Artificial intelligence: opportunities and implications for the future of decision making

Artificial intelligence has arrived. In the online world it is already a part of everyday life, sitting invisibly behind a wide range of search engines and online commerce sites. It offers huge potential to enable more efficient and effective business and government but the use of artificial intelligence brings with it important questions about governance, accountability and ethics. Realising the full potential of artificial intelligence and avoiding possible adverse consequences requires societies to find satisfactory answers to these questions. This report sets out some possible approaches, and describes some of the ways government is already engaging with these issues

Exploring patterns of recurrent melanoma in Northeast Scotland to inform the introduction a digital self-examination intervention

Peer reviewedPublisher PD

The effects of social service contact on teenagers in England

Objective: This study investigated outcomes of social service contact during teenage years. Method: Secondary analysis was conducted of the Longitudinal Survey of Young People in England (N = 15,770), using data on reported contact with social services resulting from teenagers’ behavior. Outcomes considered were educational achievement and aspiration, mental health, and locus of control. Inverse-probability-weighted regression adjustment was used to estimate the effect of social service contact. Results: There was no significant difference between those who received social service contact and those who did not for mental health outcome or aspiration to apply to university. Those with contact had lower odds of achieving good exam results or of being confident in university acceptance if sought. Results for locus of control were mixed. Conclusions: Attention is needed to the role of social services in supporting the education of young people in difficulty. Further research is needed on the outcomes of social services contact

A generation apart? Youth and political participation in Britain

Conventional wisdom holds that young people in Britain are alienated from politics, with some claiming that this reflects a wider crisis of legitimacy that should be met by initiatives to increase citizenship. This article addresses these areas, presenting both panel survey and focus group data from first-time voters. It concludes that, contrary to the findings from many predominantly quantitative studies of political participation, young people are interested in political matters, and do support the democratic process. However they feel a sense of anti-climax having voted for the first time, and are critical of those who have been elected to positions of political power. If they are a generation apart, this is less to do with apathy, and more to do with their engaged scepticism about ‘formal’ politics in Britain

Women and community sentences

Despite the increasing numbers of women given community sentences in the UK and in other jurisdictions in recent years, there has been relatively little research into women’s experiences of these disposals. This is particularly surprising given what is known about the distinctive characteristics of women in conflict with the law and the gendered nature of pathways to crime. This article draws upon the experiences of women made subject to a range of community sentences to identify recurring themes including the complexity of women’s problems, the significance of stigma, trauma and abuse, the importance to women of their supervisory relationships, the relevance of self-efficacy and the nature of barriers to compliance. The article considers the consequences of the discourses of ‘penality’ when underpinned by ideological assumptions and expectations based on gender relations. The implications for the supervision of women in the community are considered, while acknowledging that community sanctions are unlikely in themselves to be capable of addressing broader issues that bring women into and retain them in the criminal justice system

Constructing resilience through security and surveillance: The politics, practices and tensions of security-driven resilience

This article illuminates how, since 9/11, security policy has gradually become more central to a range of resilience discourses and practices. As this process draws a wider range of security infrastructures, organizations and approaches into the enactment of resilience, security practices are enabled through more palatable and legitimizing discourses of resilience. This article charts the emergence and proliferation of security-driven resilience logics, deployed at different spatial scales, which exist in tension with each other. We exemplify such tensions in practice through a detailed case study from Birmingham, UK: ‘Project Champion’ an attempt to install over 200 high-resolution surveillance cameras, often invisibly, around neighbourhoods with a predominantly Muslim population. Here, practices of security-driven resilience came into conflict with other policy priorities focused upon community-centred social cohesion, posing a series of questions about social control, surveillance and the ability of national agencies to construct community resilience in local areas amidst state attempts to label the same spaces as ‘dangerous’. It is argued that security-driven logics of resilience generate conflicts in how resilience is operationalized, and produce and reproduce new hierarchical arrangements which, in turn, may work to subvert some of the founding aspirations and principles of resilience logic itself

Not Managing Expectations: A Grounded Theory of Intimate Partner Violence From the Perspective of Pakistani People

Intimate partner violence (IPV) is a major social and public health problem affecting people from different cultures and societies. Much research has been undertaken to understand the phenomenon, its determinants, and its consequences in numerous countries. However, there is a paucity of research on IPV in many areas of the world including Pakistan. The present study aimed to develop a theory of the meaning and process of IPV from the perspective of Pakistani men and women living in and outside Pakistan

Malaria mosquito control using edible fish in western Kenya: preliminary findings of a controlled study

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Biological control methods are once again being given much research focus for malaria vector control. This is largely due to the emerging threat of strong resistance to pesticides. Larvivorous fish have been used for over 100 years in mosquito control and many species have proved effective. In the western Kenyan highlands the larvivorous fish <it>Oreochromis niloticus </it>L. (Perciformes: Cichlidae) (formerly <it>Tilapia nilotica</it>) is commonly farmed and eaten but has not been previously tested in the field for malaria mosquito control.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>This fish was introduced into abandoned fishponds at an altitude of 1,880 m and the effect measured over six months on the numbers of mosquito immatures. For comparison an untreated control pond was used. During this time, all ponds were regularly cleared of emergent vegetation and fish re-stocking was not needed. Significant autocorrelation was removed from the time series data, and t-tests were used to investigate within a pond and within a mosquito type any differences before and after the introduction of <it>O. niloticus</it>. Mulla's formula was also used on the raw data to calculate the percentage reduction of the mosquito larvae.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>After <it>O. niloticus </it>introduction, mosquito densities immediately dropped in the treated ponds but increased in the control pond. This increase was apparently due to climatic factors. Mulla's formula was applied which corrects for that natural tendency to increase. The results showed that after 15 weeks the fish caused a more than 94% reduction in both <it>Anopheles gambiae s.l</it>. and <it>Anopheles funestus </it>(Diptera: Culicidae) in the treated ponds, and more than 75% reduction in culicine mosquitoes. There was a highly significantly reduction in <it>A. gambiae s.l</it>. numbers when compared to pre-treatment levels.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>This study reports the first field trial data on <it>O. niloticus </it>for malaria mosquito control and shows that this species, already a popular food fish in western Kenya, is an apparently sustainable mosquito control tool which also offers a source of protein and income to people in rural areas. There should be no problem with acceptance of this malaria control method since the local communities already farm this fish species.</p

Comparing nuclear power trajectories in Germany and the UK: from ‘regimes' to ‘democracies’ in sociotechnical transitions and Discontinuities

This paper focuses on arguably the single most striking contrast in contemporary major energy politics in Europe (and even the developed world as a whole): the starkly differing civil nuclear policies of Germany and the UK. Germany is seeking entirely to phase out nuclear power by 2022. Yet the UK advocates a ‘nuclear renaissance’, promoting the most ambitious new nuclear construction programme in Western Europe.Here,this paper poses a simple yet quite fundamental question: what are the particular divergent conditions most strongly implicated in the contrasting developments in these two countries. With nuclear playing such an iconic role in historical discussions over technological continuity and transformation, answering this may assist in wider understandings of sociotechnical incumbency and discontinuity in the burgeoning field of‘sustainability transitions’. To this end, an ‘abductive’ approach is taken: deploying nine potentially relevant criteria for understanding the different directions pursued in Germany and the UK. Together constituted by 30 parameters spanning literatures related to socio-technical regimes in general as well as nuclear technology in particular, the criteria are divided into those that are ‘internal’ and ‘external’ to the ‘focal regime configuration’ of nuclear power and associated ‘challenger technologies’ like renewables. It is ‘internal’ criteria that are emphasised in conventional sociotechnical regime theory, with ‘external’ criteria relatively less well explored. Asking under each criterion whether attempted discontinuation of nuclear power would be more likely in Germany or the UK, a clear picture emerges. ‘Internal’ criteria suggest attempted nuclear discontinuation should be more likely in the UK than in Germany– the reverse of what is occurring. ‘External’ criteria are more aligned with observed dynamics –especially those relating to military nuclear commitments and broader ‘qualities of democracy’. Despite many differences of framing concerning exactly what constitutes ‘democracy’, a rich political science literature on this point is unanimous in characterising Germany more positively than the UK. Although based only on a single case,a potentially important question is nonetheless raised as to whether sociotechnical regime theory might usefully give greater attention to the general importance of various aspects of democracy in constituting conditions for significant technological discontinuities and transformations. If so, the policy implications are significant. A number of important areas are identified for future research, including the roles of diverse understandings and specific aspects of democracy and the particular relevance of military nuclear commitments– whose under-discussion in civil nuclear policy literatures raises its own questions of democratic accountability