Agency, truth and meaning: judging the Hutton Report

The Hutton Report is now established as an important element of Britain's involvement in the Iraq War. In this article the ideas that underpin it are analysed. In particular, the focus is on Hutton's presuppositions concerning the nature of truth, agency, subjectivity, meaning and language. It is shown how unquestioned assumptions structured his method and shaped his conclusions. Although such presuppositions are widely shared by the public, too, a discursive conflict within the report is identified, revealing a sub-text of competing understandings that protagonists invoked. These suggest a more phenomenological and intersubjective approach to the interpretation of events. The conclusion is that Dr Kelly and the BBC were victims of a particular sense of truth and that Hutton failed to situate important actors and events within geopolitical, institutional, experiential and affective structures. The author suggests that a greater appreciation of the contingent way information enters the public domain (itself more evident in the Butler Report) is a pre-condition for better intelligence and public policy making

An end-of-life care nurse service for people with COPD and heart failure: stakeholders' experiences

Background: End-of-life care (EOLC) has historically been associated with cancer care. However, demographic changes indicate that future provision must also cater for other long term conditions (LTC). An EOLC-LTC service, delivered by palliative care nurses, is currently being piloted in one area in the East Midlands with patients with cardiac and respiratory disease. In order to inform future commissioning, it is important to gain the views and experiences of those involved with the service. Aims: This study aimed to explore patients, and their partners, views and experiences of the EOLC-LTC service. Methods: Semi-structured interviews were used as part of a case study design, involving six cases. Each case consisted of the patient, their nominated family member/carer and key healthcare professionals involved in their care as identified by the patient. This paper reports on the findings from the interviews conducted with the six patients and their family member/carers. Data were analysed thematically. Results: From the interviews, the following themes were identified: experiences managing a long term cardio-respiratory condition, the nurse service, building a close/therapeutic relationship and fragmentation and integration. Conclusions: This study has shown that the EOLC-LTC service is welcomed and highly regarded by patients and their family members/carers. Further studies are required to explore the views and experiences of other key stakeholders and to evaluate how well the pilot operates within the wider care pathway

Understanding the vulnerabilities in Wi-Fi and the impact on its use in CCTV systems

Modern surveillance devices are increasingly being taken off private networks and placed onto networks connected via gateway to the Internet or into Wi-Fi based local area wireless networks (LAWN). The devices are also increasingly using IPv4 and IPv6 network stacks and some form of embedded processing or compute built in. Additionally, some specialist devices are using assistive technologies such as GPS or A-GPS. This paper explored the issues with use of the technologies in a networked environment, both wireless and internetworked. Analysis of these systems shows that the use of IP based CCTV systems carries greater risk than traditional CCTV systems, primarily due to the exposure to IP based vulnerabilities. Furthermore, Wi-Fi based IP CCTV systems are additionally susceptible to remote, physical denial of service attacks due to the broadcast nature of wireless communication systems. Interception of traffic is possible with IP based systems, and again, Wi-Fi IP based CCTV systems are more susceptible due to protocol vulnerabilities and lack of processing power. The paper concludes that more research is needed in this area to identify and classify generic vulnerabilities that these systems are vulnerable to, and to present a framework which can be used to mitigate the risk of adopting these systems

A simple model for the formation of vegetated dunes

A simple model for the dynamics of dunes associated with vegetation is proposed. Using the model, formation processes of transverse dunes, parabolic dunes and elongated parabolic dunes according to two environmental factors: i)the amount of sand at the source, ii)the wind force, are simulated. The results have qualitative correspondence to the real counterpart, and the simplicity of the algorithm and the consequent easiness of the handling of this model provide us with wide applicability for the investigation of the complex interplay between vegetation and dunes.Comment: 4 figure

Defence in depth, protection in depth and security in depth: A comparative analysis towards a common usage language

A common language with consistency of meaning is a critical step in the evolution of a profession. Whilst the debate as to whether or not security should be considered a profession is ongoing there is no doubt that the wider community of professionals operating in the security domain are working towards achieving recognition of security as a profession. The concepts of defence in depth, protection in depth and security in depth have been used synonymously by different groups across the domain. These concepts represent the very foundation of effective security architecture are hierarchical in nature and have specific meaning. This paper through comparative analysis clearly defines the difference between and establishes the hierarchy such that a common understanding can be achieved

Patient reported outcome measures for measuring dignity in palliative and end of life care : a scoping review

BACKGROUND: Patient reported outcome measures are frequently used standard questionnaires or tools designed to collect information from patients regarding their health status and care. Their use enables accurate and relevant insight into changes in health, quality of life, and symptom severity to be acquired. The purpose of this scoping review was to identify PROMs that had been subject to rigorous development and were suitable for use in palliative and end of life care for clinical practice and/or research purposes. The review had a specific focus on measures which could be used to assess perceptions of dignity in these contexts. METHODS: A scoping review of English-language papers published between 2005 and 2015. Searches were devised in conjunction with an information science specialist and were undertaken in Medline; PsycINFO; EMBASE; CINAHL; Social Science Citation Index; ASSIA; CENTRAL; CDSR; DARE; HTA; Oxford PROM Bibliography; PROQOLID, using dignity related terms such as personhood; dignity or dignified; patient-centred care; which were linked (via the Boolean operator "AND") to care-related terms such as terminal care; hospice care; palliative care; end of life. Papers were assessed against inclusion criteria and appraised for quality. RESULTS: The search strategy produced an initial 7845 articles. After three rounds of eligibility assessment, eight articles discussing eight patients reported outcome measures were found to meet the inclusion criteria and were included in the final review. These underwent a thorough critical appraisal process. All seven studies were empirical research focused on the development and testing of a PROM. CONCLUSIONS: The eight patient reported outcome measures had all undergone some psychometric testing, and covered dignity aspects suggesting that they could be considered for use for research purposes to assess dignity. There were also indications that some could be implemented into a clinical setting. However, each measure had limitations and scope for further development

lexiDB : a scalable corpus database management system

lexiDB is a scalable corpus database management system designed to fulfill corpus linguistics retrieval queries on multi-billion-word multiply-annotated corpora. It is based on a distributed architecture that allows the system to scale out to support ever larger text collections. This paper presents an overview of the architecture behind lexiDB as well as a demonstration of its functionality. We present lexiDB's performance metrics based on the AWS (Amazon Web Services) infrastructure with two part-of-speech and semantically tagged billion word corpora: Historical Hansard and EEBO (Early English Books Online)

Scaling out for extreme scale corpus data

Much of the previous work in Big Data has focussed on numerical sources of information. However, with the `narrative turn' in many disciplines gathering pace and commercial organisations beginning to realise the value of their textual assets, natural language data is fast catching up as an exploitable source of information for decision making. With vast quantities of unstructured textual data on the web, in social media, and in newly digitised historical document archives, the 5Vs (Volume, Velocity, Variety, Value and Veracity) apply equally well, if not more so, to big textual data. Corpus linguistics, the computer-aided study of large collections of naturally occurring language data, has been dealing with big data for fifty years. Corpus linguistics methods impose complex requirements on the retrieval, annotation and analysis of text in terms of displaying narrow contexts for each occurrence of a word or linguistic feature being studied and counting co-occurrences with other words or features to determine significant patterns in language. This, coupled with the distribution of language features in accordance with Zipf's Law, poses complex challenges for data models and corpus software dealing with extreme scale language data. A related issue is the non-random nature of language and the `burstiness' of word occurrences, or what we might put in Big Data terms as a sixth `V' called Viscosity. We report experiments to examine and compare the capabilities of two No-SQL databases in clustered configurations for the indexing, retrieval and analysis of billion-word corpora, since this size is the current state-of-the-art in corpus linguistics. We find that modern DBMSs (Database Management Systems) are capable of handling this extreme scale corpus data set for simple queries but are limited when querying for more frequent words or more complex queries

Return-to-work outcomes and usefulness of actual fit notes received by employers

Background: GPs can use the fit note to advise that a patient ‘may be fit’ or is ‘not fit’ for work. Previous employer-based research on the fit note is largely qualitative and based on general perceptions and past experience. Knowledge of the return-to-work outcomes and usefulness of actual fit notes is needed to strengthen the evidence-base and inform practice. Objective: To investigate the return-to-work outcomes of fit notes issued to employed patients, and their employers’ opinions as to the usefulness of each note. Methods: Participating organizations collecting fit notes were asked to rate the outcome and usefulness of each fit note via postal questionnaires. Quantitative data were analysed descriptively; qualitative data were analysed using thematic content analysis. Results: Five hundred and sixteen questionnaires were posted, with a 97% return rate (n = 498). More than 80% of employees (n = 44) returned to work after the expiry date of a ‘may be fit’ note compared with 43% (n = 167) of those issued with a ‘not fit’ note. Fit notes were considered more useful if they provided information on the condition and its effect on the employee’s ability to work, if they stated whether or not the employee needed reassessment and if clear advice regarding return-to-work had been provided. Conclusions: ‘May be fit’ notes are useful in helping employees return to work. However, this option is infrequently used, and the completion and content of many fit notes does not meet employers’ needs. These factors need to be urgently addressed if the fit note is to reach its full potential

Hip precautions after hip operation (HippityHop): protocol for a before and after study evaluating hip precautions following total hip replacement

Introduction Hip precautions are routinely used despite inconclusive evidence that they reduce dislocations, and concern that they impede activities of daily living. HippityHop compares a change in practice locally from implementing routine hip precautions to no routine precautions, in order to: 1. Compare patient outcomes in quality of life, functional performance, pain, sleep, mood and satisfaction. 2. Ascertain staff and patient perceptions of the two regimes. 3. Determine the cost of precautions. Methods Before and after study: phase one patients will receive hip precautions, while phase two patients will receive no routine precautions. We propose to collect data from 342 participants at baseline, and at one week, six weeks, and three months postoperatively. Interviews will be conducted with 20 staff and 20 patients, and data collected relating to costs. Results Statistical analysis will be conducted to compare the two groups to determine any differences in patient outcomes. Thematic analysis will be used to identify and report themes within the interview data. Conclusion If there are no additional advantages to hip precautions, patients could resume everyday activities more quickly, potentially improving their quality of life. Conversely, if withdrawing hip precautions is detrimental, evidence for precautions will be provided