Shower Improvements

This is a great video from Matt D’Avella as he interviews Greg McKeown about essentialism. My favourite part comes near the end as he talks about a coal mine vs a diamond mine and our need to recognize which one we live in.

This is something that really bugs me.  united biscuits manufacture a bar under the brand go ahead!™ boasting that its only 74 calories per slice. The brand name, their marketing campaign and everything about this biscuit, is geared towards this being a healthy option.
“The go ahead! brand offers consumers delicious snacks they can feel good about eating”
However in reality the information being provided isn’t very helpful, and doesn’t allow the consumer to make healthy eating choices at all. Firstly there are two slices per pack, so its really 148 calories. Secondly the bars are tiny only 36g each so you don’t get much. Especially when you consider that for 74 calories you can have 231g of strawberries, or 129g of fat free yoghurt, or 19g of sugar. What the bars should advertise is the calorie density, or calories per 100 gram. In which case its a 417 calorie per 100g bar. Admittedly on the back of the packet such information is provided, but united biscuits as well as many other companies use a loophole in the way they can provide nutrition information to the consumer to make it look like a healthy option when actually it isn’t. Especially when you consider that a Mars bar is 467 calories per 100g. But I don’t have a problem with Mars, they brand their products as confectionery sweets and as such everyone knows they are a treat not to be eaten too often. *

So here is my healthy alternative to go ahead!™ if you just take half the sugar and half the yoghurt you have the equivalent of one slice, and if you take all the strawberries, you have the equivalent of the two slices. So pictured right we have two measly go ahead!™ yoghurt breaks strawberry slices and next to them we have one bowl of strawberries, a huge dollop of yoghurt, and more than two teaspoons of sugar. In addition the go ahead!™ bar has all sorts of other crap in it including:

• Strawberry paste 1.5%
• Glycerine
• Dextrose Monohydrate
• Sodium Citrate
• Calcium Citrate
• Soya Lecithin
• Sodium Bicarbonate
• Disodium Diphosphate

I am not really sure what any of those things are but my healthy option contains:

• Fresh strawberries 50%
• Pasteurised Skimmed Cow’s Milk
• Sugar

There is no mention of whether the go ahead!™ bar contains any Vitamin C, but being that my option has fresh strawberries in it its packed full of Vitamin C, as strawberries have the most amount of Vitamin C than any other fruit. The yoghurt means it is also packed full of protein and live active yoghurt cultures (L. Bulgaricus, S. Thermophilus, L. Acidophilus, Bifidus, L. Casei). I know which I would rather eat, so I did. It was delicious. The go ahead!™ bar went in the bin.

*Previously Mars had an questionable advertising campaign slogan “A Mars a day helps you work, rest and play”, but the current slogan is simply “Work rest play your part for England” which I think is a responsible way of promoting sport and exercise using the brand

Author: Jacob Smith -

After my unsuccessful launch attempt in July I wouldn’t be able to attempt another launch for at least another four weeks because I had to apply for permission from the Civil Aviation Authority again. I had a free week in mid-August so sent an application and got to work figuring out how to solve the issue I had had first time around.

What went wrong?

If you remember back to my last blog post, when I was preparing to launch my High Altitude Balloon, the signal I was receiving from my tracker was intermittent, forcing me to abort the launch. I studied this back at home and determined the likely cause was that the antenna on the underneath of the payload had been damaged. The radials must be straight and well soldered together, but having accidentally dropped the box on them once or twice, they may have been damaged. Admittedly, I had taken the easier option when making this antenna the first time, but clearly it wasn’t reliable. So, with the help of my mum who sat night after night painstakingly unbraiding 20cm of insulation from a coax cable, we made what we hoped would be a more robust antenna (basically it was all one piece rather than 3 pieces soldered together). I also re-soldered some of the old connections on the circuit board, which could have also contributed to the issues I had. Next was a trip to the local lake to test the new antenna. And…success! I was really pleased that it produced a clear constant signal that I was able to pick up from the other side of the lake.

The payload antenna seen forming a cross on the underneath of the box, and the main radiating element covered by a straw to keep it straight.

Further improvements from lessons learnt

The eagle-eyed readers amongst you might notice that the polystyrene payload box in the picture above is not the same as you have seen in all my previous blog posts! During the first launch attempt I found it difficult to secure all the components in the box so I decided to start again with a bigger sized box, and this time use Velcro as well as cable ties. The interior of the new payload is shown below.

The payload interior. Starting at the top and going clockwise - Canon camera, tracker with external temperature sensor poking out the box, Arduino battery pack, power bank for video camera, video camera, iPhone as backup tracker, perspex to hold my mascot...

Something extra special 

Launching a balloon to 30km and taking pictures of the Earth is something quite special, but I wanted to do something to make it even more out of the ordinary. It’s not uncommon to send a mascot with the payload to get pictures of said mascot with the Earth in the background, and this is exactly what I tried to do… Everyone at the University of Bath knows how popular our ducks are on campus, so I thought I would honour the ducks and send an astronaut rubber duck up as my mascot!

Meet Tim Beak!

Tim will be sitting on piece of Perspex in front of the Canon camera – hopefully I can get some good pictures of him and he'll bring me good fortune!

Oh the British weather

It turns out the hardest part of the project was actually getting a good day to launch on. Four weeks after the first attempt I had new launch permissions, this time for two launch sites so that I had a choice depending on the wind direction. I was raring to go but in running the flight predictions I was again disappointed…the wind was the wrong direction for one launch site, and from the other site the payload was predicted to land in central London. Launch cancelled again!

Another four weeks later took us to mid-September, right at a time when Storm Ali and the remnants of Hurricane Florence where battering the UK. I had my permissions (this time for three launch locations!) but all week the payload was predicted to land in the North Sea or pass over restricted areas! But, just as I was running out of time before university started again, the winds eased, and I had my chance!

The big day (again!)

Travelling to the launch site I felt excited and completely prepared, but still a bit nervous. It was a family event and I was very grateful for help from my parents, grandparents, and uncle in preparing the payload and balloon for launch. We first turned on the tracker and made sure the signal was strong – it was! Then it was a case of starting the cameras, setting up the iPhone as a backup tracker, securing everything in the box with cable ties, and then taping up the box. Next it was time to fill the balloon, which proved quite difficult when the wind picked up. I won’t say too much about the process because it can all be seen in the video at the bottom of this page. I used a ‘fill tube’ – basically some PVC pipe with lots of sealant and tape – to pass the helium from the hose nozzle into the much larger diameter neck of the balloon. You may also notice a milk bottle with a certain amount of water in attached to the fill tube. I knew the balloon was filled with the correct volume of helium when the balloon could just lift the weight of this bottle off the ground, as this was equivalent to providing the force required to lift the weight of the payload and lift it up in the air at 5m/s.

Filling the balloon - nearly enough helium to provide the required lift

With all systems go we tied off the balloon and secured it to the parachute. Sounds simple but believe me it was much trickier than I had anticipated - in the end requiring three pairs of hands to hold and secure everything! So, after weeks of waiting and months of work, I found myself on a rugby field holding the payload in my hands, with a huge balloon 15m above my head. It was finally happening! A final wish of good luck to Tim Beak, a prayer that everything in the payload was still working…and release!

There was nothing I could do to it now. The balloon would rise and rise, the wind would blow it miles away, and although I had an idea of the area (provided my calculations were right), I had no idea where exactly the payload would land. What I could do though was track it! We quickly packed up and got in the car, and I was so pleased to get a good signal from the payload. I had notified the High Altitude Balloon community of my flight and I was amazed that I had up to nine people at once receiving my telemetry and helping to track the flight, some from as far away as the Netherlands and France showing just how good a radio tracker like I had made is!

We tracked the payload throughout the whole flight and as it came down we were waiting in the countryside near where we expected it to land. 2 hours and 25 minutes after launch we could see on the map that it had stopped moving, nearly 60 miles from the launch site. It had landed, and was only a 4-minute walk away! It was very exciting, and I was so happy that the tracking had been successful. The only remaining question was – what had it landed in? Well, not a lake, not a tall tree, not on a house, but in a field at the end of a public footpath! How lucky! I was thrilled to find that everything was still working, and Tim had survived – even though the Perspex had snapped on impact! Tim reached an altitude of 29.2km and a temperature of -53°, an inspiration to all ducks! I was even happier when I watched back the flight footage and pictures, which I have combined to produce a video about the launch, flight, and recovery. The flight could not have gone much better!

Top: screenshot from video camera. Bottom: picture from Canon camera. Both overlooking the wash near the burst point at 29km above Huntingdon, Cambridgeshire.

Concluding comments

I really enjoyed doing this project and solving the many problems I encountered along the way. I have learnt new skills, particularly in practical electronics which I had little experience with before, and has taught me that things will work out alright in the end as long as you don't give up. I hope you have found these blog posts interesting, and may have been inspired to do something similar yourself! I'd like to thank the Department of Mechanical Engineering for their support, the people of the UK High Altitude Society for their advice and fantastic online guides, and my family for their help throughout the project and on the launch day.

Editor's note: Richard Fairchild is an associate professor at the Finance of School of Management at the University of Bath. The article reflects the author's opinions, and not necessarily those of CGTN.

Nations play out many games on the international stage, such as Brexit, trade wars and many others. However, these all pale into insignificance when we consider the games played between nations over the huge and potentially disastrous environmental threat to our planet's very survival.

Over the past decades, there have been numerous attempts to form environmental agreements, (e.g. Montreal 1987, Basel 1989, Helsinki 1992, the Kyoto protocol 1997, Stockholm 2001, and most recently, the Paris Agreement 2015) between international governments over issues such as limiting pollution, greenhouse gases, carbon emissions, and global warming. But, in the end, nations always fall short of the agreed targets, renege on their promises, or simply quit, and the agreement breaks down.

The Paris Agreement is a recent example of this problem: 196 nations negotiated and agreed on it in December 2015, with the objective of limiting increases in global warming. However, in June 2017, U.S. President Trump announced that his country would be withdrawing from the agreement.

 White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus walks into the West Wing before President Trump's remarks that the U.S. is withdrawing from the Paris climate accord during a Rose Garden event at the White House, Washington, DC, June 1, 2017.

 White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus walks into the West Wing before President Trump's remarks that the U.S. is withdrawing from the Paris climate accord during a Rose Garden event at the White House, Washington, DC, June 1, 2017.

Starting with the work of Scott Barrett (a prominent environmental economist) in the 1990s, game theorists have been developing their models analyzing International Environmental Agreements (IEAs).

These models consider two aspects: participation, which is that how many nations would sign up to an agreement in the first place, and compliance, meaning whether, and to what extent, each individual signatory would comply with the targets agreed - this part of the analysis allows for signatories to subsequently quit, a la Trump quitting the Paris agreement.

All of these game-theoretic models demonstrate a grim equilibrium: a very low number of signatories in the first place, and/or much breaking of the deal so that the agreement becomes meaningless.

In the models, nations go back to business as usual, with the existing high and damaging levels of pollution, global warming and emissions.

In game theoretical terms, an IEAs is a classic Prisoners Dilemma where each player has two possible strategies - cooperate or defect.

All nations and the planet as a whole would be better off if all of the countries of the World could cooperate, and stick to the agreement on, for example, limiting greenhouse gases, but each self-interested, and selfish nation has an individually rational and economic incentive to defect and go back to business as usual individually, and the planet suffers.

This is the classic free-rider problem, with every nation leaving it to all of the others to stick to the agreement and everyone defects.

It is interesting to note that this game-theoretic analysis of the collapse of IEAs is based on a homo economicus view, which is entirely self-interested and self-absorbed, unemotional nations with no empathy.

In recent work, behavioral game-theoretic models have been developing, in which fairness, empathy, trust, warm-glow and emotions may play a role. These models show that, if enough nations can form empathetic relationships, fellow-feelings of fairness and trust, and a spirit of global community and feelings for the planet, beyond individual borders, then IEAs could be coherent, stable and successful.

However, on the other side of the coin, negative emotions such as anger could make things worse. For example, President Trump's anger resulted in the U.S. withdrawing in 2017 from the Paris Accord, which had been signed only two years earlier, with the then President Obama being the U.S. signatory.

People wearing face masks walk on an overground pathway in Bangkok, Thailand, January 31, 2019. /VCG Photo

People wearing face masks walk on an overground pathway in Bangkok, Thailand, January 31, 2019. /VCG Photo

One argument put forward by the 'homo economicus' game-theoretic models is that the problem is there is no Supra-national over-arching authority, interested in total, overall, planetary welfare, to police and monitor the individual nations.

In the real world, we have witnessed international movements, such as Greenpeace, who do care about the planet beyond individual national borders, and who put some pressure on individual nations.

More recently, the Extinction Rebellion group has arisen, exerting pressure on nations and governments to act in an environmentally responsible manner. Another striking development is the emergence of the University of Athens (and former Greek Finance Minister) Professor Yanis Varoufakis's DieM25 (Democracy in Europe Movement 2025) party.

Part of this party's agenda is to push the Governments of the World to take action against planetary environmental destruction, using a combination of encouragements and threats/punishments, such as large corporation tax.

As reported in the Guardian Newspaper, DieM25 is pushing for an International Green New Deal, "a pragmatic plan to raise eight trillion dollars- five percent of global GDP - each year, coordinate its investment in the transition to renewable energy and commit to providing climate protections on the basis of countries' needs, rather than their means.... uniting countries in the project of bottom-up economic transformation - and coercing multinationals to fund their fair share of it."

It is clear that the Planet is in deep trouble from the ongoing and increasing environmental damage. The renowned British BBC Broadcaster and Natural Historian, Sir David Attenborough, is currently and passionately publicizing the environmental issue with the hope of promoting a change in public attitudes.

Behavioral economics provides us some hope. If nations can form deeper, empathetic, fair, trusting and cooperative relationships, then we may be able to develop sustainable and successful International Environmental Agreements!

(If you want to contribute and have specific expertise, please contact us at [email protected])

Join our exciting new collaboration between Dorothy House Hospice and the University of Bath

We are seeking a highly motivated and high performing research fellow for a joint project between Dorothy House Hospice and the University of Bath, focused on generating palliative and supportive care research. As the primary researcher you will be responsible for:

• Conducting high quality research as an independent researcher, including securing funding via research grants and/or fellowship applications;
• Developing regional, national and international research links,
• Contributing to supervision and training of relevant staff
• Promoting evidence based research.

The role will be varied and will include developing the research objectives, projects and proposals for the collaboration. This will include setting standards through scoping projects and managing their delivery in order to fulfil research grant proposals.

We are looking for an individual with significant depth and breadth of specialist knowledge in palliative and supportive care, as well as the social sciences more generally. We are particularly interested to hear from experienced postdoctoral researchers with demonstrable experience in:

• Attracting research funds
• Publishing papers in high quality peer-reviewed journals
• Supervision of researchers
• Collaboration between Universities and external organisations
• Preparation of research proposals and conducting individual research
• You will also be expected to:
• Develop national and international networks
• Compile research reports and effectively disseminate their outcomes
• Inspire other researchers within the team and have effective people management skills

You must be willing to travel regularly and work between the two sites of the University of Bath and Dorothy House Hospice in Winsley, Wilsthire.

This is a full time, fixed term position of up to 24 months

Interviews will be held on the 04th February 2019.

For any informal enquiries about this position please contact Dr Lisa Austin on [email protected]

The appointments will be made subject to an Enhanced Disclosure & Barring Service (DBS) clearance being obtained

Email details to a friend

Further details:

This event is part of the Lunch with Impact Workshops series.

Our Industrial Partnership Managers, Steven Boakes and Izaro Lopez-Garcia, will be leading this session. They will be sharing their experience and expertise in the benefits to collaborating with Industry, opportunities to engage with industry, and how the Research Grants Development Team (Industrial Strategy) can help.

The series is funded by the University’s HEIF and EPSRC Impact Acceleration Account (IAA), to support staff in identifying, generating and evidencing impact from their research.

The sessions are practical in nature, allowing attendees to apply the information, knowledge and tools to their own research.

Dr Kate Summers is a Fellow in Qualitative Methodology in the Department of Methodology at The London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE). David Young is a PhD Candidate in the Institute for Policy Research (IPR) at the University of Bath. 

"At its heart, Universal Credit is very simple", Iain Duncan Smith, Work and Pensions Secretary, 2010.

2019 started with another announcement that Universal Credit (UC) is being reset and rethought. While some of the changes being introduced are welcome, piecemeal policymaking draws our attention away from the bigger picture. We want to return to one of the principles underpinning UC: simplicity. In his short introduction to Universal Credit in 2010, Iain Duncan Smith made it clear that simplifying the “complexity of the existing benefit system” is a central tenet of welfare reform. Complexity will be “cut through” and the system will be “streamlined”.

Currently, however, claims of simplicity can only be sustained if UC is considered at a superficial level: one monthly payment per household, delivered by the Department for Work and Pensions, with a single taper rate, and with the amount calculated and adjusted monthly. But if we consider the system in any detail and from a claimant perspective, claims of simplicity fall away.

Administrative simplicity

Administering a single payment that must account for multiple circumstances and contingencies shifts complexity behind the scenes. UC brings together six different means-tested benefits for people of working age, each with its own rules, entitlements and administration. As a new ‘all-in-one’ benefit, UC must encompass this complexity. Even when just looking at means-tested social security benefits, there are many reasons why people claim: unemployment, sickness, low-pay, childcare responsibilities, housing needs; within these broad contingencies are many other interacting reasons. By having an all-in-one working-age benefit that accounts for many contingencies, administrative complexity is inevitably shifted from front-stage to back-stage.

Claimant simplicity and the importance of short-termism

What about the claimant experience of simplicity within a changing policy environment? We draw on evidence from two empirical studies to examine one element in particular: the single monthly payment under Universal Credit. Monthly payment is based partly on the evidence that three quarters of people in the UK are paid their work income monthly, making the move from benefits to work purportedly easier by aligning social security payments with ‘the world of work’. However, when looking at those earning less than £10,000 a year, around half of workers are paid more often than monthly, raising questions about how successfully Universal Credit fits with the reality of the lives of low-income claimants. There is also evidence of longstanding budgeting processes developed by those on a low income that centre around the regular receipt of different sources of income for whom monthly payments pose significant challenges.

In the first research by Kate Summers, 43 claimants in receipt of the ‘legacy’ outgoing payments were interviewed. People spoke about how they organised their money, and the majority were oriented around short-term (days and weeks) timescales that were bolstered by the ‘pay days’ of the legacy benefits (these overlap and span from weekly, to two weekly, to four weekly). Three main notions underpinned this short-termism: 1) the ability to establish some degree of security by managing and planning in the short-term; 2) conversely that short-termism was essential as a matter of survival when, as one participant put it, “you’re budgeting pennies”; 3) meaning that inevitably money is experienced highly transiently and “just goes”. Only seven of the 43 participants talked about managing their money on slightly longer term timescales (weeks and months). However, these participants tended to be in work, they were paid monthly and had opted to receive their tax credits four-weekly.

The second, ongoing research by David Young involved 15 households claiming UC and legacy benefits over a three-month period. Seven of those households adopted weekly budgeting periods, four adopted two-weekly budgeting periods and four adopted monthly budgeting periods. The most common reason for short-termism was a sense of control in the face of unstable and inadequate income. The most common reason for monthly budgeting was experience of a monthly income and regular monthly bills.

The importance of dividing and earmarking money

It is not just the shift from predominantly shorter-term means-tested benefit payments to a monthly payment, but also the shift from multiple payments to a single payment under UC that matters. There has been growing recognition that people divide up and ‘earmark’ their money for specific purposes, going against assumptions of standard economic theory. Kate’s research found that participants engaged in complex earmarking practices to separate out money, in order to allocate and protect different amounts for different purposes. The ‘pay days’ of different benefit payments acted as crucial organisational markers. Within the timings of these ‘pay days’ participants tended to broadly distinguish and separate money for ‘family’ or ‘living’ costs from ‘bill’ money. They used various tools to enforce this distinction, including separating, stashing, and storing cash, as well as keeping and moving money in between bank accounts.

Within David’s work, pay dates were also crucial to those who constructed informal saving and borrowing arrangements with friends and family according to different pay days. David’s work also highlighted how claimants drew distinctions between the different administrative elements of UC, which included their ‘standard allowance’, housing costs, childcare costs, and disability related costs. Despite being paid in one lump, claimants sought to section out their money. This distinction had practical meaning in the lives of participants claiming Universal Credit such as participant G who said:

"I’m going to keep having to borrow money to pay the rents because Universal Credit are not paying the rent properly." (Participant G)

Despite Housing Benefit being amalgamated into Universal Credit, claimants still distinguished, and prioritised receiving the correct entitlement for housing costs. Arguably, claimants now face further complication as they must check the amount, and top up what is missing or what they are not entitled to.

Conclusion

The evidence shows that social security recipients have developed effective tools and processes to make ends meet while in receipt of meagre means-tested payments: the monthly payment design of UC pushes against many of these strategies. Moreover the earmarking tools and short-term orientations are sometimes seen as deficiencies to be fixed with money management education and training. Instead they should be recognised for what they are: astute responses to managing on a very low income.

Within the current ‘re-think’ period, there remains a powerful consensus that Universal Credit is, or at least can be, simple. While certain administrative simplification still has the potential to improve a system widely seen as too complex, this must be considered alongside claimant experience. Claims of simplicity can often mean that complexity does not go away but is shifted out of sight, backstage. We argue that with Universal Credit, the complexity of managing to make ends meet on a very low-income cound end up being shifted onto those that can least afford it: the claimants themselves.

This post was originally published via LSE British Politics and Policy on 4 February 2019.

On 11 April, we will be holding an event in the Arts Theatre at The Edge to welcome Professor White into the University community as our new Vice-Chancellor.

The event will run from 2-3pm and will be followed by an opportunity to meet Professor White informally over refreshments. This will form one of many opportunities for engagement with the new Vice-Chancellor over the next few months.

We are running a ballot for students and staff at the University to join us for this event. Please register your entry for the ballot through the 'Register' button on this page by Friday 22 March. We will allocate places by random selection during the week commencing 25 March and will notify everyone registered to let you know whether you have secured a place at the event.

For those who are not allocated a ticket, please do join us virtually through the live stream that will commence at 2pm on the day. Details of how to access the live stream will be emailed through to everybody who registers their interest for the event.