The Concept of Ecologically Oriented Progress and Natural Resource Preservation

The most important issue of scientific and technological progress is considering the environment challenges of industrial development. It means that the progress must be ecologically oriented and environmentally friendly. The most adequate concept for the approach to the issue of "man - society – nature" relations is the ontology of the noosphere - the idea of a common space for human beings and nature. It presents an ideal example of an optimistic attitude towards the coordination between accelerating the scientific and technological development and natural resource saving. However, to maintain the balance between human needs and environmental processes determined by this concept, it is essential to include the lean production training into technological development of society

Perception of Nuclear Energy and Coal in France and the Netherlands

This study focuses on the perception of large scale application of nuclear energy and coal in the Netherlands and France. The application of these energy-sources and the risks and benefits are judged differently by various group in society. In Europe, France has the highest density of nuclear power plants and the Netherlands has one of the lowest. In both countries scientists and social scientists completed a questionnaire assessing the perception of the large scale application of both energy sources. Furthermore, a number of variables relating to the socio cultural and political circumstances were measured. The results indicate that the French had a higher risk perception and a more negative attitude toward nuclear power than the Dutch. But they also assess the benefits of the use of nuclear power to be higher. Explanations for these differences are discussed

Development of an opportunistic diagnostic prediction algorithm for osteoporosis and fragility fracture risk estimates from forearm radiographs (The OFFER1 Study)

This is a preprintData availability statement: The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.Osteoporosis and associated fractures are an increasingly prevalent concern in context with an ageing population. This study reports testing of IBEX Bone Health (IBEX BH) software, applied following acquisition of forearm radiographs. IBEX BH analyses the radiograph to measure areal bone mineral density (aBMD) at the examination site. A non-randomised cross-sectional study design was performed involving 261 (254 after exclusions) participants (112/142 m/f; mean age 70.8years (SD+/-9.0); 53 with osteoporosis). They underwent posterior-anterior distal forearm radiographs; dual x-ray absorptiometry (DXA) of the wrists, hips and lumbar spine; and, questionnaires exploring clinical risk factors. IBEX BH automatically identifies regions of interest (ROI) at the ultra-distal (UD) and distal third (TD) regions of the radius. Analysis investigated the area under the receiver operating characteristics curve (AUC) performance of IBEX BH for prediction of i) osteoporosis (based on clinical reporting of the hip and spine DXA) and ii) treatment recommendations by Fracture Risk Assessment Tool (FRAX) inclusive of neck of femur (NoF) areal bone mineral density (aBMD) results following National Osteoporosis Guideline Group (NOGG) guidelines. AUC for osteoporosis prediction at the UD and TD ROIs were 0.86 (99% Confidence interval (CI) [0.80, 0.91]) and 0.81 (99% CI [0.75, 0.88]), respectively. AUC for treatment recommendation using FRAX inclusive of NoF aBMD at the UD and TD ROIs were 0.95 (99% CI [0.91, 1.00]) and 0.97 (99% CI [0.93,1.00]), respectively. With a matched sensitivity to FRAX (without NoF aBMD) 0.93 (99% CI [0.78, 0.99]), IBEX BH predicted at the UD and TD ROIs recommended treatment outcomes by NOGG guidelines using FRAX (with NoF aBMD) with specificity 0.89 (99% CI 0.83, 0.94]) and 0.93 (99% CI [0.87, 0.97]), respectively. This is compared with 0.60 (99% CI [0.51, 0.69]) for FRAX (without NoF aBMD). Results demonstrate the potential clinical utility of IBEX BH as an opportunistic screening tool.Ibex Innovation

Education as site of memory: developing a research agenda

This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from the publisher via the DOI in this recordThe field of memory studies tends to focus attention on the ‘3Ms’ – museums, monuments, memorials – as sites where memories are constructed, communicated, and contested. Where education is identified as a site for memory, the focus is often narrowly on what is or is not communicated within curricula or textbooks, assuming that schools simply pass on messages agreed or struggled over elsewhere. This article explores the possibilities opened when educative processes are not taken as stable and authoritative sites for transmitting historical narratives, but instead as spaces of contestation, negotiation and cultural production. With a focus on ‘difficult histories’ of recent conflict and historical injustice, we develop a research agenda for education as a site of memory and show how this can illuminate struggles over dominant historical narratives at various scales, highlighting agencies that educational actors bring to making sense of the past

Refining Inductive Types

Dependently typed programming languages allow sophisticated properties of data to be expressed within the type system. Of particular use in dependently typed programming are indexed types that refine data by computationally useful information. For example, the N-indexed type of vectors refines lists by their lengths. Other data types may be refined in similar ways, but programmers must produce purpose-specific refinements on an ad hoc basis, developers must anticipate which refinements to include in libraries, and implementations must often store redundant information about data and their refinements. In this paper we show how to generically derive inductive characterisations of refinements of inductive types, and argue that these characterisations can alleviate some of the aforementioned difficulties associated with ad hoc refinements. Our characterisations also ensure that standard techniques for programming with and reasoning about inductive types are applicable to refinements, and that refinements can themselves be further refined