Perceived efficacy and attitudes towards genetic science and science governance

This is the postprint version of the Article. The official published version can be obtained from the link below - © 2010 SAGE Publications.Arguments for public involvement in science and technology are often based on ideas of developing a more capable public and the assumed effects this may have for science. However, such a relationship is yet to be sufficiently explored and recent work indicates that a more involved public may have counterintuitive effects. Using nationally representative survey data for the UK and Northern Ireland, the effects of the public's own beliefs about involvement are explored. Developing the concept of "belief in public efficacy," findings suggest those who believe that the public might be able to affect the course of decision making have less approving attitudes towards future applications of genetic science; however, an individual's political efficacy does not significantly influence these attitudes. Furthermore, political efficacy and belief in public efficacy have some distinct and opposing relationships with the principles of governance people prefer. Overall, findings provide support for suggestions that it is simplistic to consider increasing public involvement as a way of increasing the approval of risky new technologies

Comparison of consumer attitudes between Cyprus and Latvia: An evaluation of effect of setting on consumer preferences in the water industry

This is the post-print version of the article. The official published version can be obtained from th link below - Copyright @ SpringerModels approaching consumer expectations of their water supplier from a risk perspective suggest that consumers primarily and overwhelmingly want safe drinking water supply. In this study consumer preferences in the water sector are investigated in two contrasting case studies: Cyprus, where there have been significant quantity and continuity of supply issues, and Riga, where there have been water quality issues. While water quality is undoubtedly the main priority of water consumers in Riga, in Cyprus consumers indicate that they prioritise a more reliable service even though many are sufficiently dissatisfied with water quality that they do not drink the tap water. The analysis of consumer attitudes in the two case studies suggests that when water supply is unreliable, reliability takes precedence; once it is reliable quality issues come to the fore.This research was carried out as part of Work Area 6 of the TECHNEAU project, an integrated project funded under FP6 of the European Commission, grant number: 018320

Measurement-driven dynamics for a coherently-excited atom

The phenomenon of telegraphing in a measurement-driven two-level atom was noted in Cresser et al. [Cresser, J.D.; Barnett, S.M.; Jeffers, J.; Pegg, D.T. Opt. Commun. 2006, 264, 352361]. Here we introduce two quantitative measures of telegraphing: one based on the accumulated measurement record and one on the evolution of the quantum state. We use these to analyse the dynamics of the atom over a wide range of parameters. We find, in particular, that the measures provide broadly similar statistics when the measurements are frequent, but differ widely when measurements are sparse. This is in line with intuition, and demonstrates the utility of both measures

Reviewing and extending the five-user assumption: A grounded procedure for interaction evaluation

" © ACM, 2013. This is the author's version of the work. It is posted here by permission of ACM for your personal use. Not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction (TOCHI), {VOL 20, ISS 5, (November 2013)} http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/2506210 "The debate concerning how many participants represents a sufficient number for interaction testing is well-established and long-running, with prominent contributions arguing that five users provide a good benchmark when seeking to discover interaction problems. We argue that adoption of five users in this context is often done with little understanding of the basis for, or implications of, the decision. We present an analysis of relevant research to clarify the meaning of the five-user assumption and to examine the way in which the original research that suggested it has been applied. This includes its blind adoption and application in some studies, and complaints about its inadequacies in others. We argue that the five-user assumption is often misunderstood, not only in the field of Human-Computer Interaction, but also in fields such as medical device design, or in business and information applications. The analysis that we present allows us to define a systematic approach for monitoring the sample discovery likelihood, in formative and summative evaluations, and for gathering information in order to make critical decisions during the interaction testing, while respecting the aim of the evaluation and allotted budget. This approach – which we call the ‘Grounded Procedure’ – is introduced and its value argued.The MATCH programme (EPSRC Grants: EP/F063822/1 EP/G012393/1

Simulation of large turbulent structures with the parabolic Navier-Stokes equations

The theoretical basis for well posed marching of a Parabolic Navier-Stokes (PNS) computational technique for supersonic flow is discussed and examples given to verify the analysis. It is demonstrated that stable computations can be made even with very small steps in the marching direction. The method is applied to cones at large angle of attack in high Reynolds number, supersonic flow. Streamline trajectories generated from the numerical solutions demonstrate the development of vortex structures on the lee side of the cone

Retrodiction as a tool for micromaser field measurements

We use retrodictive quantum theory to describe cavity field measurements by successive atomic detections in the micromaser. We calculate the state of the micromaser cavity field prior to detection of sequences of atoms in either the excited or ground state, for atoms that are initially prepared in the excited state. This provides the POM elements, which describe such sequences of measurements.Comment: 20 pages, 4(8) figure

Two-mode entanglement in two-component Bose-Einstein condensates

We study the generation of two-mode entanglement in a two-component Bose-Einstein condensate trapped in a double-well potential. By applying the Holstein-Primakoff transformation, we show that the problem is exactly solvable as long as the number of excitations due to atom-atom interactions remains low. In particular, the condensate constitutes a symmetric Gaussian system, thereby enabling its entanglement of formation to be measured directly by the fluctuations in the quadratures of the two constituent components [Giedke {\it et al.}, Phys. Rev. Lett. {\bf 91}, 107901 (2003)]. We discover that significant two-mode squeezing occurs in the condensate if the interspecies interaction is sufficiently strong, which leads to strong entanglement between the two components.Comment: 22 pages, 4 figure

Cavity-enabled high-dimensional quantum key distribution

High-dimensional quantum key distribution (QKD) offers the possibility of encoding multiple bits of key on a single entangled photon pair. An experimentally promising approach to realizing this is to use energy–time entanglement. Currently, however, the control of very high-dimensional entangled photons is challenging. We present a simple and experimentally compact approach, which is based on a cavity that allows one to measure two different bases: the time of arrival and another that is approximately mutually unbiased to the arrival time. We quantify the errors in the setup, due both to the approximate nature of the mutually unbiased measurement and as a result of experimental errors. It is shown that the protocol can be adapted using a cut-off so that it is robust against the considered errors, even within the regime of up to 10 bits per photon pair

Security of high-dimensional quantum key distribution protocols using Franson interferometers

Franson interferometers are increasingly being proposed as a means of securing high-dimensional energy-time entanglement-based quantum key distribution (QKD) systems. Heuristic arguments have been proposed that purport to demonstrate the security of these schemes. We show, however, that such systems are vulnerable to attacks that localize the photons to several temporally separate locations. This demonstrates that a single pair of Franson interferometers is not a practical approach to securing high-dimensional energy-time entanglement based QKD. This observations leads us to investigate the security of modified Franson-based-protocols, where Alice and Bob have two or more Franson interferometers. We show that such setups can improve the sensitivity against attacks that localize the photons to multiple temporal locations. While our results do not constituting a full security proof, they do show that a single pair of Franson interferometers is not secure and that multiple such interferometers could be a promising candidate for experimentally realizable high-dimensional QKD.Comment: 14 pages (single column format