Supporting adaptation decision making in response to a changing climate

Special Issue: Adaptation and resilience to a changing climate: Supporting adaptation decision making

From Building Services Engineering Research and Technology

This special issue provides an overview on the development of weather data based on the UK Climate Projections 2009 (UKCP09) to support modelling of buildings and services. UKCP09 offers a range of possible climate outcomes and the probability of those outcomes, based on our best understanding of how the climate system operates and how drivers of change can affect those outcomes. It is this offering that provides both the challenges and the opportunities to practitioners and provides the focus for research presented in this Special Issue.

Experts write on the risks of low-level radiation – A year after the Fukushima disaster

Special issue: Low-level radiation risks

From Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 

Each time a release of radioactivity occurs, questions arise and debates unfold on the health risks at low doses—and still, just over a year after the disaster at the Fukushima Nuclear Power Station, unanswered questions and unsettled debates remain. This special issue examines what is new about the debate over low-dose radiation risk, specifically focusing on areas of agreement and disagreement, including quantitative estimates of cancer risk as radiation dose increases, or what is known as the linear non-threshold theory (LNT). The issue, which includes essays written by the top experts in their fields, does not claim to put the argument to rest—however, it does provide an indispensible update of the existing literature.

Computers are oversold and underused in Middle East classrooms

Promoting the Knowledge Economy in the Arab World

From SAGE Open

This article discusses the need for a deeper institutional reform that will bring Arab classrooms into the 21st century. The research studies educational programs in Bahrain, Jordan, and the United Arab Emirates, information and communication technology (ICT) is not effectively utilized in classrooms in the Middle East. Many technology-related policies overlook the real needs of students. While ICT infrastructure aims to incorporate electronic classes and teaching systems that enhance students’ and teachers’ technological abilities, in reality it has become little more than a way to mechanically optimize the operation of equipment and to perpetuate cultural traditions. The author observes “This is undoubtedly a reflection of the difficulties inherent in implementing an agenda for modernization and reform within countries which have only been free from colonial domination for a few decades”. He called for more rigorous research that goes beyond mere speculation about ICT implementation. “If the findings from this research are able to identify best practices that can be replicated in different settings, then educationalists can begin to be satisfied that computers in the classroom are not just ‘oversold and underused’.”

Perspectives on research impact in nursing

From Journal of Research in Nursing

This podcast records Ann McMahon, Editor of Journal of Research in Nursing talking about the recent special issue Perspectives on research impact in nursing. This exploration of research impact makes explicit the links between research in nursing, policy and practice.

View table of contents for this special issue.

New Labour’s youth justice legacy

The sleep of (criminological) reason: Knowledge—policy rupture and New Labour’s youth justice legacy

From Criminology and Criminal Justice

 

This article looks at how the UK youth justice system has experienced many reforms under the 3 terms of New Labour. There is an understanding that the treatment of children— particularly those in conflict with the law—is an important signifier of a society’s civility, maturity and humanity. It represents a profound symbolic marker of its core values, principles and moral integrity. The argument here is that by effectively negating knowledge/evidence in the construction of policy, successive New Labour Ministers have mutated justice and surrendered their claim to be regarded as honest brokers in the complex debates surrounding children, young people and crime. This raises serious questions pertaining not only to knowledge/evidence–policy relations but also to the democratic process itself, political power and public accountability.