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Evidence or Instinct? An International Exploration of the Impact Assessment Practices of Intervention Providers Supporting Leaving Extremism
Get PDFThe number of deradicalisation and disengagement programmes has increased significantly in recent years. Such initiatives have become part of the standard counterterrorism and conflict resolution repertoire. There are various ways to measure a programme participant’s progress or evaluate an intervention’s impact. Nevertheless, knowledge is lacking on which methods used in programmes work and which do not. Additionally, despite encouragement, intervention providers seldom measure participant development or evaluate programme impact. This thesis focuses on the discussed knowledge gap by conducting semi-structured interviews with 12 practitioners to gain an overview of their practices and opinions on impact assessment. This thesis seeks answers to three questions: how do tertiary prevention intervention providers measure the progress or regression of participants; how do tertiary prevention intervention providers measure the impact of programmes; and what is the reasoning for not practising impact assessment. The results show that 50% of the interviewed practitioners measure participant progress with standardised tools or set criteria. To measure participant progress, practitioners employ screening, needs assessment, indicators of change, and standardised tools. Programme development is tracked through monitoring or evaluation conducted by an outside evaluator or funder. Impact assessment is not practised for several reasons, including lack of trust in standardised tools and methods, and tendency to work based on professional intuition. This thesis argues that instead of evaluating interventions' “success”, more attention should be placed on assessing participant progress and creating a standardised progress measuring tool. Moreover, due to tertiary prevention processes being non-linear, relapse should be considered an inevitable part of programmes. As its contribution to research, the findings of this thesis can be put into use to create interdisciplinary standardised progress measuring tools and train current and future intervention providers. Also, design funding principles for tertiary prevention programme interventions and an environment that supports impact measuring
The Terminator’s Vision of AI Warfare Is Now Reality
Get PDFForty years after The Terminator warned us about killer robots, AI-powered drones and autonomous weapons are being deployed in real-world conflicts. From Gaza to Ukraine, the dystopian future of machine warfare isn’t just science fiction anymore
Manuel II Palaeologus' "Prayer to those who are stormtossed or are simply at sea composed from David's Book of Psalms".
Get PDFThe article, written in Greek, is an edition of a hitherto unpublished short prayer composed by Emperor Manuel II Palaeologus (1391-1425), during his sojourn in the West (1400-1403). The prayer is transmitted in two extant manuscripts: Par. gr. 3041, copied by the imperial scribe Theophylaktos Basilikos, and Barb. gr. 219, copied by an anonymous hand that copied also other works for the Emperor. The introduction to the edition is written in the form of a fictitious dialogue between Manuel and Theophylaktos, though based on attested historical evidence
the curious codes of silence
Get PDFThis work combines the Lumatone keyboard (facilitating microtonal tuning) with a microtonally retuned electric piano, acoustic piano and ensemble. The work explores identity and experiments with tuning systems using this experimental instrument. It completes Goves’ three works inspired by The New York Trilogy by American author Paul Auster. This new work, combining real and virtual pianos, mirrors the shifts in identity of the story, in which a writer fully assumes the identity of a missing colleague – including appropriating his work and marrying his wife – then refuses to acquiesce when his colleague resurfaces.<br/
Russia's Mediterranean Moment:Constellations of Sovereignty and the Making of a Region, 1770–1830
Get PDFAt the Qing Empire’s Taiwan Frontier:Identities of the Chinese Maritime Customs Commissioners during the Sino-French War and the First Sino-Japanese War
Get PDFTaiwan, as a frontier territory of the Qing Empire, played a unique role in modern Chinese history. Within the Qing bureaucracy, special measures, including some relating to the appointment of personnel, were applied to Taiwan, principally due to its geographical location. From 1863, the Chinese Maritime Customs Service was established in Taiwan, operating in parallel with the island’s Qing administrators and representing Qing sovereignty through the collection of tariffs on foreign trade and other related affairs such as the building and running of lighthouses. Tensions between these two representatives of empire became fraught at times, notably during the Sino-French War and the First Sino-Japanese War
Warning – Taboo Words Ahead! Avoiding Attentional Capture by Spoken Taboo Distractors
Get PDFWe examine whether the disruption of serial short-term memory (STM) by spoken taboo distractors is due to attentional diversion and unrelated to the underlying disruptive effect of sound on serial STM more generally, which we have argued is due to order cues arising from the automatic pre-categorical processing of acoustic changes in the sound conflicting with serial–order processing within the memory task (interferenceby-process). We test whether the taboo-distractor effect is, unlike effects attributable to interference-by-process, amenable to top-down control. Experiment 1 replicated the taboo-distractor effect and showed that it is not merely a valence effect. However, promoting cognitive control by increasing focal task-load did not attenuate the effect. However, foreknowledge of the distractors did eliminate the taboo-distractor effect while having no effect on disruption by neutral words (Experiment 2). We conclude that the taboo-distractor effect results from a controllable attentional-diversion mechanism distinct from the effect of any acoustically-changing sound
Plastid retrograde signaling:A developmental perspective
Get PDFChloroplast activities influence nuclear gene expression, a phenomenon referred to as retrograde signaling. Biogenic retrograde signals have been revealed by changes in nuclear gene expression when chloroplast development is disrupted. Research on biogenic signaling has focused on repression of Photosynthesis Associated Nuclear Genes (PhANGs) but this is just one component of a syndrome involving altered expression of thousands of genes involved in diverse processes, many of which are up-regulated. We discuss evidence for a framework that accounts for most of this syndrome. Disruption of chloroplast biogenesis prevents production of signals required to progress through discrete steps in the program of photosynthetic differentiation, causing retention of juvenile states. As a result, expression of PhANGs and other genes that act late during photosynthetic differentiation is not initiated, while expression of genes that act early is retained. The extent of juvenility, and thus the transcriptome, reflects the disrupted process: lack of plastid translation blocks development very early whereas disruption of photosynthesis without compromising plastid translation blocks development at a later stage. We discuss implications of these and other recent observations for the nature of the plastid-derived signals that regulate photosynthetic differentiation, and the role of GUN1, an enigmatic protein involved in biogenic signaling
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