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1. Developer’s Responsibility or Database’s Responsibility? Rethinking Concurrency Control in Databases

   Cheng, Chaoyi; Han, Mingzhe; Xu, Nuo; Blanas, Spyros; Bond, Michael D.; Wang, Yang (January 2023, 13th Annual Conference on Innovative Data Systems Research (CIDR ’23))
2. Developer’s Responsibility or Database’s Responsibility? Rethinking Concurrency Control in Databases

   Cheng, Chaoyi; Han, Mingzhe; Xu, Nuo; Blanas, Spyros; Bond, Michael D.; Wang, Yang (January 2023, 13th Annual Conference on Innovative Data Systems Research (CIDR ’23). January 8-11, 2023, Amsterdam, The Netherlands.)

   Many database applications execute transactions under a weaker isolation level, such as READ COMMITTED. This often leads to concurrency bugs that look like race conditions in multi-threaded programs. While this problem is well known, philosophies of how to address this problem vary a lot, ranging from making a SERIALIZABLE database faster to living with weaker isolation and the consequence of concurrency bugs. This paper studies the consequences, root causes, and how developers fix 93 real-world concurrency bugs in database applications. We observe that, on the one hand, developers still prefer preventing these bugs from happening. On the other hand, database systems are not providing sufficient support for this task, so developers often fix these bugs using ad-hoc solutions, which are often complicated and not fully correct. We further discuss research opportunities to improve concurrency control in database implementations. 

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3. Editorial: Ethics, Values, and Designer Responsibility

   Gray, Colin M; Toombs, Austin L; Light, Ann; Vines, John (June 2018, Proceedings of the Design Research Society)

   As we rely upon increasingly complex sociotechnical systems to support ourselves and, by extension, the structures of society, it becomes yet more important to consider how ethics and values intertwine in design activity. Numerous methods that address issues related to ethics and value- centeredness in design activity exist, but it is unclear what role the design research and practice communities should play in shaping the future of these design approaches. Importantly, how might researchers and practitioners become more aware of the normative assumptions that underlie both their design activity and the design artifacts that result? Previous research has revealed that a designer’s awareness of ethical issues can be raised through value-centered design approaches and methods (c.f., value-sensitive design), but the broader ethical impacts of these approaches and methods are often underexplored. For example, the diversity of potential stakeholders and complexity of use contexts may not be immediately accessible to a designer, leaving their near- and long-term ethical responsibility under-developed. There is always the spectre of unintended consequences, while shifts in culture make designs not only obsolete but unfathomable. 

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4. Responsibility as a Foundation of Safety Culture

   https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.chas.3c00006  

   McMillion, Noah D.; Smith, Allison M.; Miller, Alexander J. (May 2023, ACS Chemical Health & Safety)
5. Ethics and responsibility in biohybrid robotics research

   https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2310458121  

   Mestre, Rafael; Astobiza, Aníbal M; Webster-Wood, Victoria A; Ryan, Matt; Saif, M_Taher A (July 2024, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences)

   The industrial revolution of the 19th century marked the onset of an era of machines and robots that transformed societies. Since the beginning of the 21st century, a new generation of robots envisions similar societal transformation. These robots are biohybrid: part living and part engineered. They may self-assemble and emerge from complex interactions between living cells. While this new era of living robots presents unprecedented opportunities for positive societal impact, it also poses a host of ethical challenges. A systematic, nuanced examination of these ethical issues is of paramount importance to guide the evolution of this nascent field. Multidisciplinary fields face the challenge that inertia around collective action to address ethical boundaries may result in unexpected consequences for researchers and societies alike. In this Perspective, we i) clarify the ethical challenges associated with biohybrid robotics, ii) discuss the need for and elements of a potential governance framework tailored to this technology; and iii) propose tangible steps toward ethical compliance and policy formation in the field of biohybrid robotics. 

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