Gender on the flightdeck: experiences of women commercial airline pilots in the UK

The reasons for, and the implications arising from, the underrepresentation of women on the flightdeck of commercial aircraft continues to challenge national Governments, the aviation industry, and the academic community. Although some airlines have made concerted efforts to improve the gender balance of their flightcrew, womens' participation in the profession remains low. Of the 130,000 airline pilots worldwide only 4000 (3%) are women and only 450 hold the command of Captain. The dominant historical discourse of airline pilots as assertive masculine figures may act to dissuade women from pursuing a career on the flightdeck and women pilots are subjected to sexist remarks and behaviour from colleagues and passengers. Given commercial aviation's increasing growth worldwide and the concurrent increase in demand for highly skilled labour, the inability to recruit and retain women pilots represents a significant problem for both the sector and the wider economy as it will constrain growth, hinder aviation's expansion by failing to capitalise on women's skill sets, and delay the achievement of gender equality. Understanding the experiences of flightcrew is therefore vital in addressing this important research problem. Through the use of in-depth interviews with men and women flightcrew in the UK, the research identifies a number of obstacles to greater female participation and recommends that airlines not only focus on gender differences in learning, leadership and communication but that they also take steps to more effectively manage diversity in their workforce and actively promote positive representations of women flightcrew both within and beyond their organisation

Development of an Explainability Scale to Evaluate Explainable Artificial Intelligence (XAI) Methods

Explainable Artificial Intelligence (XAI) is an area of research that develops methods and techniques to make the results of artificial intelligence understood by humans. In recent years, there has been an increased demand for XAI methods to be developed due to model architectures getting more complicated and government regulations requiring transparency in machine learning models. With this increased demand has come an increased need for instruments to evaluate XAI methods. However, there are few, if none, valid and reliable instruments that take into account human opinion and cover all aspects of explainability. Therefore, this study developed an objective, human-centred questionnaire to evaluate all types of XAI methods. This questionnaire consists of 15 items: 5 items asking about the user’s background information and 10 items evaluating the explainability of the XAI method which were based on the notions of explainability. An experiment was conducted (n = 38) which got participants to evaluate one of two XAI methods using the questionnaire. The results from this experiment were used for exploratory factor analysis which showed that the 10 items related to explainability constitute one factor (Cronbach’s α = 0.81). The results were also used to gather evidence of the questionnaire’s construct validity. It is concluded that this 15-item questionnaire has one factor, has acceptable validity and reliability, and can be used to evaluate and compare XAI methods

Is sharing the solution? : exploring the opportunities and challenges of privately rented shared accommodation for single people in housing need

Reduced availability of, and access to, affordable accommodation coupled with housing benefit reductions, particularly for single people under the age of 35, make it inevitable that more people will require shared accommodation as a financially viable solution to their housing needs. However, there is a reluctance to enter into sharing, particularly with 'strangers', and many members of vulnerable groups face challenges such as living with others, gaining access to the private rented sector, and sustaining tenancies. In response to these challenges, the Sharing Solutions Programme, run by Crisis and funded by the Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG), recently piloted, developed and promoted new models for establishing successful sharing arrangements for single people in housing need. This paper draws on findings from an evaluation of that programme, alongside the literature on shared accommodation, to identify a number of potential barriers to making shared accommodation work, and ways in which these may be overcome. A range of factors are identified as pivotal in the success of sharing in the private rented sector, including changing perceptions of sharing, managing shared properties and supporting tenants. While the paper concludes that sharing can be a viable option for some, it simultaneously recognises the significant resources required to make it successful for tenants

Deletion of AIF1 but not of YCA1/MCA1 protects Saccharomyces cerevisiae and Candida albicans cells from caspofungin-induced programmed cell death

Caspofungin was the first member of a new class of antifungals called echinocandins to be approved by a drug regulatory authority. Like the other echinocandins, caspofungin blocks the synthesis of β(1,3)-D-glucan of the fungal cell wall by inhibiting the enzyme, β(1,3)-D-glucan synthase. Loss of β(1,3)-D-glucan leads to osmotic instability and cell death. However, the precise mechanism of cell death associated with the cytotoxicity of caspofungin was unclear. We now provide evidence that Saccharomyces cerevisiae cells cultured in media containing caspofungin manifest the classical hallmarks of programmed cell death (PCD) in yeast, including the generation of reactive oxygen species (ROS), the fragmentation of mitochondria, and the production of DNA strand breaks. Our data also suggests that deleting AIF1 but not YCA1/MCA1 protects S. cerevisiae and Candida albicans from caspofungin-induced cell death. This is not only the first time that AIF1 has been specifically tied to cell death in Candida but also the first time that caspofungin resistance has been linked to the cell death machinery in yeast

Whose Goals? Whose Aspirations?: Learning to Teach Underprepared Writers across the Curriculum

Ever since Horace Mann promoted state supported schooling in the 1850s, the aims of U.S. public education have been the subject of heated national debate. Whose Goals? Whose Aspirations? joins this debate by exploring clashing educational aims in a discipline-based university classroom and the consequences of these clashes for underprepared writers. In this close-up look at a White middle-class teacher and his ethnically diverse students, Fishman and McCarthy examine not only the role of Standard English in college writing instruction but also the underlying and highly charged issues of multiculturalism, race cognizance, and social class.https://digitalcommons.usu.edu/usupress_pubs/1137/thumbnail.jp

Organizing the U.S. Health Care Delivery System for High Performance

Analyzes the fragmentation of the healthcare delivery system and makes policy recommendations -- including payment reform, regulatory changes, and infrastructure -- for creating mechanisms to coordinate care across providers and settings

A Triple Bottom-line Typology of Technical Debt: Supporting Decision- Making in Cross-Functional Teams

Technical Debt (TD) is a widely discussed metaphor in IT practice focused on increased short-term benefit in exchange for long-term ‘debt’. While it is primarily individuals or groups inside IT departments who make the decisions to take on TD, we find that the effects of TD stretch across the entire organisation. Decisions to take on TD should therefore concern a wider group. However, business leaders have traditionally lacked awareness of the effects of what they perceive to be ‘technology decisions’. To facilitate TD as group- based decision-making, we review existing literature to develop a typology of the wider impacts of TD. The goal is to help technologists, non-technologists, and academics have a broader and shared understanding of TD and to facilitate more participatory and transparent technology-related decision making. We extend the typology to include a wider ‘outside in’ perspective and conclude by suggesting areas for further research

SOCIOMATERIALITY: AN OBJECT-INSPIRED PROPOSAL FOR IS SCHOLARS

The ideas presented in this paper have emerged from our curiosity about how technological objects might be leveraged as more than mere evidence in IS research. As constructions of a particular time and place, objects can tell us a great deal about the people, organisations and cultures that produced and used them. Objects reflect the values, beliefs and activities of those people, organisations, and cultures. But many IS scholars following a sociomaterial agenda continue to see objects as no more than background facts that play a supporting role in our research. There is little guidance in the IS literature on how objects might participate more directly and fully in our research and how we as scholars should engage with them. In this paper, we present an object-inspired perspective largely drawn from the material culture literature where we engage with objects as the units of observation. We discuss what this might contribute to IS theory-building and what opportunities it might create for new types of object-centred and -driven theories. We describe a framework for undertaking this object-inspired research. In so doing, we are challenged to think about the ontological commitments of our approach and how this differs from dominant forms of sociomateriality