Shaping policy development in a UK Government department

Policy-making organisations are often accused of linear and narrow-focused thinking and de-cision-making, failing to account for the diversity of human needs and goals, even the diversity of goals existing across different government departments. Accordingly, resulting government policies can be fragmented and do not account for the mul-tiple aspects important for human wellbeing. As unintended consequences arise across a broad range of outcomes, an integrated, system-wide and participatory approach to policy-making is needed. It needs to shape thinking around policy-making to interlink the different individuals and organisations interacting with these policies. This paper suggests a participatory systems approach that engages diverse policy-makers in a process of co-creation and shared learning. Instead of focusing on narrow policy develop-ment, it develops a process fuelled by systems thinking and participatory system dynamics modelling to shape policy-making. It refers to a collaboration with a UK government depart-ment and takes policy-making about domestic heating energy from a home-owner and market perspective as an example. The collaborative approach uses interviews, workshops, qualita-tive mapping, causal loop diagramming and simulation modelling to jointly establish causal maps of nonlinearities, complex interrelationships and feedback processes in the area of do-mestic heating energy efficiency and use. The collaborative project shows that interest in systems thinking can be triggered through a participatory research project and interaction with a simulation environment. It also presents a process for engaging collaborators with different interdisciplinary background and discusses challenges and successes. Finally it reveals how participants unfamiliar to systems thinking can engage in a new way of thinking and collaborating. System dynamics modelling, systems thinking, home energy efficiency, retrofit, home-owner decision-makin

Mechanisms of Consumer Boycotts: Evidence from the Nestlé Infant Food Controversy

Quality criteria do not only relate to the products mere quality, but to the production and marketing process of the product as well. Customers often express their dissatisfaction with low ethical standards in this area by consumer boycotts. As there are complex relationships between financial aspects and compliance, a system dynamics model is used to unveil causal relationships and explain behavioral patterns. The model highlights the links between a company’s dilemma situation and the effectiveness of a boycott for those demanding different corporate conduct. It also demonstrates possible levers for triggering different behavior

Integrating GMB and Games in the Built Environment

This placeholder submission describes a study at University College London (UCL) that is currently underway integrating Group Model Building (GMB) process with a system dynamics (SD) based simulation game towards increasing consensus among stakeholders. During game play participants will make the decisions, first as individuals and then as groups. The game is designed as two stage process. The first stage is a trial-driven process, played before the model structure has been revealed and explained. In the second round, analysis-driven process will predominate following a description of the underlying structure(Van Daalen et al., 2014). Our hypothesis is that stakeholders with greater levels of ownership due to participation in the GMB workshops will have better outcomes regarding shared understanding, commitment, systems thinking, insight and consensus. The final model will be integrated website of the UCL Institute for Environmental Design and Engineering to enable continuous learning among participants and create a window into the study for a broader audience. This work builds on the qualitative application of SD conducted by Macmillan et al. (2016) and Shrubsole et al. (2014) as part of an integrated project on housing, energy and wellbeing (HEW)

What are System Dynamics Insights?

This paper explores the concept of system dynamics insights. In our field, the term “insight” is generally understood to mean dynamic insight, that is, a deep understanding about the relationship between structure and behavior. We argue this is only one aspect of the range of insights possible from system dynamics activities, and describe a broader range of potential system dynamics insights. We also propose an initial framework for discussion that relates different types of system dynamics activities with different types of insights

Is standard breast-conserving therapy (BCT) in elderly breast cancer patients justified? A prospective measurement of acute toxicity according CTC-classification

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Breast conserving therapy (BCT) is an accepted treatment for early-stage breast cancer. This study aimed to measure prospectively acute radiation-related toxicity and to create a comprehensive data base for long-term temporal analyses of 3D conformal adjuvant radiotherapy. The specific aspect of age has been neglected by traditional research. Therefore, the impact of age on acute BCT toxicity should be also specifically adressed.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>Toxicity was measured in 109 patients at initiation (t1), during radiotherapy (t2-t7), and 6 weeks after treatment completion (t8) using a new topographic module. Organ systems were recorded in 15 scales and scored according to symptom intensity (grade 0-5) based on CTC (Common Toxicity Criteria) -classification. Radiotherapy was virtually CT-based planned and applied with 6-MeV-photons. Mean total dose was 60.1 Gy. Patients were stratified by age in 3 Groups: <50, 50-60, and >60 years.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Registered toxicity was generally low. Mean overall-grade climbed from 0.29-0.40 (t1-t7), and dropped to 0.23 (t8). Univariate analyses revealed slightly higher toxicity in older (> 60 years) versus young patients (< 50 years) in 2 scales only: breast-symmetry (p = 0.033), and arm function (p = 0.007). However, in the scale "appetite" toxicity was higher in younger (< 50 years) versus older (> 60 years) patients (p = 0.039). Toxicity differences in all other scales were not significant. Between older (> 60 years) and midaged patients (50-60 years) no significant differences in toxicity were found. This was also true for the comparison between young (< 50 years) versus midaged patient groups (50-60 years).</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>The treatment concept of BCT for breast cancer is generally well tolerated. The toxicity-measurement with the new topographic module is feasible. Not modified standard treatment for BC should be performed in elderly women.</p

The origin and early evolution of vascular plant shoots and leaves

The morphology of plant fossils from the Rhynie chert has generated longstanding questions about vascular plant shoot and leaf evolution, for instance, which morphologies were ancestral within land plants, when did vascular plants first arise and did leaves have multiple evolutionary origins? Recent advances combining insights from molecular phylogeny, palaeobotany and evo-devo research address these questions and suggest the sequence of morphological innovation during vascular plant shoot and leaf evolution. The evidence pinpoints testable developmental and genetic hypotheses relating to the origin of branching and indeterminate shoot architectures prior to the evolution of leaves, and demonstrates underestimation of polyphyly in the evolution of leaves from branching forms in ‘telome theory’ hypotheses of leaf evolution. This review discusses fossil, developmental and genetic evidence relating to the evolution of vascular plant shoots and leaves in a phylogenetic framework. This article is part of the themed issue ‘The Rhynie chert: our earliest terrestrial ecosystem revisited’

Differential gene expression profile reveals deregulation of pregnancy specific β1 glycoprotein 9 early during colorectal carcinogenesis

BACKGROUND: APC (Adenomatous polyposis coli) plays an important role in the pathogenesis of both familial and sporadic colorectal cancer. Patients carrying germline APC mutations develop multiple colonic adenomas at younger age and higher frequency than non-carrier cases which indicates that silencing of one APC allele may be sufficient to initiate the transformation process. METHODS: To elucidate the biological dysregulation underlying adenoma formation we examined global gene expression profiles of adenomas and corresponding normal mucosa from an FAP patient. Differential expression of the most significant gene identified in this study was further validated by mRNA in situ hybridization, reverse transcriptase PCR and Northern blotting in different sets of adenomas, tumours and cancer cell lines. RESULTS: Eighty four genes were differentially expressed between all adenomas and corresponding normal mucosa, while only seven genes showed differential expression within the adenomas. The first group included pregnancy specific β-1 glycoprotein 9 (PSG9) (p < 0.006). PSG9 is a member of the carcinoembryonic antigen (CEA)/PSG family and is produced at high levels during pregnancy, mainly by syncytiotrophoblasts. Further analysis of sporadic and familial colorectal cancer confirmed that PSG9 is ectopically upregulated in vivo by cancer cells. In total, deregulation of PSG9 mRNA was detected in 78% (14/18) of FAP adenomas and 75% (45/60) of sporadic colorectal cancer cases tested. CONCLUSION: Detection of PSG9 expression in adenomas, and at higher levels in FAP cases, indicates that germline APC mutations and defects in Wnt signalling modulate PSG9 expression. Since PSG9 is not found in the non-pregnant adult except in association with cancer, and it appears to be an early molecular event associated with colorectal cancer monitoring of its expression may be useful as a biomarker for the early detection of this disease

Studying the Underlying Event in Drell-Yan and High Transverse Momentum Jet Production at the Tevatron

We study the underlying event in proton-antiproton collisions by examining the behavior of charged particles (transverse momentum pT > 0.5 GeV/c, pseudorapidity |\eta| < 1) produced in association with large transverse momentum jets (~2.2 fb-1) or with Drell-Yan lepton-pairs (~2.7 fb-1) in the Z-boson mass region (70 < M(pair) < 110 GeV/c2) as measured by CDF at 1.96 TeV center-of-mass energy. We use the direction of the lepton-pair (in Drell-Yan production) or the leading jet (in high-pT jet production) in each event to define three regions of \eta-\phi space; toward, away, and transverse, where \phi is the azimuthal scattering angle. For Drell-Yan production (excluding the leptons) both the toward and transverse regions are very sensitive to the underlying event. In high-pT jet production the transverse region is very sensitive to the underlying event and is separated into a MAX and MIN transverse region, which helps separate the hard component (initial and final-state radiation) from the beam-beam remnant and multiple parton interaction components of the scattering. The data are corrected to the particle level to remove detector effects and are then compared with several QCD Monte-Carlo models. The goal of this analysis is to provide data that can be used to test and improve the QCD Monte-Carlo models of the underlying event that are used to simulate hadron-hadron collisions.Comment: Submitted to Phys.Rev.

Measurement of the W+W−W^+W^- Production Cross Section and Search for Anomalous WWγWW\gamma and WWZWWZ Couplings in ppˉp \bar p Collisions at s=1.96\sqrt{s} = 1.96 TeV

This Letter describes the current most precise measurement of the $W$ boson pair production cross section and most sensitive test of anomalous $WW\gamma$ and $WWZ$ couplings in $p \bar p$ collisions at a center-of-mass energy of 1.96 TeV. The $WW$ candidates are reconstructed from decays containing two charged leptons and two neutrinos, where the charged leptons are either electrons or muons. Using data collected by the CDF II detector from 3.6 fb$^{-1}$ of integrated luminosity, a total of 654 candidate events are observed with an expected background contribution of $320 \pm 47$ events. The measured total cross section is $\sigma (p \bar p \to W^+ W^- + X) = 12.1 \pm 0.9 \textrm{(stat)} ^{+1.6}_{-1.4} \textrm{(syst)}$ pb, which is in good agreement with the standard model prediction. The same data sample is used to place constraints on anomalous $WW\gamma$ and $WWZ$ couplings.Comment: submitted to Phys. Rev. Let