USOs, citizenship & modernisation of the public services landscape

A brief review of the development and nature of universal service obligations in the network industries is linked to a discussion of the development of the policy notion of the consumer and the paradigm of the 'circumspect and informed consumer' of EU and national consumer law. These twin themes are then considered in relation to the triangular relationships that apply to both economic (network) and social (public)services that are subject to marketised provision models. A focus is drawn to universal service obligations within the network sectors, and their role in protecting (in terms of access and affordability)the 'vulnerable consumer citizen'. This is then contrasted with ongoing developments concerning the marketisation of social services where such mechanisms for legal/regulatory protection of the 'vulnerable citizen consumer' are not so apparent

Protocol 26 and the promotion of user rights

General presentation concerning the promotion of user rights in relation to Protocol 26 of the EU Treaties and Article 14 TFEU following the Lisbon reforms. The presentation considered the relationship between user rights and the other values in Protocol 26 and the realities for individual users in enjoying those rights

Identifying and individuating cognitive systems: A task-based distributed cognition alternative to agent-based extended cognition

This article argues for a task-based approach to identifying and individuating cognitive systems. The agent-based extended cognition approach faces a problem of cognitive bloat and has difficulty accommodating both sub-individual cognitive systems ("scaling down") and some supra-individual cognitive systems ("scaling up"). The standard distributed cognition approach can accommodate a wider variety of supra-individual systems but likewise has difficulties with sub-individual systems and faces the problem of cognitive bloat. We develop a task-based variant of distributed cognition designed to scale up and down smoothly while providing a principled means of avoiding cognitive bloat. The advantages of the task-based approach are illustrated by means of two parallel case studies: re-representation in the human visual system and in a biomedical engineering laboratory

The Science of a Better You with Jim Davies

Overview & Shownotes One of the best and worst things about the field of ethics is that it often takes a lot of thought, discussion and intellectual energy to sort out how to do good. My guest today, the Carleton University cognitive scientist Jim Davies, claims there are some definitive answers about how to do the most good for the most people. His book, Being the Person Your Dog Thinks You Are is about how to live a good life and also how to be a good person. We’re focusing on the second half of his book, where he uses scientific insights to figure out how to maximize the good we can do in the world. For the episode transcript, download a copy or read it below. Contact us at [email protected] Links to people and ideas mentioned in the show Jim Davies, Being the Person Your Dog Thinks You Are Listen to Jim Davies and Kim Hellemans’ podcast, Minding the Brain Remember Napster? Utilitarianism Disability-adjusted life years (D-A-L-Y) from the World Health Organization Effective Altruism Humane League and Against Malaria Foundation (Please note that these links are in the show notes so that listeners can learn more about the organizations Jim Davies mentions in the interview. The Prindle Institute does not endorse either of these organizations.) Credits Thanks to Evelyn Brosius for our logo. Music featured in the show: “Gin Boheme” by Blue Dot Sessions “Songe d’Automne” by Latché Swing from the Free Music Archive. CC BY-NC-SA 2.0 F

CATASTROPHIC FLANK COLLAPSE ON TA’U ISLAND AND SUBSEQUENT TSUNAMI: HAS THIS OCCURRED DURING THE LAST 170 YEARS?

Ta’u, the easternmost inhabited island in the Samoan Islands archipelago, exhibits a series of down-faulted benches on its southern flank, believed to be the remnant of ~30 km3 catastrophic collapse. A historical map of Ta’u charted in 1839 during the United States Exploring Expedition, which did not show the benches, suggests that the event occurred less than 170 years ago. A collapse event of this magnitude would have generated a locally devastating tsunami, with possible impacts experienced at the regional level. However, no written or oral records of such an event exist. A number of key questions thus emerge, and formed the basis for this study. Did this event actually happen within the last 170 years, and if so, how and why could it have gone unnoticed? Or, is the event much older than the impression obtained from the literature? The catastrophic flank collapse was modeled using 100 m contour-resolution bathymetry data of the Ta’u region, coupled with rational assumptions made on the geometry of the failed mass. This enabled numerical landslide- tsunami simulation in the Cornell Multigrid Coupled Tsunami Model (COMCOT). The results indicate that if an event of this magnitude occurred in the last 170 years, it could not have gone unnoticed by local inhabitants. It thus seems likely that the initial survey conducted during the Exploring Expedition was inaccurate. Nevertheless, the well-preserved nature of the benches indicates collapse relatively recently and raises the possibility of future collapse

Engineering Agile Big-Data Systems

To be effective, data-intensive systems require extensive ongoing customisation to reflect changing user requirements, organisational policies, and the structure and interpretation of the data they hold. Manual customisation is expensive, time-consuming, and error-prone. In large complex systems, the value of the data can be such that exhaustive testing is necessary before any new feature can be added to the existing design. In most cases, the precise details of requirements, policies and data will change during the lifetime of the system, forcing a choice between expensive modification and continued operation with an inefficient design.Engineering Agile Big-Data Systems outlines an approach to dealing with these problems in software and data engineering, describing a methodology for aligning these processes throughout product lifecycles. It discusses tools which can be used to achieve these goals, and, in a number of case studies, shows how the tools and methodology have been used to improve a variety of academic and business systems

An Integrated System Dynamics Model for Analyzing Behaviour of the Social-Energy-Economic-Climatic System: Model Description

The feedback based integrated assessment model ANEMI represents the society-biosphereclimate- economy-energy system of the earth and biosphere. The development of ANEMI model is done using the system dynamics simulation approach that (a) allows understanding and modeling of complex global change and (b) assists in the investigation of possible policy options for mitigating, and/or adopting to global changing conditions, within an integrated assessment modeling framework. This report presents ANEMI model and its nine individual sectors: climate, carbon cycle, land-use, population, food production, hydrologic cycle, water demand, water quality, and energy-economy. Two versions of the model are developed and presented in the report. The first one represents the society-biosphere-climate-economy-energy system on a global level. The second one is developed for regional presentation of Canada. The development of Canada model is based on the top down approach and various disaggregation techniques. To evaluate market and nonmarket costs and benefits of climate change, ANEMI model integrates an economic approach, with a focus on the international energy stock and fuel price, with climate interrelations and temperature change. The market clearance mechanism of economy sector introduces optimization within the simulation framework, which makes the model unique and different from any other integrated assessment model available in the published literature. The model takes account of all major greenhouse gases (GHG) influencing global temperature and sea-level variation. Several of the model sectors are built from the basic structure of the previous version of ANEMI. However, they are integrated in a novel way, the water sectors in particular. The integration of optimization within the simulation framework of the ANEMI model is timely, as recognition of the importance of energy based economic activities in determining long-term Earth-system behaviour grows. Experimentation with different policy scenarios demonstrated their consequences on future behaviour of the society-biosphere-climate-economy-energy system through feedback based interactions. The use of ANEMI model improves both, scientific understanding and socio-economic policy development strategy. This report describes the model structure in details and illustrates its use through the analysis of three policy scenarios.https://ir.lib.uwo.ca/wrrr/1037/thumbnail.jp