Drawing on scholarship around academic freedom and new public management, this article explores the way in which research ethics committees in UK universities (URECs) can come to exhibit behaviour - common in their US equivalents - that prioritises the reputational protection of their host institution over and above academic freedom and the protection of research subjects. Drawing on two case s...

Determinism of devices is a key aspect throughout all of computer science, simply because of considerations of efficiency of the implementation. One possible way (among others) to relax this notion is to consider unambiguous machines: non-deterministic machines that have at most one accepting run on each input. In this paper, we will investigate the nature of unambiguity in automata theory, pre...

•Accessibility by non-experts: researchers in the social sciences should be able to use the system to share and explore data with no involvement from experts in data privacy, computer science, or statistics. •Generality: the system should be applicable and effective on a wide variety of heterogeneous datasets hosted in a repository such as the Harvard Dataverse. •Workflow-compatibility: the sys...

All the trainees within the NHS have probably been introduced to appraisals and assessments at some stage in their training. This culture of developmental appraisals and assessments is unfamiliar to many of these doctors and may be found threatening, embarrassing, and even intimidating. In the light of this uncertainty, the appraisal and assessment procedure is often viewed as a redundant and b...

The legal theory of blackmail is the veritable puzzle surrounded by a mystery wrapped in an enigma. Consider. Blackmail consists of two things, each indisputably legal on their own; yet, when combined in a single act, the result is considered a crime. What are the two things? First, there is either a threat or an offer. In the former case, it is, typically, to publicise on embarrassing secret; ...

We explore methods to automatically detect the quality in individual or batches of pharmaceutical products as they are manufactured. The goal is to detect 100% of the defects, not just statistically sample a small percentage of the products and draw conclusions that may not be 100% accurate. Removing all of the defective products, or halting production in extreme cases, will reduce costs and el...

We address the methodology of design-oriented research in HCI, whereby researchers design and implement technology to test concepts. The task is to produce a testable prototype (that we call NEVO, Non-Embarrassing Version One) that faithfully embodies the concept. We probed leading HCI researchers and CHI authors about the challenge of Finding NEVO. We found uncertainty on how to design prototy...

Web search engines provide specialized results to specific queries, often relying on the output of a QA system. However, targeted answers, while helpful, are embarrassing when wrong. Automated techniques are required to avoid wrong answers and improve system performance. We present the Expected Answer System, a statistical data-driven framework that analyzes the performance of a QA system with ...

For flexible sigmoidoscopy adequate preparation of the left side of the colon is essential. This is often achieved by administration of a phosphate enema by nursing staff in the endoscopy department. Patients may find the procedure embarrassing; it is also time consuming for the nurses. Home administered oral bowel preparation has been reported as safe, cheap, and effective, but no studies have...

Readers of the Indian Mcdical Gazette may remember a paper which I published in 1914 on my experience in the treatment of cholera with iodine. Since then I have used iodine exclusively for cholera and have struck nothing better. On return from military duty to civil employ in January 1921, I was faced by an embarrassing problem, there was a general hue and cry from all quarters that the distric...