Discovering new kinds of patient safety incidents

Every year, large numbers of patients in National Health Service (NHS) care suffer because of a patient safety incident. The National Patient Safety Agency (NPSA) collects large amounts of data describing individual incidents. As well as being described by categorical and numerical variables, each incident is described using free text. The aim of the work was to find quite small groups of similar incidents, which were of types that were previously unknown to the NPSA. A model of the text was produced, such that the position of each incident reflected its meaning to the greatest extent possible. The basic model was the vector space model. Dimensionality reduction was carried out in two stages: unsupervised dimensionality reduction was carried out using principal component analysis, and supervised dimensionality reduction using linear discriminant analysis. It was then possible to look for groups of incidents that were more tightly packed than would be expected given the overall distribution of the incidents. The process for assessing these groups had three stages. Firstly, a quantitative measure was used, allowing a large number of parameter combinations to be examined. The groups found for an ‘optimum’ parameter combination were then divided into categories using a qualitative filtering method. Finally, clinical experts assessed the groups qualitatively. The transition probabilities model was also examined: this model was based on the empirical probabilities that two word sequences were seen in the text. An alternative method for dimensionality reduction was to use information about the subjective meaning of a small sample of incidents elicited from experts, producing a mapping between high and low dimensional models of the text. The analysis also included the direct use of the categorical variables to model the incidents, and empirical analysis of the behaviour of high dimensional spaces

The impact of boundary conditions on CO2 capacity estimation in aquifers

The boundary conditions of an aquifer determine the extent to which fluids (including formation water and CO2) and pressure can be transferred into adjacent geological formations, either laterally or vertically. Aquifer boundaries can be faults, lithological boundaries, formation pinch-outs, salt walls, or outcrop. In many cases compliance with regulations preventing CO2 storage influencing areas outside artificial boundaries defined by non-geological criteria (international boundaries; license limits) may be necessary. A bounded aquifer is not necessarily a closed aquifer. The identification of an aquifer’s boundary conditions determines how CO2 storage capacity is estimated in the earliest screening and characterization stages. There are different static capacity estimation methods in use for closed systems and open systems. The method used has a significant impact on the final capacity estimate. The recent EU Directive (2009/31/EC) stated that where more than one storage site within a single “hydraulic unit” (bounded aquifer volume) is being considered, the characterization process should account for potential pressure interactions. The pressure interplay of multiple sites (or even the pressure footprint of just one site) is heavily influenced by boundary conditions

Direct cash transfers to households: the Bank of England’s response to COVID-19 and the end of orthodoxy

With the Bank of England likely to announce a further £200bn of monetary economic stimulus soon to combat the economic impact of the coronavirus crisis, Caroline Bentham argues they should think carefully about what they do with the money. She makes the case for a different design of central bank monetary stimulus – direct money transfers to households – and explains how this would work

En undersøkelse av utdanning for bærekraftig utvikling : tolkning og implementering i en lærerutdanningsinstitusjon i Sør Afrika

It has been noted that any hope for transformation in education lies in the hands of the teacher and/or teacher educator who inevitably must take on the role as implementer of policy innovation. It is, however, not only an issue of whether or not institutional policy has been interpreted and implemented appropriately within teacher education institutions, it is also a question of how institutional policy encompasses global and national initiatives. This study focuses on the Education for Sustainable Development initiative that has been formally adopted at a national and global level. It is pertinent that policy guiding teacher education institutions reflect this global and national responsibility. Having said this, it is not enough to formulate policy that is strongly ESD aligned. This research reveals that deep learning for sustainability at any Higher Education Institution (HEI) is only sustainable in of itself if first the institutional culture is understood and second if it is embraced in the model for ‘change’

Risk assessment for Legionella in building water systems

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Utilitarianism, God, and Moral Obligation from Locke to Sidgwick

The standard account of the origin of utilitarianism is derived from Leslie Stephen, who argued that the doctrine developed from the rejection by John Locke (1632–1704) of innate ideas and his identification of good and evil with pleasure and pain, respectively. Stephen identified two strands of utilitarianism. One strand was ‘theological utilitarianism,’ propounded by a ‘school’ of moral philosophers, most famously represented by William Paley (1743–1805), which held that what was useful or expedient, and hence virtuous, was what accorded with God’s will, and thereby attached a religious sanction to utilitarian moral behavior. If men were virtuous, that is, promoted the happiness of the community and hence did God’s will, they would be rewarded in an afterlife with the pleasures of heaven, but if they were vicious, they would suffer the pains of hell. The other strand was developed by David Hume (1711–1776) and borrowed in essentials by Jeremy Bentham (1748–1832), and aimed to formulate a ‘scientific’ system of morality. The foundation of ethics was laid in an objective human psychology, which was common to all men and would motivate them in the same way, all other circumstances being equal. Taking Bentham and Paley as the representative thinkers of the two strands, Stephen remarked that “The relation … of Bentham’s ethical doctrines to Paley’s may be expressed by saying that Bentham is Paley minus a belief in hell-fire.