Last Chance for Submissions to IPO’s Copyright Consultation

Peter Bradwell, Campaigner at the Open Rights Group, urges academics to submit evidence to the IPO’s copyright consultation

Making the most of collaboration an international survey of public service co-design

At its heart collaborative design seeks to make public services match the wants and needs of their beneficiaries. Policy makers and practitioners have increasingly embraced closer collaborations between users and designers, hoping to reinvigorate public services under pressure from a more demanding public, increasing social complexity and overstretched resources. The returns from this engagement are more responsive, fit-for-purpose, e-ciient public services. More broadly, co-design provides an avenue for addressing a disengagement from politics and democracy, and building social capital

Network citizens: power and responsibility at work

Humans are social animals, spinning intricate webs of relationships with friends, colleagues, neighbours and enemies. These networks have always been with us, but the advance of networking technologies, changes to our interconnected economy and an altering job market have super-charged the power of networking, catapulting it to the heart of organisational thinking. Social networks are providing tremendous opportunities for people to collaborate. But until now, thinking has focused only on how organisations can respond to and capitalise on networks. This report argues that we have to look equally at how networks use organisations for their own ends. That is where the new contours of inequality and power lie that will shape the network world. We have to face networks? dark side, as well as their very real potential. Bringing together in-depth case studies of six organisations, Network Citizens maps the key fault-lines that people and organisations will have to address in the future world of work. Not doing so puts at risk the very qualities we had invested in them: openness, innovation, collaboration and meritocracy. Since networks can act for good or ill, incubating the talents and ideas of the many, or promoting the interests of the few, the need for a new set of responsibilities is growing. If we are network members, we must be network citizens, too

NSAID use and clinical outcomes in COVID-19 patients: a 38-center retrospective cohort study.

BACKGROUND: Non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) are commonly used to reduce pain, fever, and inflammation but have been associated with complications in community-acquired pneumonia. Observations shortly after the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 suggested that ibuprofen was associated with an increased risk of adverse events in COVID-19 patients, but subsequent observational studies failed to demonstrate increased risk and in one case showed reduced risk associated with NSAID use. METHODS: A 38-center retrospective cohort study was performed that leveraged the harmonized, high-granularity electronic health record data of the National COVID Cohort Collaborative. A propensity-matched cohort of 19,746 COVID-19 inpatients was constructed by matching cases (treated with NSAIDs at the time of admission) and 19,746 controls (not treated) from 857,061 patients with COVID-19 available for analysis. The primary outcome of interest was COVID-19 severity in hospitalized patients, which was classified as: moderate, severe, or mortality/hospice. Secondary outcomes were acute kidney injury (AKI), extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO), invasive ventilation, and all-cause mortality at any time following COVID-19 diagnosis. RESULTS: Logistic regression showed that NSAID use was not associated with increased COVID-19 severity (OR: 0.57 95% CI: 0.53-0.61). Analysis of secondary outcomes using logistic regression showed that NSAID use was not associated with increased risk of all-cause mortality (OR 0.51 95% CI: 0.47-0.56), invasive ventilation (OR: 0.59 95% CI: 0.55-0.64), AKI (OR: 0.67 95% CI: 0.63-0.72), or ECMO (OR: 0.51 95% CI: 0.36-0.7). In contrast, the odds ratios indicate reduced risk of these outcomes, but our quantitative bias analysis showed E-values of between 1.9 and 3.3 for these associations, indicating that comparatively weak or moderate confounder associations could explain away the observed associations. CONCLUSIONS: Study interpretation is limited by the observational design. Recording of NSAID use may have been incomplete. Our study demonstrates that NSAID use is not associated with increased COVID-19 severity, all-cause mortality, invasive ventilation, AKI, or ECMO in COVID-19 inpatients. A conservative interpretation in light of the quantitative bias analysis is that there is no evidence that NSAID use is associated with risk of increased severity or the other measured outcomes. Our results confirm and extend analogous findings in previous observational studies using a large cohort of patients drawn from 38 centers in a nationally representative multicenter database

Growth and retreat of the last British–Irish Ice Sheet, 31 000 to 15 000 years ago: the BRITICE-CHRONO reconstruction

The BRITICE-CHRONO consortium of researchers undertook a dating programme to constrain the timing of advance, maximum extent and retreat of the British–Irish Ice Sheet between 31 000 and 15 000 years before present. The dating campaign across Ireland and Britain and their continental shelves, and across the North Sea included 1500 days of field investigation yielding 18 000 km of marine geophysical data, 377 cores of sea floor sediments, and geomorphological and stratigraphical information at 121 sites on land; generating 690 new geochronometric ages. These findings are reported in 28 publications including synthesis into eight transect reconstructions. Here we build ice sheet-wide reconstructions consistent with these findings and using retreat patterns and dates for the inter-transect areas. Two reconstructions are presented, a wholly empirical version and a version that combines modelling with the new empirical evidence. Palaeoglaciological maps of ice extent, thickness, velocity, and flow geometry at thousand-year timesteps are presented. The maximum ice volume of 1.8 m sea level equivalent occurred at 23 ka. A larger extent than previously defined is found and widespread advance of ice to the continental shelf break is confirmed during the last glacial. Asynchrony occurred in the timing of maximum extent and onset of retreat, ranging from 30 to 22 ka. The tipping point of deglaciation at 22 ka was triggered by ice stream retreat and saddle collapses. Analysis of retreat rates leads us to accept our hypothesis that the marine-influenced sectors collapsed rapidly. First order controls on ice-sheet demise were glacio-isostatic loading triggering retreat of marine sectors, aided by glaciological instabilities and then climate warming finished off the smaller, terrestrial ice sheet. Overprinted on this signal were second order controls arising from variations in trough topographies and with sector-scale ice geometric readjustments arising from dispositions in the geography of the landscape. These second order controls produced a stepped deglaciation. The retreat of the British–Irish Ice Sheet is now the world’s most well-constrained and a valuable data-rich environment for improving ice-sheet modelling.publishedVersio

The edgeless university

British universities have world-class reputations and they are vital to the country’s social and economic future, yet they are under siege. This report argues that this can be a moment of rebirth. The huge public investment that sustained much of the sector is in jeopardy and the current way of working is not sustainable. Some are predicting the end of the university as we have known it. Technology is changing universities as they become just one source among many for ideas, knowledge and innovation. But online tools and open access also offer the means for their survival. Their expertise and value is needed more than ever to validate and support learning and research. Through their institutional capital, universities can use technology to offer more flexible provision and open more equal routes to higher education and learning. We need the learning and research that higher education provides. This will take strategic leadership from within, new connections with a growing world of informal learning and a commitment to openness and collaboration. By exploiting this role, universities can harness technology as a solution and an indispensable tool for shaping their vital role in the future

FYI: the new politics of personal information

This report is intended to push the debate on personal information beyond the legal and technical language associated with data protection and identity management. The debate must move towards something that people ? through day-to-day experiences in their own lives ? have a stake in. New trends of communication, customer services, personalisation, and issues of social inclusion and privacy are helping to create a new framework for the discussion of personal information

Video republic

Cheap digital technology and broadband access have broken the moving-image monopoly held by production companies and broadcasters. In its place a new theatre of public information has emerged. It is a messy, alternative realm of video creation and exchange that extends across the internet, television, festivals and campaigns. This report charts the rise of the ?Video Republic? across Europe, a new space for debate and expression dominated by young people. Drawing on extensive research with experts and young people in the UK, Turkey, Germany, Romania and Finland, it argues that the stakes are high, both for the contributors to this realm and for the democracies they live in. Confusion about regulation, copyright and privacy means that young people are plunging headlong into an uncertain set of new relationships online. And around Europe, new types of expressive inequality are emerging as many are held back from participating by poor access and a lack of resources