Pollutant transport in rivers : estimating dispersion coefficients from tracer experiments

To better understand the dispersion characteristics of small streams which are sparsely represented in published work, eleven successful tracer experiments were carried out on the same reach of a small stream (Murray Burn) in Scotland over various flow and seasonal conditions. Four different analysis methods (Reduction of Peak, Method of Moments, Routing Procedure, Analytical Solution) were used to determine dispersion coefficients and flow velocities from observed temporal concentration profiles. A new weighted average approach for the Analytical Solution method produced improved velocity and dispersion results, i.e. ones that were more consistent with the results from the other methods. One aim was to investigate the influence of long tails (on the concentration profiles) on the results by truncating the profiles at the 1% peak concentration level, repeating the data analysis and comparing the truncated results with the original analysis. It is concluded that truncation of concentration profiles is beneficial for the methods used in the thesis. The dispersion coefficients obtained for the Murray Burn (0.15 – 1.0 m2/s) augment our knowledge of dispersion in small streams by complementing the few previously published data for stream flow rates less than 1000 l/s

“Breaking” the Emergency Department: Does the Culture of Emergency Medicine Present a Barrier to Self-Care?

Introduction: Our goal was to critically examine emergency physician’s (EP) beliefs about taking breaks for self-care on shift. Our operational definition of a break for self-care included time not engaging in direct patient care, eating, drinking, using the bathroom, or leaving a clinical area for a mental break. Using focus groups, the study aimed to accomplish the following: 1) identify barriers to why residents and faculty at our academic center may not take breaks in the emergency department; 2) generate hypotheses for empirical testing; and 3) generate solutions to include in a departmental breaks initiative.Methods: We convened eight focus groups comprised separately of resident and faculty physicians. Group discussion was guided by eight questions representing a priori themes. The groups were recorded for transcription and subjected to a “cut-and-sort” process. Six themes were identified by consensus after independent review by three of the co-authors, which were confirmed by participant validation.Results: We identified six themes that represented the pooled outcomes of both resident and faculty focus groups: 1) Physiological needs affect clinical performance, 2) EPs share beliefs around taking breaks that center on productivity, patient safety and the dichotomy of strength/weakness, 3) when taking breaks EPs fear worst-case scenarios, 4) breaking is a learned skill, 5) culture change is needed to allow EPs to engage in self-care; and 6) a flexible, individualized approach to breaking is necessary. Our central finding was that productivity and patient safety are of key importance to EPs when considering whether to take a break for self-care. We identified a dichotomy with the concept of strength related to productivity/patient safety, and the concept of weakness related to self-care.Conclusion: The current practice culture of emergency medicine and the organization of our unique work environment may present barriers to physicians attempting to engage in self-care

Interrogation of fibre Bragg gratings through a fibre optic rotary joint on a geotechnical centrifuge

The monitoring of an array of fibre Bragg gratings (FBGs) strain sensors was performed through a single channel, single mode fibre optic rotary joint (FORJ) mounted on a geotechnical centrifuge. The array of three FBGs was attached to an aluminum plate that was anchored at the ends and placed on the model platform of the centrifuge. Acceleration forces of up to 50g were applied and the reflection signal of the monitored FBGs recorded dynamically using a 2.5kHz FBG interrogator placed outside the centrifuge. The use of a FORJ allowed the monitoring of the FBGs without submitting the FBG interrogator to the high g-forces experienced in the centrifuge. © (2016) COPYRIGHT Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers (SPIE). Downloading of the abstract is permitted for personal use only

Fuzzy ethics: or how I learned to stop worrying and love the bot.

The recent death of a Volkswagen worker at the hand of a factory robot has resulted in a number of editorials and opinion pieces discussing moral responsibility and robots. In this short response piece we outline some of the wider context of this discussion, with reference to the classic ethical study the Case of the Killer Robot. We argue that there is a growing need for the field of computer ethics to consider with some urgency what it means to be a responsible moral agent when tragic events occur, and to what extent it makes sense to 'blame the robot'

Power and perception in the scandal in academia.

The Scandal in Academia is a large-scale fictional ethical case study of around 17,000 words and fourteen separate revelations. They are delivered as newspaper extracts from a newspaper reporting on an ongoing crisis at a Scottish educational institution. The scandal case as presented on the ethical issues raised, concentrating instead on providing the scenario in isolation. This paper is a companion piece to that case study, discussing the third and fourth revelations with reference to the issues raised, the mainstream media, and the formal academic literature. The discussion presented here is not intended to be exhaustive or definitive. It is instead educational context, and illustrative of the kind of discussions that ideally emerge from the effective use of the material

Musings on misconduct: a practitioner reflection on the ethical investigation of plagiarism within programming modules.

Tools for algorithmically detecting plagiarism have become very popular, but none of these tools offers an effective and reliable way to identify plagiarism within academic software development. As a result, the identification of plagiarism within programming submissions remains an issue of academic judgment. The number of submissions that come in to a large programming class can frustrate the ability to fully investigate each submission for conformance with academic norms of attribution. It is necessary for academics to investigate misconduct, but time and logistical considerations likely make it difficult, if not impossible, to ensure full coverage of all solutions. In such cases, a subset of submissions may be analyzed, and these are often the submissions that have most readily come to mind as containing suspect elements. In this paper, the authors discuss some of the issues with regards to identifying plagiarism within programming modules, and the ethical issues that these raise. The paper concludes with some personal reflections on how best to deal with the complexities so as to ensure fairer treatment for students and fairer coverage of submissions

Do you feel like a hero yet?

Video games have a long tradition of including elements of moral decision making within their ludic and narrative structures. While the success of these endeavours has been mixed, the systems used to express moral choices within a game have grown more popular. However, these morality systems are inherently restricted and limited by ludic and business considerations. Coupled to this is the concept of the magic circle in which games are considered to be morally discontinuous spaces where the normal rules of what actions are and are not permitted are different. Moral choices then become flattened down into mere narrative flavouring rather than a reflection of an individuals ethical makeup. Moral choices within games are thus shallow and lack the ability to truly offer us an opportunity to reflect on the actions we have taken. Rather than offering insight, they instead cheapen and simplify nuanced topics and concepts. However, several games released in the past few years have made an effort to break free of this mould by explicitly externalising moral choices. In this paper we discuss two of these games: Popes 2013 title Papers, Please and Yager Developments 201

Effect before cause: supramodal recalibration of sensorimotor timing.

YesBackground: Our motor actions normally generate sensory events, but how do we know which events were self generated and which have external causes? Here we use temporal adaptation to investigate the processing stage and generality of our sensorimotor timing estimates. Methodology/Principal Findings: Adaptation to artificially-induced delays between action and event can produce a startling percept¿upon removal of the delay it feels as if the sensory event precedes its causative action. This temporal recalibration of action and event occurs in a quantitatively similar manner across the sensory modalities. Critically, it is robust to the replacement of one sense during the adaptation phase with another sense during the test judgment. Conclusions/Significance: Our findings suggest a high-level, supramodal recalibration mechanism. The effects are well described by a simple model which attempts to preserve the expected synchrony between action and event, but only when causality indicates it is reasonable to do so. We further demonstrate that this model successfully characterises related adaptation data from outside the sensorimotor domain

Ethics in computer science.

Ethics within the field of computer science represents a rich and vibrant topic with almost universal applicability both within and without the profession. In this chapter, the author discusses some of features that combine to give the topic unique nuance: the frictionless nature of data transmission; the ease of automation; the power of privacy and anonymity; and the increasing speed and affordability of computing resources. Regardless of the topicality and reach, it can be difficult to communicate the need for professional understanding of computer ethics. This chapter also discusses how advocates of computer ethics as a ongoing topic for professional development can help contextualise and communicate the need to reflection to others