Complex systems science: expert consultation report

Executive SummaryA new programme of research in Complex Systems Science must be initiated by FETThe science of complex systems (CS) is essential to establish rigorous scientific principles on which to develop the future ICT systems that are critical to the well-being, safety and prosperity of Europe and its citizens. As the “ICT incubator and pathfinder for new ideas and themes for long-term research in the area of information and communication technologies” FET must initiate a significant new programme of research in complex systems science to underpin research and development in ICT. Complex Systems Science is a “blue sky” research laboratory for R&D in ICT and their applications. In July 2009, ASSYST was given a set of probing questions concerning FET funding for ICT-related complex systems research. This document is based on the CS community’s response.Complex systems research has made considerable progress and is delivering new scienceSince FET began supporting CS research, considerable progress has been made. Building on previous understanding of concepts such as emergence from interactions, far-from-equilibrium systems, border of chaos and self-organised criticality, recent CS research is now delivering rigorous theory through methods of statistical physics, network theory, and computer simulation. CS research increasingly demands high-throughput data streams and new ICT-based methods of observing and reconstructing, i.e. modelling, the dynamics from those data in areas as diverse as embryogenesis, neuroscience, transport, epidemics, linguistics, meteorology, and robotics. CS research is also beginning to address the problem of engineering robust systems of systems of systems that can adapt to changing environments, including the perplexing problem that ICT systems are too often fragile and non-adaptive.Recommendation: A Programme of Research in Complex Systems Science to Support ICTFundamental theory in Complex Systems Science is needed, but this can only be achieved through real-world applications involving large, heterogeneous, and messy data sets, including people and organisations. A long-term vision is needed. Realistic targets can be set. Fundamental research can be ensured by requiring that teams include mathematicians, computer scientists, physicists and computational social scientists.One research priority is to develop a formalism for multilevel systems of systems of systems, applicable to all areas including biology, economics, security, transportation, robotics, health, agriculture, ecology, and climate change. Another related research priority is a scientific perspective on the integration of the new science with policy and its implementation, including ethical problems related to privacy and equality.A further priority is the need for education in complex systems science. Conventional education continues to be domain-dominated, producing scientists who are for the most part still lacking fundamental knowledge in core areas of mathematics, computation, statistical physics, and social systems. Therefore:1. We recommend that FET fund a new programme of work in complex systems science as essential research for progress in the development of new kinds of ICT systems.2. We have identified the dynamics of multilevel systems as the area in complex systems science requiring a major paradigm shift, beyond which significant scientific progress cannot be made.3. We propose a call requiring: fundamental research in complex systems science; new mathematical and computational formalisms to be developed; involving a large ‘guinea pig’ organisation; research into policy and its meta-level information dynamics; and that all research staff have interdisciplinary knowledge through an education programme.Tangible outcomes, potential users of the new science, its impact and measures of successUsers include (i) the private and public sectors using ICT to manage complex systems and (ii) researchers in ICT, CSS, and all complex domains. The tangible output of a call will be new knowledge on the nature of complex systems in general, new knowledge of the particular complex system(s) studied, and new knowledge of the fundamental role played by ICT in the research and implementation to create real systems addressing real-world problems. The impact of the call will be seen through new high added-value opportunities in the public and private sectors, new high added-value ICT technologies, and new high added-value science to support innovation in ICT research and development. The measure of success will be through the delivery of these high added-value outcomes, and new science to better understand failures

1973 Evaluations of Some Pesticide Residues in Food: The Monographs. Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, Rome, 1975. 491 p. Available from Unipub, Box 433, Murray Hill Station, New York, NY 10016. $15.00.

(excerpt) The evaluations of residues on foodstuffs contained in these monographs were prepared by a joint meeting of an FA0 expert committee and a WHO expert committee on pesticide residues that met in Geneva and produced its report Pesticide Residues in Food published as WHO Technical Report Series No. 545 and FA0 Agricultural Studies No. 92 in 1974. Th

Report on Expert Interviews

This short report represents a summary of the analysis conducted so far on the GfK Panel Data. The focus was on the main three types of raw meat: chicken, pork, beef, as well as three categories of processed food products: liver paste, cold cuts and sausages. The aim was to look at the market indicators for each one of the six sub-categories, out of which market share and penetration were considered to be the most important. Besides these two indicators, I also included some extra calculations for each category, which can be analysed further and more in-depth if needed. One of the desired outcomes of the analyses was to identify companies and brands that were successful in each sub-category. Unfortunately, due to the generally low market shares of the organic products, the number of options was limited. Beef and pork were two categories where no brands were registered in the original product and sales Files. In the chicken category there was only one brand registered between 2006 and 2010, however, the market shares were extremely low for this category. There were only one or two households buying organic chicken products. The processed meat sub-categories both had a few companies registered. However, the diversity isn’t large. Still, it is good to notice that in the three sub-categories there were two companies that were most present: Farre Food and Hanegal. Market shares were generally low for all six sub-categories. Organic beef, pork and liver paste were the only categories to reach market shares of over 1%, while organic chicken had the lowest market shares of all. The trends were generally fluctuating over time. The highest market shares for liver paste, pork, chicken and beef were registered in 2007. All these four categories had much lower market shares in 2009, but it is interesting to notice that in the same year, organic cold cuts and sausages registered the highest market shares. Except for chicken, all market shares dropped in 2010 compared to 2009. Penetration levels had a clear descending trend for organic beef and liver paste, whereas for the other subcategories the levels fluctuated. Organic chicken and sausage generally had an ascending trend, while organic pork and cold cuts usually had descending trends in penetration levels. The highest penetration rates were registered in 2006 for liver paste, beef and cold cuts and in 2008 for sausages, chicken and pork. Out of all the six sub-categories that were analysed, organic beef has had the highest market shares and highest penetration rates, even though the figures were lower and lower every year. Regarding the average price paid/100 gr of meat products, we notice that in the organic category there is more fluctuation than in the conventional category, meaning that the price of organic products varies more between years. According to the analysis, the price difference between the organic and the conventional options in a sub-category is clearly notices in the processed meat category, but it is not as well defined for chicken, pork and beef. There are some limitations regarding the analysis of the panel data. On the one hand, these are due to the fact that there are some incompatibilities between the product file and the sales file regarding the identification of products as being organic or not. On the other hand, some of the products were registered as “unknown”, meaning that they are neither analysed as being organic, nor as being conventional, but as being a separate category. It is considered however that due to the fact that the results of the analysis are so small, the correction of these errors would not change the numbers significantly

No More Laissez Faire? Expert Evidence, Rule Changes and Reliability: Can More Effective Training for the Bar and Judiciary Prevent Miscarriages of Justice?

The apparent link between miscarriages of justice in prosecutions involving expert evidence and the level of training provided to the legal profession (the Bar in particular) and the judiciary in respect of such evidence was highlighted in 2005 with the publication of the House of Commons Science and Technology Committee Report Expert Evidence on Trial.2 The Law Commission, in the 2011 Report Expert Evidence in England and Wales 3 subsequently comprehensively addressed the same issue. This article seeks to consider why appropriate training in relation to expert evidence is so necessary and questions whether, in the context of the amendments to what is now Part 19 of the Criminal Procedure Rules (CrimPR19) and Part 19A of the Criminal Practice Direction (CrimPD19A), there have been sufficient developments in training to effect a cultural change within the legal profession and ultimately substantially reduce the risk of future miscarriages of justice. Finally, the article debates the nature of required training, arguing that much more detailed training is required than has previously been considered and addresses where this training best sits

Expertise and Bias in Decision Making

In this paper, we develop a model of a decision maker using an expert to obtain information. The expert is biased toward some favoured decision but cares also about its reputation on the market for experts. We then analyse the corresponding decision game depending on the nature of the informational linkage with the market. In the case where the expert is biased in favour of the status quo, the final decision is always biased in the same direction. Moreover, it is better to rely on experts biased against the status quo. We also show that it is optimal to publically disclose the expert report. Finally, we prove that the intuitive results that hiring an honest inside expert raises the outside expert's incentives to report truthfully holds when reports are public but not when they are secret.Experts, Bias, Reputation, Merger Control

People in public health. Expert hearings: a summary report

People in Public Health is a national study that is looking at how volunteers and lay workers are involved in improving health in their communities. The study’s main aim is to improve understanding of how to support lay people in their many and varied public health roles. In June 2008, three expert hearings were held so that the research team could listen to the views of people with specialist knowledge or practical experience of working in this way. Fifteen experts were invited from around the country to talk about how and why lay people get involved in public health, why the work they do is important and what the main barriers are. Our experts included lay people active in their communities, university researchers, people working in the health service (NHS), local government and the voluntary sector. While some talked about their experience of specific projects, others made more general points about services and support. All the expert hearings were held in public and there were opportunities for discussion

Jack Balkin's constitutionalism and the Expert Panel on Constitutional Recognition of Indigenous Australians

This article assesses the Expert Panel on Constitutional Recognition of Indigenous Australians\u27 Report and proposals from the perspective of constitutional theory. Introduction In January 2012, the Expert Panel on Constitutional Recognition of Indigenous Australians (‘Expert Panel’) delivered its report to the then Prime Minister making a number of recommendations to amend the Australian Constitution to ‘recognise’ Indigenous Australians. Rather than engage in a legal critique of the substance of the Expert Panel’s various proposals, this article approaches the Expert Panel’s Report and proposals as a whole from the perspective of constitutional theory. It argues that the Expert Panel’s Report and proposals strongly reflect the constitutional theory of the American constitutional theorist Jack Balkin. In his book Living Originalism, Balkin conceives of the United States Constitution functioning not only as ‘basic law’, distributing powers and setting up institutions of government, but also as ‘higher law’, embodying values and aspirations for the nation, and as ‘our law’, helping to constitute the people of the nation as a people. The first claim made in this article is that the Expert Panel conceives of the functions of the Australian Constitution in much the same way as Balkin conceives of the functions of the United States Constitution. The article makes a second claim. For Balkin, a constitution successfully functioning as basic law gives it procedural legitimacy whilst its success in functioning as higher law and our law gives it moral and sociological legitimacy respectively. Whilst the Australian Constitution does not really function as higher law or our law in Balkin’s sense, the Expert Panel’s adoption of that kind of thinking can be seen as a critique of the legitimacy of the Australian Constitution. The Expert Panel implicitly suggests that the Australian Constitution can be made more legitimate. The article also makes a third claim building upon the first two. It is argued that the Expert Panel is engaged in a project of constitutional redemption, a concept that features heavily in Living Originalism and which is the principal subject of its companion work Constitutional Redemption: Political Faith in an Unjust World. This article begins by setting out the background to the Expert Panel’s Report and notes its various proposals for amendments to the Australian Constitution. The article then turns to the first main claim. It explains Balkin’s tripartite view of constitutional functions and explores how the Expert Panel’s report and recommendations appear to be based on a view of the Australian Constitution as higher law and as our law. The article then turns to the second main claim, explaining how it is difficult to accept that the Australian Constitution functions as higher law and our law in Balkin’s sense and showing how the Expert Panel’s adoption of that thinking offers a critique of the legitimacy of the Australian Constitution. The article then turns to the third main claim and explores how the Expert Panel appears to be engaged in a project of constitutional redemption. The article concludes with a reference to The Castle and ‘the vibe’ and suggests that it is possible that the Australian people may one day look to the Australian Constitution as higher law and our law

Independent Expert Scientific Panel – Report on Unconventional Oil and Gas

No abstract available