Search results

This paper aims to critically assess approaches to sex and gender in the Human Brain Project (HBP) as a large information and communication technology (ICT) project case study using intersectionality.

The strategy of the HBP is contextualised within the wider context of the representation of women in ICT, and critically reflected upon from an intersectional standpoint.

The policy underpinning the approach deployed by the HBP in response to these issues parallels Horizon 2020 wording and emphasises economic outcomes, productivity and value, which aligns with other “equality” initiatives influenced by neoliberalised versions of feminism.

Limitations include focussing on a single case study, the authors being funded as part of the Ethics and Society Subproject of the HBP, and the limited temporal period under consideration.

The frameworks underpinning the HBP approach to sex and gender issues present risks with regard to the further entrenchment of present disparities in the ICT sector, may fail to acknowledge systemic inequalities and biases and ignore the importance of intersectionality. Shortcomings of the approach employed by the HBP up to March, 2018 included aspects of each of these risks, and replicated problematic understandings of sex, gender and diversity.

This paper is the first to use an intersectional approach to issues of sex and gender in the context of large-scale ICT research. Its value lies in raising awareness, opening a discursive space and presenting opportunities to consider and reflect upon potential, contextualised intersectional solutions to such issues.

WHEN A biography of Dante Gabriel Rossetti was returned to Kendal library by post from Oxford University with a stamp on the date label of 5 Feb 1916 no one considered this to be very startling news. There was a compliment slip inside apologising for the delay (‘It was lurking in one of our darker corners’). I sent them a brief note thanking them, and that I thought was that.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate National Hockey League (NHL) expansion draft decisions to measure divestment aversion and endowment effects, and analyze bias and its affect on presumed rational analytic decision making.

A natural experiment with three variables (age, minutes played and presence of a prior relationship with a team’s management), filtered athletes that were exposed or protected to selection. A machine learning algorithm trained on a group of 17 teams was applied to the remaining 13 teams.

Athletes with pre-existing management relationships were 1.7 times more likely to be protected. Athletes playing fewer relative position minutes were less likely to be protected, as were older athletes. Athlete selection was predominantly determined by time on ice.

This represents a single set of independent decisions using publicly available data absent of context. The results may not be generalizable beyond the NHL or sport.

The research confirms the affect of prior relationships on decision making and provides further evidence of measurable sub-optimal decision making.

Decision making has implications throughout human resources and impacts competitiveness and productivity. This adds to the need for managers to recognize and implement de-biasing in areas such as hiring, performance appraisal and downsizing.

This natural experiment involving high-stakes decision makers confirms bias in a setting that has been dominated by students, low stakes or artificial settings.

The recent debate in the House of Lords showed that the official plans for milk of better quality, set out in the White Paper three years ago, are only slowly being put into effect. A more active policy was, however, promised by Lord Ammon when labour and plant made it possible. Farmers have come to accept the view that a safe milk supply depends both upon the improvement of animal health and on the heat‐treatment of milk. Some recent figures issued in the Monthly Bulletin of the Ministry of Health show what the pasteurisation of milk has already achieved in reducing the number of deaths among young children from abdominal tuberculosis, a form of the disease which is generally due to tubercle bacillus of bovine origin. In 1921, in the administrative county of London, 136 out of every 1,000,000 children died from this disease. In 1944 the corresponding figure was six. In rural areas the rate in 1921 was 252 and in 1944 still sixty, or ten times the London rate. The London figures for 1944 show a reduction to one‐twenty‐third of the 1921 rate, while for rural areas the reduction is only about one‐quarter. These figures suggest a high degree of correspondence between the increase of pasteurisation and the decrease of mortality from abdominal tuberculosis. In 1944 99 per cent. of London milk supplies was pasteurised; and though more milk has been treated in rural areas and in urban areas outside London during the past twenty years, nothing like the London standard has yet been generally reached. Large towns such as London are at one disadvantage in regard to milk safety in that they receive their supplies in bulk, and samples, before pasteurisation, show a high degree of infection. To this extent rural areas might be expected to have better figures. That they do not would appear to be proof of the greater safety provided by pasteurisation. In the House of Lords debate Lord Rothschild estimated the annual casualties from raw milk contaminated by bovine tuberculosis germs as between 7,000 and 8,000. The case for speedier progress with the provision of pasteurisation plant will be generally endorsed. This development under the auspices of the Ministry of Health needs to be supported by a vigorous effort by the Ministry of Agriculture to build up the health of dairy herds. The problems involved in establishing clean areas, beginning with isolated districts and extending them gradually until in ten or fifteen years' time the whole country is clear of tuberculosis and contagious abortion, were recently discussed in these columns. The Milk Marketing Board, the producers' organisation, has now declared its support for a national drive to clean up the dairy herds; and the Government are assured of general support when a comprehensive plan for ensuring safety in milk is put forward.

The present research aims to examine the scholarly literature on high-performance work practices (HPWPs). Relevant comparisons were made between the hospitality industry, service industry and various other contextual environments in general business that might impact the choice and implementation of HPWPs, and a set of work practices was proposed for the hospitality industry.

A comprehensive review was conducted of scholarly literature related to HPWPs that was published in the past 25 years (1991-2015). A total of 89 scholarly articles were considered in this summary. Based on this review, HPWPs in the hospitality industry were compared and contrasted with other industry sectors.

There is little consensus among researchers concerning specific HPWPs that should be used by every company to improve their organizational- or individual-level performance. Thus, a specific set of 13 HPWPs that take into consideration the unique characteristics of the industry, based on a review of empirical research, was identified for the hospitality industry as a starting point for future research in the hospitality industry.

Following a comparison of HPWPs in the hospitality, services literature and manufacturing-based industry context, the authors extend the body of knowledge and propose a set of HPWPs for future research in the hospitality industry. HPWPs can have positive impacts on both organizational- and individual-level performance. Thirteen specific hospitality HPWPs were identified that are most beneficial, and the circumstances under which they might yield optimal results enhance the scholar’s understanding of HPWPs and provide guidance to human resource professionals to make evidence-based decisions. A better understanding of HPWPs can assist human resource professionals in making policy decisions that optimize the use of human capital in their organizations.

Dealing with forming and tinning in a low‐volume high‐reliability environment is a never‐ending challenge. This process is one of the most critical steps in SMT fabrication. The effects of forming and tinning contribute to a majority of the defects found at final inspection. The intention of this paper is to describe in detail the forming and tinning process and all that it entails. The topics include: forming, tinning, converting to an automated process, process control techniques, and statistical process capability.

Large numbers who have received “certificates of attestation” are the better class producers, who, mostly, have always produced clean milk. Many of them are “estate” farms, and some sell no milk at all, but they all enjoy the free services of the nation's servants. I think I am quite right in saying that actually the promoters of the “attestation” scheme (not being the Ministry of Health), are not really concerned with the milk production—as to whether it is clean or not. All the various activities which this memorandum exposes have some good in them, but altogether they make for very little. The experience born of them should be now pooled, and a real compulsory plan proceeded with. An idea which might come to fruition in, say, five years occurs to me, and it is as follows: (1) Frequent inspection of methods and milk sampling at all farms and dairies (both wholesale and retail). (2) Every producer's milk should be tested by animal inoculation for tubercle infection, at least twice per annum. Microscopic examinations of the same samples would disclose certain other infections, such as streptococci. Tests of the same sample for cleanliness (Methylene Blue and Coli) should be applied, with subsequent following inspection of methods to enforce cleanliness. (3) Frequent sampling of milk at various points of transit to consumer for quality. Often milk for delivery to wholesaler or retailer would be sampled on same occasions as visits under item 2. A new regulation should require all receptables containing milk, when placed out of his physical possession, to be sealed, pending collection by the wholesale buyer. The placing of such receptacles exposed to the sun, as is now done in thousands of cases at farm gates, should be prohibited by regulation. It is a common sight to see such receptacles on roads for hours, exposed to the hot sun, awaiting the arrival of the collecting lorry. Often the lids of the churns are raised, with consequent risk of contamination. Some of this milk being the previous afternoon's production, is eighteen to twenty hours old before being collected for transmission to the collecting depot. At such an age, and subjected to such exposure, milk, even of good production, will almost always prove to be of poor keeping quality, indeed it is often on “the turn” on arrival at the depot. (4) The Government should encourage by monetary assistance the renovation of cowsheds and dairies, with emphasis on the provision of a good water supply and means of sterilising utensils. All milk sold to the consumer should be in closed bottles, cartons, or other closed receptacle. (5) Results of tuberculous and other disease‐infected milk discovered by item 2 to be forwarded to the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries, Animal Health Division, co‐operative consideration being given on finding extent of disease in any cow as to whether legal proceedings should be instituted for failing to report animal and/or for selling tuberculous milk. (6) Statutory authority should be given providing for the tuberculin test of all cattle, and the sale of reactors should be prohibited. In connection with this, two or three years notice should be given to all cattle keepers (including non‐producers) that a survey tuberculin test would be carried out (the notice being for the purpose of enabling cattle owners to rear sufficient young T.T. stock to replace reactors found on first survey test, and so avert serious reduction in milk yields). The reacting animals would become the property of the State, appropriate compensation being paid to the owner before immediate removal to a district farm establishment adequately segregated, and managed by, say, the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries—one such establishment could serve several counties. The best of such animals could be marketed for food, thereby reclaiming a substantial part of the monetary outlay paid in compensation. The reactors would be replaced by the young T.T. stock provided by each owner during the two or three years prior to the first survey. A second test should be made, and any eliminating process necessary via the Ministry's reacting establishments repeated. Afterwards it should be made a serious offence to permit the addition to any herd of any animal which has not passed the tuberculin test. Home‐bred stock should be tested as soon after birth as possible (say 14 days). The test relating to the addition to herds should be the responsibility of the owner, and the cost of tuberculin testing by a private veterinary surgeon should be a fixed, reasonable charge. Certificates showing the result should be furnished to the Animal Health Division office. Thereafter an annual tuberculin test of all herds, with accompanying clinical examination by the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries, should be made, when compliance with the regulations respecting animals added since the previous inspection could be checked. If some such scheme as outlined was proceeded with, gone would be the necessity of all the present halfhearted voluntary schemes which are only touching a very small percentage of cattle. As all milk would be clean, tuberculin tested milk, controlled by bacteriological tests, no need would exist for the Milk (Special Designations) Orders: these could be repealed. No more milk need be “pasteurised.” “Approval” of milk for schools, with all its complications, would be redundant, as it would not matter which producer's milk was consumed by the children. The National Milk Testing Scheme would be redundant also.

This public educational conference on our food and drug law has a particular significance. For in the first place it deals with the public law of greatest personal importance to our people ; and that is why it is truly called “ the people's law ” In the second place this law is inadequately known, mainly for three reasons. They are: (a) the general public ordinarily has no direct contact with this law; (b) its official reports do not reach that public, as a rule; and (c) other general publicity about it is insufficient. Furthermore, this conference has the additional value of recalling that our people now enjoy the highest food and drug standards of living ever reached anywhere. That situation has an essential relation to the national welfare ; and it was achieved by the great scientific, technological and economic progress of our food and drug industries. But the food and drug law has played an indispensable role in this achievement.

Under this heading are published regularly abstracts of all Reports and Memoranda of the Aeronautical Research Committee, Reports and Technical Notes of the U.S. National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, and publications of other similar research bodies as issued