The ‘ripple effect’ of driving behaviour

The Department of Social Psychology has completed a research project for the tyre company Goodyear, working through LSE Enterprise. Dr Chris Tennant discusses what the study revealed about the psychology of ‘ordinary, everyday’ drivers, and how they can get involved in antagonistic interactions with other drivers, (combative driving) and co-operative interactions with other drivers, (considerate driving)

Justification and Cultural-Authority in s.35(1) of the Constitution Act, 1982: Regina v. Sparrow

Regina v. Sparrow is the first decision of the Supreme Court of Canada under s.35(1) of the Constitution Ac 1982. The case has wide-reaching implications for the recognition and limitation of aboriginal rights. This case comment will explore some of the implications of Sparrow, with a focus on the test developed by the Court for the justification of government regulation of aboriginal rights. In particular, the question of the cultural authority of non-aboriginal judges to justify legislation regulating aboriginal rights will be addressed

On the threshold: a social psychological study of different standpoints in the climate change debate

Helm (2008) asked: 'Climate change policy: why has so little been achieved?' Cultural Theory (CT) has been used to analyse the debate over climate change, arguing that competing worldviews mandate divergent policy responses (Rayner & Malone 1998). CT's framework suggests the monolithic structure of the UNFCCC process fails to integrate these multiple worldviews, hindering effective action. This thesis uses a complementary framework, Fiske's (1992) Relational Model's Theory (RMT). Whereas CT analyses the debate at the societal level, RMT proposes a framework of individual social cognition comprising four models of social exchange: 'Equality Matching', based upon reciprocity; 'Communal Sharing', based on equal entitlement within a community; 'Authority Ranking', based upon established status; and 'Market Pricing', based on an external currency of merit. RMT implies that the relational models found in individual cognition should be mirrored in any debate at the societal and inter-personal levels. Content analyses of media articles and focus group interviews support the view that there are four coherent Standpoints matching these relational models in the debate. Survey respondents who believe in climate change used different models from those who did not, but survey evidence also gave support to the view that individuals use multiple models to reason over novel or contested issues such as climate change. CT explicitly argues that one of the four hypothesised worldviews, the 'fatalist', is not active in shaping policy. In contrast, these empirical studies suggest that the closest equivalent relational model, Equality Matching, generates the Commons Dilemma (Hardin, 1968) that actually drives much of the debate. The studies also raised new questions about the structure connecting the four relational models, or the worldviews. Lastly, the framework confirms it will be difficult to get concerted action before climate change impacts intensify, at which point social as well as climate thresholds will have been crossed

Public anticipations of self-driving vehicles in the UK and US

Developers of self-driving vehicles (SDVs) work with a particular idea of a possible and desirable future. Members of the public may not share the assumptions on which this is based. In this paper we analyse free-text responses from surveys of UK (n = 4,860) and US (n = 1,890) publics, which ask respondents what springs to mind when they think of SDVs, and why they should or should not be developed. Responses (averaging a total 27 words per participant) tend to foreground safety hopes and, more regularly, concerns. Many respondents present alternative representations of relationships between the technology, other road users and the future. Rather than accepting a dominant approach to public engagement, which seeks to educate members of the public away from these views, we instead propose that these views should be seen as a source of social intelligence, with potential constructive contributions to building better transport systems. Anticipatory governance, if it is to be inclusive, should seek to understand and integrate public views rather than reject them as irrational or mutable

Burnout and psychiatric morbidity in new medical graduates

OBJECTIVE: To determine the prevalence of psychiatric morbidity and burnout in final-year medical students, and changes in these measures during the intern year. DESIGN: Prospective longitudinal cohort study over 18 months, with assessment of psychiatric morbidity and burnout on six occasions. PARTICIPANTS: All 117 students in the first graduating cohort of the University of Sydney Graduate Medical Program were invited to participate in the study; 110 consented. OUTCOME MEASURES: Psychiatric morbidity assessed with the 28-item General Health Questionnaire and burnout assessed with the Maslach Burnout Inventory. RESULTS: The point prevalence of participants meeting criteria for psychiatric morbidity and burnout rose steadily throughout the study period. CONCLUSIONS: Internship remains a stressful time for medical graduates, despite initiatives to better support them during this period. The implications for the doctors themselves and for the communities they serve warrant further attention, including programs specifically aimed at reducing the rate of psychological morbidity and burnout during internship.NHMR

Superconducting radio-frequency cavity fault classification using machine learning at Jefferson Laboratory

We report on the development of machine learning models for classifying C100 superconducting radio-frequency (SRF) cavity faults in the Continuous Electron Beam Accelerator Facility (CEBAF) at Jefferson Lab. CEBAF is a continuous-wave recirculating linac utilizing 418 SRF cavities to accelerate electrons up to 12 GeV through 5-passes. Of these, 96 cavities (12 cryomodules) are designed with a digital low-level RF system configured such that a cavity fault triggers waveform recordings of 17 RF signals for each of the 8 cavities in the cryomodule. Subject matter experts (SME) are able to analyze the collected time-series data and identify which of the eight cavities faulted first and classify the type of fault. This information is used to find trends and strategically deploy mitigations to problematic cryomodules. However manually labeling the data is laborious and time-consuming. By leveraging machine learning, near real-time (rather than post-mortem) identification of the offending cavity and classification of the fault type has been implemented. We discuss performance of the ML models during a recent physics run. Results show the cavity identification and fault classification models have accuracies of 84.9% and 78.2%, respectively.Comment: 20 pages, 10 figures submitted to Physical Review Accelerators and Beam

The academic, economic and societal impacts of Open Access: an evidence-based review

Ongoing debates surrounding Open Access to the scholarly literature are multifaceted and complicated by disparate and often polarised viewpoints from engaged stakeholders. At the current stage, Open Access has become such a global issue that it is critical for all involved in scholarly publishing, including policymakers, publishers, research funders, governments, learned societies, librarians, and academic communities, to be well-informed on the history, benefits, and pitfalls of Open Access. In spite of this, there is a general lack of consensus regarding the potential pros and cons of Open Access at multiple levels. This review aims to be a resource for current knowledge on the impacts of Open Access by synthesizing important research in three major areas: academic, economic and societal. While there is clearly much scope for additional research, several key trends are identified, including a broad citation advantage for researchers who publish openly, as well as additional benefits to the non-academic dissemination of their work. The economic impact of Open Access is less well-understood, although it is clear that access to the research literature is key for innovative enterprises, and a range of governmental and non-governmental services. Furthermore, Open Access has the potential to save both publishers and research funders considerable amounts of financial resources, and can provide some economic benefits to traditionally subscription-based journals. The societal impact of Open Access is strong, in particular for advancing citizen science initiatives, and leveling the playing field for researchers in developing countries. Open Access supersedes all potential alternative modes of access to the scholarly literature through enabling unrestricted re-use, and long-term stability independent of financial constraints of traditional publishers that impede knowledge sharing. However, Open Access has the potential to become unsustainable for research communities if high-cost options are allowed to continue to prevail in a widely unregulated scholarly publishing market. Open Access remains only one of the multiple challenges that the scholarly publishing system is currently facing. Yet, it provides one foundation for increasing engagement with researchers regarding ethical standards of publishing and the broader implications of 'Open Research'