57 research outputs found
Uncertainty in Forensic Science: Conceptualisation, Evaluation and Communication
This thesis addresses how uncertainty in forensic science can be conceptualised, evaluated, and communicated to lay stakeholders. Traditionally uncertainty has been articulated with vague definitions, while typologies of uncertainty have not been systematically and clearly established. The evaluation of uncertainty has largely been restricted within the confines of the Bayesian theorem and the methods and means of communicating uncertainty have yet to be agreed by the academic community and the criminal justice sector. The first study of the thesis reviews the current narrative within forensic science with regards to the conceptualisation of uncertainty, through an exploration of the definitions, typologies and characteristics recognised and used by academics, policymakers and the courts. An interdisciplinary configurative review was then conducted into three allied neighbouring disciplines of medicine, environmental science and economics, to identify innovative ways to conceptualise, evaluate and communicate uncertainty to lay stakeholders in forensic science. As a result, three toolkits were developed, one each for the three facets of addressing scientific uncertainty. A third study was then carried out, to establish the sources of uncertainty that key stakeholders identified to be priorities for evaluation and communication for the application of science to the justice system. This study thereby tested that the findings from the interdisciplinary systematic review reflected the experiences of stakeholders, and in so doing provided a foundation for optimising the value of the three toolkits. The wider implications of dealing with uncertainty in forensic science in a more consistent, coherent and standardised fashion are then considered with a focus on both the discipline itself, and for different stakeholders within the criminal justice system. There is a clear need to recognise uncertainty as a salient issue in every stage of the forensic science process, and particularly so in the presentation of forensic science evidence in court. The body of work presented here offers a starting point for the development of a more coherent and consistent understanding of scientific uncertainty in forensic science, while also encouraging fruitful conversations regarding ways through which it can be evaluated and communicated to lay stakeholders. This research identifies the key aspects of considering uncertainty as a fundamental and integrated part of forensic science by identifying the nuances, complexities and limitations of forensic science evidence in the context of the delivery and application of science in a multiple stakeholder justice system
Machine Medical Ethics
In medical settings, machines are in close proximity with human beings: with patients who are in vulnerable states of health, who have disabilities of various kinds, with the very young or very old, and with medical professionals. Machines in these contexts are undertaking important medical tasks that require emotional sensitivity, knowledge of medical codes, human dignity, and privacy.
As machine technology advances, ethical concerns become more urgent: should medical machines be programmed to follow a code of medical ethics? What theory or theories should constrain medical machine conduct? What design features are required? Should machines share responsibility with humans for the ethical consequences of medical actions? How ought clinical relationships involving machines to be modeled? Is a capacity for empathy and emotion detection necessary? What about consciousness?
The essays in this collection by researchers from both humanities and science describe various theoretical and experimental approaches to adding medical ethics to a machine, what design features are necessary in order to achieve this, philosophical and practical questions concerning justice, rights, decision-making and responsibility, and accurately modeling essential physician-machine-patient relationships.
This collection is the first book to address these 21st-century concerns
The Human Auditory System
This book presents the latest findings in clinical audiology with a strong emphasis on new emerging technologies that facilitate and optimize a better assessment of the patient. The book has been edited with a strong educational perspective (all chapters include an introduction to their corresponding topic and a glossary of terms). The book contains material suitable for graduate students in audiology, ENT, hearing science and neuroscience
AXMEDIS 2008
The AXMEDIS International Conference series aims to explore all subjects and topics related to cross-media and digital-media content production, processing, management, standards, representation, sharing, protection and rights management, to address the latest developments and future trends of the technologies and their applications, impacts and exploitation. The AXMEDIS events offer venues for exchanging concepts, requirements, prototypes, research ideas, and findings which could contribute to academic research and also benefit business and industrial communities. In the Internet as well as in the digital era, cross-media production and distribution represent key developments and innovations that are fostered by emergent technologies to ensure better value for money while optimising productivity and market coverage
The Narrative Identity Construction of Three Multilingual Students at an American-Style University in the UAE: An Examination of Motivational, Ideological, Attitudinal, and Sociocultural Factors that Impact Writer Identity in Academic English
This study explores how multilingual students at an American-style university in the UAE construct their narrative identities as academic writers in English. I use a case-study approach on three first-year writing students by examining written journal responses, questionnaires, and semi-structured interviews about their past, present, and imagined-future experiences as writers. The study uses multiple theoretical frameworks to examine the writing motivations, linguistic ideologies, attitudinal beliefs, and sociocultural influences surrounding English as an academic discourse that are specific to the UAE, with particular focus on how English as the medium of instruction impacts writer identity and narrative identity construction in multilingual students. The study reveals that the participants’ motivations as academic writers were impacted by their investments in English rather than their sole abilities as academic writers. Thus, English as the primary language of instruction in the UAE plays a significant role when understanding writer identity in the region. The study also reveals the challenges that can arise when educational practices in the UAE demand mastery of academic discourse in English without considering the potential impact on multilingual students’ perceptions of their English-language abilities. This was highlighted when the participants encountered difficulties common to all academic writers, such as gatekeeping practices, formulaic teaching methods, and standard-language correctness, yet their English-language abilities were perceived to be the cause, either by themselves or their teachers, rather than the overall challenges of mastering an academic discourse. By having the participants construct their writer identities in narrative form, their unique experiences can offer important perspectives on the ways in which English impacts writer identity in multilingual students in the UAE
Recommended from our members
Dialogic education, historical thinking and epistemic beliefs: a design-based research study of teaching in Taiwanese classrooms
The study reported in this dissertation explored: (1) teachers’ use of dialogue to facilitate students’ historical thinking and (2) the trajectory of historical personal epistemology through a design-based approach. Empirical evidence emerging in previous decades has acknowledged that good quality classroom dialogue could have a positive impact on students’ learning. Through dialogic teaching, it has been argued that teachers could probe and promote students’ higher thinking skills. However, how dialogue is being used in history classes as well as the cultural context of dialogic education in East Asia was a salient gap in current research. The first research aim was to explore both teachers’ and students’ epistemic beliefs regarding the domain of history, which has been largely neglected in this field of study. The aim of this research was also to propose a new perspective on dialogic education that might not only bridge the dichotomy of the monologic and dialogic forms of teaching, but also address the pedagogical dilemma in history education raised by the latest Taiwanese national curriculum reform. Finally, another major aim of the research was to design a teacher professional development programme to change teachers’ epistemic beliefs and their teaching practice towards dialogic history education for promoting historical thinking.
Adopting the notion of design-based research, a teaching professional programme was designed and administered throughout the one-academic year to 7 high school teachers. Three students of each participating teacher were chosen for semi-structured interviews to explore their personal epistemology, which were later analysed with an innovative discourse analysis method: Epistemic Network Analysis (ENA). Data concerning classroom dialogue was collected from monthly class observations and then analysed with a reconceptualised coding framework adapted from the Teacher’s Scheme for Educational Dialogue Analysis (T-SEDA, Hennessy, et al., 2021) and an observational instrument for historical thinking (Gestsdóttir, et al., 2018).
In regard to personal epistemology, the findings reported a mixture of results with only a few students seeing a significant change in their epistemic beliefs after the programme. However, a pattern-based model for analysing historical epistemic beliefs reported from this study, has been generated resulting in four major patterns of beliefs being identified. In terms of classroom dialogue, the results found a positive increase in teachers’ use of dialogue. A hybrid form of dialogue informed by current dialogic theories synthesised with Confucianism and Taoism allowed dialogue to transgress away from the dichotomy of structural forms of monologue and dialogue was also put forward and characterised from the analysis. The contributions of this present study are discussed in terms of theoretical, methodological and practical uses
Low-Cost Sensors and Biological Signals
Many sensors are currently available at prices lower than USD 100 and cover a wide range of biological signals: motion, muscle activity, heart rate, etc. Such low-cost sensors have metrological features allowing them to be used in everyday life and clinical applications, where gold-standard material is both too expensive and time-consuming to be used. The selected papers present current applications of low-cost sensors in domains such as physiotherapy, rehabilitation, and affective technologies. The results cover various aspects of low-cost sensor technology from hardware design to software optimization
OBSERVER-BASED-CONTROLLER FOR INVERTED PENDULUM MODEL
This paper presents a state space control technique for inverted pendulum system. The system is a common classical control problem that has been widely used to test multiple control algorithms because of its nonlinear and unstable behavior. Full state feedback based on pole placement and optimal control is applied to the inverted pendulum system to achieve desired design specification which are 4 seconds settling time and 5% overshoot. The simulation and optimization of the full state feedback controller based on pole placement and optimal control techniques as well as the performance comparison between these techniques is described comprehensively. The comparison is made to choose the most suitable technique for the system that have the best trade-off between settling time and overshoot. Besides that, the observer design is analyzed to see the effect of pole location and noise present in the system
A Review of Resonant Converter Control Techniques and The Performances
paper first discusses each control technique and then gives experimental results and/or performance to highlights their merits. The resonant converter used as a case study is not specified to just single topology instead it used few topologies such as series-parallel resonant converter (SPRC), LCC resonant converter and parallel resonant converter (PRC). On the other hand, the control techniques presented in this paper are self-sustained phase shift modulation (SSPSM) control, self-oscillating power factor
control, magnetic control and the H-∞ robust control technique
- …