Skills that are difficult to automate are expected to increase in demand and reward according to skill-biased technological change advocates, who have identified high rewards for cognitive and social skills. However, such broad skill categories involve numerous essential competencies that can be differentially rewarded or go simply unrewarded. Using US data, this article analyses the demand for and payment of linguistic competency, a cross-cutting kind of skill that is basic for both cognitive and social work in the new economy and is one of the human capacities that is most difficult to automate. While human capital theory predicts an increase in wages as the demand for linguistic skills rises, from cultural/institutional perspectives, it can be theorised that communicative abilities and foreign-language knowledge are socially undervalued because of their association with feminised activities, ethnicity, and low-status service jobs. We analyse the demand and reward for linguistic skills through a two-step analysis of occupational and individual data derived from two sources: the Occupational Information Network and the Current Population Survey. Results show that while ‘hard’ verbal-reasoning skills are associated with high average salaries, as is predicted by neoclassical theory, the potentially undervalued linguistic skills – interactive and multilingual skills – are unrewarded and even penalised. This evidence requires further political attention, given its implications for large number of workers, especially in feminised, low-status service jobs.

The integration of users' perception in the design process is and important challenge for the optimization of products. This study describes how design recommendations can be drawn, from a perceptual experiment with a panel of subjects using a multi-objective interactive genetic algorithm (IGA). The application concerns the bi-objective optimization of the unpleasantness and the detectability of sounds for electric vehicles (EV). After a description of the experimental protocol for the assessment of the detectability and the unpleasantness of EV sounds (listening test), a set of optimal sounds (Pareto efficient) is defined with an IGA experiment. The analysis of these sounds, based on a probabilistic analysis of the selection process, leads to the definition of design recommendations. A second listening test, involving recommended sounds but also other design proposals, allows an evaluation of the validity of the approach. Results show that the sounds recommended obtain interesting performance, in particular to improve the detectability of EV sounds.

Combining the strengths of “traditional” documentary filmmaking (as “creative treatments of actualité”) with the immersive power of interactive digital technologies (from 360° video to VR to data mining to algorithms), i-Docs can transform audiences into participants, co-creators, and collaborators in nonfiction storytelling, allowing them to not only explore and experience a story on their own terms but to remix, share, and contribute their own content to a collective story. i-Docs are cross- and multiplatform, screening across cinema, computers, smartphones, and gallery installations. Showcased at leading film festivals, increasingly adopted by broadcasters—including PBS, Al Jazeera, and BBC—and critically acclaimed from the Webbys and the Pulitzers to Cannes, the i-Doc sector is set to boom. After a close reading of two i-Docs, Hunt for the Inca Ruins (2017) and Saydnaya (2016), I consider the potential of i-Docs to resolve archaeologists’ concerns about misrepresentation, accuracy, information quality, (co)authorship, and crediting original research in documentary storytelling. I also examine the sector's shortcomings of unstable production pathways, funding sources, technologies, and difficulties assessing impact. I propose that archaeologists should engage proactively with the i-Doc sector if we wish to avoid the pitfalls previously encountered in film and factual TV and make the most of this new format.

A collective outreach approach is fundamental for a scientific project. The Green Edge Project studied the impact of climate change on the dynamics of phytoplankton and their role in the Arctic Ocean, including the impact on human populations. We involved scientists and target audiences to ensure that the communications strategy was in agreement with scientists and audience requirements. We developed websites (academic site and blogs and an educational platform). Then, we produced a 52-minute documentary, ‘Arctic Bloom’, and infographics were created to explain experiments on the ice. We also organised a photo exhibition and live videos that enabled primary school-age students to ask questions directly of scientists working on the research icebreaker. Finally, both students and professionals drew their own conception of Arctic science, and our social media sites reached diverse groups of people. The evaluation results showed a large number of education structures (approximately 8000 schools and 104 museums or educational organisations) engaged with our communications outputs and encouraging statistics about website visits (117 021 and 3739 visits on the blog and the YouTube channel, respectively). Selecting different, but intersecting techniques, to promote a better understanding of the science contributed to the success of the communication and outreach outputs of the 3-year project.

The paper discusses the requirements of the engineering designer during the higher, conceptual levels of the design process in terms of search within initial predefined design spaces and subsequent exploration of transformed design spaces. Such transformation is based upon information gathered from initial search using evolutionary techniques that rapidly identify high-performance regions of complex design spaces. It is proposed that off-line processing of such information and associated design team discussion in an iterative designer/evolutionary search procedure can strengthen the knowledge base relating to the problem at hand and initiate significant change in the design environment. Research relating to appropriate evolutionary search and exploratory procedures is described and illustrated with results from simple test functions and real-world design problems. These results support discussion related to the manner in which the techniques may best support innovative and creative design activity in an interactive design team/evolutionary search environment.