therefore, arise when the systems had to deal with dates outside the 1900s. In 2000, for example a programme that calculates the age of a person born in 1965 will subtract 65 from 00 and get -65. The problem is most acute in mainframe systems, but that does not mean PCs, UNIX and other computing environments are trouble free. Any computer system that relies on date calculations must be tested because the Y2K or the millennium bug arises because of a potential for “date discontinuity” which occurs when the time expressed by a system, or any of its components, does not move in consonance with real time. Though attention has been focused on the potential problems linked with change from 1999 to 2000, date discontinuity may occur at other times in and around this period.

All-State Radiation Monitoring Network in the Czech Republic

Requirements of the All-State Radiation Monitoring Network in the Czech Republic have been establishedby Regulation No. 319/2002 Sb, and its function and organisation are described in Regulation No. 27/2006Sb. The All-State Radiation Monitoring Network in the Czech Republic consists of two components–permanentmonitoring and emergency monitoring. The activity of the whole network is provided by the State Office forNuclear Safety. The selected central authorities of the state administration participate in operation and providingparticular components. There are two different modes of the operation of these components–normal andemergency. The modes of operation are controlled by the State Office for Nuclear Safety. The activity of wholenetwork is focused on continuous monitoring of the radiation situation in the Czech Republic and on earlydetection of radiation accidents in and around the country as well as beyond it. The acquired data shall serveas a basis for adopting urgent and subsequent radiological protection provisions.Defence Science Journal, 2008, 58(6), pp.728-733, DOI:http://dx.doi.org/10.14429/dsj.58.170

Hero-making as a defence against the anxiety of responsibility and risk: A case study of US airways flight 1549

By examining US Airways Flight 1549’s glider-like landing on New YorkCity’s Hudson River on 15 January 2009, this article contributes to a deeperunderstanding of the psycho- and socio-analytic aspects of American culture.Using system psychodynamics as a conceptual framework, the essayuses this case study to demonstrate how individual psychology, groupdynamics, and systemic influences intertwined to tap a collective societalneed for a traditional male hero to salve the cultural disillusionment createdby corporate scandals, executive greed, job loss, and terrorist attacks in post-9/11 America. Understanding how this phenomenon occurred helps us grapplewith psycho-cultural factors that favour searching for a saviour overrecognising collective responsibilities that encourage more collaborativeapproaches to crisis decision making

The social sciences and the web : From ‘Lurking’ to interdisciplinary ‘Big Data’ research

Acknowledgements This research is supported by the award made by the RCUK Digital Economy theme to the dot.rural Digital Economy Hub (award reference: EP/G066051/1) and the UK Economic & Social Research Council (ESRC) (award reference: ES/M001628/1).Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Digital Ethics Canvas: A Guide For Ethical Risk Assessment And Mitigation In The Digital Domain

Ethical concerns in the digital domain are growing with the extremely fast evolution of technology and the increasing scale at which software is deployed, potentially affecting our societies globally. It is crucial that engineers evaluate more systematically the impacts their solutions can have on individuals, groups, societies and the environment. Ethical risk analysis is one of the approaches that can help reduce “ethical debt”, the unpaid cost generated by ethically problematic technical solutions. However, previous research has identified that novices struggle with the identification of risks and their mitigation. Our contribution is a visual tool, the Digital Ethics Canvas, specifically designed to help engineers scan digital solutions for a range of ethical risks with six “lenses”: beneficence, non-maleficence, privacy, fairness, sustainability and empowerment. In this paper, we present the literature background behind the design of this tool. We also report on preliminary evaluations of the canvas with novices (N=26) and experts (N=16) showing that the tool is perceived as practical and useful, with positive utility judgements from participants