Not just a number? NEETs,data and datalogical systems

This paper draws on empirical research with NEET populations (16–24-year-olds not in education, employment or training) in the U.K. in order to engage with issues around identification, data and metrics produced through datalogical systems. Our aim is to bridge contemporary discourses around data, digital bureaucracy and datalogical systems with empirical material drawn from a long-term ethnographic project with NEET groups in Leeds, U.K. in order to highlight the way datalogical systems ideologically and politically shape people’s lives. We argue that NEET is a long-standing data category that does work and has resonance within wider datalogical systems. Secondly, that these systems are decision-making and far from benign. They have real impact on people’s lives – not just in a straightforwardly, but in obscure, complex and uneven ways which makes the potential for disruption or intervention increasingly problematic. Finally, these datalogical systems also implicate and are generated by us, even as we seek to critique them.     

瘦脸魔法

小脸儿美女始终是大家的最爱。理由当然也简单，演艺明星，时装模特都是小脸儿美女，难道天生的胖脸就没有机会了吗，当然不是，现在“瘦脸”方法越来越多，临时的，永久的，毫不费劲的，要忍受皮肉之苦的等等方法都非常有效果，即使是天生的baby fat，也能变成可人儿的小脸美女。     

Family Support and the Health of Children

This paper examines the relationship between family support and the health of children. The impact of the decline in the structural support for child rearing is considered first, followed by an examination of the health effects of support provided in home visitation programmes. Finally, the health and welfare effects of the provision of day-care services for children are considered. Because the validity of evidence from properly conducted randomised controlled trials is more readily assured than with other study designs, particular emphasis has been given to the results of experimental evaluations.     

Consideration of Background Exposures in the Management of Hazardous Waste Sites: A New Approach to Risk Assessment

The current approach to health risk assessment of toxic waste sites in the U.S. may lead to considerable expenditure of resources without any meaningful reduction in population exposure. Risk assessment methods used generally ignore background exposures and consider only incremental risk estimates for maximally exposed individuals. Such risk estimates do not address true public health risks to which background exposures also contribute. The purpose of this paper is to recommend a new approach to risk assessment and risk management concerning toxic waste sites. Under this new approach, which we have called public health risk assessment, chemical substances would be classified into a level of concern based on the potential health risks associated with typical national and regional background exposures. Site assessment would then be based on the level of concern for the particular pollutants involved and the potential contribution of site contaminants to typical background human exposures. While various problems can be foreseen with this approach, the key advantage is that resources would be allocated to reduce the most important sources of human exposure, and site remediation decisions could be simplified by focussing on exposure assessment rather than questionable risk extrapolations.