Science and Values

This short paper, written for a wide audience, introduces "science and values" topics as they have arisen in the context of eugenics. The paper especially focuses on the context of 20th century eugenics in western Canada, where eugenic legislation in two provinces was not repealed until the 1970s and thousands of people were sterilized without their consent. A framework for understanding science-value relationships within this context is discussed, and so too is recent relevant work in philosophy of science

Full Open Population Capture-Recapture Models with Individual Covariates

Traditional analyses of capture-recapture data are based on likelihood functions that explicitly integrate out all missing data. We use a complete data likelihood (CDL) to show how a wide range of capture-recapture models can be easily fitted using readily available software JAGS/BUGS even when there are individual-specific time-varying covariates. The models we describe extend those that condition on first capture to include abundance parameters, or parameters related to abundance, such as population size, birth rates or lifetime. The use of a CDL means that any missing data, including uncertain individual covariates, can be included in models without the need for customized likelihood functions. This approach also facilitates modeling processes of demographic interest rather than the complexities caused by non-ignorable missing data. We illustrate using two examples, (i) open population modeling in the presence of a censored time-varying individual covariate in a full robust-design, and (ii) full open population multi-state modeling in the presence of a partially observed categorical variable

Biological Individuals

The impressive variation amongst biological individuals generates many complexities in addressing the simple-sounding question what is a biological individual? A distinction between evolutionary and physiological individuals is useful in thinking about biological individuals, as is attention to the kinds of groups, such as superorganisms and species, that have sometimes been thought of as biological individuals. More fully understanding the conceptual space that biological individuals occupy also involves considering a range of other concepts, such as life, reproduction, and agency. There has been a focus in some recent discussions by both philosophers and biologists on how evolutionary individuals are created and regulated, as well as continuing work on the evolution of individuality

Sprite Catcher: A Handheld Self Reflection and Mindfulness Tool for Mental Healthcare

This paper describes the rationale behind the ongoing development of Sprite Catcher - a handheld, tangible interactive tool for treating depression and anxiety. The current design, which is intended to encourage the user to practice self-reflection and mindfulness, is the product of participatory design conducted with counsellors from a local mental health charity and with a university psychology researcher. Through a review of previous work in this area, a description of a use scenario and an overview of the design's functions and concepts, we illustrate where the project is heading and which research questions we aim to respond to

Robust decision making for agile systems development Part 2: a decomposition and analysis

The need for agility in operational systems within the defence enterprise and procurement domains has been identified by many authors, and over time, there have been a number of initiatives and programmes that have sought to identify the nature of agility, and the means by which it can be defined and employed within individual cases and scenarios. These have identified impediments to the successful realization of agile practices and methods, particularly the resilience of agile decision making throughout the conceptual understanding, design and implementation of the operational system. To further investigate the extent to which this process can be implemented in a robust and reliable manner, Cranfield University created the ‘Robust Enterprise-based Approach for Agility in Capability Through-life (REA2CT)’ framework, which provides a number of functional steps to institute a systems development lifecycle approach to producing agile solutions for use in networked systems and systems-of-systems. This paper builds upon the description of the framework[1] by applying the Axiomatic Design (AD) theory to identify where complexity exists within the requirements and design activities that underpin the framework. Using this analysis, this paper identifies ‘pain points’ within the REA2CT framework, and suggests necessary improvements to facilitate the implementation of agility throughout the systems development lifecycle

Robust decision making for agile systems development Part 1: exploring the paradigm

The need for agility in operational systems within the defence enterprise and procurement domains has been identified by many authors, and over time, there have been a number of initiatives and programmes that have sought to identify the nature of agility, and the means by which it can be defined and employed within individual cases and scenarios. These have identified impediments to the successful realization of agile practices and methods, particularly the resilience of agile decision making throughout the conceptual understanding, design and implementation of the operational system. To further investigate the extent to which this process can be implemented in a robust and reliable manner, Cranfield University created the ‘Robust Enterprise-based Approach for Agility in Capability Through-life (REA2CT)’ framework, which provides a number of functional steps to institute a systems development lifecycle approach to producing agile solutions for use in networked systems and systems-of-systems. This paper briefly examines the Customer Need (CN) for the enterprise-based delivery of system (of systems) agility into the operational domain. Axiomatic Design (AD) theory is used to describe the REA2CT framework, identifying Functional Requirements (FRs) which might satisfy the CN for agility. Initial Design Parameters (DPs) are proposed to satisfy the FRs

Species and Other Evolving Lineages as Feedback Systems

This paper proposes a new and testable view about the nature of species and other evolving lineages, according to which they are feedback systems. On this view, it is a mistake to think gene flow, niche sharing, and trait frequency similarities between populations are among variables that interact to cause some further downstream variable that distinguishes evolving lineages from each other, some sort of “species cohesion” for example. Instead, gene flow, niche sharing, similarities between populations, and other causal variables feed into each other—instances of these at earlier times help cause instances of these same variables at later times. And any lineage-identifying cohesion just is the recurrence or cycling of these feedback relations within metapopulations over generations. Such cohesion can then be represented as variable M within multi-dimensional variable spaces, where values of M vary dynamically with the frequency and magnitude of feedback relations. Related conditions for being a species or other evolving lineage are then clarified. To argue for the development and testing of this view, the paper shows how it improves upon others