Greenhouse Gas Removal

The 2015 Paris Agreement called for a balance between sources of Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions and their removal by 2100 to halt global temperature rise. This POSTnote explains why Greenhouse Gas Removal (GGR) techniques may be required to achieve this goal, outlines the benefits of and concerns about them, and considers policy options

Incremental processes of institutional change from 1960 to 2000 secured MPs’ current capacity to scrutinise science-based legislation

The unprecedented circumstances of COVID-19 have intensified the demands placed upon MPs to scrutinise the use of science in policymaking, making visible the parliamentary mechanisms that enable them to do so. Emmeline Ledgerwood examines the steps that led two such mechanisms to become embedded in the institution of Parliament: the House of Commons Select Committee on Science and Technology and the Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology. She highlights how individual members of the all-party Parliamentary and Scientific Committee have influenced institutional change

Exclusive Look at the Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology’s new Social Science Section

The Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology (POST) is Parliament’s in-house source of independent, balanced and accessible analysis of public policy issues related to science and technology. In partnership with the ESRC and with the support of UCL, POST is establishing a dedicated Social Science Section to provide parliamentarians with more access to social science research evidence. Ahead of its launch this week, we’ve asked for reflections from Adam Afriyie MP (Chair of POST), Jason Blackstock (UCL), Paul Boyle (ESRC) and Chris Tyler (POST) on the making of the Social Science Section and how it will seek to improve the impact of social science in policy-making

The development and evaluation of ME@BU, a self-accessing online tool to support students’ transitions to, and through, university.

Evaluation report submitted to ‘Distance learning’ Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology call

Legislative science advice is a powerful tool, yet the majority of parliamentarians around the world don't have access to it

The Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology (POST) has played an important role in UK politics, by providing horizon scanning research summaries to parliamentarians on emerging issues. Here, Sarah Foxen and Chris Tyler discuss the challenges and opportunities faced in setting up services that put leading edge research in front of busy politicians and reflect on their work to help set up similar offices internationally

Ethnic Minorities and their Health Needs: Crisis of Perception and Behaviours

There is considerable evidence to suggest that racial and ethnic disparities exist in the provision of emergency and wider healthcare. The importance of collecting patient ethnic data has received attention in literature across the world and eliminating ethnic and racial health equalities is one of the primary aims of healthcare providers internationally. The poor health status of certain racial and ethnic groups has been well documented. The improvement of racial and ethnic disparities in healthcare is at the forefront of many public health agendas. This article addresses important policy, practice, and cultural issues confronted by the pre-hospital emergency care setup. This aspect of care plays a unique role in the healthcare safety net in providing a service to a very diverse population, including members of ethnic and racial minorities. Competent decision making by the emergency care practitioners requires patient-specific information and the health provider's prior medical knowledge and clinical training. The article reviews the current ethnicity trends in the UK along with international evidence linking ethnicity and health inequalities. The study argues that serious difficulties will arise between the health provider and the patient if they come from different backgrounds and therefore experience difficulties in cross-cultural communication. This adversely impacts on the quality of diagnostic and clinical decision making for minority patients. The article offers few strategies to address health inequalities in emergency care and concludes by arguing that much more needs to be done to ensure that we are hearing the voices of more diverse groups, groups who are often excluded from engagement through barriers such as language or mobility difficulties

Wave resource variability: Impacts on wave power supply over regional to international scales

The intermittent, irregular and variable nature of the wave energy resource has implications for the supply of wave-generated electricity into the grid; intermittency of renewable power may lead to frequency and voltage fluctuations in the transmission and distribution networks. This study analyses the wave resource over different spatial scales to investigate the potential impacts of the resource variability on the grid supply. It is found that the deployment of multiple wave energy sites results in a reduction in step changes in power, leading to an overall smoothing of the wave-generated electrical power

Prevalence and determinants of the use of self-tests by members of the public: a mixed methods study

Background Self-tests can be used by members of the public to diagnose conditions without involving a doctor, nurse or other health professional. As technologies to design and manufacture diagnostic tests have developed, a range of self-tests have become available to the public to buy over-the-counter and via the Internet. This study aims to describe how many people have used self-tests and identify factors associated with their use. Methods A postal questionnaire will elicit basic information, including sociodemographic characteristics, and whether the person has used or would use specified self-tests. Consent will be sought to recontact people who want to participate further in the study, and interviews and focus groups will be used to develop hypotheses about factors associated with self-test use. These hypotheses will be tested in a case-control study. An in-depth questionnaire will be developed incorporating the identified factors. This will be sent to: people who have used a self-test (cases); people who have not used a self-test but would use one in the future (controls); and people who have not used and would not use a self-test (controls). Logistic regression analysis will be used to establish which factors are associated with self-test use. Discussion Self-tests do have potential benefits, for example privacy and convenience, but also potential harms, for example delay seeking treatment after a true negative result when the symptoms are actually due to another condition. It is anticipated that the outcomes from this study will include recommendations about how to improve the appropriate use of self-tests and existing health services, as well as information to prepare health professionals for patients who have used self-tests

Quick, but not dirty – can rapid evidence reviews reliably inform policy?

The COVID-19 pandemic created an unprecedented and time critical demand for policy relevant evidence syntheses and in so doing demonstrated how timely evidence reviews can shape policymaking. As the policy crisis of COVID-19 recedes, research is underway to assess how these methods could be applied to other policy areas. In this post, Jonathan Breckon considers how rapid evidence reviews have been used, the potential pitfalls in adopting rapid research methods and invites readers to contribute to work being carried out by the Parliamentary Office for Science and Technology, International Public Policy Observatory, and Capabilities in Academic Policy Engagement, into how rapid reviews can be deployed in future

Committee chair selection under high informational and organizational constraints

This article draws on major theories of committee organization to explain committee chair selection in contexts with high informational and organizational constraints. We test our theoretical expectations through a series of fixed effects conditional logit models ran on an original data set which includes all legislators who have served in the Romanian Chamber of Deputies from 1992 to 2012. The findings indicate that sector knowledge matters more for committee chair selection in the first post-communist terms, while chair seniority and party credentials acquire relevance later on. The effect of sector knowledge is stronger than that of chair seniority for the committees that the members of parliament perceive to be the most important, while party leaders have privileged access to the chair position irrespective of how salient the committee is