What Cooperative Extension Professionals Need to Know About Institutional Review Boards: Risks and Benefits

More and more, Extension professionals are being asked to first run their needs assessment, program evaluation, and applied research projects through their university\u27s Institutional Review Boards. For many, this can be a confusing task. This article is the third in a series providing tips for preparing IRB proposals and discusses the potential risks and benefits involved in research projects

Adult responses to concerning sexual behaviours of young people in specialist school settings

[Extract] Descriptive in nature, the aim of this study was to obtain information about specialist school staff, regarding the factors found to be associated with responding to CSBs between students. Specific research questions of this study included: • What do staff know (or not know) about CSBs occurring peer-to-peer? And what are staff understandings of how to intervene to address associated risks? • What are the staff attitudes about CSBs occurring peer-to-peer (do they hold / demonstrate protective attitudes towards children, disability, and sexual behaviours)? • What are the perceived skills utilised in staff responses to issues/problems that arise when dealing with CSBs

Imagining interventions for collective sex environments

Frank’s (2018) article provides an excellent summary of transdisciplinary research concerned with collective sex environments, synthesizing highly diverse studies spanning five decades. The contributing papers utilize a broad range of methods and reflect many key sexual health risks across several diverse and distinct populations. For many readers, such as ourselves, with a particular interest in a single population, Frank’s synthesis provides a much needed and entirely fascinating wider perspective. This overarching vantage point can teach us about similarities and differences across populations, while simultaneously illuminating the populations and research we know so well through a different lens. As such, the paper provides an essential contribution to the literature. However, rather than champion the paper’s many strengths, within this Commentary we wish to grapple with what could be seen as its potential shortcomings. Our aim here is not be critical for the sake of it, but to somewhat playfully push debates further about many issues addressed within the paper. In this way, we wish to initiate more dialogue concerning collective sex, concomitant risks, and imaginative ways to ameliorate such risks

The Dark Side of Consensus and Creativity: What Mediators of Mass Disputes Need to Know About Agency Risks

This Essay looks at how mediators describe their role, and it asks whether—in negotiations to resolve mass disputes—the mindset and skill set of mediators may sometimes exacerbate rather than mitigate risks of self- serving conduct by lawyers. The Essay applies general concerns about class settlements and nonclass settlements to the particular problem of mass dispute mediation

The Case for an Information-Forcing Regulatory Definition of “Nanomaterials”

This Article reviews regulatory attempts to define nanomaterials to date, including the European Commission’s definition. It then sets forth and explains why agencies should adopt what I am calling an information-forcing definition of nanomaterials. Nanomaterials implicate the same informational problem as many other substances or practices that are the subject of political and legal debate: that is, we (the public) know enough to know that there are some risks but not enough to specify and assess those risks. We know risks are posed by some kinds of small-scale materials in some contexts, but not enough is known to define the universe of which particular materials pose risk and which do not (or how much risk is posed by those materials that do pose risk). Regulators, therefore, do not know enough to specify the health and environmental risks from nanomaterials with any precision. Regulatory definitions are, therefore, needed that facilitate the production and sharing by industry of information about the small-scale materials they use, why they use them, and what behaviors those materials exhibit that may translate into human health and/or ecological risk. The regulatory definitions should be structured so as not only to force information from industry, but also to force, or at least encourage, agencies not to give in to powerful forces of bureaucratic inertia and stick with regulatory definitions even after emerging science and other public information suggest they are obsolete

Theorizing Risk and Research: Methodological Constraints and Their Consequences

Conflict, postconflict settings, and other risky research sites are important with wide-ranging policy implications. Microlevel, field-based research lends critical insights to how conflicts work and the mechanisms behind macrolevel correlations that underpin quantitative political science. This article identifies how the risks associated with conflict and postconflict contexts influence researchers’ choices by theorizing the existence of distinct adaptive strategies. Specifically, researchers facing elevated risk generally manage it through three main strategies: outsourcing risk, avoiding risk, and internalizing risk. We argue that these strategies systematically shape and circumscribe outputs. We conclude by discussing how the relationship between risky fieldwork and what we know about conflict is poorly acknowledged. Thinking about how we manage risk should play a larger role in both our preparation for and interpretation of research, particularly in conflict and postconflict contexts

Measuring Value Understanding in Language Models through Discriminator-Critique Gap

Recent advancements in Large Language Models (LLMs) have heightened concerns about their potential misalignment with human values. However, evaluating their grasp of these values is complex due to their intricate and adaptable nature. We argue that truly understanding values in LLMs requires considering both "know what" and "know why". To this end, we present the Value Understanding Measurement (VUM) framework that quantitatively assesses both "know what" and "know why" by measuring the discriminator-critique gap related to human values. Using the Schwartz Value Survey, we specify our evaluation values and develop a thousand-level dialogue dataset with GPT-4. Our assessment looks at both the value alignment of LLM's outputs compared to baseline answers and how LLM responses align with reasons for value recognition versus GPT-4's annotations. We evaluate five representative LLMs and provide strong evidence that the scaling law significantly impacts "know what" but not much on "know why", which has consistently maintained a high level. This may further suggest that LLMs might craft plausible explanations based on the provided context without truly understanding their inherent value, indicating potential risks

The Failure of Federal Biotechnology Regulation

The recent court case and state ballot measures regarding mandatory labels for Genetically Modified Organisms (“GMOs”) suggest the need for a deeper conversation about the federal framework for regulating biotechnology. What is it about GMOs that consumers feel they have the “right to know?” Why has a generation of federal biotechnology regulation failed to satisfy consumer concerns? Are those concerns irrational, or is the regulatory structure inadequate? This Article argues that many consumer concerns underlying the labeling movement raise important scientific and extra- scientific questions that have been apparent since the advent of the technology in the 1980s. Moreover, these concerns persist because the Coordinated Framework for Regulation of Biotechnology has failed to respond to them effectively. The Coordinated Framework was based on statutes that pre-existed the technology and thus poorly fit the unique risks of genetic engineering. Today, genetic engineering is on the verge of a radical shift in technology, a shift that has already begun to burst the seams of those old statutes, leaving agencies with no regulatory authority at all over new products. This Article reviews the evidence behind persistent concerns about GMOs, considers the failures of the Coordinated Framework to address the most valid of those concerns, and canvasses policy questions that Congress must consider to more effectively tailor agency authority to address the risks and to enhance the potential of this rapidly-changing field of technology

Forecasting the Price of Oil

We address some of the key questions that arise in forecasting the price of crude oil. What do applied forecasters need to know about the choice of sample period and about the tradeoffs between alternative oil price series and model specifications? Are real or nominal oil prices predictable based on macroeconomic aggregates? Does this predictability translate into gains in out-of-sample forecast accuracy compared with conventional no-change forecasts? How useful are oil futures markets in forecasting the price of oil? How useful are survey forecasts? How does one evaluate the sensitivity of a baseline oil price forecast to alternative assumptions about future demand and supply conditions? How does one quantify risks associated with oil price forecasts? Can joint forecasts of the price of oil and of U.S. real GDP growth be improved upon by allowing for asymmetries?Econometric and statistical methods; International topics

How Vaping Is Impacting One Rural High School and What Can Be Done

How vaping is impacting one rural high school and what can be done. There has been an increase in the number of teens vaping. In order to understand this epidemic among teens and vaping, this research answers the following questions: What is vaping and why is it a problem? What are the health risks of vaping? Why is vaping among teens a concern? How is vaping impacting teens in local high school? In a review of literature on vaping, the research shows the negative impact on health and the increasing popularity of vaping especially among youth. This action research project reports on a collaboration between CSUMB Liberal Studies students and a local high school to learn what students know about vaping. Our findings indicate a need for more instruction on the health risks of vaping