Reconstructing Social Policy and Ageing

This article draws from the work of Michel Foucault to reconstruct an understanding of social policy and ageing in contemporary Britain. In many ways, policy provides three trajectories for older people; first, as independent self-managing consumers with private means and resources; second, as people in need of some support to enable them to continue to self-manage and third, as dependent and unable to commit to self-management. Governmentality provides the theoretical framework through which to view policy and practice that is largely governed by discourses of personalisation

Producing Analytical Models of the SPORT Spacecraft for Science Data Processing

The Scintillation Prediction Observation Research Task (SPORT) is a joint United States of America and Brazil 6U CubeSat mission. The SPORT mission is to understand how the Earth’s ionosphere evolves during day and night transitions. Space Weather Probes, a suite of instruments developed by Utah State University, monitors the ionosphere by observing currents and voltages around the SPORT spacecraft body. This thesis presents the data collected by Space Weather Probes and how it is used to measure the ionosphere. Modeling techniques are also presented to demonstrate how the Space Weather Probes instrument is expected to respond to the ionosphere

Aging and Family Policy: A Sociological Excursion

The contemporary focus on family policy and old age has become increasingly important in social discourses on aging both within the discipline of Sociology and social policy practices of welfare institutions that attempt to define later life. Using the United Kingdom as a case study, sheds light on wider current trends associated with aging in United States, Canada, Europe and Australia. Social welfare is a pivotal domain where social discourses on aging have become located. Narratives are \u27played out\u27 with regard to the raw material supplied by family policy for identity performance of older people. Therefore, grounding developments in \u27narrativity\u27 provides a sociological framework to assess the changing discourses associated with family policy and older people as advanced through different policy positions

Positioning Society and Community in an Ever Changing World

Society is frequently located within a media setting. Embedded with society is the concept of community. Many sociologist scholars, past and present, been fascinated with the concept of ‘society’ and ‘community’ because they generate a fascinating discussion on the political contribution of both terms. More than ever before political, community and religious leaders discuss the interrelationships of society and community and how people can better themselves. The aim of this paper is to critically explore the concepts of society and community. The author argues that there needs to be a re-justification of both concepts. The motivation of re-justification of society and community has been socially reconstructed by the impact of globalization

Contemporary debates on institutions: governance, governmentality and power

Institutions, at state and local level, have been perceived as a mechanism of supporting the vulnerable within society. The processes of globalisation within an economic, political and social context have played a fundamental role in institutions. The 'State' that administers institutions has experienced involvement and adjustment by central government's policy of privatisation and deregulation. The aim of this paper is to critically explore the current debates on institutions within British society. We frame the debates within Foucault's notion of 'governmentality', which highlights how government provides governance of 'action at a distance' in order to detract blame from government and its policies and place this blame onto individuals and communities themselves (1978, p. 33)

Rethinking Trust, Crime Policy and Social Theory

This article analyses the relationship of ‘trust’ to crime, power and criminal justice policy. The theoretical model employed to analyse this relationship draws from Owen’s (2009a), conceptually driven argument that is based on an ontologically-flexible critique of agency-structure, micro-macro and time-space. This relationship stands at the interface of competing pressures working to produce the increasing complexity of crime and criminal justice policy (Powell 2005). We then move the attention to the conceptual problems of ‘trust’ which is linked with uncertainty and complexity whilst law and order and crime policies rest on the specialist knowledge claimed by a range of professional “experts” and technologists that inhabit powerful spaces through which crime policy and practice is governed and articulated

Fewer pests and more ecosystem service‐providing arthropods in shady African cocoa farms: Insights from a data integration study

Agricultural intensification is leading to conversion of cocoa agroforestry towards monocultures across the tropics. In the context of cocoa agriculture, arthropods provide a range of ecosystem services and dis‐services. Arthropod pests (e.g., mirids and mealybugs) can cause major damage to crops, whilst pollinators and natural enemies (e.g., predatory insects and parasitoids) have the potential to enhance agricultural yields. Understanding how intensification of cocoa farming affects different arthropod groups is therefore important in maximising the abundance of beneficial arthropod taxa and reducing pest burdens. However, little is known about the influences of agricultural intensification on tropical arthropod communities, especially in Africa, where ~70% of the world's cocoa is produced. Most research on arthropod communities considers data from different sampling methods separately, as proxies of abundance; whilst these proxies can be informative, estimating true abundance enables direct comparison between arthropod taxa, and therefore the study of community dynamics. Here, we develop a Bayesian hierarchical model that integrates data from three common arthropod survey techniques to estimate population size of arthropod orders and to investigate how arthropod community composition responds to farm shade cover (an indicator of management intensity). Our results show that eight of 11 arthropod taxa responded to farm shade cover; importantly, brown capsids (the primary pest of cocoa in Africa), Coleoptera pests and Hemiptera pests decreased with increasing farm shade cover, whilst Araneae (natural enemies) and Diptera (potential pollinators) were more abundant in shady farms. Synthesis and applications. To achieve lower pest burdens and higher abundances of potential pollinators and natural enemies, African cocoa farms should maintain a dense canopy of shade trees. The current shift towards high‐intensity cocoa farming in Africa could result in long‐term losses due to pest infestations and loss of arthropod‐mediated ecosystem services

A Comparison of U. S. and European University-Industry Relations in the Life Sciences

We draw on diverse data sets to compare the institutional organization of upstream life science research across the United States and Europe. Understanding cross-national differences in the organization of innovative labor in the life sciences requires attention to the structure and evolution of biomedical networks involving public research organizations (universities, government laboratories, nonprofit research institutes, and research hospitals), science-based biotechnology firms, and multinational pharmaceutical corporations. We use network visualization methods and correspondence analyses to demonstrate that innovative research in biomedicine has its origins in regional clusters in the United States and in European nations. But the scientific and organizational composition of these regions varies in consequential ways. In the United States, public research organizations and small firms conduct R&D across multiple therapeutic areas and stages of the development process. Ties within and across these regions link small firms and diverse public institutions, contributing to the development of a robust national network. In contrast, the European story is one of regional specialization with a less diverse group of public research organizations working in a smaller number of therapeutic areas. European institutes develop local connections to small firms working on similar scientific problems, while cross-national linkages of European regional clusters typically involve large pharmaceutical corporations. We show that the roles of large and small firms differ in the United States and Europe, arguing that the greater heterogeneity of the U. S. system is based on much closer integration of basic science and clinical development

The 100 most eminent psychologists of the 20th century.

A rank-ordered list was constructed that reports the first 99 of the 100 most eminent psychologists of the 20th century. Eminence was measured by scores on 3 quantitative variables and 3 qualitative variables. The quantitative variables were journal citation frequency, introductory psychology textbook citation frequency, and survey response frequency. The qualitative variables were National Academy of Sciences membership, election as American Psychological Association (APA) president or receipt of the APA Distinguished Scientific Contributions Award, and surname used as an eponym. The qualitative variables were quantified and combined with the other 3 quantitative variables to produce a composite score that was then used to construct a rank-ordered list of the most eminent psychologists of the 20th century. The discipline of psychology underwent a remarkable transformation during the 20th cen-tury, a transformation that included a shift away from the European-influenced philosophical psychology of the late 19th century to th