Public perceptions and community issues

This paper is the seventh in a series of 8 that make up the evidence base for SDC report 'The role of nuclear power in a low carbon economy'.Publisher PD

GitHub and Jekyll for Publishing GIS Workshop Content

In this article, we describe GitHub in simple terms and demonstrate its practical value as a platform for delivering workshop instruction. This article stems from a virtual pre-conference workshop we delivered at the 2020 annual meeting of the Western Association of Map Libraries (WAML). We describe an easily replicated workflow for publishing workshop materials and documentation to the web using GitHub Pages and provide a GitHub repository that readers of this article can copy and customize to suit their own workshop needs

Empirical Problems Using the Efficient Frontier to Find Optimal Weights in Asset Classes

This study documents the transitory nature of efficient weights in six commonly employed asset classes, going beyond a simple stock and bond classes and using a 30 year data window. We review the literature on asset class diversification, including its failures during the recent credit crisis. Results show that asset class diversification benefits are inconsistent and, contrary to common academic wisdom before recent times, historical asset class covariances (even estimated with decades of data) are poor estimates of future values

From Pacifists to Cowboys to Torturers: The Different Representations of the US Military and Intelligence Agencies in Post-9/11 American War Films

The horrifying images of the terrorist attacks on New York’s World Trade Center on 11 September 2001, in which three thousand civilians were killed, have become some of the most famous images ever committed to film or television. In the decade following the attacks, a wealth of war films were released, including Redacted (Brian De Palma, 2007), The Hurt Locker (Kathryn Bigelow, 2009) and Zero Dark Thirty (Kathryn Bigelow, 2012) amongst many others. Many films from this period of US cinema addressed both the 9/11 attacks as well as the US military’s conflicts in various countries suspected of harboring terrorist groups. When analyzing the ways the military and intelligence agencies (such as the CIA) are represented in some US films from this period, it becomes clear that such representations changed over just a few years: Redacted showed the military to be polarized–a place for pacifists, rapists and murderers. The Hurt Locker later depicted successful soldiers as having a “gung ho” attitude, and the military as a permanent fixture in Iraq. Finally, Zero Dark Thirty included scenes of CIA torture, which is suggested as being necessary and justified. Surprisingly, however, the ways the military and intelligence agencies are represented in these films did not necessarily mirror the political change that was occurring

When is a Promise a Strategic Liability?

Employers offer pension plans for two main reasons; paternalism and skills market competiveness. Recent changes in legislation and business practice have promoted the scrutiny of the underpinnings for such a management tradition. The paper identifies several relevant factors that derive from: field work undertaken by the authors; the Pension Act 1995; and recent changes to corporation tax. It is argued that what has emerged is a sharply focused tradeoff, relating to the asset and liability characteristics of employer-based pension schemes. This questions the sustainablilty of all types of pension plans and thereby has a place in strategies affecting financial planning and business development

Occupational Pension Schemes and Human Resource Management: Some Survey Evidence

Definitions of Human Resource Management (HRM) have been both numerous and multifaceted and various classifications have been arranged to try to capture the essence of HRM. Although there is not one rigid "HRM position", it does appear that it is characterised by certain tendencies in contemporary ways of looking at employer-employee relations. For example, instead of earlier emphasises in industrial relations/ personnel management thinking on short-term time frames and ad hoc planning perspectives, HRM is claimed to focus upon longer-term, more strategic considerations

Dark Energy and Modified Gravity

Despite two decades of tremendous experimental and theoretical progress, the riddle of the accelerated expansion of the Universe remains to be solved. On the experimental side, our understanding of the possibilities and limitations of the major dark energy probes has evolved; here we summarize the major probes and their crucial challenges. On the theoretical side, the taxonomy of explanations for the accelerated expansion rate is better understood, providing clear guidance to the relevant observables. We argue that: i) improving statistical precision and systematic control by taking more data, supporting research efforts to address crucial challenges for each probe, using complementary methods, and relying on cross-correlations is well motivated; ii) blinding of analyses is difficult but ever more important; iii) studies of dark energy and modified gravity are related; and iv) it is crucial that R&D for a vibrant dark energy program in the 2030s be started now by supporting studies and technical R&D that will allow embryonic proposals to mature. Understanding dark energy, arguably the biggest unsolved mystery in both fundamental particle physics and cosmology, will remain one of the focal points of cosmology in the forthcoming decade.Comment: 5 pages + references; science white paper submitted to the Astro2020 decadal surve

Towards a protocol for community monitoring of caribou body condition

Effective ecological monitoring is central to the sustainability of subsistence resources of indigenous communities. For caribou, Arctic indigenous people's most important terrestrial subsistence resource, body condition is a useful measure because it integrates many ecological factors that influence caribou productivity and is recognized by biologists and hunters as meaningful. We draw on experience working with indigenous communities to develop a body condition monitoring protocol for harvested animals. Local indigenous knowledge provides a broad set of caribou health indicators and explanations of how environmental conditions may affect body condition. Scientific research on caribou body condition provides a basis to develop a simple dichotomous key that includes back fat, intestinal fat, kidney fat and marrow¬fat, as measures of body fat, which in autumn to early winter correlates with the likelihood of pregnancy. The dichotomous key was formulated on "expert knowledge" and validated against field estimates of body composition. We compare local indigenous knowledge indicators with hunter documented data based on the dichotomous key. The potential con¬tribution of community body condition monitoring can be realized through the continued comparative analysis of datasets. Better communication among hunters and scientists, and refinement of data collection and analysis methods are recommended. Results suggest that specific local knowledge may become generalized and integrated between regions if the dichotomous key is used as a generalized (semi-quantitative) index and complemented with other science and community-based assessments