Brooking no excuses: university staff and students are encouraged to develop their engagement

Brooking no excuses: university staff and students are encouraged to develop their engagement This paper will explore the internal and external factors that have prompted the University of East Anglia's decision to give Public Engagement into a more central role within the Universities Corporate Plan. It will illustrate how the SEARCH Action Learning Programme facilitated the design, implementation and delivery of new Staff and Student Development Programmes that aim to provide the confidence, skills and mentorship that will encourage staff to develop their engagement activities. We will use a SWOT analysis to discuss the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats of the Public Engagement Practitioner. As part of this, we will explore how many of the issues we face as Science communicators with the public are similar to issues encountered by Communicators within the Arts and Humanities disciplines. Finally we will outline and detail our future plans, opportunities and vision that will enable us to move this agenda forward

Predictive policing management: a brief history of patrol automation

Predictive policing has attracted considerably scholarly attention. Extending the promise of being able to interdict crime prior to its commission, it seemingly promised forms of anticipatory policing that had previously existed only in the realms of science fiction. The aesthetic futurism that attended predictive policing did, however, obscure the important historical vectors from which it emerged. The adulation of technology as a tool for achieving efficiencies in policing was evident from the 1920s in the United States, reaching sustained momentum in the 1960s as the methods of Systems Analysis were applied to policing. Underpinning these efforts resided an imaginary of automated patrol facilitated by computerised command and control systems. The desire to automate police work has extended into the present, and is evident in an emergent platform policing – cloud-based technological architectures that increasingly enfold police work. Policing is consequently datafied, commodified and integrated into the circuits of contemporary digital capitalism

CrashEd – A live immersive, learning experience embedding STEM subjects in a realistic, interactive crime scene

Interactive experiences are rapidly becoming popular via the surge of ‘escape rooms’; part game and part theatre, the ‘escape’ experience is exploding globally, having gone from zero offered at the outset of 2010 to at least 2800 different experiences available worldwide today. CrashEd is an interactive learning experience that parallels many of the attractions of an escape room – it incorporates a staged, realistic ‘crime scene’ and invites participants to work together to gather forensic evidence and question a witness in order to solve a crime, all whilst competing against a ticking clock. An animation can enhance reality and engage with cognitive processes to help learning; in CrashEd, it is the last piece of the jigsaw that consolidates the students’ incremental acquisition of knowledge to tie together the pieces of evidence, identify a suspect and ultimately solve the crime. This article presents the background to CrashEd and an overview of how a timely placed animation at the end of an educational experience can enhance learning. The lessons learned, from delivering bespoke versions of the experience to different demographic groups, are discussed. The article will consider the successes and challenges raised by the collaborative project, future developments and potential wider implications of the development of CrashEd

Achieving the impossible

Smallpox feature article

How much does a man cost? A dirty, dull, and dangerous application

Thesis (M.A.) University of Alaska Fairbanks, 2017This study illuminates the many abilities of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs). One area of importance includes the UAV's capability to assist in the development, implementation, and execution of crisis management. This research focuses on UAV uses in pre and post crisis planning and accomplishments. The accompaniment of unmanned vehicles with base teams can make crisis management plans more reliable for the general public and teams faced with tasks such as search and rescue and firefighting. In the fight for mass acceptance of UAV integration, knowledge and attitude inventories were collected and analyzed. Methodology includes mixed method research collected by interviews and questionnaires available to experts and ground teams in the UAV fields, mining industry, firefighting and police force career field, and general city planning crisis management members. This information was compiled to assist professionals in creation of general guidelines and recommendations for how to utilize UAVs in crisis management planning and implementation as well as integration of UAVs into the educational system. The results from this study show the benefits and disadvantages of strategically giving UAVs a role in the construction and implementation of crisis management plans and other areas of interest. The results also show that the general public is lacking information and education on the abilities of UAVs. This education gap shows a correlation with negative attitudes towards UAVs. Educational programs to teach the public benefits of UAV integration should be implemented

Making Available Library Information Resources for Utilisation and Reformation of Prison Inmates

Nigerian prisons harbour offenders who have committed offences. These are mainly youths of great strength and high intelligence within the age bracket of 18-45 years. A study on availability and utilization of library information resources and psychological well-being was carried out among prison inmates with functional libraries in Ikoyi prison, Lagos and Ijebu-ode prison, Ijebu, Nigeria. The population of convicted prison inmates in the two prisons was 744 (513 prisoners from Ikoyi prison and 231from Ijebu prison). 305 inmates were sampled from Ikoyi prison and 138 from Ijebu-ode prison, totalling 443 (60%) of the study population. A structured questionnaire was used to collect data from the respondents in the two prisons, and the 443 sample responded correctly to the questionnaire making it a 100% response rate. The study revealed that there is a poor rendition of library services in the prison library from the items tested, the mean scores obtained were weighted at 1.31 ≤ 2.00. The study also revealed unavailability of library information resources while the few available ones are under-utilized. Out of the 11 items tested, 9 items portrayed very poor utilisation rate, while the remaining two items; internet and video for personal development training and cassettes were not utilized at all. The paper, therefore, recommends that prison library should be equipped with relevant and updated information materials and library services be fully rendered in order to facilitate their rehabilitation and improve inmates reformation. Keywords: Reformation, Information Resources, Availability, Utilization, Prison libraries, Inmates, Nigeri

Defense for Covert Administrative Techniques for Neutralizing American Highly Qualified Personnel

International audiencePh.D. scientists and engineers are highly qualified personnel (HQP) that improve U.S. economic efficiency and generate new products including weapons of interest to the intelligence community. HQP represent a small fraction of the population, which make them favorable targets to compromise. This study analyzes how to defend against a novel approach of covert infiltration that uses administrative techniques to neutralize HQP without recruiting them directly. The approach follows five hierarchical strategies to replace the innovation cycle with administrative time expenditures. This approach is critically analyzed to further national security goals by providing intelligence service guidelines for defensive measures needed against this new weapon

In the Battle for Reality: Social Documentaries in the U.S.

Provides an overview of documentaries that address social justice and democracy issues, and includes case studies of successful strategic uses of social documentaries

A National Dialogue on Health Information Technology and Privacy

Increasingly, government leaders recognize that solving the complex problems facing America today will require more than simply keeping citizens informed. Meeting challenges like rising health care costs, climate change and energy independence requires increased level of collaboration. Traditionally, government agencies have operated in silos -- separated not only from citizens, but from each other, as well. Nevertheless, some have begun to reach across and outside of government to access the collective brainpower of organizations, stakeholders and individuals.The National Dialogue on Health Information Technology and Privacy was one such initiative. It was conceived by leaders in government who sought to demonstrate that it is not only possible, but beneficial and economical, to engage openly and broadly on an issue that is both national in scope and deeply relevant to the everyday lives of citizens. The results of this first-of-its-kind online event are captured in this report, together with important lessons learned along the way.This report served as a call to action. On his first full day in office, President Obama put government on notice that this new, more collaborative model can no longer be confined to the efforts of early adopters. He called upon every executive department and agency to "harness new technology" and make government "transparent, participatory, and collaborative." Government is quickly transitioning to a new generation of managers and leaders, for whom online collaboration is not a new frontier but a fact of everyday life. We owe it to them -- and the citizens we serve -- to recognize and embrace the myriad tools available to fulfill the promise of good government in the 21st Century.Key FindingsThe Panel recommended that the Administration give stakeholders the opportunity to further participate in the discussion of heath IT and privacy through broader outreach and by helping the public to understand the value of a person-centered view of healthcare information technology