Social science sequestered

Greenhouse gas removal (GGR) raises many cultural, ethical, legal, social, and political issues, yet in the growing area of GGR research, humanities and social sciences (HASS) research is often marginalized, constrained and depoliticised. This global dynamic is illustrated by an analysis of the UK GGR research programme. This dynamic matters for the knowledge produced and for its users. Without HASS contributions, too narrow a range of perspectives, futures and issues will be considered, undermining or overpromising the prospects for the responsible development of GGR (and threatening worse side-effects), and limiting our understanding of why and how policy demands GGR solutions in the first place. In response, we present policy principles for bringing HASS fully into GGR research, organized around three themes: (1) HASS-led GGR research, (2) Opening up GGR futures, and (3) The politics of GGR futures.We acknowledge funding from the UK GGR programme, under several specific grants: NE/P019838/1, NE/P019900/1, NE/P019951/1, NE/P019668/1, and NE/P01982X/1

Digitalization and co-creation of healthcare value: A case study in Occupational Health

This paper discusses how digitalization of healthcare empowers stakeholders to interact and co-create value. The literature so far has focused on the benefits of healthcare value co-creation through digital technologies (DTs) from the patients and providers’ perspective. It has viewed patients and providers in isolation focusing on the benefits accruing to the healthcare system but has not shed light upon the role of DT during interactions between stakeholders to co-create healthcare value. To address this gap, this research uses a case of the ‘Occupational Health Adviceline’ (OHA), a DT-enabled Occupational Health (OH) service introduced in England to provide support and advice to Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs). We draw upon the affordances and S-D Logic concepts to illustrate how technology enables stakeholder (employees, employers, contact centre advisors, and OH nurses) empowerment and allows them to interact and co-create healthcare value. Our contribution lies in illustrating, through the affordances and S-D Logic lenses, how digitalization facilitates value co-creation through empowering stakeholders while providing new forms of visibility management.British Academy / Leverhulme Trust (grant no. SG122331); Knowledge Transfer Leave (Brunel University London)

Scenarios for the Development of Smart Grids in the UK: Literature Review

This Working Paper reviews the existing literature on the socio-technical aspects of smart grid development. This work was undertaken as part of the Scenarios for the Development of Smart Grids in the UK project

Sources of Risk and Uncertainty in UK Smart Grid Deployment: An Expert Stakeholder Analysis

The shift to increasingly smarter grids will require preparation and planning on the part of a diverse selection of current and future stakeholders. There are substantive sources of uncertainty that will impact on the adoption of smarter grid solutions. Risks and uncertainties are placed in one of seven categories: markets, users, data and information, 28 supply mix, policy, investment conditions, and networks. Each of these has the potential to add risk to the planning profiles of the stakeholders involved. Here, UK stakeholders drawn from industry, government, regulators, and academia are canvassed about potential sources of uncertainty within the UK’s electricity sector and the attendant risks that might be engendered by them.UK Research Council

Scenarios for the Development of Smart Grids in the UK: Synthesis Report

Building on extensive expert feedback and input, this Research Report describes four smart grid scenarios which consider how the UK' electricity system might develop to 2050. The scenarios outline how political decisions, as well as those made in regulation, finance, technology, consumer and social behaviour, market design or response, might affect the decisions of other actors and limit or allow the availability of future options

Vision-Depth Landmarks and Inertial Fusion for Navigation in Degraded Visual Environments

This paper proposes a method for tight fusion of visual, depth and inertial data in order to extend robotic capabilities for navigation in GPS-denied, poorly illuminated, and texture-less environments. Visual and depth information are fused at the feature detection and descriptor extraction levels to augment one sensing modality with the other. These multimodal features are then further integrated with inertial sensor cues using an extended Kalman filter to estimate the robot pose, sensor bias terms, and landmark positions simultaneously as part of the filter state. As demonstrated through a set of hand-held and Micro Aerial Vehicle experiments, the proposed algorithm is shown to perform reliably in challenging visually-degraded environments using RGB-D information from a lightweight and low-cost sensor and data from an IMU.Comment: 11 pages, 6 figures, Published in International Symposium on Visual Computing (ISVC) 201

How distinctive is the Foreign Language Enjoyment and Foreign Language Classroom Anxiety of Kazakh learners of Turkish?

The present study focuses on foreign language enjoyment (FLE) and foreign language classroom anxiety (FLCA) of 592 learners of Turkish as a foreign language (FL) in Kazakhstan. Mean levels of FLE and FLCA were found to be similar to previous studies in different settings with different target languages. In contrast with previous literature, a weak positive correlation was found between FLE and FLCA and the gender effect went in the opposite direction, with male participants reporting more FLCA than female participants. Multiple regression analyses revealed that FLE and FLCA were more strongly predicted by learners’ attitude toward Turkish and teacher-related variables than by learner-internal variables, confirming previous research outside Kazakhstan. Attitude toward the FL, teacher’s friendliness, strictness and frequency of use of the FL, attitude toward the teacher, participant’s age and FL exam result explained a total of 25% of variance in FLE. Differing slightly from previous studies, FLCA was found to be only weakly predicted (6% of variance) by some learner-internal variables (FL exam result, attitude toward the FL) as well as teacher-centred variables (friendliness, strictness). The findings suggest that variation in FLE and FLCA among Kazakh learners of Turkish is quite similar to that established in other contexts

Long-term precipitation in Southwestern Europe reveals no clear trend attributable to anthropogenic forcing

We present a long-term assessment of precipitation trends in Southwestern Europe (1850-2018) using data from multiple sources, including observations, gridded datasets and global climate model experiments. Contrary to previous investigations based on shorter records, we demonstrate, using new long-term, quality controlled precipitation series, the lack of statistically significant long-term decreasing trends in precipitation for the region. Rather, significant trends were mostly found for shorter periods, highlighting the prevalence of interdecadal and interannual variability at these time-scales. Global climate model outputs from three CMIP experiments are evaluated for periods concurrent with observations. Both the CMIP3 and CMIP5 ensembles show precipitation decline, with only CMIP6 showing agreement with long term trends in observations. However, for both CMIP3 and CMIP5 large interannual and internal variability among ensemble members makes it difficult to identify a trend that is statistically different from observations. Across both observations and models, our results make it difficult to associate any declining trends in precipitation in Southwestern Europe to anthropogenic forcing at this stage

Long-term precipitation in Southwestern Europe reveals no clear trend attributable to anthropogenic forcing

We present a long-term assessment of precipitation trends in Southwestern Europe (1850-2018) using data from multiple sources, including observations, gridded datasets and global climate model experiments. Contrary to previous investigations based on shorter records, we demonstrate, using new long-term, quality controlled precipitation series, the lack of statistically significant long-term decreasing trends in precipitation for the region. Rather, significant trends were mostly found for shorter periods, highlighting the prevalence of interdecadal and interannual variability at these time-scales. Global climate model outputs from three CMIP experiments are evaluated for periods concurrent with observations. Both the CMIP3 and CMIP5 ensembles show precipitation decline, with only CMIP6 showing agreement with long term trends in observations. However, for both CMIP3 and CMIP5 large interannual and internal variability among ensemble members makes it difficult to identify a trend that is statistically different from observations. Across both observations and models, our results make it difficult to associate any declining trends in precipitation in Southwestern Europe to anthropogenic forcing at this stage.This work was supported by the research projects CGL2017-82216-R, CGL2017-83866-C3-3-R and PCI2019-103631, financed by the Spanish Commission of Science and Technology and FEDER; CROSSDRO project financed by the AXIS (Assessment of Cross(X) - sectoral climate Impacts and pathways for Sustainable transformation), JPI-Climate co-funded call of the European Commission and INDECIS which is part of ERA4CS, an ERA-NET initiated by JPI Climate, and funded by FORMAS (SE), DLR (DE), BMWFW (AT), IFD (DK), MINECO (ES), ANR (FR) with co-funding by the European Union (Grant 690462)