The state of sustainable agriculture and agroecology research and impacts: A survey of U.S. scientists

A growing body of research suggests that although sustainable agriculture, particularly agroecology, can address challenges such as those related to climate change, ecosystem services, food insecurity, and farmer livelihoods, the transition to such systems remains limited. To gain insight into the state of U.S. sustainable agriculture and agroecology, we developed a 28-question mixed-method survey that was administered to scientists in these fields. Respondents (N=168) represented diverse locations, institutions, and career stages. They offered varied definitions of sustainable agriculture, with 40% considering economic and social well-being to be core components. Respondents identified the amount and duration of public research funding as important obstacles to conducting research on sus- tainable agriculture (85% and 61%, respectively). Further, most expressed challenges in communi- cating findings beyond academia, including to the media and policymakers, potentially limiting the impacts of such research. However, respondents expressed satisfaction in several areas, including relationships with community members (81%) and local producers (81%), and interest from students (80%) and research communities (73%), suggesting positive momentum in this field. Earlier versus later career scientists rated research on “human dimensions” as more important, expressed greater concerns over career stability, and were less satisfied with opportunities for policy engagement. Results imply that greater public investments, particularly fostering human dimensions, could support a transition to agroecology and its associated benefits

Developing ODP student placements

In a similar way to nursing and other health professions, elements of the education of operating department practitioners (ODPs) can only be contextualised by clinical practice involvement (Stockhausen and Strutt, 2005; Higginson, 2006; Morgan, 2006). The importance of high-quality placement experiences for all UK health professions is widely acknowledged (Quality Assurance Agency, 2001). Prior to 2009, students on the Diploma in Higher Education ODP programme undertook four clinical placements in the same Trust or organisation. At the time of the project there was a shortfall in the number of placements available and, although the university explored placing students in different clinical areas, such as private healthcare providers and new areas in the NHS, none could provide the full learning experience for students to achieve the required competencies. The course team developed a system that uses placements in a variety of settings and ensures students can gain the required outcomes. The new approach involves auditing for individual placements, instead of for the full course duration. Students are now informed throughout recruitment and selection events that they should be undertaking placements in a minimum of three different organisations. Students now move to a different organisation with every experience, to gain a variety of clinical knowledge. This has resulted in the greater use of clinical placements and the development of new areas for students to gain experience. The benefits of students’ experiences have increased, as they can develop skills and understanding of the ODP role from different perspectives

An Enactive Theory of Need Satisfaction

In this paper, based on the predictive processing approach to cognition, an enactive theory of need satisfaction is discussed. The theory can be seen as a first step towards a computational cognitive model of need satisfaction

Personalization framework for adaptive robotic feeding assistance

The final publication is available at link.springer.comThe deployment of robots at home must involve robots with pre-defined skills and the capability of personalizing their behavior by non-expert users. A framework to tackle this personalization is presented and applied to an automatic feeding task. The personalization involves the caregiver providing several examples of feeding using Learning-by- Demostration, and a ProMP formalism to compute an overall trajectory and the variance along the path. Experiments show the validity of the approach in generating different feeding motions to adapt to user’s preferences, automatically extracting the relevant task parameters. The importance of the nature of the demonstrations is also assessed, and two training strategies are compared. © Springer International Publishing AG 2016.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

Supporting Worth Mapping with Sentence Completion

Expectations for design and evaluation approaches are set by the development practices within which they are used. Worth Centred Development (WCD) seeks to both shape and fit such practices. We report a study that combined two WCD approaches. Sentence completion gathered credible quantitative data on user values, which were used to identify relevant values and aversions of two player groups for an online gambling site. These values provided human value elements for a complementary WCD approach of worth mapping. Initial worth maps were extended in three workshops, which focused on outcomes and user experiences that could be better addressed in the current product and associated marketing materials. We describe how worth maps were prepared for, and presented in, workshops, and how product owners and associated business roles evaluated the combination of WCD approaches. Based on our experiences, we offer practical advice on this combinination

Cooperation and defection in ghetto

We consider ghetto as a community of people ruled against their will by an external power. Members of the community feel that their laws are broken. However, attempts to leave ghetto makes their situation worse. We discuss the relation of the ghetto inhabitants to the ruling power in context of their needs, organized according to the Maslow hierarchy. Decisions how to satisfy successive needs are undertaken in cooperation with or defection the ruling power. This issue allows to construct the tree of decisions and to adopt the pruning technique from the game theory. Dynamics of decisions can be described within the formalism of fundamental equations. The result is that the strategy of defection is stabilized by the estimated payoff.Comment: 12 pages, 2 figure

Towards a practical framework for managing the risks of selecting technology to support independent living

Information and communication technology applications can help increase the independence and quality of life of older people, or people with disabilities who live in their own homes. A risk management framework is proposed to assist in selecting applications that match the needs and wishes of particular individuals. Risk comprises two components: the likelihood of the occurrence of harm and the consequences of that harm. In the home, the social and psychological harms are as important as the physical ones. The importance of the harm (e.g., injury) is conditioned by its consequences (e.g., distress, costly medical treatment). We identify six generic types of harm (including dependency, loneliness, fear and debt) and four generic consequences (including distress and loss of confidence in ability to live independently). The resultant client-centred framework offers a systematic basis for selecting and evaluating technology for independent living

Values Following a Major Terrorist Incident: Finnish Adolescent and Student Values Before and After September 11, 2001

The horrific terrorist attacks on the United States on September 11, 2001, left an indelible mark on perceptions of security and threat across the world. This paper uses Schwartz’s (1992) value circumplex model to examine value change across matched high school and university student samples in Finland, questioned before and after the World Trade Center (WTC) and associated attacks. In Study 1 (N5419), security values of adolescents were higher the day following the WTC attacks than before, but fell back toward pre-attack levels in the subsequent two samples. In contrast, levels of stimulation were lower following the terrorist incidents. In Study 2 (N5222), security levels of students were also higher following the WTC attacks, but again were closer to pre-attack levels in a subsequent cohort

Diversity, Dilemmas and Transformation in Post-Compulsory Education: an Introduction to the Special Issue on Work Based Research

As governments recognize the central place of post-compulsory education in regenerating and modernizing the economic and social fabric of society (BIS 2008), it is appropriate for us as educational researchers to question whether this recognition beckons a different role for research in post-compulsory education. Much of this research is work based, using a broad interpretation of this term, and the majority of articles received by this journal (though the proportion published is a lower one) reflect this balance. Work based research in education poses particular challenges for the researcher and the practitioner, whether the focus is practitioner research, in which case the dilemmas can centre on potential role conflict between practitioner and researcher roles, or whether the work based research is observational – analyzing others’ professional practice, in which case the dilemmas can centre on power relations between researcher and researched, the politics of research, and ethical questions around care for participants and the degree of their involvement or non-involvement in the total research enterprise. This article reviews the prospects for work based research in post-compulsory education and introduces the articles in this special issue