Questioning the merits and demerits of electronic communication in Social Work

This paper examines the social dynamics of electronic exchanges in the human services, particularly in social work. It focuses on the observable effects that email and texting have on the linguistic, relational and clinical rather than managerial aspects of the profession. It highlights how electronic communication is affecting professionals in their practice and learners as they become acculturated to social work. What are the gains and losses of the broad use of electronic devices in daily lay and professional, verbal and non-verbal communication? Will our current situation be seriously detrimental to the demeanor of future practitioners, their use of language, and their ability to establish close personal relationships? The paper analyzes social work linguistic and behavioral changes in light of the growth of electronic communication and offers a summary of merits and demerits viewed through a prism emerging from Baron’s (2000) analysis of human communication.

Understandings of transnational families in debates on Migration and development

International migration sets in motion a range of significant transnational processes that connect countries and people. How migration interacts with development and how policies might promote and enhance such interactions have, since the turn of the millennium, gained attention on the international agenda. The recognition that transnational practices connect migrants and their families across sending and receiving societies forms part of this debate. The ways in which policy debate employs and understands transnational family ties nevertheless remain underexplored. This article sets out to discern the understandings of the family in two (often intermingled) debates concerned with transnational interactions: The largely state and policydriven discourse on the potential benefits of migration on economic development, and the largely academic transnational family literature focusing on issues of care and the micro-politics of gender and generation. Emphasizing the relation between diverse migration-development dynamics and specific family positions, we ask whether an analytical point of departure in respective transnational motherhood, fatherhood or childhood is linked to emphasizing certain outcomes. We conclude by sketching important strands of inclusions and exclusions of family matters in policy discourse and suggest ways to better integrate a transnational family perspective in global migration-development policy.

Theory as Noir: a cartoon version of an academic article

Expanding on the growing movement to take academic and other erudite subjugated knowledges and distill them into some graphic form, this “cartoon” is a recounting of the author’s 2014 article,  “Big Data, Actionable Information, Scientific Knowledge and the Goal of Control,” Teknokultura, Vol. 11/no. 3, pp. 529-54.  It is an analysis of the idea of Big Data and an argument that its power relies on its instrumentalist specificity and not its extent. Mind control research in general and optogenetics in particular are the case study. Noir seems an appropriate aesthetic for this analysis, so direct quotes from the article are illustrated by publically available screen shots from iconic and unknown films of the 20th century. The only addition to the original article is a framing insight from the admirable activist network CrimethInc. 

Rethinking Copyright: History, Theory, Language

This book provides the reader with a critical insight into the history and theory of copyright within contemporary legal and cultural discourse. It exposes as myth the orthodox history of the development of copyright law in eighteenth-century Britain and explores the way in which that myth became entrenched throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. To this historical analysis are added two theoretical approaches to copyright not otherwise found in mainstream contemporary texts. Rethinking Copyright introduces the reader to copyright through the prism of the public domain before considering how best to locate copyright within the parameters of traditional property discourse. Underpinning these various historical and theoretical strands, the book explores the constitutive power of legal writing and the place of rhetoric in framing and determining contemporary copyright policy and discourse.

Select Document: Sir George Radcliffe’s “Original of Government” (1639) and Absolutist Political Theory in Stuart Ireland

A seventeenth-century manuscript miscellany, which once belonged to Archbishop James Ussher of Armagh, contains a short treatise on the origins of government by Sir George Radcliffe. Radcliffe was legal assistant to Sir Thomas Wentworth, lord deputy of Ireland (from January 1640 earl of Strafford and lord lieutenant). The treatise insisted on the divine origin of all human political power and implied that the best form of government was absolute monarchy, in which the monarch was free of all human law and subject to divine restraint alone. It will be suggested below that the composition of this treatise can be dated to the summer of 1639. This introduction will offer an outline of Radcliffe’s education and political career, explain the genesis of his treatise on government, point out some pertinent aspects of its argument, and finally assess the document’s significance.

Optimising power take-off of an oscillating wave surge converter using high fidelity numerical simulations

Oscillating wave surge converters are a promising technology to harvest ocean wave energy in the near shore region. Although research has been going on for many years, the characteristics of the wave action on the structure and especially the phase relation between the driving force and wave quantities like velocity or surface elevation have not been investigated in detail. The main reason for this is the lack of suitable methods. Experimental investigations using tank tests do not give direct access to overall hydrodynamic loads, only damping torque of a power take off system can be measured directly. Non-linear computational fluid dynamics methods have only recently been applied in the research of this type of devices. This paper presents a new metric named wave torque, which is the total hydrodynamic torque minus the still water pitch stiffness at any given angle of rotation. Changes in characteristics of that metric over a wave cycle and for different power take off settings are investigated using computational fluid dynamics methods. Firstly, it is shown that linearised methods cannot predict optimum damping in typical operating states of OWSCs. We then present phase relationships between main kinetic parameters for different damping levels. Although the flap seems to operate close to resonance, as predicted by linear theory, no obvious condition defining optimum damping is found.

Emotions & Power:Habitus and Change in Late Modernity

(Under contract)

Informal strategies of power in the local planning system

Existing studies that question the role of planning as a state institution, whose interests it serves together with those disputing the merits of collaborative planning are all essentially concerned with the broader issue of power in society. Although there have been various attempts to highlight the distorting effects of power, the research emphasis to date has been focused on the operation of power within the formal structures that constitute the planning system. As a result, relatively little attention has been attributed to the informal strategies or tactics that can be utilised by powerful actors to further their own interests. This article seeks to address this gap by identifying the informal strategies used by the holders of power to bypass the formal structures of the planning system and highlight how these procedures are to a large extent systematic and (almost) institutionalised in a shadow planning system. The methodology consists of a series of semi-structured qualitative interviews with 20 urban planners working across four planning authorities within the Greater Dublin Area, Ireland. Empirical findings are offered that highlight the importance of economic power in the emergence of what essentially constitutes a shadow planning system. More broadly, the findings suggest that much more cognisance of the structural relations that govern how power is distributed in society is required and that ‘light touch’ approaches that focus exclusively on participation and deliberation need to be replaced with more radical solutions that look towards the redistribution of economic power between stakeholders.

Morality, Power and the Planning Subject

Ethical issues are at the heart of planning. Thus, planning theory has long displayed an interest in debating both the ethical justification for planning and how the activity of planning can be rendered more ethically sensitive. However, comparatively little attention has been shown to how the very constitution of the planner as a ‘moral subject’ may be ethically problematic for planning practice. This article addresses this lacuna through an engagement with the philosophy of Michel Foucault. In contrast to how his work is normally applied, this article accords with Foucault’s own direction that his later examination of ethics be used as a lens through which to read his earlier analysis of power and knowledge. Accordingly, the article first outlines Foucault’s innovative reinterpretation of how power and knowledge operate in society before setting this within his novel reconception of ethics. This theoretical exposition is then employed to interpret the material drawn from in-depth qualitative interviews with 20 planning officers working in a range of different contexts. The article subsequently employs Foucault’s ethically informed reading of power and knowledge to identify ethical issues arising from the approaches used by practitioners to justify their planning activities. The article concludes by suggesting how such issues can be resolved.

Addressing the theory practice gap in nurse education: evaluating teaching through audit against NMC standards and final management placement

Introduction
This paper outlines an innovative approach to auditing and evaluating the content of a management and leadership module for undergraduate nursing students after their final management clinical placement. Normally evaluations of teaching in a module take place at the end of a teaching module and therefore do not properly reflect the value of the teaching in relation to practical clinical experience.
Aim
This audit and evaluation sought to explore both the practical value of the teaching and learning, and also the degree to which it the teaching reflected against the NMC Standards of Education and Learning (2010 domain 3).
Methods
Having piloted the evaluative tool with an earlier cohort of nursing students, this evaluation explored both a quantitative assessment employing a Personal Response System (n =172), together with a qualitative dimension (n=116), thus delivering paper-based comments and reflections from students on the value and practicality of the module teaching theory to their final clinical management experience. The quantitative audit data were analysed for frequencies and cross tabulation and the qualitative audit data were thematically analysed.
Results
Results suggest a significant proportion of the students, appreciated the quality of the standard of teaching, but more importantly, ‘valued or highly valued’ the teaching and learning in relation to how it helped to significantly inform their management placement experience. A smaller proportion of the students underlined limitations and areas in which further improvement can be made in teaching and learning to the module.
Conclusion
Significantly positive evaluation by the students of the practical value of teaching and learning, to the theoretical management module. This has proved a useful auditing approach in assessing the theoretical teaching to student’s Level 3 clinical experience, and facilitated significant recommendations as far as developing the teaching and learning to better reflect the practice needs of nursing students

Increasing the power of genome wide association studies in natural populations using repeated measures : evaluation and implementation

1. Genomewide association studies (GWAS) enable detailed dissections of the genetic basis for organisms' ability to adapt to a changing environment. In long-term studies of natural populations, individuals are often marked at one point in their life and then repeatedly recaptured. It is therefore essential that a method for GWAS includes the process of repeated sampling. In a GWAS, the effects of thousands of single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) need to be fitted and any model development is constrained by the computational requirements. A method is therefore required that can fit a highly hierarchical model and at the same time is computationally fast enough to be useful. 2. Our method fits fixed SNP effects in a linear mixed model that can include both random polygenic effects and permanent environmental effects. In this way, the model can correct for population structure and model repeated measures. The covariance structure of the linear mixed model is first estimated and subsequently used in a generalized least squares setting to fit the SNP effects. The method was evaluated in a simulation study based on observed genotypes from a long-term study of collared flycatchers in Sweden. 3. The method we present here was successful in estimating permanent environmental effects from simulated repeated measures data. Additionally, we found that especially for variable phenotypes having large variation between years, the repeated measurements model has a substantial increase in power compared to a model using average phenotypes as a response. 4. The method is available in the R package RepeatABEL. It increases the power in GWAS having repeated measures, especially for long-term studies of natural populations, and the R implementation is expected to facilitate modelling of longitudinal data for studies of both animal and human populations.

Understanding the Patient Experience Through the Power of Film: a Mixed Method Qualitative Research Study

Background For decades film has proved to be a powerful form of communication. Whether produced as entertainment, art or documentary, films have the capacity to inform and move us. Films are a highly attractive teaching instrument and an appropriate teaching method in health education. It is a valuable tool for studying situations most transcendental to human beings such as pain, disease and death. Objectives The objectives were to determine how this helps students engage with their role as health care professionals; to determine how they view the personal experience of illness, disease, disability or death; and to determine how this may impact upon their provision of patient care. Design, Setting and Participants The project was underpinned by the film selection determined by considerate review, intensive scrutiny, contemplation and discourse by the research team. 7 films were selected, ranging from animation; foreign, documentary, biopic and Hollywood drama. Each film was shown discretely, in an acoustic lecture theatre projected onto a large screen to pre-registration student nurses (adult, child and mental health) across each year of study from different cohorts (n = 49). Method A mixed qualitative method approach consisted of audio-recorded 5-minute reactions post film screening; coded questionnaires; and focus group. Findings were drawn from the impact of the films through thematic analysis of data sets and subjective text condensation categorised as: new insights looking through patient eyes; evoking emotion in student nurses; spiritual care; going to the moves to learn about the patient experience; self discovery through films; using films to link theory to practice. Results Deeper learning through film as a powerful medium was identified in meeting the objectives of the study. Integration of film into pre registration curriculum, pedagogy, teaching and learning is recommended. Conclusion The teaching potential of film stems from the visual process linked to human emotion and experience. Its impact has the power to not only help in learning the values that underpin nursing, but also for respecting the patient experience of disease, disability, death and its reality.

Asymptotic and structural properties of special cases of the Wright function arising in probability theory

This analysis paper presents previously unknown properties of some special cases of the Wright function whose consideration is necessitated by our work on probability theory and the theory of stochastic processes. Specifically, we establish new asymptotic properties of the particular Wright function 1Ψ1(ρ, k; ρ, 0; x) = X∞ n=0 Γ(k + ρn) Γ(ρn) x n n! (|x| < ∞) when the parameter ρ ∈ (−1, 0)∪(0, ∞) and the argument x is real. In the probability theory applications, which are focused on studies of the Poisson-Tweedie mixtures, the parameter k is a non-negative integer. Several representations involving well-known special functions are given for certain particular values of ρ. The asymptotics of 1Ψ1(ρ, k; ρ, 0; x) are obtained under numerous assumptions on the behavior of the arguments k and x when the parameter ρ is both positive and negative. We also provide some integral representations and structural properties involving the ‘reduced’ Wright function 0Ψ1(−−; ρ, 0; x) with ρ ∈ (−1, 0) ∪ (0, ∞), which might be useful for the derivation of new properties of members of the power-variance family of distributions. Some of these imply a reflection principle that connects the functions 0Ψ1(−−;±ρ, 0; ·) and certain Bessel functions. Several asymptotic relationships for both particular cases of this function are also given. A few of these follow under additional constraints from probability theory results which, although previously available, were unknown to analysts.

Modern Portfolio Theory Applied to Electricity Resource Planning

To meet electricity demand, electric utilities develop growth strategies for generation, transmission, and distributions systems. For a long time those strategies have been developed by applying least-cost methodology, in which the cheapest stand-alone resources are simply added, instead of analyzing complete portfolios. As a consequence, least-cost methodology is biased in favor of fossil fuel-based technologies, completely ignoring the benefits of adding non-fossil fuel technologies to generation portfolios, especially renewable energies. For this reason, this thesis introduces modern portfolio theory (MPT) to gain a more profound insight into a generation portfolio’s performance using generation cost and risk metrics. We discuss all necessary assumptions and modifications to this finance technique for its application within power systems planning, and we present a real case of analysis. Finally, the results of this thesis are summarized, pointing out the main benefits and the scope of this new tool in the context of electricity generation planning.

SPINNING NARRATIVES ACROSS POLITICAL DIVIDES: HARNESSING THE CULTURAL POWER OF A STORY WELL-TOLD

This dissertation explores how two American storytellers, considered by many in their to be exemplary in their craft, rely on narrative strategies to communicate to their audiences on divisive political topics in a way that both invokes feelings of pleasure and connection and transcends party identification and ideological divides. Anna Quindlen, through her political columns and op-eds, and Aaron Sorkin, through his television show The West Wing, have won over a politically diverse fan base in spite of the fact that their writing espouses liberal political viewpoints. By telling stories that entertain, first and foremost, Quindlen and Sorkin are able to have a material impact on their audiences on both dry and controversial topics, accomplishing that which 19th Century writer and activist Harriet Farley made her practice: writing in such a way to gain the access necessary to “do good by stealth.” This dissertation will argue that it is their skilled use of storytelling elements, which capitalize on the cultural relationship humans have with storytelling, that enables Quindlen and Sorkin to achieve this. The dissertation asks: How do stories shape the beliefs, perspectives, and cognitive functions of humans? How do stories construct culture and interact with cultural values? What is the media’s role in shaping society? What gives stories their power to unite as a medium? What is the significance of the experience of reading or hearing a well-told story, of how it feels? What are the effects of Quindlen’s and Sorkin’s writing on audience members and the political world at large? What is lost when a simplistic narrative structure is followed? Who is left out and what is overlooked? The literature that informs the answers to these questions will cross over and through several academic disciplines: American Studies, British Cultural Studies, Communication, Folklore, Journalism, Literature, Media Studies, Popular Culture, and Social Psychology. The chapters will also explore scholarship on the subjects of narratology and schema theory.