How Can We Act? A Praxiographical Program for the Rhetoric of Technology, Science, and Medicine

The future of the rhetoric of science—which will increasingly take the form of a rhetoric of technology, science, and medicine (RTSM)—will be shaped by its move away from its modernist, humanistic roots in response to institutional pressures and historical contingencies. This paper advocates a “praxiographical” emphasis on the ability to intervene in science policy and other STEM-related discourses for the field of RTSM. It describes four research foci emerging from this emphasis to be used as areas of programmatic concern at an Institute for Applied Rhetoric of Science and Sustainability at the newly organized Patel College of Global Sustainability at the University of South Florida

"How Can We Act?" A Praxiographical Program for the Rhetoric of Technology, Science, and Medicine

The future of the rhetoric of science—which will increasingly take the form of a rhetoric of technology, science, and medicine (RTSM)—will be shaped by its move away from its modernist, humanistic roots in response to institutional pressures and historical contingencies. This paper advocates a “praxiographical” emphasis on the ability to intervene in science policy and other STEM-related discourses for the field of RTSM. It describes four research foci emerging from this emphasis to be used as areas of programmatic concern at an Institute for Applied Rhetoric of Science and Sustainability at the newly organized Patel College of Global Sustainability at the University of South Florida

Open the Jail Cell Doors, HAL: A Guarded Embrace of Pretrial Risk Assessment Instruments

In recent years, criminal justice reformers have focused their attention on pretrial detention as a uniquely solvable contributor to the horrors of modern mass incarceration. While reform of bail practices can take many forms, one of the most pioneering and controversial techniques is the adoption of actuarial models to inform pretrial decision-making. These models are designed to supplement or replace the unpredictable and discriminatory status quo of judicial discretion at arraignment. This Note argues that policymakers should experiment with risk assessment instruments as a component of their bail reform efforts, but only if appropriate safeguards are in place. Concerns for protecting individual constitutional rights, mitigating racial disparities, and avoiding the drawbacks of machine learning are the key challenges facing reformers and jurisdictions adopting pretrial risk assessment instruments. Absent proper precautions, risk assessment instruments can reinforce, rather than alleviate, modern criminal justice disparities. Drawing from a case study of New Jersey’s recent bail reform program, this Note examines the efficacy, impact, and pitfalls of risk assessment instrument adoption. Finally, this Note offers a broad framework for policymakers seeking to thoughtfully experiment with risk assessment instruments in their own jurisdictions

A technique for determining viable military logistics support alternatives

A look at today's US military will see them operating much beyond the scope of protecting and defending the United States. These operations now consist of, but are not limited to humanitarian aid, disaster relief, and conflict resolution. This broad spectrum of operational environments has necessitated a transformation of the individual military services into a hybrid force that can leverage the inherent and emerging capabilities from the strengths of those under the umbrella of the Department of Defense (DOD), this concept has been coined Joint Operations. Supporting Joint Operations requires a new approach to determining a viable military logistics support system. The logistics architecture for these operations has to accommodate scale, time, varied mission objectives, and imperfect information. Compounding the problem is the human in the loop (HITL) decision maker (DM) who is a necessary component for quickly assessing and planning logistics support activities. Past outcomes are not necessarily good indicators of future results, but they can provide a reasonable starting point for planning and prediction of specific needs for future requirements. Adequately forecasting the necessary logistical support structure and commodities needed for any resource intensive environment has progressed well beyond stable demand assumptions to one in which dynamic and nonlinear environments can be captured with some degree of fidelity and accuracy. While these advances are important, a holistic approach that allows exploration of the operational environment or design space does not exist to guide the military logistician in a methodical way to support military forecasting activities. To bridge this capability gap, a method called A Technique for Logistics Architecture Selection (ATLAS) has been developed. This thesis describes and applies the ATLAS method to a notional military scenario that involves the Navy concept of Seabasing and the Marine Corps concept of Distributed Operations applied to a platoon sized element. This work uses modeling and simulation to incorporate expert opinion and knowledge of military operations, dynamic reasoning methods, and certainty analysis to create a decisions support system (DSS) that can be used to provide the DM an enhanced view of the logistics environment and variables that impact specific measures of effectiveness.Ph.D.Committee Chair: Mavris, Dimitri; Committee Member: Fahringer, Philip; Committee Member: Nixon, Janel; Committee Member: Schrage, Daniel; Committee Member: Soban, Danielle; Committee Member: Vachtsevanos, Georg

The Empirical Turn In Family Law

Historically, the legal system justified family law’s rules and policies through morality, common sense, and prevailing cultural norms. In a sharp departure, and consistent with a broader trend across the legal system, empirical evidence increasingly dominates the regulation of families. There is much to celebrate in this empirical turn. Properly used, empirical evidence in family law can help the state act more effectively and efficiently, unmask prejudice, and depoliticize contentious battles. But the empirical turn also presents substantial concerns. Beyond perennial issues of the quality of empirical evidence and the ability of legal actors to use it, there are more fundamental problems: Using empirical evidence focuses attention on the outcomes of legal rules, discouraging a debate about contested and competing values. Reliance on empirical evidence overlays a veneer of neutrality on normative judgments. And uncritically adopting evidence about present conditions without interrogating the role of historical discrimination that continues to disadvantage some families can replicate that discrimination. Given the promise and peril of the empirical turn in family law, this Essay proposes a framework to guide the use of this evidence. The framework preserves space for debating multiple values and advises decisionmakers when to use empirical evidence, with particular attention to the dangers for nondominant families. The framework also recommends strengthening evidentiary gatekeeping and elevating the potential for legal scholarship to serve as a bridge from the broader research base to the courts. With this guidance in place, empirical evidence can take its rightful place as a useful but cabined tool in the legal regulation of families

The implementation of IS on the knowledge management and mental models at the decision-making process

The emphasis of this research is to leverage Knowledge Flow Theory to enhance extant Decision Theory and decision support systems to improve the decision-making process in military organizations in general and to outline a research agenda for subsequent application to the Hellenic Navy. Thus, the challenge of this research effort is to expose the major factors that define the problem of the decision maker for correct decisions through their synthesis. The areas of the dynamic knowledge as well as the mental models have special gravity among the military personnel since they determine the decision making process. Therefore, the intention of the author will be to conduct an introduction of the existed literature and provide greater fidelity and insight into the mechanism within which the emerging technology can either support or in some cases improve our decisions. Hence, the basis of this thesis is to enlighten the technological approach for timely integrated decisions. The method that will be followed focuses on theoretical integration and is expected to result in a general decision-making process for the military that reflects explicit incorporation of Knowledge Flow Theory.http://archive.org/details/theimplementatio109455768Approved for public release; distribution is unlimited

The Application of a System of Systems Analysis to Assessments of National Power

This dissertation proposes an approach and methodology for the utilization of the fundamentals of systems theory as an aid to national security decision-making. At its core is an examination of the elements of nations\u27 or non-state actor\u27s power resources. The product of the analysis is the compilation of a set of nodes, and the relationships between these, upon which actions may be taken to achieve desired effects. Since the boundaries between the subsystems of power resources are flexible and permeable, and there will be interactions between elements in different subsystems, a system of systems approach is essential so that the functioning of the system may be better understood and the secondary consequences of actions considered. The premise is that changes cannot occur in isolation, and that alterations in one component will result in modifications (intended or unintended) to related elements. The goal of the approach is not precise prediction of the effects of actions, but rather to provide for understanding of the relationships between elements of national power that will lead to expectations of the consequences of those actions. The hypothesis is: If national power is characterized as nonlinear and complex; and, if approaches recently developed in mathematics and the physical sciences provide a means of enhanced understanding of nonlinear systems; then, utilization of such an approach may provide a metaphor or model for increased understanding of the system and the secondary effects of coercive actions taken to achieve objectives. This dissertation will attempt to confirm the existence of the first two conditions, and will provide arguments and a design for accomplishment of the third. An ex post analysis of three conflicts where coercion by military means was the primary strategy---Somalia, 1992-1995; Kosovo, 1999; and, Afghanistan, 2001---will be used as case studies. These examples will provide illustration of the utilization of the principles of the system of systems construct and exposition of the potential of this methodology to enhance the understanding of the effects of coercive actions

The total assessment profile, volume 1

A methodology is described for the evaluation of societal impacts associated with the implementation of a new technology. Theoretical foundations for the methodology, called the total assessment profile, are established from both the economic and social science perspectives. The procedure provides for accountability of nonquantifiable factors and measures through the use of a comparative value matrix by assessing the impacts of the technology on the value system of the society

Ideological distinction. The political ideologies of social psychologists in the East and West.

The problem of “liberal bias” among personality and social psychologists has been widely discussed in recent years (Haidt, 2011; Duarte et al., in press; Inbar, Lammers, 2012). Most of these discussions extrapolated findings observed in American and Western European social psychology to the whole discipline. This article presents a first insight into regional differences in the political opinions of Western, and Eastern social psychologists. Based on the characteristics of intellectuals in Eastern European countries as reproducers of existing structures of dependence, we hypothesised that Eastern European psychologists would not express a “liberal bias” but instead, at least in the domain of economic opinions, that they would support rather conservative political solutions. An empirical study of social psychologists from Hungary, Poland, the USA and the UK supported this hypothesis. Furthermore, it was demonstrated that, despite forming the majority in the field of social psychology, Polish supporters of a free market economy were reluctant to express their views in public. Finally, based on the European Values Survey, we compared the economic attitudes of European social psychologists with the attitudes prevalent in their countries (i.e. Hungary, Poland and the UK). This comparison suggested that Hungarian and Polish social psychologists hold more procapitalist stances on economic issues than the poorest segments of the societies they live in, whereas British social psychologists supported state interventionism to a greater extent than the poorest sections of their society