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People in the business world have different expectations about eye contact, body language, dress code, and dining etiquette, just to name a few. While many companies have shifted to a more casual culture, understanding proper business etiquette can go a long way. In this piece, we’ll explain what business etiquette is and some of the basic rules to familiarize yourself with.
Business etiquette is a type of behavior that team members are expected to follow in order to uphold the company image and respect each other. Business etiquette may change from culture to culture, but when everyone understands and follows a particular set of standards, it can create a sense of unity.
Business etiquette is sometimes unspoken, but more often than not, team members will agree upon the basic rules so everyone presents a united image. When team members follow business etiquette, it builds effective communication in the workplace.Повысьте эффективность коммуникации в команде с помощью Asana
The basics of business etiquette vary from culture to culture, and it can be particularly intimidating to understand business etiquette if you're working for a company with a culture different from the one you grew up in. However, there are some universal constants that can help you stick to the status quo as you learn the particular group dynamics and team norms at your company.
These five important business courtesies can help you make a solid first impression and show respect for your team members.
Whether you’re attending an interview or daily standup meeting, being on time in a work environment shows that you respect everyone’s schedule. If punctuality isn’t something you’ve prioritized in the past, brush up on some time management tips to keep yourself organized and aware of your to-do list.
There are nuances to being on time—some cultures operate on a system of being slightly late to everything. But when in doubt, show up on time and adjust from there if necessary.
Acknowledging others is proper business etiquette for both casual and formal work environments. When someone walks in the room at a business dinner or meeting, greet them and say hello appropriately—whether by shaking hands or following some other cultural custom.
The same rule applies if you work from home and attend daily Zoom meetings. You may not be required to get on camera in every business meeting, but speaking up and taking the time to recognize your team members can let everyone know you’re listening and make others feel noticed.
Dressing appropriately is subjective and will depend on whether you work in an office or from home. Some companies that work in the office every day will expect everyone to dress in business casual attire because much of the work involves face time with stakeholders or clients. Other companies who work in a hybrid environment may encourage team members to dress casually in order to promote comfort and productivity.
If you are unsure about appropriate business attire, ask your manager or supervisor for tips. It’s especially common to feel unsure if you just started a new job, but don’t be afraid to send a quick email before your first day to get a feel of the office policy. Alternatively, think back to your interview and try to remember what everyone was wearing so you can dress accordingly.
Even if you work remotely, you may go into the office on occasion or share virtual spaces with your team members. Office spaces you may share with team members include a kitchen, bathroom, printer and copy room, and lounge area. Virtual spaces you may share include Google Drive folders and project management software.
The way you treat shared spaces will reflect on you as a professional, so it’s important that you label things correctly, stay organized, and respect others who also use these spaces. Business etiquette applies to shared spaces whether you’re cleaning up after yourself physically or following company processes online.
Emotional intelligence is the ability to recognize, regulate, and understand emotions in yourself and in others. Effective emotional intelligence skills can help you empathize with team members and overcome challenges. While emotional intelligence isn’t a direct rule of business etiquette, it will help you in the workplace, no matter what conflicts arise.
For example, imagine you’re behind on work and your boss suddenly adds a large, time-sensitive project to your plate. With emotional intelligence skills, you can speak with your manager to understand the relative priority of the work. Since you're already behind on work, you can express your worry about becoming overworked and work with your manager to come up with a solution of which work you can deprioritize or delegate less important tasks.
With the transition to increasingly virtual teams, the definition and practice of business etiquette has changed. In person, you may need a politely firm handshake and the right attire, but when working remotely, you’ll need to know the basics of email, phone, and video etiquette.
Writing an email or communicating with your team through tools like Slack or Asana seems simple enough, but professional communication online differs from personal communication. Consider the tips below for proper email and online etiquette.
Proofread: Proofreading your emails is a hard rule of thumb that you shouldn’t ignore. While your email or project management platform may have a built-in proofreading tool, you should also look over your email before sending it out, just in case.
Be polite and professional: Even though you're not speaking face to face with your email recipient, your tone of voice will come through in your words. It’s important to be polite and professional in your copy. For example, you can use upbeat phrases like: “I hope you... thanks for... just a friendly reminder... please let me know... looking forward to hearing from you.”
Respond in a timely manner: Whenever another team member or client reaches out to you, they’re doing so for a reason. Proper email and team communication etiquette means responding to people in a timely manner, even if that means setting up an automatic response for when you’re out of the office. While you don’t need to respond within minutes, aim to respond within one or two business days.
Keep it brief: Keeping your email copy brief can get your point across quickly and save time for your reader. When you hide the main objective of your message within a lengthy email, your reader may be less likely to respond in the way you hope for.
Remember that who you’re writing to may make a difference in your email or online content. For example, if you’re communicating with other team members through Asana and Slack, you can write in a more casual tone, whereas client emails should be more formal.
Business communication often occurs through phone calls. When speaking to clients or business partners on the phone, consider the following ways to uphold business etiquette.
Don’t call unannounced: Everyone in the business world has a schedule to follow, whether they’re working around a strict project timeline or trying to prioritize a heavy workload. When you need to talk to someone on the phone, send them an email first to schedule your call. Calling unannounced can be considered bad manners because the call recipient may be unprepared to talk to you.
Use reasonable tone and clarity: Your tone of voice is important on work phone calls. You’ll need to keep a polite tone as you speak to team members or clients and be aware of your volume and clarity as well. If you speak too loudly or mumble on a professional call, your recipient may not receive your message the way you hope them to. Tone and communication can also vary based on culture, so keep cultural intelligence in mind when on the phone.
Deliver messages promptly: Just like with work emails, it’s important to respond to work voicemails promptly. You may receive emails from team members or clients asking to schedule phone calls. Respond to these emails quickly with the best time you’re available to talk on the phone.
Create a professional voicemail: Creating a professional voicemail for when you’re unavailable is proper business etiquette because it lets people know who you are, what you do, and that you’re unavailable. They can then leave you messages explaining why they’re calling.
Video is one of the most popular ways for remote workers to connect. With this method of communication, you get the benefit of speaking with many of your team members in real-time, which means there are some video etiquette basics you should know.
Mute yourself: One of the biggest issues team members face on video calls is background noise coming from those who aren’t speaking. This issue has a simple fix: mute yourself when you aren’t the speaker. Muting yourself will ensure your microphone is silent so others can have the full attention of the virtual room.
Engage with your body: When on a video call, others can see how you non-verbally interact with the speaker. If you’re looking down or you’re too relaxed in your seat, you may send the message that you’re uninterested in the conversation. Sitting up straight, looking alert, and using nonverbal communication to show you’re engaged lets the speaker know you’re paying attention.
Don’t interrupt: Interrupting someone on a video call can be especially disruptive. Technology can’t always keep up with multiple people trying to speak on a video call, so interruptions can lead to glitches and confusion for everyone involved.
Dress appropriately: Video calls may only show your clothes from the waist up, but it’s still important to dress appropriately together. Your attire for video calls should follow your company’s dress code. Also consider your personal hygiene when on camera.
Working from home makes it less common that you’ll interact with team members and clients in person, but don’t forget that virtual interactions still leave lasting impressions. When in doubt, approach these interactions with the same business ettiquette and care as you would for an in-person conversation.
The goal of business etiquette is to present a united company image, foster mutual respect for team members, and improve communication in the workplace. When teams communicate effectively, they do better work. | https://asana.com/ru/resources/business-etiquette |
Culturally agile leaders are self-aware. To be culturally agile, you need to understand your own prejudices. There’s nothing wrong with this – everybody has biases and cultural preconceptions – but it’s important to acknowledge them. Be honest with yourself. Think about cultural stereotyping and what has caused your particular views – and make an effort to undo them. Try to see other cultures first through a prism of what you have in common rather than what’s different.
Learn how to adjust your own behavior to certain situations to maintain harmony. This doesn’t mean mimicking someone else, or suddenly speaking very slowly, which can sound patronizing. But as an example, if you are dealing with someone from a culture that is more expressive and animated than your own, don’t suddenly start shouting and waving your arms around just because the other person is. Be yourself. Listen and try to understand the context of what they are saying.
This leads onto being authentic. Let your own culture shine through but tone it down if necessary to acknowledge the sensibilities of the other person. For example, if you are American, and typically direct and businesslike but doing business in an Arab country, be yourself but understand their way of doing business and adapt to it. Build relationships before negotiating, acknowledge the hierarchy and listen and understand their concerns. You should be comfortable with being ‘different’ but know the importance of respecting another culture.
Be flexible. You and your team may be negotiating with Chinese suppliers one day and selling to German buyers the next. Developing cultural awareness means you will all be able to react quickly to different situations. In some situations, you will need to adapt to the norms of others. On occasion you will need to seek a middle ground and then sometimes you will be able to work from a basis of trying to minimize your cultural differences with the other person.
If you are going to be working extensively with people from oversees you will experiences cultural differences. Learn about cultural sensitivities for example, a call center in India, immerse yourself and your own team in that culture for a while. What makes these people tick? What motivates them? What are their expectations? What is their approach to problem solving? You can really only manage a team remotely if you’ve made the effort to understand these issues. Everybody on your own team needs to buy into this.
When training your team in cultural agility, be aware that it may come more easily to individuals who are self-aware, extrovert, have a degree of humility and an ability to laugh at themselves and situations. Everybody will respond differently to whatever training you put in place and it’s important to listen to them.
Ask for feedback. There’s absolutely no harm in making a friend from a different culture, or asking a colleague for a bit of their time and sitting down to talk about how you can become more culturally sensitive. Most people are happy to help and act as an informal mentor. They will be flattered that you have taken the time to learn. If you are working across multiple cultures, try to have these conversations with colleagues wherever you visit.
Step outside your cultural comfort zone and encourage your team to do the same. If you’re on the road, socialize with colleagues or dine out locally rather than staying in your hotel. Build relationships, ask locals about their lives and observe what’s going on around you. Think about how you react to stressful situations in this destination and how others react to you.
Bear in mind your own corporate culture and that of your overseas counterparts when developing your cultural intelligence, and that of your team. When is it acceptable to step outside the corporate culture to solve cross-cultural issues? To what extent have individuals put their corporate culture ahead of their own, for example, if they work for a big multinational in a developing country?
If you’re only ever dealing with different cultures remotely, pick up the phone. Talk to colleagues rather than only emailing. Learn about the way they think and react to situations. Find out if they have skills you didn’t know about.
Never assume your job of becoming culturally agile is complete. You may see yourself as having a lot in common with your MBA-educated, snappy dressing, ‘westernized’ colleague in Hong Kong, which is a good start, but there will always be cultural differences. The context of their life, background and attitudes will always be different and it’s only by opening yourself to constant learning that you will discover this. | https://countrynavigator.com/blog/expert-view/cultural-agility/ |
A Home for Culture Vultures
What is Intercultural Communication and Why is it Important?
Intercultural Communication is a mammoth topic.
It has so many facets, angles and sub-topics that doing it any real justice requires lengthy and considered research.
So, rather than try to give some sort of all-encompassing guide to Intercultural Communication, with all its ins and outs, we’re going to keep it simple.
We’re going to focus on 10 answers to 10 commonly asked questions about Intercultural Communication that will offer some great initial insights and answer the question posed, “What is Intercultural Communication and why is it important?”
You’ll find plenty of links to further reading along the way if you want to take your learning to the next level.
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- What is the Definition of Intercultural Communication?
- What is Intercultural Communication in Simple Terms?
- What are Some Examples of Intercultural Communication?
- What is the Purpose of Intercultural Communication?
- What Makes Intercultural Communication Important?
- What are Intercultural Communication Skills?
- What is the Role of Intercultural Communication in Work Life?
- What is Intercultural Business Communication?
- What Can I Do to Improve My Intercultural Communication Skills?
- What are Some Essential Books About Intercultural Communication?
1. What is the Definition of Intercultural Communication?
“‘Intercultural Communication’ is one of those terms that everybody uses, and in many different and not necessarily compatible ways.” (Intercultural Communication: A Critical Introduction. Ingrid Piller. 2017)
“Loosely, an umbrella term for interaction between people from different cultural or subcultural backgrounds intended to lead to shared understandings of messages.” (Oxford Reference)
“Intercultural communication is a discipline that studies communication across different cultures and social groups, or how culture affects communication.” (Wikipedia)
“Intercultural communication is the study and practice of communication across cultural contexts.” (Milton J. Bennett, Ph.D. Intercultural Development Research Institute)
There is no formal definition of ‘Intercultural Communication’.
As you can see from the quotes above, there is a fuzzy agreement as to what it does and what it looks like, but there are also differences in definitions, meanings and assumptions.
As training practitioners within the Intercultural field, we define Intercultural Communication as the study, research, awareness, training, skills, and practicalities of communicating across cultures – whether those cultures be foreign cultures, i.e. American culture vs. Indian culture, or some other sort of culture, such as organizational culture, i.e. Military Culture vs. Private Sector Culture.
Cultural differences exist between many types of cultures, including generational. We can see this expressed in lots of ways including differences in the way they dress, walk and, of course, communicate. Photo by Benjamin Ranger
2. What is Intercultural Communication in Simple Terms?
Simply put, Intercultural Communication is about understanding what happens when people communicate with one another when they come from different cultures.
It’s about an awareness of many different factors such as how messages are delivered (e.g. listening and speaking), differences in areas such body language (e.g. eye contact, touch, gestures, etc.) and non-verbal communication (e.g. silence, proxemics, social cues, etc.).
Intercultural Communication, as well as being its own discipline, overlaps with many others including sociology, psychology, anthropology, biology, political science, economics, and public policy.
An easy way to think about Intercultural Communication is that it tries to teach us about ourselves, as individuals and as a species, by using the concept of ‘culture’ to analyze how we create meaning and express that with other cultures.
“Intercultural communication is a symbolic, interpretive, transactional, contextual process, in which people from different cultures create shared meanings.” (Lustig & Koester, Intercultural competence 2007)
At its most basic, as the above quote illustrates, Intercultural Communication is as simple as a conversation or an interaction between two or more people from different cultures.
Intercultural Communication also covers the ways in which we, as cultures, meet and greet people. Learning how other cultures do it, teaches us about our similarities and differences. Photo by Bob Brewer
3. What are Some Examples of Intercultural Communication?
Let’s look at some examples of Intercultural Communication to help consolidate our understanding of the definition and meanings associated with it.
We mentioned above the example of communication differences between national cultures. Well, let’s explore that further.
American and Indian cultures share certain cultural traits when it comes to communication. For example, they both tend to value politeness and friendliness. However, they also have differences. For example:
- Americans tend to communicate explicitly whereas Indians to be implicit.
- Americans are comfortable with dealing with conflict openly whereas in Indian culture it requires subtlety.
- In the USA, “yes” may have very limited interpretations whereas in India, “yes” can mean many things.
- Strong eye contact is a positive behavior in the USA whereas in India it can be disrespectful or aggressive.
- Personal space is expected in the USA whereas in India keeping your distance from someone could be interpreted as rude or cold.
The key learning point here is that different national cultures communicate in slightly different ways.
This is also true within countries themselves – you often find subtle regional differences within a country or culture in terms of communication styles.
For example, in the UK, the people of the North are widely recognized as being much more open and friendly than their guarded countrymen in the South and London. In the USA, you will also see differences between the East and West coasts as well as the South.
The other example we mentioned above was between Military Culture and Private Sector Culture. Again, as with national cultures, we can also see different communication styles between organizations within a country.
Military organizations are highly hierarchical, conservative and formal. This is reflected in the communication style where seniors are spoken to according to protocols, where messages are transactional and the language, tone and vocabulary are highly regimented.
This starkly contradicts the communication style of the Private sector where organizations are more egalitarian, open to change and informal. As a result, the communication style is much more informal, messages are personalized and people are allowed to express themselves.
Such differences, created by different cultures, can even be found within an organization itself. For example, salespeople generally tend to have a very different communication style to their colleagues working in accounts or at leadership levels. The reason behind the difference is cultural and also due to values.
Organizations, like countries, develop their own cultures due to many factors such as the environment, threat, philosophy, leadership and history. Culture is a complex patchwork of influences. Photo by Bao Menglong
4. What is the Purpose of Intercultural Communication?
Well, there isn’t one single purpose. Intercultural Communication is something that is researched, read about and taught for many reasons.
For starters, understanding how culture impacts communication helps us understand more about the areas of culture and communication. On top of that, it helps us understand more about ourselves as people and as a species.
On a personal level, Intercultural Communication can help us understand our own preferences, strengths and weaknesses when it comes to communicating and how these can help or hinder us when communicating across cultures.
On a wider level, Intercultural Communication can help us understand all manner of things about ourselves as human beings from how we create meaning to the mechanics of the brain (neuroscience) to the use of language(s) for social cohesion.
As practitioners of Intercultural Communication Training, ‘the purpose’ for us is to help professionals understand how culture impacts their effectiveness when working abroad or in a multicultural workplace.
For example, when we train an executive moving to the UAE, we will help them appreciate their own way of communicating, what they like and don’t like as well as possible biases they may hold. On top of this, they would also learn about the communication style in the UAE and potential areas of culture clash.
So, in this context, the purpose of Intercultural Communication is to try and prevent miscommunication and a mismatch of communication styles. Through raising awareness of this through training, it helps promote more successful communication.
Another example would be of a multicultural team we provide training for. In such a training course we would help the different team members understand the various communication styles within the team. Through creating an awareness of the difference, and the reasoning behind it, we help colleagues overcome issues and put into place different ways of doing things.
So, in this context, Intercultural Communication is about understanding how to effectively navigate various communication styles found in the various cultures you work with.
With more and more of us working remotely with people around the world, learning about Intercultural Communication has become necessary for both personal and organizational success. Photo by Katsiaryna Endruszkiewicz
5. What Makes Intercultural Communication Important?
A few reasons why Intercultural Communication is important have already been covered; namely, it helps people understand each other and avoid confusion.
Let’s give this a bit more context by looking at why Intercultural Communication is so important for many people in the workplace.
a. Intercultural Communication and Teamwork
Many of today’s companies and organizations are multicultural. Employees come from around the world. This is not only the case with global and international brands but also domestic companies and organizations (including the Third Sector) which have culturally diverse employees. Learning to communicate and work with people from different cultures is essential if these organizations want to be successful. So, in this regard, Intercultural Communication is important because it helps teamwork.
b. Intercultural Communication and the Military
Believe it or not, many militaries spend a lot of money on teaching their troops Intercultural Communication. Why? Because when they spend time in foreign countries, they must learn to adapt their communication style in order to ingratiate themselves with the locals, or at least, in order to gain intelligence. In the USA, for example, the Army, Navy and Marine Corps (plus others) all offer training in Intercultural Communication or similar. In this context, Intercultural Communication is important as it could be the difference between life or death.
c. Intercultural Communication and Healthcare
Another field in which Intercultural Communication can mean life or death is in healthcare. Doctors, nurses and medical professionals are now given training in Cultural Competence in order to improve healthcare for all patients. An ignorance of someone’s culture and how they communicate can lead to poor care, misdiagnosis and potential damage to health. For example, if a doctor doesn’t understand that in some cultures the elderly won’t divulge intimate details in front of family members, that Doctor is not going to get the information they need when a son or daughter brings in an elderly parent. They need to understand this and ask the child to leave so a private conversation can be had. So, in this example, Intercultural Communication is important as it ensures good care.
d. Intercultural Communication and Teaching
For teaching professionals working in multicultural schools, learning about Intercultural Communication is essential as it otherwise can lead to discrimination, bias and alienation of children from different backgrounds. Some cultures teach their kids to be quiet and respect authority, others to be expressive and challenge ideas. Some cultures wait to be asked to speak, others speak when they have something to say. The point is, as a teacher if you don’t understand the different ways your students communicate, you can make some bad judgement calls. In the context of school and education, Intercultural Communication is important because it prevents bad teaching.
e. Intercultural Communication and Marketing/Advertising
A final example of the importance of Intercultural Communication is the marketing and advertising industry. A failure to understand differences in communication around the world can lead to all sorts of marketing fails and PR disasters. A lack of awareness over cultural issues can even lead to claims of cultural appropriation and similar. Today the industry is much more culture-savvy, understanding that to run a successful ad or marketing campaign, it has to be in tune with the target audience and their values. So, in this regard, Intercultural Communication is important because it helps brands reach their audiences.
So, as you can see, Intercultural Communication is important for lots of reasons; probably too many to count.
Pretty much every facet of modern-day life needs some awareness of Intercultural Communication, whether that’s for tourists travelling abroad on vacation, businesspeople negotiating a merger or a lecturer with students from around the world.
Self-reflection is critical for those who want to improve their Intercultural Communication skills. Photo by Laurenz Kleinheider
6. What are Intercultural Communication Skills?
Intercultural Communication requires multiple skills, some of which can be learned, others that all of us possess and just need working on.
Let’s examine a few of the most important Intercultural Communication Skills that focus more on personal competencies rather than communication skills such as listening, speaking, body language, etc.
a. Self-Awareness
The key to understanding how other cultures communicate is to understand how you, yourself communicate and how your culture has shaped you. Once you are more aware of your own preferences, habits and possible biases and stereotypes, then it’s much easier to understand how you may influence or impact a conversation or communication. Intercultural Communication is not only about being aware of ‘the other’ but also yourself.
b. Empathy
Appreciating that you have been shaped by your culture and other influences, helps create understanding, compassion, mindfulness and empathy. Empathy is critical to Intercultural Communication as it helps you put yourself in someone else’s shoes and understand what they may be going through. Intercultural Communication relies on empathy as it creates a two-way street as opposed to being dominated by one or the other party.
c. Respect
With understanding and empathy, respect should be the natural logical progression. Respect means that you may not agree or like everything about someone else or their culture, but that you acknowledge their right to express themselves, their culture or values. Also, without showing respect it is also hard to receive it. Intercultural Communication can only ever be effective if respect is the foundation.
d. Emotional Intelligence
Working across cultures means learning to tune yourself into much of the unseen, intangible and subtle aspects of communication. It’s about using all your senses and engaging your self-awareness and empathy to understand what’s being communicated, or not. The Japanese have a great term for this, ‘Reading the air’ (kuuki o yomu in Japanese) which brilliantly captures the mindset needed. Intercultural Communication requires intuition and the ability to move beyond words.
e. Adaptability
In some ways, the essence of Intercultural Communication is to help people adjust their communication styles to promote clarity, harmony and collaboration in exchange for confusion, weak relationships and competition. Therefore, we need to be adaptable – adaptable not only in how we talk and listen and use body language but adaptable in how we think, react and engage with people. Intercultural Communication gives us the insights and tools we need to be flexible and adapt our ways.
f. Patience
“Acquaintance without patience is like a candle with no light,” is a Persian proverb that perfectly captures why this is such an important skill when it comes to communicating across cultures. Things work slightly differently around the world; this means things might take more time than you’re used to, or less! Whichever end of the stick you’re dealing with, patience is necessary for effective Intercultural Communication as it moderates expectations and emotions.
g. Positivity
When engaging with people from different cultures, it’s always important to keep things positive. 99% of the time when miscommunication happens it’s not because anyone purposefully tried to confuse someone else. Most people are just trying to do what’s right. Sometimes, if we lack cultural awareness, we misread what’s being communicated. That’s why we need to always frame any sort of intercultural interaction positively. To be fruitful, Intercultural Communication must come with positive intentions.
There are of course many other skills that are an important part of Intercultural Communication but hopefully, this has given you some solid points to consider.
So, to quickly recap, 7 important Intercultural Communication skills are:
- Self-Awareness
- Respect
- Empathy
- Emotional Intelligence
- Adaptability
- Patience
- Positivity
Many workplaces today are culturally diverse, making Intercultural Communication skills essential. Photo by Arlington Research
7. What is the Role of Intercultural Communication in Work Life?
The answer to this question really depends on what ‘work’ you’re thinking about. We like to speak from experience, so let’s look at some examples of Intercultural Training we have provided for clients.
These will give you an idea of some of the common challenges professionals in various contexts have to deal with in the workplace and how learning about Intercultural Communication helps them.
a. Intercultural Communication and Meetings
We did some training for a global fashion brand and its team of international managers. Various members of the team were frustrated with the way online virtual meetings were being run. For example: “The Americans give you zero time to think and move onto the next point.” vs. “The Chinese never give their opinions which is really frustrating.”
This came down to cultural differences around expectations of meetings. The Americans wanted frank, open discussions whereas the Chinese preferred non-confrontational meetings that focused on face. Due to a lack of awareness, the team meetings were not working. By raising awareness through training, the team learned to find a balance that worked for all.
So, the role of Intercultural Communication here was to help people understand their differences and find common ground.
b. Intercultural Communication and Management
Another example that shows how communication styles differ across cultures and why it’s necessary to be adaptable, is some Intercultural Training we did for a German organization. With staff all over the globe, German managers were consistently receiving positive feedback from some countries and terrible feedback from others. In many parts of the world, they were seen as ‘distant’ and ‘impersonal’.
What the managers needed to learn to do was become a bit more relationship-focused in their communication as opposed to focusing on tasks and agendas. In some parts of the world, ‘getting down to business' is not dealt with positively and people expect a bit more ‘warmth’. The managers just needed to be shown what was happening and they learned to adapt their communication style accordingly.
So, the role of Intercultural Communication here was to help managers communicate more effectively with their staff and get more positive feedback.
c. Intercultural Communication and Working Abroad
A final example would be one of the many training courses we provide for professionals relocating to a foreign country for work. Moving to another county means learning a new culture and if you fail to appreciate cultural differences, it can result in some bad decisions. For example, one manager from Europe working in Saudi Arabia nearly got the sack for berating his staff!
Professionals who fail to invest some time and energy in understanding the new host culture can take longer to settle in, make more initial mistakes and generally don’t’ make a great first impression. The statistics show that this is also one of the key reasons why relocations fail, i.e. why people return ‘home’ quicker.
So, the role of Intercultural Communication here is to give people the tools they need to navigate a new culture and to help them settle into a country or job.
By way of summarizing, the role of Intercultural Communication in work life is in helping people understand how culture shapes the different ways we communicate, collaborate and coordinate.
We can use this understanding to help us recognize what is being communicated to us and how we communicate with others.
Doing business successfully across the globe requires the ability to communicate and convince effectively. Photo by Cytonn Photography
8. What is Intercultural Business Communication?
‘Intercultural Business Communication’ refers specifically to interpersonal and structural communication within a professional business context.
The examples above from our Intercultural Training courses were all focused on Intercultural Business Communication as opposed to communication taking place within social services, the military, diplomatic services or healthcare.
Different industries and sectors have very different needs. Yes, there may be some overlap between the needs of a surgeon, a taxi driver, a police officer and a politician, however, when it comes to the specifics, you need focus.
Therefore, Intercultural Business Communication is treated separately as the needs of people within business are specific to the way trade, commerce and enterprise are conducted around the world.
Business as a whole understands that they have their own challenges when it comes to the 'culture question'. This is being reflected in the number of University Degrees now entitled “Intercultural Business Communication” which have been developed to fill the need of global businesses looking to hire people with the skills they need.
Courses focus on key business areas to prepare learners for international careers including topics such as:
- Human Resource Management
- Developing Intercultural Competence
- Global Marketing
- Business Communication
- International Business Event Management
- Organizational Change and Management
- Understanding Language in the Global Workplace
‘Intercultural Business Communication’ covers everything from the big (such as how to launch retail products in a foreign market) to the small (such as how to avoid using humor inappropriately) and everything in between.
If you're looking for a good book on Intercultural Communication for your next vacation, we've got plenty to recommend! Photo by Dan Dumitriu
9. What are Some Essential Books About Intercultural Business Communication?
If you’re looking for good books on Intercultural Business Communication, you’re spoilt for choice! There are many tens of books published on the subject looking at it from lots of different angles.
If there’s something you’re specifically interested in, then we recommend you do a search to see what books come up. You can also do a search for academic publications, for example with JSTOR.
If you want a decent overview of some of the important books on Intercultural Communication, then we recommend this list by Good Reads which is very comprehensive.
If you want our opinion on some essential books about Intercultural Business Communication, then here’s our top 5 (in no particular order or rank).
- Basic Concepts of Intercultural Communication: Paradigms, Principles, & Practices. Bennett, Milton Boston, Intercultural Press 2013
- The Silent Language. Hall, Edward T. Garden City: Doubleday 1959
- Understanding Intercultural Communication. Ting-Toomey, Stella & Chung, Leeva., Oxford University Press 2011
- Intercultural Business Communication. Robert Gibson, Oxford University Press 2000
- Use Your Difference to Make a Difference: How to Connect and Communicate in a Cross-Cultural World. Tayo Rockson, Wiley 2019
Improving your Intercultural Communication skills means you need to be culturally curious. Photo by Yingchou Han
10. What Can I Do to Improve My Intercultural Communication Skills?
If you want to improve your Intercultural Communication skills, then there are several things you can do to get started.
Obviously travelling abroad, learning a language and mixing with people from different cultures are all excellent ways of improving your Intercultural Communication skills, however, these aren’t very easy for most people. Plus, it takes a lot of time.
So, we’re going to focus on giving you some more simple and tangible things you can do instead.
a. Learn about Culture
Learning about other cultures, their values and their communication preferences will offer a lot of insight into differences around the world. There are plenty of websites that offer cultural overviews which you can find online, including our award-winning culture guides. As well as learning about other cultures, it’s also a good idea to learn about some of the basics of Intercultural Communication. A good place to start is this self-study guide to intercultural communication.
b. Watch TV Shows
Most of us like to watch TV shows, so why not watch TV and learn about different cultures at the same time? Rather than listen to a poorly dubbed foreign movie in English, listen to it in its native language so you can hear how people from that country communicate. Streaming services today such as Netflix have TV series from around the world, so if you want to learn about Indian culture, Turkish culture or Chinese culture, it’s all there!
c. Ask People
If you work with people from different countries or have neighbours from abroad, you have excellent untapped resources. Speaking to people about their cultures and about any ‘culture shock’ they may have experienced living in your country, can give you all sorts of rich information and insights. As long as it’s done with respect, most people around the world love to share their opinions and thoughts.
d. Listen & Observe
When it comes to actual communication, there are all sorts of tips to help you improve your Intercultural Skills. For example, learning to ask open and closed questions where needed or avoiding humor. Here’s a list of 10 simple tips if you want to read more. Perhaps the two most important tips when it comes to communication are to listen more than you normally would and also actively observe what others are doing.
e. Take a Course
Finally, if you want to start peeling away your own cultural make-up, address your own cultural biases and preferences, plus start to learn more about Intercultural Communication, then why not take a course? There are plenty of courses available online which looks at various aspects, however, to get you started you can watch the free video from our eLearning course on Cultural Awareness. It’s a fantastic introduction to the topic of cultural differences, communicating across cultures and working with cultural diversity.
You can watch it below or if you visit the course page you can also access some free course resources and find out more about the contents.
THANKS FOR READING OUR INTRO TO INTERCULTURAL COMMUNICATION!
WE HOPE YOU FOUND IT USEFUL.
IF YOU WANT TO LEARN MORE ABOUT OTHER CULTURES, THEN CLICK HERE TO CHECK OUT ALL OUR FREE RESOURCES! | https://www.commisceo-global.com/blog/what-is-intercultural-communication-and-why-is-it-important |
This is an exciting opportunity to join us as Head of School and to work collaboratively and co-operatively with the school’s Senior Leadership Team to lead the development of a world-class school. Together, you will ensure our school offers the very best international experience for our students whilst expertly delivering the Chinese and American curriculums to an outstanding level of performance.
You willbe a fluent English speaker, expert in the American/AP curricula, as well as having experience of bilingual teaching, ideally from a school(s) in Asia. We are looking for a proven track-record in school leadership and a strong understanding of and respect for different cultures so that you can confidently work with school leaders, teachers, students and parents from China with diverse cultural backgrounds.
Creativity, motivation, communication skills and adaptability are essential to make a significant impact in this important role.
The successful candidate will lead the school operationally and educationally:
Relentlessly pursue outstanding academic performance for all students;
Strengthen and develop the school’s mission, vision and strategic plan while ensuring the teaching and learning in the school is of the highest quality;
Support the marketing and admissions process of the school with passion and an adherence to quality, thus ensuring the school grows and in high demand;
Develop and lead a culture of professional learning within the teaching body and develop the use of forward-looking technology in teaching and learning;
Promote our values through the opportunities we offer, the impact we make, the leadership we demonstrate and the respect we think everyone deserves;
Ensure the school is a well-organised, efficient and effective hive of purposeful learning from the start to the end of each school day;
Build and monitor the necessary teams and systems to run the school effectively and with excellence.
What we are looking for
The appointed candidate will:
Possess a creative and pragmatic mind with the ability to lead innovations in teaching and learning and the broader activity of the school;
Lead with a strategic and decisive style, suitable for a highly successful school within a competitive environment;
Demonstrate understanding of how to deliver a world-class American curriculum style education in an international setting;
Demonstrate understanding of how to blend the best of premium international curricula with a local Chinese curriculum using contemporary international thinking to create a distinctive positioning for the school;
Be an ambassador and help to build the brand and reputation of the school;
Demonstrate a flair for developing managerial and educational talent;
Respect, appreciate and understand a variety of cultures and societies, building strong relationships with all members of the school community;
Be committed to achieving the best possible outcomes for every student in our care and engage with children, staff and parents to ensure that we identify, understand and meet their educational aims and needs.
In return for your passion to deliver the highest quality education you will enjoy a more than competitive salary, accommodation provided by us, an annual flight allowance, health insurance and places in the school for your children. | https://gulfjobseek.com/job/head-of-school/ |
Rhian Radia, Partner and Head of Employment Law at Hodge Jones & Allen, explains the steps employers should take before dismissing employees who are on long-term sick leave.
Sick employees are an expensive problem for employers. But how long do employers need to wait before deciding enough is enough and taking the drastic step of dismissing an employee for being incapable of doing their job?
The recent Court of Appeal decision in O’Brien V Bolton St Catherine’s Academy provides some useful guidance.
Long-term absence, how long is too long?
Mrs O’Brien was a teacher at Bolton St Catherine’s Academy who was assaulted by a pupil. The assault left her feeling very shaken and unsafe at work, which led to her being diagnosed with anxiety, depression and post-traumatic stress disorder.
After a year of being off work, the Academy dismissed Mrs O’Brien on the basis that there was no evidence that she would return to work in the near future. The employer, in other words, decided it could not wait forever and considered this to be a reasonable and fair step to take. Mrs O’Brien then produced a fit note stating that she could return to work imminently, but the decision to dismiss was upheld on appeal.
The Employment Tribunal initially found in Mrs O’Brien’s favour but its decision was overturned by the Employment Appeal Tribunal on the basis that the Academy should not have had to wait longer for Mrs O’Brien to return to work. Mrs O’Brien then took her case to the Court of Appeal who concluded that the dismissal was both unfair and amounted to disability discrimination.
This case is a lesson for employers not to rush to dismissal.
Dismissal should always be a last resort
According to the Court of Appeal, the Academy should not have disregarded the fit note and given Mrs O’Brien enough time to gather appropriate evidence. In short, they should have taken the fit note seriously and waited longer before resorting to dismissal.
The Court of Appeal also found that the Academy had not appeared to have considered the impact of Mrs O’Brien’s continued absence on the wider business, which should have been the case. More specifically, the Academy should have been able to demonstrate that the impact on the business was significant enough to warrant its decision to dismiss. It is not just about the medical evidence but also the financial and commercial aspects too.
The Court of Appeal was not in agreement about the decision. The fit note was described as “half baked” by one of the judges and the length of absence also fuelled disagreement. The case clearly highlights the difficulties for employers of any dismissal decision of employees on long-term sick leave.
Here are some steps that employers can take to manage the risks.
Implications for employers
This case clearly demonstrates that employers should not rush to dismiss employees simply because they have been on sick leave for a lengthy period of time.
It is therefore vital that employers take the following steps before even considering dismissal:
- Be proactive and don’t forget employees who are absent for a long period of time. Obtain medical documentation regularly and do not let things drift
- Ask the employee to attend an independent medical examination. It is useful to have the right to do this in the employment contract
- Give employees time to gather evidence to support their ability to return to work and put forward their case
- It may sound basic, but follow occupational health recommendations
- Take on board the advice provided by medical and other related professionals, including occupational health, on an employee’s ability to continue to do their job
- Make reasonable adjustments to facilitate a disciplinary hearing, for example, arrange to visit the employee at home or at a neutral venue
- Be sure that the impact on the wider business of any continued absence is significant enough to warrant dismissal, and gather supporting evidence
- Think about whether there are other vacancies for the employee which they could take up in the future before dismissal.
Employers that take the decision to dismiss an employee in the absence of sound medical evidence or whilst ignoring the same, or do not consider the full impact on the business, will do so at their peril. | https://hrnews.co.uk/sacking-sick-long-employers-wait/ |
Especially when running a small business, sometimes you just don’t have the time, resources, or energy to investigate a potential employee as closely as you should. And sometimes that oversight leads to them taking things that don’t belong to them – AKA employee theft.
Employee theft actually accounts for eight times more losses to companies than shoplifting.
But it’s a dicey issue, and wrongly accusing an employee of stealing – whether it’s a bartender or a bookkeeper – can lead to serious ramifications for your business. So how do you handle employee theft? Here’s a step-by-step guide on how to deal with employee theft before, during and after.
Look for the Signs
The first step to effectively knowing how to handle employee theft is realizing that it’s occurring. With that thought in mind, here are some signs to watch out for:
- Sudden money – Did you not give an employee a raise and all of a sudden he’s telling you about the epic dinner he had at a local new hotspot or the brand new $600 Gucci loafers he just bought? Ask where that money came from and see how they react.
- Check your books – Slight cash variances happen, especially in service industry jobs. But if the differences are large, or abnormally frequent, try and find the source.
- Missing items – Not just paper clips out of your stockroom, but things like missing electronics or cash from other employees can signal that there is a thief among you.
- Missing inventory – The same goes with business inventory. Sure, you may have shoplifters or damages, but if nobody’s been caught and your security footage doesn’t show much, then it may mean that it’s an inside job.
If You Think An Employee is Stealing
So, how do you handle employee theft if that’s what you believe is occurring? Here are some options to consider:
- Gather evidence – Though you’d probably rather sit next to a crying baby and an obese man on a trans-Atlantic flight, going through your surveillance tapes is the first way to start building a case against an employee that is stealing from your business. And if you don’t already have some type of camera system in place, now is a good time to get one. It may be too late to prove employee theft that has already taken place, but it acts as a great deterrent for any future employees who may have sticky hands.
- Audit records – Put any records you have that have drawn your suspicion in a separate file, then take the time to go through and audit why they may have come out abnormally. Yes, this option can be very time consuming, but it is critical if you believe that the discrepancies are related to employee theft.
- Document all theft – Assuming you find anything, make a strong file of every instance you can prove of employee theft and begin to build your case.
- Prepare an interview – Because a good thief is often also a good liar, straight up calling the employee into a room and saying “Are you stealing?” isn’t going to get you very far. So take some time – and consult with an interview or interrogation specialist – to determine how exactly you want to go about questioning the employee. At a minimum, call your local police agency and ask them how to deal with employee theft. They may have some good ideas for you based on other, similar cases they’ve handled.
- Wait – Sometimes you can’t afford to, but often thieving employees who think you’re onto them will stop stealing for a while. Give them time, they’ll start up again and then you can gather more proof.
- Record everything you’ve done – An employee who steals may not go quietly. So in addition to documenting your evidence, record any interviews, get statements from other employees, and gather and document any other evidence you might need in a lawsuit. This type of documentation may prove helpful in other instances as well, such as if the person tries to file a claim for work-related disability or unemployment as a way to retaliate. In these cases, you may need to show employee theft to keep from paying the claim.
- If you’ve got enough, fire them – Keeping an employee who is stealing is simply an invitation to steal more, and a sign to other employees that stealing is okay. But make sure you know 100% they’re stealing, know you have tangible proof, and make sure you’ve got backup documentation before firing your employee.
Once you’ve let your employee go in an effort to stop the theft, your work is not done. In fact, when it comes to properly handling employee theft, there are a few different things you can do after the fact that can keep this type of situation from going from bad to worse.
- Escort them until they’re gone – Just like with any firing, make sure you or someone who can handle security walks the person back to his or her desk, watches as they clean out their stuff, and escorts them off the premises. This is especially important in cases of employee theft as the last thing you need is for the person to take more from you than they already have while on their way out the door.
- Determine whether to involve authorities – If the theft is large enough, you may want to press criminal charges. But be aware that most stolen money is probably spent, and though you might win a lawsuit or criminal case, you may not recover much money. And a police investigation may agitate your former employee and lead to even more problems.
- Don’t dock their final check – Most states have laws about how much money you can withhold for employee theft from a final check. Find out what your laws are before considering this option.
- Change all passwords – And not just the ones that employee had access to. If he was stealing, he may well have had access to a lot more than you think.
- Contact your bank – And terminate any account (or at least get new cards) that the stealing employee was involved with. Make all necessary security changes there as well to ensure the fired employee has no access.
- Backup your computer files – An angry ex-employee might also be able to hack into your system easier than you think. Especially one cunning enough to steal from you. So backup everything you have in case of a large-scale deletion. | http://www.wfginsurancequotes.com/blog/how-to-handle-employee-theft-a-guide-for-business-owners |
Useful Legal Tips to Help You Handle A Health-Damaging Injury
A workplace injury can involve anything from a minor cut or bruise to a more serious injury like a broken bone. It can also include injuries that happen over time, such as carpal tunnel syndrome.
Whether you’re dealing with a paper cut or a life-threatening injury, getting hurt at work is never fun. And if your injury is serious enough to warrant time off from work, it can be difficult to know what legal steps to take next. If you’ve been injured on the job, here are a few legal tips to help you navigate the process:
Seek Medical Attention Immediately
Don’t waste time when it’s crucial. There are a few reasons why it’s important to seek medical attention immediately in events of personal injury cases in the workplace.
First, your body may go into shock after an injury, which can cause your blood pressure to drop and your heart rate to increase. Second, if you have a lot of bleeding, you could go into shock from blood loss.
Third, if you have an open wound, it’s important to clean and dress the wound as soon as possible to prevent infection. Similarly, some injuries, such as broken bones, require immediate medical attention in order to heal properly.
If you wait too long to seek medical attention, your injury could become worse and more difficult to treat. And finally, you’ll need documentation of your injuries for any potential workers’ compensation claim.
Notify Your Employer As Soon As Possible
You should let your boss know about your injury as soon as you can, preferably in writing. This is important because they need to be aware of the situation so they can make accommodations for you, if necessary. Similarly, your employer may have insurance that can help cover the costs of your medical treatment. By informing your boss of your injury, they can help ensure that you receive the proper workers’ compensation benefits you’re owed.
Gather Evidence
If you plan on filing a workers’ compensation claim or suing your employer, it’s important to gather evidence of your injuries and the accident that caused them. Below is a step-by-step example of how to seek evidence after your injury.
1. Get Medical Documentation Right Away
It’s important to seek medical attention as soon as possible after your injury. This will not only help you recover more quickly, but it will also provide documentation of your injury.
2. Take Photos Of Your Injuries
Be sure to take clear, close-up photos of any physical injuries you sustained in the accident. These can help prove the extent of your injuries.
3. Collect Witness Information
If there were any witnesses to your accident, be sure to get their names and contact information. Their testimony can be invaluable in supporting your claim.
4. Gather Any Other Relevant Documentation
This may include things like accident reports, time cards, or pay stubs. Any documentation that can help to prove the details of your accident and injury will be helpful.
5. Keep A Record Of Your Symptoms
It can be helpful to keep a daily journal documenting the symptoms you’re experiencing as a result of your injury. This can be important evidence in support of your claim.
Speak To An Attorney
If you’re considering taking legal action, it’s a good idea to speak to an experienced workers’ compensation attorney who can advise you of your rights and help you navigate the process.
There are many ways a personal injury attorney can help you with your injury claim. An attorney can help you gather evidence, interview witnesses, and build a strong case.
A personal injury attorney can also negotiate with the insurance company on your behalf and fight for the maximum compensation you deserve.
Contacting an experienced attorney is the best way to ensure you get the justice and compensation you so rightfully deserve.
Read More: How to make Ice Chips (Hospital Ice Chips)
Be Patient
The workers’ compensation claims process can be slow, so it’s important to be patient. If your claim is denied, you may have to appeal the decision, which can take even longer.
Appeals are not for the faint-hearted, to say the least. They can take months, or even years to resolve. So you need to make sure that you are prepared for the long haul. This means having the financial resources to support yourself, as well as the emotional fortitude to see it through.
Take Care Of Yourself
And finally, it’s important to look after yourself not only physically, but also mentally. When it comes to being injured in the workplace, it’s important to know that you’re not alone.
Many people struggle with mental health problems after a workplace injury, and it can be hard to cope – especially if your injuries are preventing you from living the life that you should be or want to be living. Here are some tips for dealing with mental health problems after a workplace injury:
1. Seek Professional Help
If you’re struggling with your mental health, it’s important to seek professional help. There are many resources available to help you cope with your mental health problems, and a professional can help you find the right resources for your needs.
2. Talk To Your Family And Friends
It’s important to talk to your loved ones about what you’re going through. They can provide support and understanding during this difficult time.
3. Join A Support Group
There are many support groups available to help people who have been injured at work. These groups can provide valuable support and guidance.
4. Take Care Of Yourself
Be sure to take care of yourself physically and emotionally. This includes getting enough rest, eating healthy, and exercising regularly.
5. Stay Positive
It’s important to focus on the positive aspects of your life after a workplace injury. This can be difficult, but it’s important to remember that you can still live a happy and fulfilling life despite your injuries.
Take The Right Course Of Action
If you’ve been injured at work, it’s important to follow the steps outlined above to give yourself the best possible chance of receiving workers’ compensation benefits.
Seek medical attention right away, gather evidence, and speak to an attorney. And most importantly, take care of yourself both physically and mentally. Remember, you are not alone in this process.
Many people struggle with mental health problems after a workplace injury, so reach out for help if you need it. With patience and perseverance, you will get through this difficult time. | https://techbuddys.co/useful-legal-tips-to-help-you-handle-a-health-damaging-injury/ |
NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS BOARD, Petitioner,
v.
Steven DAVIS and Michael Provenzano, d/b/a Carlton's Market,
Respondent,
Retail Clerks Union Local 1428, United Food Commercial
Workers International Union, AFL-CIO, Intervenor.
No. 79-7566.
United States Court of Appeals,
Ninth Circuit.
Argued and Submitted Oct. 9, 1980.
Decided April 20, 1981.
Andrew F. Tranovich, Washington, D. C., for petitioner.
Robert M. Simpson, Rose, Klein & Marias, Los Angeles, Cal., for respondent.
On Application for Enforcement of an Order of The National Labor Relations Board.
Before FLETCHER and FERGUSON, Circuit Judges, and FITZGERALD*, District Judge.
FITZGERALD, District Judge:
The National Labor Relations Board ruled that Carlton's Market of El Monte, California engaged in unfair labor practices which dissipated a union majority within the bargaining unit and brought about conditions making a fair representation election impossible. As a consequence, the Board issued a bargaining order and now comes to this court for enforcement.1
On November 28, 1977, Michael Provenzano and Steven Davis, both experienced in grocery management but inexperienced in labor relations, entered into an agreement with Tajico Corporation to acquire Carlton's Market. The business was in poor financial shape. On the same date, the union2 completed collection of authorization cards from 13 out of 17 employees at the market.
The new management was opposed to the union. Provenzano and Davis discharged six of their employees because of their pro-union activities. Provenzano also told employees that he would do anything to keep the union out. He threatened to fire union supporters, offered wage increases to those who took his side, threatened not to hire people with pro-union sympathies, mentioned reductions in hours for pro-union employees, and stated that he could obtain the discharge of pro-union employees who left his store to work elsewhere if they should prove troublesome to him.
On March 13, 1978, the union filed a charge of unfair labor practices with the National Labor Relations Board. Provenzano and Davis then consulted a skilled labor attorney who provided them with a "crash course" in employee relations. There have been no new allegations of unfair labor practices at the market since.
An administrative law judge held hearings on the union's complaint in December 1978 and January 1979. The judge refused to admit some evidence indicative of a change of attitude on the part of the management. However, Provenzano and Davis were permitted to show that the number of employees at the market had grown from 17 to 37, of whom 27 had been hired subsequent to any unfair labor practices. At the time of the hearing, only nine members remained of the work force employed at the time the unfair labor practices were committed.
The judge found that 15 separate unfair labor practices had occurred in addition to the six prohibited discharges which had been stipulated to. The Board adopted the judge's recommendation and issued an order requiring Carlton's Market to cease and desist its unfair labor practices and to recognize and bargain with the union.
Despite respondent's contentions to the contrary, we find substantial evidence in the record as a whole to establish that in December 1977 the union represented a majority of the employees in the bargaining unit, and that the management thereafter committed serious unfair labor practices against the employees and the union. We hold, as well, that the Board's inquiry into whether a fair election might be held was adequate and that the Board's reasons are sufficiently explicit to justify the bargaining order.
ANALYSIS
In NLRB v. Gissel Packing Company,3 the Supreme Court ruled that a bargaining order could issue in these circumstances if (1) "the Union demonstrates that it represented a majority of the unit employees who signed valid union authorization cards," (2) the employer committed unfair labor practices, and (3) those practices are "bad enough to undermine the free election process."4
The Union Majority
The Board correctly determined that the proper size of the bargaining unit was 17, rather than 20 as respondent contends. It found (1) that Donald Conroy was essentially an expert on pricing working for Tajico rather than an employee of the market, (2) that Naushad Kurji was a management trainee with special status more closely aligning him with management than with employees, and (3) that Angus Garrison could be properly excluded as a meat employee in line with current industry practice separating meat and grocery employees. These findings are not arbitrary and capricious as they are supported by substantial evidence.5
Respondent contends that a majority was not achieved within the unit because the purpose of the authorization cards was misrepresented to the signers. In Gissel the Court adopted the Board's Cumberland Shoe doctrine for dealing with authorization cards when such claims arise.
(I)f the card itself is unambiguous (i. e., states on its face that the signer authorizes the Union to represent the employee for collective bargaining purposes and not to seek an election), it will be counted unless it is proved that the employee was told that the card was to be used solely for the purpose of obtaining an election.6
In this case, the card was unambiguous. Therefore, the management must establish that the signer was told that the card would be used solely for an election in order to exclude it from the count. Our examination of the evidence now relied upon by the respondent reveals that, at best, it can be viewed as conflicting. The testimony of William Rodriguez, who collected the cards, provides substantial evidence in the light of the entire record that a sufficient number of signature cards were properly signed to obtain a majority.
The Unfair Labor Practices
Four employees were discharged by Carlton's Market within a week of signing their union authorization cards. Later two more employees who had signed cards were terminated. Although all six were subsequently offered reinstatement and back pay, we conclude that discharges for protected union activity strike directly at the Act's stated purpose of "encouraging the practice and procedure of collective bargaining ... by protecting the exercise by workers of full freedom of association...."7 Such violations are among the most serious infringements of the Act possible. Besides these six, there are seven additional findings of unfair labor practices by Carlton's Market which are undisputed. They include Provenzano's coercive interrogation of employees about union sympathies, a statement to an employee that he was trying to keep the union out, his threat to get another employee discharged from any future job because of union activities, and his statements to still another employee that he did not want any discussion of union organization in the market, or anyone in the store who was for the union. These findings reveal a pattern of sustained and serious violation of section 8(a)(1) of the Act.8
Finally, six more findings of unfair labor practices rest on the administrative law judge's determinations of credibility. All involve conversations which Provenzano had with individual employees. The employees testified that Provenzano threatened discharges and cuts in hours if the union organized the store, repeatedly interrogated them about their attitudes toward the union, and promised wage increases if they would not support it.
The findings of the Board must be upheld if supported by substantial evidence viewing the record as a whole.9 "... (T)he examiner's findings as to credibility should not be disturbed unless a 'clear preponderance of all the relevant evidence convinces that they are incorrect.' "10 Here the administrative law judge made credibility resolutions on the basis of the demeanor and appearance of the witnesses and explicitly presented her analysis and reasoning for crediting some and not crediting others in her findings. Significant testimony in the record supports her findings which we will not disturb.
The Bargaining Order
An employer's commission of an unfair labor practice does not automatically result in an order to bargain. In choosing a remedy, Gissel instructs the Board to consider the extensiveness of the unfair labor practices, their past effect on election conditions,11 the likelihood of their reoccurrence, and the probability that a fair election can be held.12 The relevant time period for consideration of the possibility of a fair election is when the case is before the Board.13
To document its consideration of these factors, the Board must make findings which are sufficiently explicit to support issuance of a bargaining order. The Board must "clearly articulate the reasons behind any order, and particularly why other remedies were found inappropriate."14 These findings may not be perfunctory.15 However, when the Board has considered these matters and determined that a bargaining order is necessary, Gissel counsels deference to the Board's determination of a remedy.16
In her decision, the administrative law judge concluded that the misconduct of Carlton's management was so pervasive that it made a fair election infeasible:
Finally, I reject Respondent's argument that any effect of the unfair labor practices has been dissipated and a fair election is now possible. The extent of Respondent's unfair labor practices are so pervasive that traditional remedies will not erase the effects thereof. Provenzano and Davis deliberately embarked upon a course of action designed to, and which did, undermine the Union's majority. The leading union adherent was discharged along with 5, probably 6, of the 13 card signers in a unit of only 17. Nine of the current employees were employed at the time of the unfair labor practices. The nature of Respondent's conduct discharges, threats of discharges, threat to cause discharge from future employment is the type of conduct which employees are apt to relate to other employees and which is rather difficult, probably impossible to forget or discount. Nor are employees likely to miss the point that backpay and offers of reinstatement made some 9 to 11 months after the discharge does not necessarily compensate for the financial hardship and emotional and mental anguish apt to be experienced during an interim period of unemployment. Thus, such conduct would have a longlasting, if not permanent, effect on the employees' freedom of choice in selecting or rejecting a bargaining representative and it is unlikely, if not impossible, that the Board's traditional remedies would dispel the coercive atmosphere which Respondent has created.
Respondent objects to the inferences which the administrative law judge drew from the evidence she relied upon. However, it is well settled that the judge and the Board are entitled to draw such reasonable inferences.17 Moreover, Gissel teaches that, "... a reviewing court must recognize the Board's competence in the first instance to judge the impact of utterances made in the context of the employer-employee relationship."18
Respondent suggests that the ruling is perfunctory and mechanically applies Gissel, without regard to context, in a manner forbidden by NLRB v. Western Drug.19 In that case an administrative law judge determined that the union had failed to achieve a majority within the unit. He made no findings on the question of whether a fair election could be held.20 The Board reversed the findings of the judge and issued a bargaining order. In reversing the Board, the court in Western Drug said:
We limit our holding to the facts presented. The circumstances changed completely before the unfair practice charges were tried, and there was no unusual delay in trying the charges. All the employees in the unit voluntarily terminated their employment for reasons unrelated to the unfair practices. And the Board's findings do not suggest any alternative ground for concluding that an election would not reflect the present employees' true wishes.21
Western Drug is distinguishable from the case now before this court. Here the administrative law judge clearly stated the reasons upon which she rested her conclusion that remedies short of a bargaining order would be ineffectual. The Board adopted her detailed statement of reasons and in conformity with her findings issued the bargaining order. Western Drug is simply not on point.
Respondent argues that the proper time to consider whether a fair election can be held is when the issue is before the Board,22 in contending that the administrative law judge improperly rejected evidence of change in management attitude toward the union after March 13, 1978.
The judge correctly refused to allow an employee to be questioned as to whether a fair election would be possible in the near future. Gissel points out:
We also accept the observation that employees are more likely than not, many months after a card drive and in response to questions by company counsel, to give testimony damaging to the union, particularly where company officials have previously threatened reprisals for union activity in violation of § 8(a)(1). We therefore reject any rule that requires a probe of an employee's subjective motivations as involving an endless and unreliable inquiry.23
Other evidence excluded by the judge included Provenzano's offer to testify as to his present attitude toward unions and to his intentional hiring of employees with prounion sympathies after March, 1978. While this evidence is probative of a change of heart on management's part, the error, if any, was harmless since the record contains evidence of events occurring after March, 1978. Detailed records of employee turnover were received, as was evidence of the settlement resulting in reinstatement and back pay for improperly discharged employees.
Respondent suggests that reinstatement, plus the published notices, must have "inevitably dissipated any fear that past misconduct will recur." The judge, however, drew a different inference:
Nor are employees likely to miss the point that back pay and offers of reinstatement made some 9 to 11 months after the discharge do not necessarily compensate for the financial hardship and emotional and mental anguish apt to be experienced during an interim period of unemployment.
The change in the behavior of the Carlton management after it consulted labor counsel was apparent to the administrative law judge; the excluded evidence would have added little. The judge determined that such altered behavior when one faces charges before the National Labor Relations Board is not surprising and probably not a reliable guide to the future. She was justified in concluding that the impact of the management's past unfair labor practices had not been dissipated, and their extent was so pervasive that traditional remedies were inadequate.
We find, therefore, that there is substantial evidence in the record to support the factual findings, errors on evidentiary matters, if any, are harmless, and the holdings are sufficiently explicit to support the issuing of a bargaining order. The Board's order is hereby ENFORCED.
Honorable James M. Fitzgerald, United States District Judge for the District of Alaska, sitting by designation
This court has jurisdiction under 29 U.S.C. § 160(e) (1975) a section of the National Labor Relations Act, 29 U.S.C. §§ 151-69 (1975). Hereinafter "the Act." | http://openjurist.org/642/f2d/350/national-labor-relations-board-v-davis |
Accident or incident investigations are an important procedure following any type of event where a near miss or injury occurred. Two benefits of incident investigations are it leads to finding the root cause of the event, and it also is known to increase employee accountability.
A senior EHS manager from Virginia, JA Rodriguez, did a presentation on worker accountability at ASSE’s Safety conference. He pointed out that there are two types of accountability. One, holding a person accountable. Two, holding yourself accountable. Workers must see that accountability starts at the top. Managers and supervisors must also hold themselves accountable for safety. They must lead their workers and recognize why a person behaved a certain way or what may have been missing in procedures that lead to the incident. Rodriguez points out that the best way to find real root causes is to conduct incident investigations.
Workers should be aware of company policies regarding incident investigations. The persons responsible for performing incident investigations should be trained appropriately.
What is an Incident Investigation?
An incident investigation is conducted to determine the true cause of the incident and make changes that reduce the chances of similar incidents occurring in the future. There are 4 key parts to a successful and effective incident investigation.
1: Respond to the Incident
- Check the scene for hazards.
- Safely control hazards or remove people from the hazards.
- Respond to medical needs: if necessary, call emergency medical services (EMS) and/or provide first aid to the level you are trained.
- Secure the area to prevent further injury or disruption of evidence.
- Contact the appropriate personnel, such as supervisors, management, or emergency responders, after injured parties are medically stable.
- Start preserving evidence that may be needed for the investigation, including photographing or isolating evidence that may not be able to be removed from the scene.
2: Gather Information
- Include management and employees in the investigation.
- Make sure that the investigation team includes or has access to technical expertise in safety, engineering, operations, or any other subjects that might be helpful.
- Focus on finding causes for the issue rather than assigning blame.
- Collect as much data as possible by interviewing personnel involved in the incident (including witnesses) and documenting the entire incident site (i.e., with photographs or video). The more information you have, the easier it will be to see the big picture.
3: Analyze the Data
- Look for root causes. A root cause is a factor that underlies other contributing causes and that could eliminate recurrence of the problem if it is addressed.
- Rather than just focusing on the actions of the people involved in the incident, try to consider the organization as a whole and whether there are any weaknesses in the current procedures that may have contributed to the incident.
- Using multiple methods of data analysis, such as fishbone diagrams or the Why Method, can help uncover root causes that may have been missed using only one.
There are number of different causes. Maybe the employee was not properly trained before performing his or her work tasks. As a result, training records should be well maintained and employees should attend annual safety training.
Read More About Key Benefits of Annual Safety Training
4: Determine Corrective Actions
Once all root causes of the incident have been determined, recommend corrective actions that can help minimize or eliminate the chances of reoccurrence.
- Be specific in your instructions for what each action entails and how it should be implemented.
- Assign responsible parties to ensure that the corrective actions are completed and a time frame for completion.
- Keep your recommendations constructive and objective.
- Clearly point out instances where human error is a cause. Disciplinary actions should be handled by Human Resources.
- Outline a follow-up plan to assure that actions are implemented correctly and work as planned.
Have questions about conducting Accident/Incident Investigations? Contact an SRP Safety Consultant to discuss your company health and safety needs. We have seven convenient locations in Charlotte, Dallas, Denver, Honolulu, Midland, Shreveport and Pittsburgh. Call us toll free at (866) 222-4972 or visit us online. | http://srpenvironmental.com/incident-investigation-worker-accountability/ |
Dealing with difficult employees is a problem that many employers face. It’s important to have good staff because they are the backbone of your business. However, it can be hard to manage them when they’re not performing well or their behaviour is unacceptable. There are many laws that protect employees which means you need to be very careful when taking disciplinary measures against your employees.
In this article, we will explain common employee issues and the correct steps to take as an employer.
Having problems with your employees? Click here for expert HR advice.
What are the Most Common Employee Issues?
There are a number of ways that an employee can be difficult but they come down to either performance or conduct. Performance issues can usually be resolved by training or coaching the employee. However, if it is their behaviour that is unacceptable, then you may need to take disciplinary action. The most common issues are:
Bullying and Harassment
Bullying and harassment can take many forms, from verbal abuse to spreading rumours. It is important to deal with this type of behaviour as it can have a serious impact on the victim’s mental health. To prevent bullying and harassment in the first place, you need to foster the right office culture and clearly set out the rules you expect all employees to follow.
The best way to do this is to have a written policy on office conduct as well as clear guidelines on bullying and harassment. This will ensure that all employees are aware of what is expected and that any incidents can be dealt with appropriately. You should take all complaints seriously, even if they seem trivial or you are unsure of the truth. If an employee has been bullied or harassed, then it’s important to reassure them that your organisation does not tolerate it and you will deal with their complaint promptly and fairly.
Lateness or Absence
If an employee is consistently late or absent from work, you need to address the issue as soon as possible. This type of behaviour can have a negative impact on your business, especially if it’s happening regularly. You should first talk to the employee privately about their lateness or absence and find out why it’s happening. It may be that they are genuinely ill or have personal issues that are causing the issue. You can then find out if there is anything you can do to help them improve their attendance such as offering flexible hours.
Disrespect
If an employee is constantly speaking rudely to their colleagues or managers, this is considered disrespectful behaviour. It can be very disruptive and make it difficult for others to work. Disrespect sometimes comes as a result of a power imbalance. If there are two people working together, one may feel they have more authority than the other and use this as an excuse to be disrespectful. You need to make sure that all employees know that you won’t tolerate disrespectful behaviour in the workplace, no matter how high their position is.
Stealing or Fraud
If an employee is stealing or committing fraud, this is a very serious issue that needs to be dealt with immediately. This type of behaviour can not only damage your business but also put you at risk of being sued.
If you have cause to believe an employee has stolen or committed fraud, will then need to hold a meeting with the employee to discuss the allegations. They will have the right to representation during this meeting so it is important to have a lawyer or union representative present. If you are then convinced of your employee’s guilt, you may then need to inform the police and your insurance company so that they can start an investigation.
Dishonesty
Dishonesty can take on many forms in the workplace. Your employee may have been dishonest with you by providing false information on their CV or have lied to other employees or customers about a business matter. If you suspect that an employee has taken part in any type of dishonesty, it’s important that you start an investigation as soon as possible. You will need to hold a meeting with the employee where you can discuss your findings and determine whether or not they have been dishonest.
Gross Negligence
If an employee is not meeting the standards you expect of them or is regularly making careless mistakes, this may be considered gross negligence. This type of behaviour can be very dangerous for your business and can lead to losses, inefficiency and even potentially dangerous accidents.
Some common examples of gross negligence include:
- Failing to follow health and safety procedures
- Leaving dangerous equipment unguarded
- Not cleaning up hazardous materials
If you believe that an employee is guilty of gross negligence, you will need to hold a meeting with them to discuss the issue. If they are unable to improve their behaviour, you may need to take disciplinary action in order to protect your business and other employees.
Poor Productivity
An employee who is unproductive may be working at a slower pace than the rest of their colleagues. This can lead to inefficiency and make it difficult for others to get work done on time.
Unproductivity could also occur as a result of an individual being disengaged from the company or simply not finding enough enjoyment in their job. If this is the case, it may be time to have a discussion with your employee about their career goals and see if there is anything you can do to help them find more meaning in their work.
Out-Of-Office Misconduct
If an employee is engaging in misconduct outside of the workplace, this can still reflect badly on your business. This type of behaviour can be particularly damaging if it involves your customers, as this will cause them to lose trust in you.
Misconduct could include:
- Aggressive or discriminatory behaviour towards others on social media
- Arrests or criminal convictions
- Drunken or reckless driving
- Extensive alcohol or drug use that affects their work
You have to be very careful when addressing out of office employee conduct because you don’t want to discriminate against them due to their personal life. You can ask your employee about a criminal conviction or arrest, but you cannot deny them employment if the crime was not related to their job. This is why it’s so important to be clear on what kind of behaviour will cause disciplinary action when hiring someone new.
How to Discipline an Employee
The disciplinary procedures you need to follow will depend on the issue that the employee is facing. However, there are some general steps that you should take based on the Advisory, Conciliation and Arbitration Service (ACAS) guidelines. ACAS is a government agency that provides information, advice and training to resolve workplace disputes. The ACAS procedures for disciplining an employee are:
Establish the Facts
If you are disciplining an employee for misconduct, it’s always important that you have the full facts first. You should gather as much evidence as possible to prove your point and make sure there is no room for doubt. If another member of staff was involved in the incident or witnessed something, they may be able to provide more information about what happened.
If the incident took place outside of work hours and has no bearing on their job, you may decide not to take any action. However, if they have behaved in an inappropriate way towards anyone at work or during business-related activity then it’s important that you address this as soon as possible.
Talk to Your Employee First Privately
You should talk to your employee before holding a formal disciplinary meeting. This will allow you to discuss the situation and find out what happened without your employee feeling like they are under attack. You can explain how their actions have affected other members of staff and why this behaviour is inappropriate for business purposes. If they are able to correct the issue there and then, you may find the matter is resolved successfully.
If an employee refuses to accept that they have done anything wrong or acknowledge their behaviour was inappropriate, it’s time for a formal disciplinary meeting.
Inform Your Employee of Disciplinary Procedures in Writing
Before your meeting with your employee and before deciding on any further action against them, make sure that all of your employees are aware of the disciplinary procedures that will be followed. This information should be in writing and given to them at least two weeks before any meeting takes place. That way, they have time to prepare their defence and know what is expected of them.
Having problems with your employees? Click here for expert HR advice.
Hold a Meeting with Your Employee
Once you have gathered evidence, clarified the facts and had a private meeting with your employee, it’s time to hold a formal disciplinary meeting. Your employee is entitled to have a representative with them at this meeting, such as a trade union representative or friend. You should explain the allegations against them and give them an opportunity to respond. If they have any evidence to support their case, they should be allowed to present it.
Take Disciplinary Measures
After hearing both sides of the story, if you decide that the employee is in the wrong, you will then need to take disciplinary measures. The appropriate measures will depend on the severity of the behaviour and whether you feel the employee has learnt their lesson. You can decide on one or more of the following disciplinary measures:
- Written warning – A written warning will be issued to your employee that informs them about how their behaviour was inappropriate and what future consequences could follow if they continue misbehaving. The letter should state a certain amount of time for improvement – for example, six months.
- Final warning – If the employee does not improve their behaviour after a written warning, you can give them a final warning. This will be in writing and state that any further misconduct could lead to dismissal.
- Demotion – Demoting an employee is a form of disciplinary action which may be used if the employee’s behaviour is not severe enough to warrant dismissal. It can also be used as a warning that future misconduct could lead to dismissal.
- Dismissal – If the employee’s behaviour is considered gross misconduct, you may decide to dismiss them from their job. This is an extreme measure and should only be used as a last resort. If you do decide to dismiss an employee, make sure that their dismissal is fair and reasonable and that you give them sufficient notice. You may also want to consider giving them a reference just to make the dismissal as smooth as possible.
Important Considerations to Make
Before taking any form of disciplinary action against your employees, think about the following carefully:
- Does the employee have a disability or medical condition?
- Are they pregnant?
- How long has the misconduct been going on?
- Will this matter affect other employees?
- Will your business suffer if you do not take action against them now?
If you can answer yes to any of these questions, it may be worth getting legal advice before taking any disciplinary action. This is because you may need to take special measures and make adjustments so that you do not risk breaking the law. If you are concerned about potential legal issues, get in touch with us today and we can advise you.
Having problems with your employees? Click here for expert HR advice.
Final Thoughts
Dealing with difficult employees is a challenge that all businesses face at some time. However, by following a fair disciplinary procedure and taking appropriate action when necessary, you can deal with issues in a professional and appropriate manner. If you are concerned about disciplinary issues or any other HR matter, get in touch with us today and we can advise you on the best way to manage your employees. | https://thesector12.com/neathouse/dealing-with-difficult-employees/ |
What is the Workplace Safety and Insurance Board?
Ontario’s Workplace Safety and Insurance Board (WSIB) is the government body that administers compensation and no-fault insurance to Ontario employers and oversees workplace safety and insurance claims. It operates in compliance with the Workplace Safety and Insurance Act.
Who can initiate workplace insurance board investigations?
Normally, the WSIB investigates claims if an insured worker is suspected of an offence under the Act. However, to keep their insurance premiums from increasing, employers may themselves initiate an investigation to eliminate any claims that they suspect may be fraudulent. The higher an employer’s claim rate, the higher their insurance premiums are.
In the process of such investigations the employer and the WSIB may hire private investigators to determine if fraud or wrongdoing is occurring and to document it.
Who can be investigated?
Workers
According to the WSIB, most claims-related offences are committed by workers. However, an investigation may include a spouse of the worker, or a worker’s dependant, such as a child.
Employers
Employers themselves may also be investigated by the WSIB for offences under the Act, such as:
- failure to register as an employer within 10 days
- failure to keep accurate statements of wages paid
- failure to notify the WSIB of an accident
Medical practitioners and health-care providers
Medical practitioners and health-care providers have also been known to commit workers’ compensation fraud, for example, by reporting non-occupational injuries as work-related, or billing for exams of patients that did not occur or for treatment never received.
Why are people investigated?
The following offences are the most common and are considered to be fraud under section 149 of the Act:
- Knowingly make a false or misleading statement – Most often, employees will overstate the symptoms or severity of a work-related injury in an effort to increase or prolong benefits.
- Failing to inform the WSIB of a material change in circumstance when required to do so. A material change in circumstance refers to any change that affects a person’s entitlement to benefits and services under the Act, and can include changes to:
- health care status, such as improvement of the work-related condition or stopping treatment,
- earnings or income, such as getting a wage increase or decrease,
- work status, such as termination due to the work-related injury, and
- having additional income from other employment while claiming to be incapacitated or unable to work.
Workers compensation fraud generally occurs when there has been deliberate dishonest conduct that results in a financial loss to the WSIB, usually as a result of a fraudulent claim. Certain offences are also considered fraud under Section 380 of the Canadian Criminal Code, such as making a false claim, or forging or altering a document.
When can an investigation be initiated?
Before an investigation can occur, there must be sufficient grounds, or red flags, that suggest an offence has been committed.
The red flags that may prompt the WSIB to investigate a claim they have received include:
- problems speaking to an injured worker directly
- frequent change of phone number or address
- anti-social behaviour or overreaction
- forms returned by someone else or not signed
- an unreasonable distance travelled by the worker to see a doctor
If the WSIB approves a claim, an employer may want to initiate its own investigation if they disagree with the WSIB’s decision (called a denial of initial entitlement). An employer may believe a claim is fraudulent and should not have been approved for a number of reasons, including if:
- the worker is taking too long to come back to work,
- the worker is exaggerating symptoms or severity of injury in an attempt to increase benefits,
- the employer believes the worker’s injury is not compatible or consistent with the duties of the job,
- the employer suspects that the injury is not work related, or
- there is an issue with the suitability of modified work offered when the worker is saying they are too disabled to participate (but employer has heard that the worker is very physically active on the weekends).
Investigations by the WSIB
1. Preliminary inquiry
If red flags are present while the WSIB is reviewing a claim, and the WSIB suspects that an offence under the Act has been committed, a preliminary inquiry is first conducted. A preliminary inquiry includes gathering information such as proof of an accident, verifying earnings, and confirming an employer’s premium information.
2. Referred to Regulatory Services
If the preliminary inquiry uncovers evidence of wrongdoing, the file is then referred to Regulatory Services. The Regulatory Services department reviews all referred cases and decides whether it will conduct an investigation.
3. Investigator gathers evidence
If Regulatory Services decides an investigation is to take place, an investigator may be hired to gather evidence to prove that an offence has occurred. Evidence may be gathered by:
- background checks
- locating witnesses and obtaining their statements
- video surveillance
- audio surveillance
- photographs
- personal observations
An investigator will document such things as:
- the apparent degree of disability,
- any physical restrictions or limitations the individual is exhibiting,
- the employee’s daily activities,
- the types of transportation the employee is using, such as driving a car or riding a bicycle,
- if the person is getting assistance from a caregiver or housekeeper, or performing domestic duties on their own, and
- whether the person is working at any other business to generate income.
An investigator will use the same techniques and gather the same evidence when conducting an investigation for an employer as is done for the WSIB.
4. Investigator’s report
Once an investigation is completed, the investigator will present a written report, along with any video and photos, that includes all the evidence discovered. This evidence may be used at a WSIB hearing. In addition, the investigator may be required to appear at the hearing to answer questions about the investigation and the report.
Charges and penalties under the WSIA
If wrongdoing is proven, the type of offence committed determines what action is taken. In the case of a claim-related offence by an individual the WSIB will decide whether to terminate or reduce benefits or record a benefit-related debt.
In the case of offences committed by employers, Regulatory Services may take administrative action, such as levying a penalty. The Legal Services department of the WSIB may start a civil action to recover money or property.
Regulatory Services may also lay charges and prosecute. Convictions of an offence under the WSIA carry the following penalties:
- for individuals, a fine of up-to $25,000, or imprisonment for up to 6 months, or both
- for corporations, a fine of up-to $100,000
Criminal Code offences
Certain acts may constitute fraud under the Criminal Code. Examples include,
- making or using a false document (i.e., a false birth certificate, Social Insurance Number, or WSIB clearance certificate)
- knowingly falsifying an employment record
- billing the WSIB for services not rendered
If an offence is considered criminal, Regulatory Services refers the case to the police, who then decide whether to lay charges under the Criminal Code. If convicted of fraud exceeding $5,000, penalties can include imprisonment for up-to 10 years, fines, probation and an order to pay full restitution.
For more information about WSIB fraud and compliance investigations, visit the WSIB website.
To have someone conduct an investigation of a suspected case of WSIB fraud or other offence and for other investigation services, contact our preferred Investigators, Smith Investigation Agency .
You now haveoptions: | https://www.legalline.ca/legal-answers/workers-compensation-board-investigations/ |
While the main goal of every health and safety program is to prevent injuries and accidents, the unfortunate reality is that they still happen in many workplaces. In 2021 alone, Ontario’s Workplace Safety Insurance Board (WSIB) reported over 220,000 injury claims.
Workplace incidents and accidents are highly stressful events for everyone involved, especially if they result in a critical injury or fatality. The overwhelming nature of these events often leads to confusion about what steps to take after an event and who is responsible for carrying them out.
The purpose of this guide is to help you understand what to do after an incident or accident to prevent similar events from occurring and comply with health and safety legislation.
You will learn:
- The difference between an incident and an accident
What to do immediately following an incident or accident
- Who is responsible for specific procedures after an incident or accident occurs
- Who needs to be notified and when
- How to investigate and report the event
To effectively manage incidents and accidents, it’s important that everyone in your workplace understands their health and safety responsibilities and that your Joint Health & Safety Committee (JHSC) members have been trained to deal with these events.
What is the difference between an accident and an incident?
Both workplace accidents and incidents are sudden unplanned events. The difference is that a workplace accident causes harm to a product, process, property, or person, whereas a workplace incident is an event that could have resulted in an accident.
Examples of workplace accidents:
- An employee not wearing fall protection while working on a roof slips and falls.
- An employee not wearing Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) sustains a chemical burn on their hand when they open an unlabeled container containing a corrosive chemical.
- Inventory is damaged when it falls to the ground due to unstable shelving.
Examples of workplace incidents:
- A reversing forklift almost hits an employee.
- An employee slips on an icy surface but does not fall.
- An employee’s clothing gets caught in machinery but tears before any injury occurs.
Reasons to investigate a workplace accident include:
- To identify the cause of the accident and prevent similar accidents from happening in the future.
- To fulfill legal requirements such as submitting a report to the Ministry of Labour, Immigration, Training and Skills Development (MLITSD).
- To process an employee’s claim with the WSIB.
Reasons to investigate a workplace incident include:
- If an incident is ignored, it could result in an accident in the future because the hazard or process was never addressed.
- The reporting process provides management with recommendations to make improvements that will create a safer work environment.
- Documenting incidents allows you to track recurring incidents that may indicate problems with current processes.
What to do after a workplace incident or accident
Legally, critical injuries or fatalities must be reported to the MLITSD and investigated by the employer and JHSC. There is no requirement to report non-critical injuries or incidents to the MLITSD, but it is considered a best practice to investigate the incident to determine the causes to prevent future incidents.
These seven steps outline the actions to take to make sure that no one else is in danger and to address the causes of the incident or accident:
- Call 911
- Administer first aid
- Secure and manage the scene
- Notify required parties
- Conduct an investigation
- Prepare the final report
- Follow up on recommendations
Step 1: Call 911
If a critical injury or fatality occurs, the employer or supervisor is responsible for ensuring that 911 is called to get emergency services on route immediately. Police are also required at the scene if there is a fatality or where workplace violence is involved.
If a non-critical injury or near miss occurs, it’s unlikely you will need to call 911.
Step 2: Administer First Aid
The employer is responsible for ensuring first aid is provided to the injured person if it is safe to do so. If administering first aid will put another employee in danger, then first aid should not be administered until trained emergency personnel arrive. For example, if a person was injured in a confined space, and entering the space would put another at risk, then first aid should not be performed until trained help arrives.
If providing first aid does not place anyone at risk, it should be administered by an individual who has their first aid certification. In Ontario, every workplace must have at least one employee on-site at all times who has a valid first aid certificate.
Step 3: Secure and manage the scene
The employer or supervisor is responsible for taking action to secure and manage the scene. In the event of both accidents and incidents this could include:
- Clearing employees from the area
- Securing the scene with caution tape, barriers, and/or barricades
- Ensuring that there is minimal scene disturbance, aside from anything required to be disturbed to deliver first aid and/or control or eliminate an imminent danger
Section 51(2) of the Occupational Health and Safety Act (OHSA) states that if a critical injury or fatality occurs, an MLITSD inspector must give permission before a scene can be disturbed. Disturbing the scene means altering, interfering with, destroying, or removing anything related to the scene.
There are some exceptions to this regulation. A scene may be disturbed without MLITSD permission to:
- Save a life
- Relieve human suffering
- Maintain an essential public utility or transportation system
- Prevent unnecessary equipment or property damage
Step 4: Notify required parties
If a near miss occurs or a person is injured as a result of an accident, employers are responsible for recording the event. The severity of the injury or incident will determine who the employer must notify.
Incidents/near misses
Events that do not result in an injury, but could have should be reported to the JHSC.
Injuries that require first aid only
Injuries that are non-critical and require first aid only should be reported to the JHSC. Examples of first aid-only injuries include:
- A small cut that can be treated with antiseptic and a bandage
- Minor skin irritation caused by exposure to a chemical that can be treated by flushing the area with water
Injuries that require health care treatment
Any injury that requires health care treatment (hospital, physiotherapist, etc.), reduced work hours, modified work, or lost time, must be reported to the WSIB, supervisor, and JHSC.
Critical injuries or fatalities
The employer is responsible for immediately notifying the following parties:
- Joint Health and Safety Committee (JHSC)
- MLITSD by submitting an accident report within 48 hours of the accident. Download our sample accident report template.
- WSIB
- Union (if applicable)
- Police (the police may automatically attend if dispatched, but must be notified of a fatality or injury involving workplace violence)
Under the (OHSA), an injury is considered critical if it meets any of the following criteria:
- Places a life in jeopardy
- Causes unconsciousness
- Results in significant loss of blood
- Involves amputation of an arm or leg, hand or foot, or multiple fingers or toes
- Involves fracture of an arm or leg, hand or foot, or multiple fingers or toes
- Consists of burns to a major part of the body
- Causes loss of sight in an eye
This table provides an overview of who should be notified for each type of injury.
Step 5: Conduct an investigation
The purpose of an investigation is to determine the root cause of the event so that steps can be taken to make sure it doesn’t happen again. The JHSC should investigate both incidents and accidents.
After a critical injury or fatality, there could be multiple investigations happening at one time by the MLITSD, police, and JHSC. The employer is responsible for cooperating fully with all investigations and providing any documentation requested.
Under section 9 (31) of the OHSA, the JHSC has the right to designate a non-management member to investigate the accident where a worker was killed or critically injured and report their findings to the committee, employer, and MLITSD. When a JHSC member investigates a critical injury or fatality, they must:
- Gather evidence
- Interview witnesses
- Investigate the causes
Ideally, the committee member conducting the investigation should be JHSC certified. All workplaces with 20 or more employees must have at least one non-management member who is certified. Members who have completed their JHSC certification will have learned how to investigate and report injuries in JHSC Part 1 training.
Gather evidence
To understand what caused the event, the investigator must document the evidence from the accident scene and review administrative policies that could have played a role in the event. Here are some steps to follow when gathering evidence:
- Document the things requiring explanation, for example, “why did a piece of equipment malfunction?”
- Record the names of all witnesses. Witnesses include individuals who saw the accident and those involved shortly before and directly after the accident or incident.
- Take measurements, drawings, and photographs of the accident scene. These will help create a record of the scene and provide a frame of reference when interviewing witnesses.
- Observe and record facts relating to physical evidence, such as:
- Equipment in use
- Safety devices in use
- Damage to equipment
- Physical signs of wear
- Location and position of injured persons
- Observe and record facts about the physical environment, such as:
- Noise levels
- Time of day
- Lighting levels
- Temperature
- Weather conditions (if applicable)
- Exposure to hazardous materials
- Air quality (haze or smells that seem abnormal)
- Review administrative policies and records and note anything that could have contributed to the accident. Documents you might look at include:
- Training records – is there any outdated or missing training?
- Inspection reports – were any potential hazards identified?
- Inspection schedules – were inspections performed regularly?
- Work processes – what procedures exist to help control hazards?
- Equipment maintenance records – is there evidence of proper maintenance?
Interview witnesses
Witnesses may include supervisors, maintenance personnel, employees, customers, contractors, or suppliers. The purpose of an interview is to gather facts from the witnesses’ account of the event, not to place blame.
When interviewing a witness:
- Conduct the interview as soon as possible when the information is still fresh
- Create a standard document to use for witness interviews to ensure consistency
- If the witness is upset, do your best to put them at ease
- Explain to the interviewee that the purpose of the interview is to uncover facts, not to place blame
- Use questions that are simple, non-suggestive, and open-ended, such as:
- Where were you at the time of the accident?
- What did you see or hear?
- In your opinion, what caused the accident?
- How might similar accidents be prevented in the future?
- Let the witness recall the events without interrupting
- Avoid making suggestions for the witness or asking leading questions
- Provide your contact details and ask the witness to reach out if they remember any additional information
Investigate the causes
Once you have organized the information collected in the evidence gathering and interviewing steps, you must analyze it to determine the immediate and root causes of the accident.
The immediate cause is the final act or condition that led to the accident. Examples include:
- Ice on the stairs
- A broken machine part
- Fume inhalation
The root cause is the underlying weakness in the safety system that led to unsafe actions or conditions that resulted in the accident. Examples include:
- Poor ventilation
- Inadequate training for employees
- Lack of supervision
- Inadequate safety program or procedures
The immediate cause of an accident is often obvious, but identifying the root cause can be more difficult.
To determine the root cause, start by analyzing the five factors that could have contributed to the accident:
- People – Consider the physical and mental condition of the people involved in the accident. For example:
- Were they tired?
- Were they rushing to complete a task?
- Had they been trained to do the work?
- Did they follow safety procedures?
- Equipment/Materials – Consider the equipment or materials used when the accident happened. For example:
- Was there an equipment malfunction?
- What caused the equipment to fail?
- Was regular maintenance of equipment carried out?
- Were there hazardous materials involved?
- Were hazardous materials clearly identified?
- Was PPE used?
- Were employees trained on how to use PPE?
- Environment – Consider the work environment at the time of the incident and any conditions that weren’t typical. For example:
- Were there objects obstructing pathways or lines of sight?
- Was it too hot or cold?
- Was there a lot of noise?
- Was there poor lighting?
- What was the air quality at the time of the accident?
- Process – Consider the work performed at the time of the accident and any processes related to it. For example:
- Was a safe work procedure used?
- Were the safe work procedures being enforced?
- Are written procedures available to employees?
- Were the appropriate tools available for the work being performed?
- Was there a supervisor present?
- Had hazards associated with the process been previously identified and assessed?
- Had procedures been developed to eliminate or control hazards?
After most questions in your analysis, it’s important to ask the follow-up “why?” This will help you understand why an unsafe condition or behaviour was allowed to exist.
Step 6: Prepare the final report
The individual or group who conducted the investigation should prepare the final report. The report is meant to help everyone learn from the accident and prevent recurrences.
The final report should contain:
- A detailed description of the accident
- The harm or losses caused by the accident
- The immediate and root cause(s) of the accident
- Temporary or permanent controls implemented
- Recommendations to prevent similar incidents
- Interview notes, drawings, and other applicable supporting documents
Recommendations are an important part of the report because they describe specific actions that the employer must take to prevent similar accidents. The OHSA gives JHSCs the power to make recommendations to the employer and requires the employer to respond to those recommendations within 21 calendar days.
Recommendations should:
- Address the root cause(s) of the accident
- Identify the reason for the recommendation
- Provide a detailed solution for eliminating or controlling the issue
- Identify what steps and resources are required to fulfill the recommendation
Once the final report is complete, it should be shared with all JHSC members, the employer, and the MLITSD.
Step 7: Follow up on recommendations
Once the JHSC submits the report to the employer or management, it is the employer’s responsibility to act on the recommendations. The JHSC is responsible for monitoring whether recommendations are being followed.
To ensure that the employer is taking action and that the recommendations are effective, the JHSC should:
- Develop a timeline for corrective action
- Confirm that the scheduled actions have been completed
- Monitor whether the recommendations are working as intended
Effective communication between the employer or management and the JHSC is an important part of the follow-up process. If the employer has questions about a recommendation or wants to discuss an alternate solution, they should contact the JHSC.
Employers should also submit a written response to the JHSC within 21 days of the recommendation being made. If the employer agrees with the recommendation, they should confirm the timeline for implementing it. If the employer does not agree with the recommendation, they should outline an alternate solution to address the issue.
Conclusion
If an incident or accident happens, investigating and reporting the event is essential to help prevent future accidents and improve the safety of a workplace. Above all, cooperation from everyone in the workplace is essential to prevent accidents and injuries. Effective training, support from management, and a proactive/strong health and safety program can all help to prevent accidents and ensure the safety of everyone in the workplace. | https://osg.ca/managing-workplace-accidents-and-incidents/ |
Many recent high-profile scandals, such as those at Toshiba, Volkswagen, FIFA, and Wells Fargo, have shown the adverse effect of having a poor corporate culture.
Toshiba’s $1.2 billion profit inflation scandal, which occurred over seven years and came to light last summer, was called “the most damaging event for the brand in the company’s 140-year history” by the outgoing CEO. The Independent Investigation Committee concluded that “there existed a corporate culture at Toshiba where it was impossible to go against the boss’ will.” In less than six months from the initial announcement, the scandal had wiped roughly $8 billion off Toshiba’s market value.
At Wells Fargo, the former CEO acknowledged that he helped create a culture that led to sales practice abuse at the bank. He said he had been aware of the systemic problem for over four years before his resignation in October 2016. After agreeing to give up $41 million of pay, an independent board committee deemed it necessary to clawback an additional $28 million from the former CEO.
Another senior executive was also forced to forfeit $47 million of compensation on top of $19 million already forgone. The result was the largest clawback of pay in financial services history and significant damage to the company’s reputation.
A job for internal audit
If the lessons at Toshiba and Wells Fargo have taught us anything, it’s that the existence of an inappropriate culture can be dangerous to an organization and its employees. The values, policies, attitudes and behaviors set out by management require proper monitoring. Due to the nature of its activities and detailed insight of operations across the entire organization, the internal audit team is often uniquely positioned to assess corporate culture and governance.
The profession still has some work to do to tackle the issue of corporate culture, however. According to a 2016 study by the Institute of Internal Auditors, 58 percent of internal audit departments do not audit culture. The study did not expand upon the reason for not auditing culture.
It is a unique, difficult and sensitive area. Culture does not easily lend itself to hard proof that auditors normally gather through traditional control testing. Some internal auditors may lack the experience or skill sets necessary to conduct such an assessment. But this does not preclude culture from being subject to an audit. The communication and soft skills sets needed can be obtained through proper career development, training, and experience.
Many aspects need to be considered when auditing culture, such as governance practices, corporate ethics and responsibility, leadership styles, policies and procedures, training, incentives, employee/customer/vendor feedback, communication practices, turnover, etc. The audit should also be tailored based on the organization’s environment, structure and industry.
6-step approach to assess culture
So how should internal auditors approach such a significant undertaking of auditing culture? Testing for the mere existence of a code of ethics, mission statements or defined values is simply not enough.
Following are six steps that can help you get started.
1. Secure support from appropriate stakeholders
The CEO, board and audit committee should welcome an assessment of culture that may improve the organization as a whole, and their approval and cooperation can aid in the effectiveness of the audit. Unfortunately, this may not always be the case, and strong resistance may be further indication of cultural red flags. The chief audit executive will need to have an open dialogue with the appropriate stakeholders to express the purpose and value of such an audit in effort to gain support.
2. Perform root cause analysis on audit findings
Analyze findings from current and prior-year audits, and determine whether there is an underlying cultural behavior that caused the issue.
It’s important for auditors to identify not just what happened in terms of compliance with expectations, but also why things happened. A breakdown in procedures and controls identified during an audit of any area could be due to lack of communication or lack of training. Further investigation could reveal an autocratic leader who doesn’t share information or that development and training for employees is not truly valued. Any finding that may give an indication of a poor culture should be tracked and summarized to aid in the assessment.
3. Evaluate aspects of culture assessment in each engagement
According to a study conducted by the UK Chartered Institute of Internal Auditors, observation and interviews are the most common method used to assess culture.
During each engagement, the auditors can directly observe and document behaviors, communication practices, leadership styles, etc. The audit team will already be working closely with employees and should be able to obtain direct feedback on culture within their respective areas. Specific cultural traits can be tracked in consecutive audits to help identify trends and patterns.
Any cultural red flags that may appear during an engagement should be documented, such as:
- Lack of response to initial documentation requests
- Slow or no response to follow-up questions
- Management not reacting to issues brought up during the audit
- Management punishing the team for reportable issues or tying compensation to audit results
- Excessive risk acceptance
- Findings are often repeat issues that were never addressed
Auditors should be mindful that subcultures across larger organizations may exist across different locations or departments, and especially if there have been acquisitions. Pockets of toxic culture can be detrimental to the organization as a whole.
4. Distribute questionnaires and surveys
In addition to interviews and observation, questionnaires and surveys can be very useful tools to gather a large amount of measurable feedback from a diverse group.
They should be constructed in a way that provides usable evidence for internal audit about culture and how it operates. Consider correlations between employee engagement levels and audit findings. Questions can be developed with management and the board to determine any specific feedback they would like to have.
5. Examine existing data and metrics
Human resources and compliance departments may already be tracking some relevant information that may indicate cultural issues or solidify other observations. HR should be able to provide turnover rates by department/location, results of exit interviews, employee complaints, etc. Auditors can also gather information from whistleblower hotlines, social media, or customer and vendor feedback.
6. Examine HR practices and incentives
Financial and non-financial incentive programs may exist that do not support the core values of an organization and, in some cases,may be extremely harmful. Internal auditors should examine whether compensation and performance metrics are aligned with the organization’s policies and values. Performance and talent management should encourage and reinforce desired behaviors.
Many successful organizations attribute their superior performance and accomplishments to their organization’s culture. As Toshiba and Wells Fargo have shown, a poor culture can cause tremendous damage to company reputation, profits, and its employees. It is incumbent upon the board to seek assurance that the appropriate culture is being displayed throughout the organization by directing their internal audit team to take a deeper look at culture.
About the Author
Justin Gwin, CIA, CPA, CISA, CRMA, CRISC, is a risk advisory services manager at Kaufman Rossin where he provides internal controls consulting and internal audit for businesses in a variety of industries. Justin also serves as president of the Institute of Internal Auditors (IIA) Miami chapter. He can be reached at [email protected]. | http://media.the-ceo-magazine.com/guest/how-audit-corporate-culture |
On March 5, HUD, AFGE Council 222 and NFFE Local 1450 entered into an agreement to settle the Fair Labor Standards Act case.
The settlement agreement covers three areas: Who will be covered by the FLSA in the future? What direction will be given to employees and supervisors about the FLSA? And what damages will employees receive for their misclassification?
Who will be covered by the FLSA?
Thousands of bargaining unit employees will be converted to FLSA "non-exempt" status, meaning that they will be covered by the FLSA. In 2005, we had 5276 exempt and 1057 non-exempt employees, for a total bargaining unit of 6333. That translated to 83% exempt, and 17% covered by FLSA.
Under this settlement agreement, we should have 1945 exempt and 4072 non-exempt, for a total unit of 6017, or 33% and 67%. Click here to go to the list of positions and grades that will be FLSA covered, in addition to ALL GS-10 and below positions.
We would have liked to see more employees covered by the FLSA, in particular Legal Honors Interns and IT specialists. But the agency remained unswayed by our arguments. As with all settlements, there is compromise, and neither side is completely satisfied.
HIHRTS will reflect your FLSA status. It will take a few months for the agency to completely correct their records, but please monitor your profile in HIHRTS to see if changes are made.
What direction will be given to employees and supervisors about the FLSA?
The agency and the Unions reached agreement on a notice to be sent to employees and supervisors. The notice makes it clear that employees covered by the FLSA are legally entitled to choose between overtime pay and compensatory time. Further, it outlines when employees are entitled to overtime for travel.
All managers should closely monitor the work hours and workloads of their employees to ensure that every employee´s workload can be accomplished within a forty (40) hour workweek, . . . .
What damages will employees receive?
The agreement covers two main types of damages−damages related to underpayment for approved overtime, and damages related to "suffer and permit" overtime. The Unions are responsible for administering a claims process. The Unions´ attorneys at Snider & Associates are administering the process on behalf of the Unions. The damages period is Fiscal Year 2001 through Fiscal Year 2007.
With regard to damages related to underpayment for approved overtime, the agency has provided Snider & Associates (the Firm) with payroll records from FY01 through FY07. The Firm is reviewing the records to identify covered employees whose overtime rate of pay was erroneously capped. They are also calculating the difference between overtime pay and compensatory time received. A portion of the $24 million settlement will be used to pay a portion of these damages. Employees will not need to file a claim for these damages, since the Firm has all of the information necessary for the Unions to direct HUD to pay employees these damages.
With regard to damages related to "suffer or permit" overtime, this concerns unpaid overtime where management knew, or should have known, the employee was working overtime. Hearings were held and evidence presented about such unpaid overtime for a few employees - GS-360 FHEO Investigators and employees at or below GS-10. The testimony was very powerful, and we believe that the hearings motivated Management to settle this action.
The vast majority of employees, however, have not had an opportunity to submit claims for "suffer or permit" overtime. The Firm is creating a web-based claims process. Employees will be notified via HUD´s email system when the claims process is open. The notice is being sent to all employees, regardless of current FLSA or bargaining unit status, since it is possible that the employee was a member of the class between 2001 and 2007. Only covered employees will be eligible to submit a claim for "suffer or permit" overtime, however.
Once notified, employees will be linked to the web site. They will be asked to provide their last name and last four digits of their social security number. With this information, the system will be able to determine if the employee is a class member, and for what years. If the employee is a class member (all bargaining unit employees who were or should have been covered by the FLSA during FY01-FY07), the system will provide the employee with his/her personalized claims form affidavit.
The claims form affidavit will include definitions of "suffer and permit" overtime and "compensation." It will then ask the employee for each year if the employee worked uncompensated overtime, and provide four options, which are currently set at: 1-8 hours, 9-16 hours, 17-24 hours, or 25+ hours.
AFGE Council 222 and NFFE 1450 kept the initial threshold very low (1-8 hours) because they want to maximize the number of employees who can benefit from this action. Employees should keep in mind that even if they only worked 15 minutes off the clock every pay period (or worked through lunch once a month), they would have worked 13 hours uncompensated overtime per year. As a general rule, AFGE Council 222 would not normally have made a claim over such small amounts of damages. But HUD refused to settle this case for almost five years, denying that any problem existed. After five years of battling this issue, we are encouraging employees to make even small claims.
At the end of the claims form affidavit, employees will be asked to affirm that their claim "is true and correct to the best of my knowledge, recollection and belief." We recognize that memories grow foggy after so many years. But as the example above shows, it´s easy to rack up several hours of uncompensated overtime. And don´t forget the claims that started this entire case - uncompensated travel on weekends, and before and after the workday. If an employee had four management reviews a year that required travel to and from the site all in one day, the chances are good that the employee was uncompensated for an additional 8 to 16 hours per year.
Furthermore, neither the Unions nor Management will investigate employee claims. Management will not provide your supervisors with copies of the claims, nor advise your supervisor that you are a claimant. Employees will be taken at their word. Only the Union retains the affidavit claims, although they must be preserved in case of an audit by an independent body.
This action cost AFGE Council 222 more than $60,000 in transcript fees and other costs. To reestablish our ability to pursue future actions, we are asking claimants to consider assigning a portion of their claim to the Unions. This option will appear on the affidavit claim form. Whether you choose to make such a contribution or not will have no impact on the processing of your claim.
The amount available for each claim will depend upon the number of claimants and the amount of their claims. The more claimants and the larger the claims, the less that will be available for each 1-8 hour increment claimed. Nonetheless, employees making claims should see a reasonable amount of compensation.
The Firm and the Unions will transmit a list of employees and amounts to be paid to HUD. Former employees will receive payment from the NFC. Current employees will receive a portion of their claim from HUD´s accounting center in Ft. Worth (that portion known as "liquidated damages"), and the remainder from the NFC. For liquidated damages payments, employees will be responsible for all tax payments - federal, state and local - although no FICA is due for these damages.
How will the Unions recognize employees who have already testified?
The settlement agreement does not directly address this issue, because the Unions are solely responsible for administering the claims process. But the Unions have agreed that employees who have already testified in this case need to be treated differently. For one, they and their claims have been scrutinized by Management, including their supervisors. Second, we believe that because of their willingness to step forward early and gather evidence to support their claims, Management was willing to settle the case.
Witnesses will receive two times their underpayment for approved overtime damages and comp time damages, and five times their "suffer or permit" claims, up to the maximum claim they submitted as witnesses. Keep in mind that the claims affidavit form currently sets forth as a maximum 25+ hours per year. Some of our witnesses testified and provided evidence of hundreds of uncompensated overtime hours.
Snider & Associates (www.sniderlaw.com) spent over four years without pay gathering evidence, preparing witnesses, presenting at hearings, writing motions and briefs, and participating in negotiations. They will receive compensation from the settlement - but four years is a long time to stand by us without compensation.
Our FLSA stewards helped track down witnesses and gather evidence needed to make a good case stronger. Special recognition should go to Shirley Green in Atlanta, who excelled at everything asked of her.
Our witnesses who went through at least four separate interviews in preparation for testifying, testified in person or by phone, and then were subjected to cross-examination by HUD´s attorneys. After all of that, their supervisors were usually called to testify to rebut their testimony.
Please look to our website for further information as it is available.
March 2007: The Council presses Management to agree to hearing dates for the damages hearings for GS-10 and below in all series. The Council has collected affidavits and data to support more than 100 claims to represent the class. No dates have been established.
Note: This case would not be possible but for the hard work and dedication of many people. If you are a claimant, thank you for your time and effort to gather the evidence to create a good claim. Thank you to the FLSA Stewards who are helping claimants gather evidence and present claims. Thanks especially to Snider & Associates, our attorneys in this case.
If your job series has not yet been considered for FLSA coverage and damages, please know that we continue to pursue a global settlement that will benefit all employees. Absent a global settlement, it may take years before we reach your series. Please continue to maintain evidence of your uncompensated overtime, including any evidence that Management knows of your working overtime (ie, email messages after hours to your supervisor, etc.). Claims go back to June 2000. Please keep your records!
The Council submits a counteroffer that totals approximately $40 million (in March, 2007).
February 2007: Management advises the Council of which GS-10s and below it will compensate pursuant to the December 2006 settlement. Of the 110 claimants, Management challenges only 9. Parties continue to work to reach agreement on the remaining 9. Compensation to other 101 should be received no later than April 23, 2007 payday.
The Parties submit their briefs regarding damages for GS-360 Fair Housing Investigators at grade 11 and above. Copy to be made available on our website.
The Council lobbies Congress regarding the need to resolve the FLSA case during the AFGE National Legislative Conference. For a copy of the FLSA issue paper, go to http://afgecouncil222.com/legislative.html and scroll down to 2007 Council 222 Issue Papers, "Failure to Implement the Fair Labor Standards Act."
January 2007: Management offers a settlement that maintains the $10 million for damages, includes an amount for attorneys fees, and sets aside additional funds to increase performance awards (to 3% for outstanding), and to increase the amounts set aside for transit, child-care and student loan subsidies. The settlement would require that employees submit claims for damages within 90 days, and that Management would be able to deny claims. The settlement continues to cover fewer employees than would be covered by the internal audit conducted by the Office of Administration in December 2005. The Council Executive Board rejects the settlement offer. Again, the amount doesn't take into account sufficient damages. Additionally, the claims process (involving more than 4000 employees) is unworkable in such a short amount of time, and the Council is concerned about the intimation that congressionally sanctioned programs such as child-care subsidies are being held hostage to the FLSA case. Management objects to this characterization. | http://afgecouncil222.tripod.com/G/flsa.html |
Given the good news this week that the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine may reduce the spread of coronavirus and the fact that one in five adults have had their first COVID-19 vaccination, many employers will be considering how to approach the issue of vaccines with their workforce. But can employers simply make vaccinations mandatory for staff? Can employers monitor who has had a vaccination? We set out below some key questions and answers on this topic.
Some high profile employers have already announced that they are going to insist that all staff have a vaccine before they are allowed to enter the workplace. For example, Charlie Mullins, founder and CEO of Pimlico Plumbers, has said that his business will introduce a "no jab, no job" policy.
There are a number of reasons why an employer might wish to introduce a mandatory vaccination policy:
- If staff are less at risk of suffering significantly from coronavirus themselves, this is a positive fact in itself.
- If transmission is reduced this has obvious health and safety benefits.
- It may assist with employee attendance rates and thereby promote business continuity.
- It may allow the employer to give comfort to other employees and also to clients and customers visiting offices or premises.
- It may assist employers who need staff to travel abroad.
- It could also lead, over time, to lower insurance premiums for both workplace insurance, travel insurance and health insurance.
Can we require all of our employees to be vaccinated against COVID-19?
No, generally not. Employers cannot force employees to have a COVID-19 vaccination. Employers are responsible for ensuring the health and safety of their employees, as far as reasonably practicable. However, this would not justify insisting upon employees having vaccinations in most cases. Being vaccinated requires consent and at present there is no legislation that can force an individual to be vaccinated. In fact, the Public Health (Control of Disease) Act 1984 specifically states that the public should not be compelled to undergo any mandatory medical treatment, including vaccinations. The government has confirmed that the COVID-19 vaccine will not be mandatory, even for frontline workers.
In light of the above, and because there are many less intrusive methods that employers can deploy to keep their business running and to keep their employees as safe as reasonably possible, it is unlikely that a mandatory policy of vaccination would be a reasonable or lawful instruction to give to all staff. If employees were disciplined or dismissed for a failure to comply with such an instruction, their employer would risk unfair dismissal and/or discrimination claims (see more below).
There may be some sectors and/or staff who work in situations where a vaccine is more necessary, such as in the care sector. An instruction to have a vaccine in such circumstances may be much more justifiable than it would be for office workers. Therefore the reason for the requirement needs to be considered carefully on a case by case basis. A flexible and nuanced approach will reduce the risk of employment claims.
Along with the legal risks, having a blanket policy raises practical problems. It is currently unclear when certain parts of the workforce will be able to access COVID-19 vaccinations. There are also some people who are advised not to have the COVID-19 vaccination (e.g. pregnant women). It may not be practicable to insist on your whole workforce having the vaccination for some time, if ever.
Can we prevent our employees returning to the workplace until they have been vaccinated?
Yes, in some cases a less draconian approach than a blanket policy of vaccinations may be to say that employees must continue to work from home until they are vaccinated. This is a possible option where employees can effectively work from home and the period is finite. If, however, employees cannot work from home, and the employer asks them to remain at home, they will need to consider paying employees full pay. It will carry significant risk to ask them to take unpaid leave for anything other than a very short period.
Again, this approach does create legal risk and practical difficulties given the uncertain length of time before vaccinations are available to all (particularly younger staff) and the inherent discrimination risks.
What discrimination risks do we face if we take a firm line on staff having vaccinations?
It is likely that at least some of the workforce will be unable or unwilling to have the vaccine. In particular:
- The government’s current advice is that pregnant women should not routinely be vaccinated. The advice to breastfeeding mothers and those planning to get pregnant is that they may wish to wait to get their vaccinations until after their pregnancy or until they have finished breastfeeding.
- Those with a known history of reacting to any specific ingredients of the COVID-19 vaccines have also been advised not to have it.
- More generally, the government’s order of priority for vaccinating means that much of the younger population will not be eligible to have the vaccine for some time, due to their age.
Aside from those advised not to have the vaccine, there are also numerous reasons why an individual may not want to be vaccinated, including religious reasons or a "belief" that the vaccine exposes them to risk.
Depending on the facts and circumstances, all of these reasons for not being vaccinated may constitute "protected characteristics" under the Equality Act 2010 (pregnancy, disability, religion and age). It is possible that an “anti-vaccination” belief may merit legal protection as a philosophical belief in the UK, although this has not been tested.
If employees are subjected to any detriment or less favourable treatment in the workplace due to their inability or unwillingness to be vaccinated, this could lead to the employer facing claims of unlawful discrimination. Dismissal, disciplinary action, detrimental role changes, refusal to allow employees to return to the office or the imposition of unpaid leave could all constitute discrimination.
A blanket policy requiring vaccinations would not constitute direct discrimination, but could be indirectly discriminatory against those who hold protected characteristics. This means that employers would need to justify this policy as a proportionate means of achieving a legitimate aim. The aims set out at the top of this article (such as ensuring the health and safety of the workforce and maximising the number of employees who can attend the workplace) could be deemed to be "legitimate" aims. However, a Tribunal would then consider if those aims were proportionate. This would include an analysis of whether there are less discriminatory means of achieving the same aim. There are likely to be other less intrusive methods of achieving these aims, for example, continuing a working from home approach. It may be difficult to demonstrate that a blanket policy, which applies irrespective of role and risk, is proportionate.
Employers are under a duty to make reasonable adjustments for disadvantaged disabled employees. This duty could potentially cover disapplication of a mandatory vaccine policy for a certain employee or changing a role to strip out parts which make the vaccine a requirement e.g. a global travel requirement.
Is there a personal injury angle?
Yes. All vaccines risk side effects. If an employee suffered side effects as a result of the vaccine that their employer had insisted upon, that employee may have grounds to bring a personal injury claim against the employer.
Can we legitimately encourage employees to have the vaccine?
Yes.
Where an organisation or a particular role does not objectively justify the need to insist on vaccination, employers may do better to actively encourage their workforce to have the vaccine when it becomes available to them. This could be done by talking to staff about the vaccine, sharing the benefits of getting vaccinated and offering paid time off to attend a vaccination appointment.
The ACAS guidance on working safely during coronavirus says that employers should support staff in getting the vaccine but cannot force them to be vaccinated.
Do we need to consult staff about our proposals with regard to vaccines?
Yes, if measures are being introduced.
Employers must consult on matters relating to the health and safety of employees. In particular, consultation is required in relation to the introduction of any measures at the workplace which may substantially affect the health and safety of the employees. Therefore, introducing any rules on vaccinations will necessitate employee consultation.
The employer’s health and safety policy may specify how the employer will engage with employees, so this should be considered first. Consultation may be required with trade union appointed health and safety representatives, employee representatives elected by the employees, the employees themselves, or with a combination of these, depending on the circumstances.
Can we gather evidence of and keep a record of employees who have been vaccinated?
Yes, potentially you can do so but we recommend that giving this information is voluntary in most cases. Employers must comply with their data protection obligations in relation to the data collected and should be aware that simply asking the question increases the risk of discrimination claims.
In order to justify evidence gathering, employers must first establish a clear rationale for doing so. Perhaps this may be where it is required for travel reasons, or for safety reasons where staff are interacting with vulnerable people. It may be where an employer is insisting employees have the vaccination before returning to the office.
Merely asking the question “have you been vaccinated?” increases the risk of discrimination claims. Employees may disclose personal information when answering this question to explain why they have not been vaccinated. Once in receipt of this new information, the employer may be under a duty to take action, such as making reasonable adjustments in respect of a previously unknown disability. Consequently, an employee could claim that any subsequent action taken by their employer was due to the information disclosed. For example, an employee selected for redundancy after telling her employer that she is in the early stages of pregnancy may claim her selection was due to her impending maternity.
It is unlawful to ask potential recruits about their health prior to offering them a role, other than for prescribed reasons. In many cases, questioning an individual’s vaccination status during recruitment would be unlawful. It is also likely to result in disclosure of other personal information, which exposes the would-be employer to potential discrimination claims if the individual is not recruited.
Gathering and holding data on vaccinations has data protection consequences. Data about whether someone has had the vaccination constitutes special category personal data (previously known as sensitive personal data) under the data protection legislation. Employers should firstly undertake a data protection impact assessment in order to consider how to minimise the data protection risks of holding this kind of employee personal data. Employers will need to identify appropriate lawful bases for processing such data. In addition, employers need to ensure appropriate policy documents and additional safeguards are in place to make sure the data is processed in a fair, lawful and transparent manner. Privacy notices, and records of processing will need to be updated to take account of this data. Storage and retention arrangements will also need to be reviewed to take into account the particularly sensitive nature of the data that employers may receive when they ask employees about vaccinations.
Does the advent of the vaccination mean that we can remove COVID-secure measures in the workplace?
No. For the time being employers will need to continue to follow the government’s industry specific COVID-secure workplace guidance until it is withdrawn. It is unlikely that all staff will have the vaccine and even if they do, vaccines are not 100% effective. Although there is some evidence that the AstraZeneca vaccine reduces the rate of spread of the virus, it is still unclear how the other vaccines will affect transmission rates. Employers should therefore maintain COVID-secure measures, such as screens, social distancing and large-scale working from home where possible.
With third parties, contractors, customers and suppliers coming on site, the COVID-secure measures will be as important as ever. | https://www.stevens-bolton.com/site/insights/articles/covid19-vaccinations-key-issues-for-employers |
Achieved Status is a position in a social structure that has been attained by the individual as a result of their individual abilities, work and personal involvements. Achieved status is a concept developed by the anthropologist Ralph Linton. Social mobility is much more frequent in countries that believe in achieved status. It is commonly perceived that ascribed status is irreversible while achieved status is reversible. Achieved status is the term used to denote a social position a person acquires on merit. Sociologists use both the concepts of class and social status to describe the systems of social stratification. We can come accross many examples of achieved status among Nobel Laureates.
The Master Status, whether ascribed status or achieved status, overshadows all other social positions of status. Achieved status denotes a social position that a person can acquire on the basis of merit. Achieved status is a position that is earned or chosen. Ascribed Status is a status that is automatically transmitted to an individual at birth or at a particular time in the life cycle. Cecilia L. Ridgeway demonstrates how the conferral of status inevitably contributes to differing life outcomes for individuals, with impacts on pay, wealth creation, and health and wellbeing.
In an open class ideology system, people are ranked by achieved status, whereas in a closed class society, people are ranked by ascribed status. In modern western Europe, status depends on individual educational and professional attainment, meaning that people are ranked based on achieved status. In an open class ideology system, the hierarchical social status of a person is achieved through their effort.
Achieved status is a position gained based on merit or achievement, as used in an open class ideology system. While occupational statuses are generally achieved, often in a competitive process, one can also achieve more personal statuses, for example, married is an achieved status.
Researchers have found that having leaders or fellow employees in the group with a higher status, or higher achieved status, may lead to a lowered group performance on tasks, and this may lead to a reduction in productivity. Social status is a position in a social structure regulated by norms and usually ranked according to power and prestige. Social status differs from social class in that it is a measure of a person's social standing or social honour in a community. Individuals who share the same social class may have very divergent status.
Ascribed Status and
Achieved Status
Eleanor Gil-Kashiwabara. Edited by: Janet M. Bennett.
In each society and/or cultural group, people are viewed as having an ascribed status or an achieved status. In the purest form, ascribed status is a status that an individual is born with and can’t control, such as race.
Achieved status is an earned status that usually reflects an individual’s effort. It is a status that is acquired, such as becoming a doctor or an elected official. This entry provides examples of how achieved status and ascribed statuses might influence each other and vary by circumstance, including the complexities related to navigating these social positions.
The Camouflage Effect: Separating Achieved Status and Unearned Privilege in Organizations - Ashleigh Shelby Rosette, Leigh Thompson. Abstract: In many organizational settings, status hierarchies result in the conferral of privileges that are based on achievement. However, in the same settings, status may result in the bestowal of privileges that are unearned. We argue that these unearned privileges are often awarded based on ascribed status characteristics, but are perceived to be achieved status.
Effects of Achieved Status of Leader on Productivity of Groups - Doyle, Wayne J.
This study examined the relationship between the achieved status of the leader and productivity in group problem solving. The report studies the effects that the achieved status of the principal has on the productivity of a heierarchically differenitiated group when all of the group members have an equal share in making decisions.
Abstract: This study examined the relationship between the achieved status of the leader and productivity in group problem solving of 27 experimental groups, which consisted of the principal and three teachers, with nine of the principals having high achieved status, nine moderate achieved status, and nine low achieved status. Groups having principals with high achieved status were the least productive in the analyzing phase. The results indicate that high achieved status in a leader has dysfunctional, as well as functional consequences.
A Clarification
of “Ascribed Status’and “Achieved Status”
Irving S. Foladare. | http://sociologyindex.com/achieved_status.htm |
As a regular reader of this blog, you know that IQ and similar measures are determined by a number of factors, and for most “normal” (modal?) individuals, one’s heritage (genes) is rarely important. Putting it another way, variation across individuals in IQ and other measures have been shown again and again to be determined by things like home environment, diet and nutrition, and even immediate social context. Here’s another finding supporting this:
Our cognitive abilities and decision-making skills can be dramatically hindered in social settings where we feel that we are being ranked or assigned a status level, such as classrooms and work environments, according to new findings from a team of researchers from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) and four other institutions.
The study is called Implicit signals in small group settings and their impact on the expression of cognitive capacity and associated brain responses and here’s the abstract:
Measures of intelligence, when broadcast, serve as salient signals of social status, which may be used to unjustly reinforce low-status stereotypes about out-groups’ cultural norms. Herein, we investigate neurobehavioural signals manifest in small (n = 5) groups using functional magnetic resonance imaging and a ‘ranked group IQ task’ where implicit signals of social status are broadcast and differentiate individuals based on their expression of cognitive capacity. We report an initial overall decrease in the expression of cognitive capacity in the small group setting. However, the environment of the ‘ranked group IQ task’ eventually stratifies the population into two groups (‘high performers’, HP and ‘low performers’, LP) identifiable based on changes in estimated intelligence quotient and brain responses in the amygdala and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex. In addition, we demonstrate signals in the nucleus accumbens consistent with prediction errors in expected changes in status regardless of group membership. Our results suggest that individuals express diminished cognitive capacity in small groups, an effect that is exacerbated by perceived lower status within the group and correlated with specific neurobehavioural responses. The impact these reactions have on intergroup divisions and conflict resolution requires further investigation, but suggests that low-status groups may develop diminished capacity to mitigate conflict using non-violent means.
There are two (main) interesting things about this study. First, as already mentioned, it shows that intelligence is an epiphenomenon of brain function in a broader context, including a social or cultural context. This is not a surprise considering that the intelligence-related stuff that happens in the brain occur in the parts of the brain that are only vaguely coded for by genetics and thus can’t really carry a heritable signal over generations. Second, and most interesting, is that what we call “intelligence” may (often) be a socio-cultural expression, or signal. This, measuring intelligence differences among people under the assumption that IQ is inherited would be like making a similar assumption while measuring happiness among people, but the people you are observing are all actors playing different roles in different plays. You are not measuring what is there. You are measuring what is being demonstrated.
Yet another nail in the coffin for the concept that intelligence is stable, inherited, and unchangeable. | https://gregladen.com/blog/2012/01/25/iq-varies-with-context/ |
(1) Caste :
Caste can be defined as a hereditary intermarrying group which determines the individual‘s status in the social stratification by his occupation, etc. e.g. Brahmin has the highest place in the social stratification of castes in India.
(2) Class :
Social stratification is also based on Class. Class is a status group and in only society the social status of one group always differs from that of another. Class is also a person‘s economic position in a society. However, as per Weber, Class is not a supreme factor in stratification. He noted that how Managers of corporations or industries control firms they do not own.
(3) Status :
Status is a person‘s prestige, social honour, or popularity in a society. Social stratification is also based on status of a person. Weber noted that political power was not rooted in capital value society, but also in one‘s individual status. Poets or saints can possess immense influence on society with often little economic growth.
(4) Power :
A person‘s ability to get their way despite the resistance of others. For example, individuals in state jobs may hold little property or status but they still hold immense power. | https://www.info4mystery.com/2016/05/types-of-social-stratification.html |
The term meritocracy arose in socialist circles in the 1950s as a derisive term for a new system of class oppression. The first known use of the term is by Alan Fox in the journal Socialist Commentary of May 1956. Fox writes:
[Social stratification] will remain as long as we assume it to be a law of nature that those of higher occupational status must not only enjoy markedly superior education as well but also, by right and necessity, have a higher income in the bargain. As long as that assumption remains—as long as violation of it are regarded as grotesque paradoxes—then so long will our society be divisible into the blessed and the unblessed—those who get the best of everything, and those who get the poorest and the least. This way lies the “meritocracy”; the society in which the gifted, the smart, the energetic, the ambitious and the ruthless are carefully sifted out and helped towards their destined positions of dominance, where they proceed not only to enjoy the fulfillment of exercising their natural endowment but also to receive a fat bonus thrown in for good measure.
This is not enough. Merely to devise bigger and better “sieves” (“equality of opportunity”) to help the clever boys get to the top and then pile rewards on them when they get there is the vision of a certain brand of New Conservatism; it has never been the vision of socialism.
(I include this lengthy quotation because copies of the original source are difficult to find—as far as I know, it hasn’t been digitized—and the brief quotation in the Oxford English Dictionary doesn’t fully convey the context or tone of its use.)
The term made its way into mainstream discourse via the publication of Michael Young’s 1958 The Rise of the Meritocracy, 1870–2033: The New Elite of Our Social Revolution. Young’s book is a satirical look at 1950s British society from the perspective of someone writing from the distant perspective of the year 2034. Young writes:
Before the meritocracy was fully established, age-stratification as a substitute for the hereditary order may have been necessary for the sake of social stability.
Young is basically echoing Fox’s sentiment that the meritocracy is simply a replacement of one class of bosses with another. In this case, the hereditary rulers of Britain had been replaced by a seniority system (“age-stratification”), which, in the 1950s, was being replaced by one based on perceived merit. Young’s book made something of a splash, and was much commented upon in the mainstream press upon its publication.
Young later claimed to have coined the term, and he may have used it without conscious awareness that it was already in use. And many writers have followed suit, crediting Young with coining the term. But he did not—as any quick look at the OED, which contains the Fox citation from two years earlier, would confirm. Young was simply using a term that was already in use by those discussing the problems of social and economic stratification.
Meritocracy was originally derisive, not satirical, although Young’s book is definitely satire. But it is certainly ironic that twenty-first century capitalism has adopted this socialist slur as justification for its existence.
Fox, Alan. “Class and Equality.” Socialist Commentary. May 1956, 13.
Oxford English Dictionary, third edition. September 2001. s. v. meritocracy, n.
Young, Michael. The Rise of the Meritocracy, 1870–2033: The New Elite of Our Social Revolution. New York: Random House, 1959, 71–72. (Published in Britain by Thames and Hudson the previous year.)
Zimmer, Ben. “A ‘Meritocracy’ Is Not What People Think It Is.” The Atlantic. 14 March 2019. | http://www.wordorigins.org/index.php/site/comments/meritocracy/ |
The term meritocracy arose in socialist circles in the 1950s as a derisive term for a new system of class oppression. The first known use of the term is by Alan Fox in the journal Socialist Commentary of May 1956. Fox writes:
[Social stratification] will remain as long as we assume it to be a law of nature that those of higher occupational status must not only enjoy markedly superior education as well but also, by right and necessity, have a higher income in the bargain. As long as that assumption remains—as long as violation of it are regarded as grotesque paradoxes—then so long will our society be divisible into the blessed and the unblessed—those who get the best of everything, and those who get the poorest and the least. This way lies the “meritocracy”; the society in which the gifted, the smart, the energetic, the ambitious and the ruthless are carefully sifted out and helped towards their destined positions of dominance, where they proceed not only to enjoy the fulfillment of exercising their natural endowment but also to receive a fat bonus thrown in for good measure.
This is not enough. Merely to devise bigger and better “sieves” (“equality of opportunity”) to help the clever boys get to the top and then pile rewards on them when they get there is the vision of a certain brand of New Conservatism; it has never been the vision of socialism.
(I include this lengthy quotation because copies of the original source are difficult to find—as far as I know, it hasn’t been digitized—and the brief quotation in the Oxford English Dictionary doesn’t fully convey the context or tone of its use.)
The term made its way into mainstream discourse via the publication of Michael Young’s 1958 The Rise of the Meritocracy, 1870–2033: The New Elite of Our Social Revolution. Young’s book is a satirical look at 1950s British society from the perspective of someone writing from the distant perspective of the year 2034. Young writes:
Before the meritocracy was fully established, age-stratification as a substitute for the hereditary order may have been necessary for the sake of social stability.
Young is basically echoing Fox’s sentiment that the meritocracy is simply a replacement of one class of bosses with another. In this case, the hereditary rulers of Britain had been replaced by a seniority system (“age-stratification”), which, in the 1950s, was being replaced by one based on perceived merit. Young’s book made something of a splash, and was much commented upon in the mainstream press upon its publication.
Young later claimed to have coined the term, and he may have used it without conscious awareness that it was already in use. And many writers have followed suit, crediting Young with coining the term. But he did not—as any quick look at the OED, which contains the Fox citation from two years earlier, would confirm. Young was simply using a term that was already in use by those discussing the problems of social and economic stratification.
Meritocracy was originally derisive, not satirical, although Young’s book is definitely satire. But it is certainly ironic that twenty-first century capitalism has adopted this socialist slur as justification for its existence.
Fox, Alan. “Class and Equality.” Socialist Commentary. May 1956, 13.
Oxford English Dictionary, third edition. September 2001. s. v. meritocracy, n.
Young, Michael. The Rise of the Meritocracy, 1870–2033: The New Elite of Our Social Revolution. New York: Random House, 1959, 71–72. (Published in Britain by Thames and Hudson the previous year.)
Zimmer, Ben. “A ‘Meritocracy’ Is Not What People Think It Is.” The Atlantic. 14 March 2019. | http://www.wordorigins.org/index.php/site/comments/meritocracy/ |
The subject associated with paper is “Social class autobiography”. The aim of the task is to give characteristic towards the notion of social class within the society, social course place. It is crucial to ascertain own social course and examine very own class place and back ground, and to study the nature, characteristic and need for the social class.
The character and importance of social class
When identifying the social structure associated with the culture it is crucial to consider that any concept, ideas and ways of its division into strata, classes or groups are conditional. Society itself just isn't divided in to classes or strata, and such a division may be the outcome of social construction, or in other words, analysis and interpretation of financial and social conditions of life of men and women and society.
Generally speaking, the U.S. has always considered their state clear of class and inequality. In the usa, individuals did not agree with European theories of classes, with a glance at culture as a hierarchy of classes, which predetermine all facets of peoples existence. There became popular the theory associated with stratum, based on which culture is a “multistage continuous gradation of stairs”, where in fact the host to guy isn't based on manufacturing, as in Marxism, but the distribution facets including education degree, earnings, the current presence of the property. Also it is very important that people tend to be more or less absolve to move from stratum to stratum in accordance with their personal abilities and efforts. (Kingston, 200, p.5)
Social course can be defined as a well balanced big group in the culture, community, with approximate equality in income, occupation and lifestyle, havesimilar values, passions and behavior.
Therefore, social class in U.S. is a group of people who have similar social status, amount of material well-being, training and other indicators. Even though the division into social classes is pretty conditional, however, actually, no body doubts the division of this society to different course groups. There are numerous types of the U.S. division of society into classes. The most basic of those is a division of people into “rich”, “medium” and “poor”, nevertheless the the truth is needless to say way more complicated.
Establishing the social class position
A person’s position in society, his relationship along with other individuals, habits, customs, thinking, passions are mostly linked to the place which he occupies in social community. The phenomenon of social place is the topic of works of several sociologists for the past and present. Numerous studies and observations associated with behavior of individuals in social teams reveal that individuals with similar or similar status have closer associates and closer relationships with one another. People, who are surrounded by equal by the status individuals, feel much more comfortable, they don't have emotions of inferiority or vice versa, of superiority. Hence, individuals start, unconsciously or consciously, to find one of the social environment folks of the equal status and build on this foundation social relations. Also, many research reports have shown that folks with comparable or equal status, usually, have similar attitudes and orientations, choices, governmental priorities, and several other the different parts of thinking and perspective.
In this regard, you will need to define the social place and social status, since they represent a completely different system of social relations and also a completely different content. To determine the variations in a particular social community (social class) is important to examine the structural parameters that constitute the fundamental structural faculties of modern society.
According to the dining table “exactly how course works”, the main parameters are: occupation, training, income and wealth. (nytimes.com)
The above mentioned parameters could be described both a separate individual also to every social group. The totality of the parameters will determine the place or position of an individual or group in social structure.
Establishing and analyzing the social course identification and class consciousness
According towards the table in nyc days, I'm able to classify myself and my children to your greater middle-income group. When developing my position I also used information regarding my moms and dads because I am 21 years of age and am a college student. Obviously now we connect my place in society and social course with my family, because i'm not yet 25 and I also am not completely independent and don’t have actually independent place, correspondingly. Only if we complete my studies and can have a stable work and stable earnings, I will be able to have my very own social status.
Owned by a certain social class have great influence on the behavior and considering people, significantly more than other areas of social life. First, representatives for the upper center and upper classes have more intangible benefits. Kids will study at prestigious universities, and will probably show greater results than kids of moms and dads with perhaps not high social position. Next, the active life expectancy of wealthy individuals is greater than associated with poor, because they have actually better life conditions and think more about their own health. Individuals belonging to greater middle and upper course have the opportunity to eat well, they are doing sports and often have getaways; also they've health insurance and use of sanitation (children’s camp, spa). 3rd, individuals with a top income have a better satisfaction from life, as belonging to a specific social course has a direct effect on lifestyle, regarding number and quality of use of goods and services. According to the research, families with low earnings have significantly more sparetime they invest viewing television not playing activities, compared with the well-off families. Additionally, take out, casino chips, frozen pizza and hamburgers in many cases are contained in the menu of families with low earnings. (Hamilton, 2010)
If to talk about and my children, I consider myself to be center and top middle income. For this reason it's important to talk about the center course place in society.
Middle-income group is some social strata, occupying a middle place between upper and low classes in the system of social stratification. This class is characterized by heterogeneous situation of conflicting passions, consciousness and governmental behavior. (Hamilton, 2010)
Since the main social group, the middle course in developed countries (and in the united states) has a number of essential social functions. Basic included in this is the social function of the stabilizer: having achieved a particular place in the social structure of culture, the center class often keep up with the current state system. It is crucial to point out that the middle-income group plays a number one role within the procedures of social flexibility, and in addition it reinforces the present social purchase, protecting it from social cataclysms. In addition to the stabilizing function, the center class plays a crucial role in other social procedures. In the sphere of financial relations center and top classes play the role of financial donors, since these folks are not merely producers of a large the main income regarding the culture, but additionally are major customers, investors and taxpayers. Inside social sphere the middle course is a cultural integrator – the guardian and disseminator of values, norms, traditions and laws associated with the culture.
The center course, which I fit in with, is the bearer for the traditional household values, that, however, is combined with a consider equality of opportunity between gents and ladies inside academic, expert, social spheres of life. This course is a mainstay of modern society, its traditions, norms and knowledge. The middle class just take active position within the political life regarding the country, being the guarantee of evolutionary social development, the development and functioning associated with the civil society.
Functions cited:
Hamilton A. “Social class in America”. In Gilbert D. The American Class construction in a day and age of Growing Inequality. Pine Forge Press, 2010
“just how course works”. Interactive pictures. The Newest York Times. nytimes.com
Kingston P. W. The Classless Community. Stanford (Ca.), 2000. P. 5.
Strasser H. “Stratum and course formation: Principles for the concept of course inequality”. The Canadian Journal of Sociology, 1980. | https://essayhub.net/essays/social-class-autobiography |
Network Security Engineer is responsible for assisting with operational activities of the network security policy management solution while participating in a diverse and agile Cyber Security team and executing on specialized projects with minimal oversight. As a member of the Architecture & Engineering team you will be responsible for building relationships with business and operational units, as well as analysts and engineers across the organization, and for promoting security principles and practices. Also, you will learn to identify, evaluate, and document cyber security risk in all areas of the enterprise.
Duties and Responsibilities
plan, design, optimize, implement, audit, and troubleshoot the network security system to improve the efficiency of the organization
responsible to protect the network from threats and bugs that could attack the system and also from the existing dangers
make sure that the networking systems can bounce back or withstand any type of mishaps such as natural disasters and hacker attacks
plan and implement security measures to protect the system from cyber attacks, hacking attacks, intrusion, infiltration, and natural disasters
Planning, engineering, and monitoring the security arrangements for the protection of the network systems.
Identifying, monitoring, and defining the requirements of the overall security of the system.
Configuring and implementing intrusion detection systems and firewalls.
Plan, design, install, configure and maintain multi-vendor firewalls
Supervising the configuration and installation of new software and hardware
Work on pre sales activities of solution development, presentation and bid response
Build an RFP on Network security opportunities
Prepare HLD, LLD and As-built documentation
Prepare PAT and ATP document and perform acceptance testing
Deliver onsite training to clients
Provide post execution support to clients
Skills and Experience
Proven work experience as a network security engineer or information security engineer
Experience in creating and maintaining security systems
Thorough understanding of the latest technologies, security principles, and protocols.
Complete command on dealing with security systems, intrusion detection systems, firewalls, anti-virus software, log management, authentication systems, content filtering, etc
Understanding of the web-related terminologies and software such as web applications, web related protocols, service-oriented architectures, and web services
Ability to work under pressure and stressful scenarios.
Network engineer certifications such as CCNP Security (Cisco Certified Network Professional Security), CEH (Certified Ethical Hacker), CISSP (Certified Information Systems Security Professional), and GIAC Security Certifications. | https://www.ethiojobs.net/display-job/352822/Network-Security-Engineer.html |
Five ways to integrate DevSecOps principles into your digital teams03/03/2021
As the coronavirus pandemic continues to disrupt global health, economic, political and social systems, there's another unseen threat rising in the digital space: the risk of cyberattacks that prey on our increased reliance on digital tools and remote operations. A heightened dependency on digital infrastructure raises the cost of failure and during the pandemic, cybercrime has risen by more than 31%.
This is why we want to talk about DevSecOps - a burgeoning discipline that injects security into the DevOps process, providing a structural assurance that code and assets will be designed with security in mind and not delivered at the end of delivery cycles.
As part of a recent live roundtable event, we invited the following DevOps and Security professionals to share their top tips for introducing a security first approach to digital team management:
Dave Edwards, Applications Director at AJ Gallagher
Neveen Elasar, Platform Engineer at Sparta Global
Osama Abu Oun, Cybersecurity Trainer at Sparta Global
- Think security first.
“I would argue it should be SecDevOps! Security should be the first consideration – before anyone starts developing new projects or programmes,” Dave Edwards.
Technical teams are tasked with continuous innovation where developing and improving systems faster is often the measure of success, but security cannot be seen as a drag to delivery. It is essential to be fast and efficient, but security cannot be where shortcuts are taken.
Taking pre-emptive measures and preparing for the worst-case scenario is a necessary security process. The COVID-19 pandemic and remote working rush has certainly solidified this notion for technical business leaders such as Dave.
“We had to move our entire workforce to remote working in the space of one weekend and security certainly could have been better. I mean that in the sense that our individuals and devices weren’t set up for remote working with immediate effect and for the length of time we have experienced. It took time to rectify this and if I could go back, I would have ensured that people and processes were in place for this scenario and that everything was standalone secure from the outset”.
- Think like a hacker
“For someone to cause havoc – they only need one way in”, Osama Abu Oun.
Fully protecting a company’s data is no easy task. Dan Chenok, a former chairman of the Information Security and Privacy Advisory Board for the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology, has asserted: “The only way to 100% protect yourself from attacks is to turn off your computers.”
Osama argues that there are steps we can take; “organisations want to reduce the risk of external hacking attacks, they need to understand the hacker mindset, comprehend the expertise of successful hackers and anticipate and confront attacks.” Companies such as Facebook Inc. and Microsoft Corp have hired hackers, but research suggests that hackers’ attacks typically follow a predictable pattern: identifying vulnerabilities; scanning and testing; gaining access; and maintaining access. Align your own security process to these steps and beat the hacker threat before it materialises.
- Tool up!
Securing a network can seem overwhelming and rolling out cybersecurity responsibilities to all teams – in the way that DevSecOps encourages as a discipline - can be complicated. However, network security tools can assist greatly in securing your monitoring IT environment.
Platform Engineer Neveen Elasar who is currently working with one of the UK’s leading insurance providers, now works in the Cloud. This, Neveen points out, provides just another layer of protection across the IT environment; “With working in the Cloud, security of your hardware and software can be managed by your cloud provider too and it’s so important that security like this is continuous and consistent, never an afterthought.
Scanning tools can also be used to identify vulnerabilities in infrastructure and code early on – giving teams the opportunity to fix bugs and improve security in areas that could causer larger and more damaging issues in the future.
- It has to be a team effort
To truly integrate DevSecOps principles into your team and organisation, everything must be treated as vulnerable and therefore can be made more secure. Anything that is built or deployed must be done so in a secure manner.
While large organisations are likely to have expert cybersecurity professionals operating internally, its no longer the sole priority of IT security teams to protect a businesses IT infrastructure.
Security is ubiquitous – having experts is important but they need to spread their knowledge. Organisations should consider forming a community of practice where all teams outside of the traditional scope of security can learn best practice from their peers.
- Implement tools incrementally – make big changes, but not all at once
In an ideal world, developers are also security engineers and will build appropriate risk-mitigation features into their software applications, as well as follow appropriate procedures and apply policies to mitigate potential risk. This is the difference between a DevOps led team and one which integrate DevSecOps, but the change cannot be rushed.
As important as it is to make immediate moves towards operating and maintaining a secure IT infrastructure, team-wide shifts in process and the introduction of new tools cannot all be done at once. Tools should be implemented incrementally to ensure adoption and validate that security risks are being addressed. | https://www.spartaglobal.com/media/five-ways-to-integrate-devsecops-principles-into-your-digital-teams-263088/ |
Privacy & Security Issues at Work Place – Office
Every organisation locally or internationally have their set of ethics to be followed in the business activities, and its the prime duty of the organisation staff to adhere to the rules and regulation while at work. Though code of ethics is followed, there are circumstances where issues are to arise. Obligations to such issues are not mentioned in the code of ethics. Such ethical issues would be as follows:
CORPS Private Limited is a leading company in retail businesses and it is well-known in the region because of its good reputation. They started facing many unexpected issues regarding their computer systems since last month. As a result of this, they created a special group having many well qualified Business Analysts and IT Professionals to investigate and find out the issues in their systems efficiently. After discussing with the company System Administrators and other operative management staff, they found out that their systems are facing some severe security threats which may lead to the system crash. In this case how possibly could system security been considered as a social issue? Social issues could be defined issues interrelated have an impact of a group, a community or an organisation. In this case, CORPS being a leading retail business company and engages in a number of transaction per day, would be definitely affected by a system efficiency. Because, the backbone of the organisation is the system, if that fails, then the entire days proceedings comes to a standstill. As a solution, according to the BCS code conduct, section 2 Duty to Relevant Authority, the failure of the system could be reported to the technical administers of the organisation. Therefore ;System Administrators main work is to monitor the processing activity, tune the system and explain all the past activities that have happened during the last three months to the team. SO, if the team reports to the systems administrator of CORPS the failure is fixed.
There can be several definitions to explain the term “Ethical Issue”. The simplest would be , the perception of the activity. Consequence theory explains this clearly(G.Johnson, computer ethics , 2002). The” behaviour or the conduct of a person towards an activity can be argued right or wrong based on his perception”. For example; employees of an organisation visiting social networks like Facebook, Twitter, Myspace or Skype . This may be against the code of ethics of that particular organisation where, visiting social blogs whilst working would be wrong. But what if the employee argues saying, the visit was not during work hours, but after his work hours. Where he had completed his responsibility has an employee and was gaining some entertainment. In the employees perspective this arguement would be correct. But in the company’s side, they would argue saying, why does the employee have to exploit company resources and gain entertainment. Also, he might finish his cores and log in, but there may be other where secretly would gain access to social sites. In this case, he is leading by example. So the best solution to this would be to block social websites during working hours. Thereby all problems are solved in both view points.
Today the internet has become the main source of globalisation. It has become the most indispensable utensil for every human being around the world to carry out many different activities. The expansion of globalisation, has made many business engage into eBusiness , like e-commerce & eBusiness. Though these activites help in gaining more sales volume, what is the assurance of security of data involved? The problem arises in the form of hackers(intruders who gain unauthorised access to company files through networks). In e-business, customers transact with organisations through interconnected networks. During hacktivism process, first a hacker chooses a network to attack. It is likely to be a specific interest of the hacker which may benefits the hacker or the hacker may port scan a network to determine its vulnerability towards the attacks. Port is an opening through which the computer receives data via the network. Open ports carry risks and will give easy access to a hacker or a cracker to access the system. Then the hacker will visit the target in some way and finds out vital information that will help them access the system. In this stage the hackers get desired results from Social Engineering method. Beside that hackers also use a technique called Dumpster Diving, where they find documents that users have thrown away. This information will help them gain access to the network.
In this case, the law which has been violated would be Data Protection Act of 1998. According to (Bott, Professional Issues in Information technology, 2006) “personal data shall be obtained only for one or more specific and lawfull purposes, and shall not be further processed in any manner incompatible with that purpose or purposes”. In this case, the data had been processed only for a single transaction, but further process had been done by the hacker for their personal use. So it would be a partial violation. As a solution to these kind of problems, the intruders are imprisoned or premium fine is asked. (Bott, Professional Issues in Information technology, 2006).
Similarly we can also divide these unknown personalities into two groups as active intruders and passive intruders.
Active Intruder is a person, who only reads the information. They will not interfere or modify the message; they simply monitor the message exchange. Passive Intruder is a person who modifies (insert, delete, update & create new messages) the information. They also deny the access to the authorized users and occasionally they stop the communication.
It is important to secure the properties of information, particularly from the active intruder who can cause severe harm to the information carried out through a system.
Attacks by Intruders
There are several types of attacks made by the intruders which affect the properties of a message passed through an Information System.
Confidentiality is a property which is connected with privacy of a message. It can be affected by the interception of passive intruders. They intercept and read the message without making any changes. This type of hacking violated privacy of the message . Privacy according to
Modification is another property, which could be affected by integrity attack made by an active intruder. As a result of this attack a modified fake message will be passed on to the receiver, which is different to the genuine message.
Interruption is one of the properties which will affect the availability of the authorized users like administration and staff. This is another type of attack made by active intruders.
Fabrication is the worst attack made by active intruders. During this attack receiver gets a false message using authorized senders’ account, created by the intruder, thus it is essential to do authentication and check whether the real person has send the message.
Suggested Security Measures
Though the company is using some standard security measures, the newly arisen threats proved that those are insufficient. For example, for the money online transactions (when eCustomers purchase through the Internet) company uses payment gateway, a secured and encrypted path to credit card, debit card transactions. When customers are accessing shopping cart and trying to purchase the product, they will automatically directed to the payment details page through a secure hypertext transfer protocol (https), where a locked padlock symbol is shown in the url. It helps to carry out web transactions (Browsers, Web servers & Internet applications) and to maintain the privacy of a customer as well as secrecy too.
Company also uses two cryptography algorithms. First one is called symmetric cryptography. In Symmetric cryptography, one key is used for encryption and decryption process. Next is asymmetric cryptography. In Asymmetric cryptography, one key is used for encryption while another key is used for decryption process.
Also, company office networks have proxy servers which act as application level gateway helps to increase the performance and security. All the office computers are having protected by firewall, a technological barrier which prevents unauthorized access and unwanted communication. The special team also monitored all the computers in the network, to investigate if the computers have antivirus software and whether they are attacked by computer viruses, Trojans, computer worms etc. They also suggested a new daily routine computer scanning scheme to prevent virus threats.
The special group also suggested to implement some other popular methods such as digital signatures, digital envelopes, digital certificates (issued by Certifying Authorities) that are liable to increase the security level.
Other Standard Security Functions (suggested) with its Applications
- Netscape Secure Socket Layer (SSL) which is known as IETF transport layer security protocol (TLS) is a standard method which secures data packets that are passed (Browsers, Web servers and Internet at the network layer applications) from packet sniffer applications. In this method a session key is used to encrypt and decrypt all the messages that are transferred over TCP connections.
- Secure MIME (S/MIME) is another standard that secures email attachments exchanged across platforms (Email package with RSA encryption & Digital multiple signature).
- Wireless Transport Layer Security (WTLS) protocol provides secure transport using User datagram protocol (UDP).
- Secure Wide Area Networks (s/WAN) is a secured place where a point to point encryption is done between firewalls and routers (Virtual Private Networks- VPN).
- Secure Electronic Transaction (SET) is also similar to https, which secures credit card & debit card transactions (Smart cards, transaction servers, ecommerce) over Internet/Web. Using this scheme allows user (client) to authenticate that the server is a recognized one.
Most of these security standards are used in the application layer and session layer of the networks.
The special group also found out that they are having lack of security when transmitting data through the wireless networks; therefore they suggested Wired Equivalent Privacy (WEP) to make security within the wireless networks in LAN, like Ethernet.
So when Internet is being used for serious applications, where the exchanged information is sensitive or valuable, it is important to confirm that the sender of this information can be confident about its security. CORPS also uses Transaction Processing (TP), Management Information System (MIS) and Decision Support System (DSS) for their daily routine work. For example, when a guest or a registered user is logging into the company website, Database Management System is used to retrieve the required information from the database. Similarly, during cash transactions, banking system and transaction processing system in management information system are used to credit and debit money in the merchant account and other accounts. | https://myooou.com/privacy-security-issues-work-place/ |
The exploration of space has benefitted highly from the technological development of our modern civilization. Although recent reports about finding water on Mars or detecting blue skies on Pluto still cause us excitement, space exploitation is already a fact. Contemporary society relies on infrastructures and communication systems set up in space for many aspects of our everyday life, including GPS and the Internet. Sustained by recent technological innovation, such space systems exist as a network of complex computers that are running sophisticated operational systems.
The data collected through space-based facilities attracts digital criminals. Even though the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) together with other space agencies worldwide put significant efforts to protect their computers from losing sensitive data and disrupting operations, the space community still suffers from a growing number of cyber-attacks. Media channels continuously report about successful cyber-attacks when skilled hackers break into space systems and search confidential files with a purpose to obtain information about non-earth life forms, take over control of spaceships, or hijack satellite services.
This article will address the challenges of space cyber security by analyzing the information security vulnerabilities of NASA (Section 2), describing major information security incidents related to space investigation (Section 3), and discussing policies designed to prevent hacking of space systems (Section 4). Finally, a conclusion is drawn (Section 5).
Currently, more than a thousand operational satellites, which support telecommunications, banking, and whether forecast systems, are orbiting the earth in space. Thus, an unauthorized access to such systems can have a significant effect on business and transportation activities.
In the U.S., NASA is a target for hackers because it possesses more than 550 information systems that perform essential operations, such as controlling spacecraft, gathering and processing scientific data, and cooperating with other space agencies worldwide.
In 2012, NASA released a report that examined Agency’s information security. The report highlighted five problems related to protecting NASA’s information systems, namely: (1) a lack of full awareness of Agency-wide IT security posture, (2) shortcomings in implementing a continuous monitoring approach to IT security, (3) a slow pace of encryption for NASA laptop computers and other mobile devices, (4) problems related to the ability to combat sophisticated cyber-attacks, and (5) problems related to the transition to cloud computing.
It is worth mentioning that the U.S. Congress annually issues a report that reflects how U.S. Federal agencies, including NASA, implement the Federal Information Security Management Act. The report also indicates information security incidents and demonstrates cyber security measures. According to the report, in 2014, CFO agencies experienced more than 67.000 information security incidents. NASA accounted for over 15.000 attacks and became the agency that is targeted by hackers most frequently. The report indicates that the number of cyber-attacks against NASA is growing rapidly. For example, in 2010 and 2011, NASA reported only 5.408 incidents that resulted in the installation of malicious software or unauthorized access to its systems, whereas in 2014 – three times more.
Other (12.017 incidents). This category includes a number of low-frequency types of information security incidents, including unconfirmed third-party notifications, port scans, and failed brute force attempts. The category also accommodates reported incidents with an unknown cause.
Malicious code (1.226 incidents). This category reflects successful installations and executions of malware that were not identified and cleaned by preventative tools, such as antivirus software.
Social engineering (1.185 incidents). The category includes attempts to entice users to download malware-infected software or provide sensitive information through using fraudulent websites.
The hacking attacks committed against NASA can have a broad range of consequences. Such intrusions can affect Agency’s computers, disrupt systems, and distort mission operations. They can also result in stealing and exporting sensitive data collected and processed by space systems. It should be pointed out that the attacks on NASA’s computers can have negative consequences not only on NASA’s operations, but also on the global security and economy.
The vulnerabilities of space systems that lead to cyber-attacks occur due to a number of reasons, e.g., working with outdated or conventional operational software, public announcement of software updates, lack of encryption, and a low level of information security protection.
The analysis of cyber-attacks directed towards U.S. governmental agencies imply that persons who are behind those attacks vary significantly. Such people range from individuals testing their IT expertise to members of criminal hacker networks that are financed by foreign intelligence agencies.
The next section will provide a concise overview of the major cyber-attacks committed against space agencies worldwide.
In general, the space systems can be divided into three interconnected categories, namely, (1) communication systems, (2) satellites and spacecraft orbiting the earth, and (3) ground stations. Cybercriminals who manage to find vulnerabilities in only on one of those categories of space systems are able to affect the other two categories.
The U.S. agencies have tense relationship with Chinese hackers. NASA experienced several China-based information security attacks. In 2011, Chinese hackers accessed NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), a key control center, and broke into JPL’s computer network. Since JPL controls over 20 spacecraft, which perform space missions related to Jupiter, Mars, and Saturn, the cyber-attack has affected a wide range of JPL’s operations. The well-concealed attack resulted in: (1) controlling NASA systems; (2) uploading hacking tools; (3) stealing user credentials; and (4) modifying, copying, and deleting sensitive files.
Similarly, in September 2014, Chinese hackers breached the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) computer network. The cyber-attack aimed at distorting operational data coming from U.S. satellites, such as disaster planning and aviation. The targeted weather satellites orbit above the earth and collect weather information, including temperature, moist, hurricanes, and cold fronts. The fact that NOAA publishes the data and imagery collected by the satellites publicly on the Web and allows downloading the information could have significantly contribute to the breach.
In 1999, then a 15 year-old computer hacker J. J. under the nickname “c0mrade” admitted breaching NASA computer network in addition to a bunch of other cyber-crimes. By accessing the NASA network, the juvenile not only caused a shutdown of NASA computers that manage international space station, but also downloaded a $1.7 million worth NASA proprietary software, which regulates space ships’ temperature and humidity. In addition, the expertise of the young hacker allowed him to breach Pentagon weapons computer network, intercept thousands of emails, and steal employees’ credentials. The boy was incarcerated for six months in detention facility and became the first juvenile sentenced for computer crimes. Being at age of 25, J. J. committed a suicide that was motivated by a number of accuses regarding intrusions of computer systems.
In 2002, an UK-based system operator G. M. was accused of committing one of the major military computer hacks in the history. The hacker claims that his aim was obtaining information about the existence of extraterrestrial visits. He was convinced that NASA hided evidence of UFO activity. In order to find the truth, G. M. breached a network of 97 NASA computers. According to U.S. authorities, the hacker: (1) accessed, downloaded, and deleted critical files and employees’ credentials; (2) shut down 2.000 computers; and (3) paralyzed supply of deliveries to the U.S. Navy’s Atlantic Fleet. The damage caused by the hacker was estimated $700.000.
U.S. agencies are not the only targets of space hackers. In the beginning of 2012, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) discovered that their computers were contaminated with a virus that caused a leakage of information stored on the network. The data that was compromised during the hijack includes system log in data, emails, and operational information. Similarly, in 2014, the German Aerospace Center, which plans, manages, and implements Germany’s space programs and rocket technologies, suffered an espionage attack that infiltrated several computers in the network with spyware and self-destroying malware.
Satellites managed by various space agencies are targets for cyber-attacks that are firstly initiated in ground stations and later elevated to satellites. Addressing security challenges, space agencies worldwide took a number of initiatives for prevention of potential cyber-attacks.
The U.S. agencies initiated actions aimed at mitigating potential risk of cyber-attacks, protecting computer networks, and preventing unauthorized access to confidential information. The efforts being undertaken by NASA include prevention of malware, mitigation of intrusions, and shaping cyber security environment. The total NASA expenses for IT security were $102 million in 2014.
The European Space Agency (ESA) also highlights its efforts to establish an effective cyber security program. ESA emphasizes the need to protect a growing number of space assets and the related installations on the ground from potential cyber threats. The ongoing ESA’s activities include risk management solutions aimed at (1) increasing public awareness about the protection of sensitive data, (2) conducting research on mitigation of computer viruses that are infecting standalone devices, (3) investing in new prevention technologies, (4) setting up cybercrime research and innovation programs, (5) improving private-public partnership on internet cyber threat, and so forth.
Similarly, Russia plans to upgrade its satellite communication systems, which are used by the Russian Defense Ministry and the Russian Federal Space Agency, until 2025.
Tackling the issue of increasingly growing cyber threat becomes a priority of military and civil agencies worldwide. Due to advance of technology, more aspects of our modern lives depend on sophisticated digital systems, especially space satellites that manage globally interconnected services, including GPS signals and the Internet. The protection of space systems is a critical concern of NASA, ESA, and other space agencies around the world.
The information security incidents discussed in this article demonstrate that space agencies are still vulnerable to hackers. In addition to already implemented security measures, the international space community should address crucial aspects of cyber defense, such as raising awareness of cyber threat, assuring proper performance of systems after a cyber-attack, strengthening international cooperation, employing standardized protocols for information security incidents, and updating anti-malware software. | https://resources.infosecinstitute.com/interplanetary-hacking-how-the-space-industry-mitigates-cyber-threats/ |
In the digital era, a cybersecurity professional acts as a watchdog. Cybersecurity professionals work with businesses and organizations to keep networks and data secure.
One of cybersecurity specialist's main tasks is to maintain track of their company's systems and report any problems to management. They are also in charge of foreseeing future dangers and providing advice on how to cope with them.
What is a cybersecurity specialist?
Depending on the size and form of his or her firm or organization, a cybersecurity professional may wear a variety of hats.
Cybersecurity specialists, as the job title suggests, are required to have a particular degree of training and knowledge that enables them to provide advice and training on the most up-to-date digital best practices.
Cybersecurity experts may have in-depth knowledge of a certain vendor's product (such as CISCO Systems, which manufactures networking and IT equipment), or they may have familiarity with other fields such as computer operating systems or mobile applications.
A cybersecurity expert may be thought of as someone who monitors a company's or organization's security while also assisting other employees and teammates in staying current on best practices.
This job is crucial since data breaches are frequently caused by employees, either purposefully or unintentionally.
There are four important steps to become a cybersecurity expert
Education:
Most cybersecurity specialist positions, like the majority of other cybersecurity occupations, need some sort of formal schooling. However, because cybersecurity expert positions cover such a broad range of job descriptions and duties, a specialist job can be obtained after completing many levels of cybersecurity education.
In other words, persons with a cybersecurity associate's degree, bachelor's degree, or master's degree can work as cybersecurity specialists. Furthermore, many cybersecurity specialists obtained a job after finishing a related degree (such as computer science, engineering, or mathematics) and/or gaining relevant work experience.
Certifications and clearances in the industry:
Obtaining cybersecurity training certification and/or clearances is a crucial step in career preparation, as it is in many other cybersecurity job pathways.
It's a good idea to start thinking about what qualifications an employer could demand, or what certifications make job seekers more competitive in their sector.
Here are a few examples of the several types of cybersecurity certification available:
Security+ is a CompTIA certification that is widely recognized among cybersecurity professionals as a foundational credential. The themes of risk management and threat assessment are covered.
CompTIA offers Network + as well. This cybersecurity analyst certification focuses on networking infrastructure and operations, as the name indicates. It is regarded as a basic qualification.
A more advanced cybersecurity analyst certification, the Certified Information Systems Security Professional (CISSP), is meant for cybersecurity professionals with at least five years of experience. Architecture, engineering, and management are among the areas covered by the certification.
Because it typically requires applicants to have many years of work experience, the Certified Ethical Hacker (CEH) certification is also considered a more advanced cert. The objective of an ethical hacker certification is to increase threat assessment and mitigation abilities by understanding how cyber assaults occur.
These are just a handful of the many cybersecurity certifications that are available. When looking for cybersecurity employment possibilities, it's a good idea to keep track of the credentials that companies are looking for.
When interviewing for cybersecurity expert roles, it's also a good idea to inquire about professional development possibilities, such as certifications that a company would pay for.
Experience:
Demonstrating relevant experience is another key part of landing a job as a cybersecurity professional.
This might be in the form of a structured internship or other formal hands-on learning, or it can be in the shape of other related job experience.
Network:
It's always a good idea to look for methods to expand your professional network.
There are a variety of professional cybersecurity organizations and associations with a network-oriented approach that are especially geared to notify members about job vacancies and professional development opportunities.
What are the responsibilities of cybersecurity experts?
Security audits of computer hardware and software systems are created and implemented by cybersecurity experts. They ensure that the systems work as they should and are protected from assault.
A cybersecurity specialist's job might be rather monotonous at times. They are in charge of ensuring that networks and computer systems are up to date and free of software defects.
Furthermore, security experts are responsible for ensuring that other coworkers are kept up to speed on security best practices, which may require them to function as a trainer or counselor.
Designing firewalls and other security measures to ensure that information and private networks are compatible with the most recent security standards is another element of a cybersecurity specialist's job.
Cybersecurity experts are also in charge of continuously monitoring security systems and networks for abnormalities and documenting and reporting on their findings.
Skills for specialists
Cybersecurity professionals have an intriguing role in the businesses and organizations where they work. People in this position are frequently hired for their soft talents as well as their technical abilities.
Cybersecurity experts must be able to communicate effectively and work well in groups. Coaching and educating coworkers on security best practices is a common part of the job.
In addition, cybersecurity expert are frequently relied upon in times of crisis or disaster, as well as when networks or data systems are malfunctioning. As a result, the capacity to flourish in "emergency" conditions is critical.
Finally, being a security specialist may entail assisting coworkers in adopting new technologies and security software as it evolves. However, most people are averse to change, particularly if it necessitates learning a new operational method or workflow. As a result, the capacity to communicate the rationale for the change, as well as the ability to connect to the demands and concerns of coworkers, is crucial.
Wrapping up
A cybersecurity professional should be like a Swiss Army knife of the digital world in terms of skills, experience, and overall mentality. This position requires multi-disciplinary skills and the ability to adapt to a wide range of scenarios.
Cybersecurity experts must be at ease in a continuously changing and evolving environment. New digital attack routes and methods emerge on a regular basis, and a cybersecurity expert is responsible for determining what skills and expertise are necessary to guard against these new threats.
This frequently necessitates continuous education, both in the form of official, industry-recognized credentials and informal learning and monitoring of industry changes. Learn cybersecurity training online for starters and venture into the world of cybersecurity. | https://www.getsocailgroupslink.live/2021/07/career-prep-with-cybersecurity-expert.html |
A cloud security engineer has a critical role within an IT enterprise. They are responsible for building, maintaining, upgrading, and continuously improving cloud networks and applications. They make sure to deliver a secure cloud infrastructure, applications, software, and platforms. Furthermore, they are responsible for the installation, maintenance, and upgrade of the business’s cloud computing environments and core IT infrastructure.
What are Cloud Security Engineers, and What Are Their Duties?
A cloud security engineer has the crucial responsibility of protecting the company’s data and customer information. They are responsible for identifying threats to the cloud system, developing new features that meet changing security needs, and managing cloud-based systems. This includes building, maintaining, troubleshooting, and updating cloud platforms and applications. These responsibilities vary depending on the company’s size. Nevertheless, cloud security engineers generally collaborate with architects and other engineers to provide their businesses with seamless cloud security solutions. The provision of cloud security solutions involves the whole process of planning, architecting, constructing, validating, testing, and deploying cloud-based systems. In addition, it includes monitoring the deployed cloud-based platform or application while detecting and remediating any malicious activity or threats to the system that may occur.
Cloud security engineers may deal with corporate information or sensitive data, and they are required to deliver a secure system that will protect the firm’s assets and information. They implement and configure security controls in the cloud environment, integrate cloud-based systems with other digital solutions, and leverage industry best practices in security. Moreover, they suggest security measures and recommend solutions to the company’s development team while identifying security gaps and offering efficient solutions.
In fact, cloud security has changed and developed over the years. It has transformed from just being a system that enables cost reduction and speedy delivery of IT assets and resources. Now, it is considered a robust enterprise-oriented system that enables the use of business resources in an efficient way. It aims to strengthen the overall security level of the company, including legal, corporate, and personal data.
Specifically, cloud security engineers have a critical task to protect the organizational data and leverage valuable metrics into the company’s security procedures. They are required to examine and spectate the existing security metrics of the cloud system and make changes when necessary to improve the overall security process.
Job Responsibilities of Cloud Security Engineer
- Creating cloud-based packages while enforcing identification and access management and securely configuring cloud environments
- Conducting threat simulations and penetration checks to spot risks and remediate them
- Providing security measures suggestions on the service design and the application development process
- Designing, implementing, and configuring cloud security structures
- In the case of threat detection, cloud security engineers are required to immediately terminate the running operations of the cloud structures and rearrange the whole infrastructure according to the company’s requirements.
- Carrying out numerous checks and using analytics based on their expertise to make certain that the cloud protection platform is steady, robust, secure, and completely operational.
- Eliminating the risk of breaches or attacks by cybercriminals.
Education and Skills
Cloud security engineers need to be able to work with multiple coding and programming systems such as Java, Python, Ruby, and other software. They are required to have a strong knowledge of diverse operating systems such as Windows and Linux. They also need to have excellent communication and collaborations skills since they will be working with a team. In addition, they need to be efficient planners and problem solvers and possess excellent organizational skills. As for the technical skills, cloud security engineers need to have a thorough and deep knowledge of information security systems, measures, and procedures. They need to have DevOps and cryptography knowledge and skills, as well as be flexible to work with different programming languages.
Furthermore, they are required to communicate effectively with the rest of the workforce members while working on security projects and maintain a calm and collaborative mindset to carry out their tasks. As a cloud security engineer, you are required to properly test the various features of the security system before deploying it. Cyber breaches are a common risk and should be remediated and handled proactively. As a result, the security engineer is responsible for solving these issues using their skill set and talent while swiftly managing all fundamental operations to eliminate the chance of the occurrence of breaches and security threats.
The security engineer needs to have training in these specific areas in order to handle system threats efficiently:
Training and cyber breaches landscape: a qualified security engineer needs to have the capability to deal with a cyber breach effectively when it occurs. They need to have an established first line of defense, such as getting the system offline and dealing with the breach. To resolve the problem and determine the cybercriminals behind the attacks, the security specialists can reverse-engineer the attack and detect the location from which the attack happened.
Furthermore, cloud security engineers need to have the proper skills and training to work with data backup and recovery systems. Knowledge of these systems is essential for cybersecurity specialists since backup and recovery systems provide an optimal solution to data loss and cyber-attacks that result in problems with data. A security engineer should proactively handle this issue by dedicating backup of the data and storing it safely.
An efficient course of action should be put in place for when a breach or a cyberattack occurs, and this is the core responsibility of the security engineer. Businesses rely deeply on the security teams’ skills, knowledge, and talent to safeguard their systems. As a result, security specialists should have extensive knowledge of security systems, measures, and threats. Understanding the threats that companies face leads to understanding how to eliminate them. An adept and quality security engineer should have knowledge of the different threats to cloud security systems and have a proactive approach in case a breach occurs and hinders the company’s security. | https://www.digitalcook.com/cloud-security-engineer/ |
There is no compliant cybersecurity law covering the energy sector and a policy for designation of critical energy infrastructure is missing. The national computer emergency response team (CERT-GOV-MD) is responsible for energy.
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Requirements for operators and NRA
Requirements for operators and NRA
General frameworks for security requirements and risk management in the public sector, applicable to energy stakeholders, are in place but reporting is missing. Implementation of energy-specific rules, measures and cooperation mechanisms should follow. The energy regulator does not have competences for cybersecurity.
State of implementation
Moldova’s general cybersecurity rules and policies are well developed and the country is gradually increasing its implementation capabilities. The state security authorities are leading in cyber protection. Energy-specific measures are in the planning phase and compliant cybersecurity legislation in the energy sector is yet to be developed.
The 2013 strategy “Digital Moldova 2020” aims to enhance cybersecurity of critical infrastructures and lists measures to identify and protect critical infrastructure including energy networks, harmonize legislation, promote information exchange and international cooperation and strengthen the computer emergency response team (CERT) capacity. The follow-up Cybersecurity Programme 2016 - 2020 goes further by introducing mandatory minimum cybersecurity standards, certification criteria, cybersecurity audit for public communication networks and other critical systems and introduction of penalties for non-compliance. The Information Security Strategy and action plan 2019-2024 provide a roadmap for the development of an integrated cybersecurity and defence platform but they do not contain energy-specific provisions.
EU legislation on cybersecurity is not transposed. The Law on Preventing and Combating Terrorism of 2017 specifies criteria for the identification of critical infrastructures that can be applied to oil and gas storage facilities and pipelines and transport and distribution of electricity, gas and oil. A mechanism for designation of the operators does not exist. CERT-GOV-MD is the national CERT protecting information and communication systems of the public administration and networks, including energy, from cyber threats, implementing risk mitigation measures and responding to security incidents.
The Cybersecurity Guidelines for civil servants published in 2018 by CERT-GOV-MD provide a general framework for risk management and security measures and are applicable to the energy operators. No energy-specific risk assessment methodology and policy exist.
General cybersecurity requirements, applicable also to energy operators, are defined by the Governmental Decision on Mandatory Minimum Cybersecurity Requirements of 2017. The Decision designates the Ministry of Economy and Infrastructure as the responsible authority for implementation of cyber policy in all public sectors, including energy. It addresses security measures and internal cybersecurity systems, data protection, access to information and communication technology, obligations of the service providers and incident recovery aspects. Incident notifications are required but no enforcement measures are in place.
The role of the energy regulator ANRE is limited to approving the expenses required for ensuring anti-terrorism protection. The current legislation fails to grant the regulator competences over cybersecurity. | https://www.energy-community.org/implementation/Moldova/CYBER.html |
Networks are very important aspects of organizations because they provide pathways for the movement of information as well as communication. The security aspect of networks is also a primary concern for organizations because it is associated with the risk of access to unauthorized people to unauthorized information. Weaknesses within a network provide pathways through which attackers may use to access, steal or destroy information belonging to an organization. Attacks on networks have over the years been on the rise and organizations are forced to use a lot of funds because of the need to secure their networks from unauthorized access. Vulnerability assessment is an important aspect that is aimed at going through a system and finding all forms of weakness to rid them and protect an organization’s information. Analysis and planning are paramount, and the first step is understanding the requirements of the assessment. Assessment is associated with the process of evaluation of the functions of a system to identify possible vulnerabilities that exist within it (Rampat, 2017).
Requirements
There are very many ways through which networks can breach. And some of them include the using of phishing techniques, use of malicious software that can be slipped into the network through the use flash drives and mobile devices such as smartphones and laptops. Another example is through the use of Trojan humans who come into businesses in disguise as repair people and get access to the network. Some of the other sources of vulnerabilities include the lack of proper password management, high level of access to information within the organization, lack of accountability through tracking and also the lack of a proper system lock when not in use. These are very important aspects that require monitoring and evaluation because they provide access points to the system. Network security is very important, and one of the requirement is understanding of how access points are risky. Access points from vulnerabilities within the network, and therefore, it is important for an organization to have knowledge of their existence to find out ways of managing them. One of the biggest ways is through the use of a q system test that operates as a typical hacking to find out the gateways that exist within the system. This is by taking the perspective of a hacker and finding all possible pathways of unauthorized access. It is an effective vulnerability assessment that aims at identifying different ways that could be possibly used to access the network. The first requirement is associated with having a team that is capable of performing a hacking test. They ought to have a great background in finding vulnerabilities within the system. Another important requirement is by having vulnerability scanners that would work hand in hand with the team to identify the vulnerabilities that exist in the system (Tsai, 2016).
Proposed Solution
Networks face the risk of unauthorized access that can lead to theft of crucial organization information. Most attacker access a network by use of tools that take advantage of weaknesses in the system. Attackers also use scanning tools that search for vulnerabilities such as missing patches, poor passwords, use of flash drives to access the mainframes of the systems of an organization and weak firewalls. These are all important pathways that attackers use to access a network and have control over the information that operates within the system or even the certain aspects of the operation of the system. With such access, attackers may steal company information which they may sell to rival organizations, maliciously delete crucial information or sabotage the system and network (Beaver, 2013). Proposed solution include penetration testing and as explained above hacking the system may be a valid option for identifying the weaknesses that it has. These are tests that focus on hosts, systems, and devices used by the network to see whether they are vulnerable to unauthorized access. These tests are important because they are helpful in identifying the opportunities hackers would use and is a proactive measure towards network security. It also helps in the assessment of the risks involved, and this is important in addressing them and strengthening the network's security. The other factor is associated with the use of vulnerability scanners that work hand in hand with penetration testing. These are software that is used for scanning for vulnerabilities. They are commercial tools that are available in the market and choice would depend on the cost as well as the needs of the specific network. An organization also needs to develop security policies that address the rules as well as the requirements that all individuals within the organization have to follow. They would ensure the effective management of the system in a holistic manner that involves the contribution of all administrators as well as the users of the network. Such policies would also have to describe security principles that would have to be followed and upheld within the organization. They would also help in the specification of security management such as the prohibition of entry with storage devices into the premises, management of passwords and prohibition of access to information without any authority. These policies can also be organized to be followed by those inside the organization as well as those outside it. (Beaver, 2013).
The management of the risks associated with the networks is a very important factor. It is associated with having a good understanding of the threats that exist and finding effective ways of managing them. In the world of technology, as technology advances so do attackers find more ways of attacking networks and systems. The survival of businesses in the world of today greatly relies on their effectiveness to manage network risk because networks are associated with personal information belonging to customers, and attacks result in the lack of trust and confidence which is very bad for business. It is, therefore, a very important mandate for businesses to uphold security through the management of networks to minimize threats and maximizes the use of computer resources without the fear of attacks. Network management has to be a continuous process that ensures threats are at a minimum. This is important because it would ensure businesses run smoothly and the measures prescribed and adopted are sustainable.
Weaknesses within network systems are very many.
They exist within different places such as the systems hardware, the operating
system, the applications used within the system and the data within it and a
penetration testing, as well as use of vulnerability scanners, are expected to
expose them. They help the users of the network understand the resources that
require defending. The two solutions
help uncover the vulnerabilities and help in decision making associated with the
best possible measure recurred to secure the network. Information from the
solutions is also important because it can be used to teach and train employees
about the possible vulnerabilities that they come across on their day to day
activities. Example include email with malicious software or access links from
the internet, give away passwords or write them down. Employees within the
organization play an important role in the security or the lack of security
within an organization's network system (Beaver, 2013). Knowledge is always
power, and penetration test provides information that teachers employees
important ways of upholding security within their organization. The information
also enables the organization to weigh the organization's level of risk against
the threats that are available and this important in making decisions on the
fate of the organization. Planning is, therefore, very important for
organizations when it comes to system vulnerabilities and assessment is
important for the planning process. It is a proactive approach can greatly help
in the identification of the problems early enough and helps in decision making
over the possible measures an organization needs to take. Network security
vulnerabilities are great problems for organizations, and they cost them a lot
of money especially when attacks take place (Tsai, 2016).
References
Beaver, K. (2013). Top
5 Common Network Security Vulnerabilities that Are Often Overlooked. | https://mypaperhub.com/blog-post.php?id_blog_post=1128 |
Cyber security management
What is cybersecurity?
Izvor: www.pecb.com
Cyber threats
ISO 27032 Standard
ISO 27032 Standard refers to cyber security, i.e. cyber security, defined as protection of privacy, integrity and availability of data in cyber space.
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Why ZIH?
ZIH has extensive experience in projects that include preparation of implementation of cyber security management system, i.e. implementation of state analysis and implementation of security measures in accordance with the standard and legal regulations. | https://zih.hr/en/consulting/information-security-and-business-continuity/cyber-security-management/ |
In spite of enhanced efforts to implement better cyber security, federal agencies continue to succumb to cyber attacks. Cyber attacks targeting federal agencies’ systems and websites, and reports of network security incidents at federal agencies have soared 650 percent during the past half-decade, jeopardizing the confidentiality and integrity of sensitive government information.
The defense department and agencies like FBI and DOJ, in particular, have been prime targets for hackers. Last month, the hacker group Anonymous, in what it called its largest operation to date, attacked the websites of the Justice Department, the FBI, the White House and several entertainment industry companies on Jan. 19, after the FBI had indicted principals of the popular file-sharing site Megaupload and shut down the site earlier in the day.
It is no surprise that cyber security has become an increasingly urgent issue for federal agencies, with hackers and nation-states infiltrating the systems to extract sensitive information and data. One of the primary reasons agency computers are vulnerable to contamination is departments have failed to implement proper security controls. Besides, agencies do not always adequately train personnel responsible for system security, regularly monitor safeguards, successfully fix vulnerabilities or resolve incidents in a timely fashion.
Complete security cannot be obtained just by technology. Of course, you need to have “the right technology in the right places” coupled with an educated, well-trained workforce and proper policies, processes, governance, and culture.
Also, one of the keys to ensuring that infrastructure and data is protected from vulnerabilities is by employing a continuous monitoring approach. Continuous monitoring is essential for protecting all elements of today’s operations. Continuous monitoring should be employed at a minimum for change management and vulnerability assessments. Almost all security issues can be identified and mitigated by simply detecting change in an environment.
The United States must encourage cyber security competence across the nation and build an agile, highly skilled workforce capable of responding to a dynamic and rapidly developing array of threats. | https://www.unicomgov.com/blog/cybersecurity-continues-be-area-focus-federal-government/ |
The position of CEO is accountable for providing strategic and financial leadership in a commercial, profitable, and sustainable manner. The role is accountable to direct CNG Holdings’ vision, mission and values and actively chart the successful implementation of CNG Holdings growth strategy working collaboratively with Executive Directors and Board.
The CEO will be responsible to set the tone for the culture and purpose of CNG Holdings by fostering ethical, value-based leadership and decision making and best in class corporate practices. The role reports to the Board of Directors and delivers short-term and long-term growth plans in line with CNG Holdings’ growth strategy and create shareholder value.
Main Responsibilities
Strategy and planning
- Ensure that there are sound operational, commercial, financial, and human resources strategies to grow the organisation, for approval by the Board.
- Lead the development and implementation of short-term, medium, and long-term growth strategic goal
- Develop and maintain an effective operating model and the associated structure to achieve the growth strategic goals.
- Delegates to Executive Directors the functions and responsibilities required to run successful operations, commercial, human resources, etc of CNG Holdings while retaining oversight and ultimate accountability over the discharge of these functions.
Financing, monitoring, and reporting
- Collaborate with the Board to ensure financing for the strategic initiatives of the company.
- Leads the achievement of budget revenue, margins and profitability measures as approved by the Board to maximise returns to shareholders.
- Ensures financial stability of CNG Holdings through sound planning, budgeting, and financial management.
- Collaborates with the Board Chairperson to develop Board agenda and anticipates challenges and opportunities that may arise.
- Reports to the Board and its committees about trends, challenges and opportunities and make recommendations for continuous improvements
Risk and legal compliance
- Oversees the development and enforcement of policies that will improve the financial and operational effectiveness of the organisation.
- Leads the identification of business risks and put in place proper systems to enhance statutory and regulatory requirements.
- Ensure proper governance processes are amended and that Safety standards and policies are developed and complied to.
Leadership
- Assigns and evaluates the work of Executive Directors including strategic resource allocation
- Ensures that Executive Directors are provided with information and KPIs necessary to fulfil their responsibilities and statutory obligations.
- Initiates, develops, and maintains products and sustainable relationships with key stakeholders both internally and externally
- Communicates effectively and enforces high performance culture at all levels to foster growth and encourage development.
- Ensure that there are proper policies, systems, and procedures to develop and grow the management and leadership capabilities in the organisation.
- Leads and promotes transformation agenda and enhances BBBEE positioning of CNG Holdings
Digital transformation
- Champion the digital business strategy to navigate digital disruptions to meet new and emerging customer needs and expectations. | https://jobs.eduspotsa.online/job/chief-executive-officer-ceo/ |
OWASP Top 10 2021
The OWASP Top 10 is an overview of the types of vulnerabilities that security experts consider most critical of web applications. It is not a ready-made checklist and does not cover all types of vulnerabilities, but it does offer a good view of this complex matter. The Top 10 therefore forms a solid basis for the security tests we offer.
Broken Access Control (A1)
Restrictions on what a user can or cannot execute within an application are in many cases not correctly enforced. Attackers can exploit these errors to access functionality and / or information without being authorized to do so.
Cryptographic Failures (A2)
Many applications and API endpoints do not sufficiently protect sensitive data. Think of personal data, documents and authorization data. Malicious ones can then steal or change them for credit card fraud, identity theft or other crimes. Sensitive data must be additionally protected by encryption or other special precautions.
Injection (A3)
Injection vulnerabilities, such as SQL, OS command, or LDAP injection, arise when unverified data is sent by a hacker as part of a command or query. This data can execute unintended commands or provide unauthorized access to data.
Insecure Design (A4)
Applications must be designed in a secure manner to avoid errors. An insecure design cannot be solved by a perfect implementation, because by definition the necessary security controls were never created to protect against specific attacks. Already during the design process, developers should make use of threat modelling, secure design patterns and principles, as well as reference architectures.
Security Misconfiguration (A5)
Good security requires a correct configuration that is tailored to the application, frameworks, application server, web server, database server and platform. Security settings must be defined, implemented, and maintained because these standards are often insecure. In addition, all software must be up-to-date.
Vulnerable & Outdated Components (A6)
Components such as libraries, frameworks and other software modules often run with full authorization. Operating a vulnerable component can result in data loss or facilitate server takeover. Components with known vulnerabilities undermine the security of the application and facilitate a variety of possible attacks.
Identification and Authentication Failures (A7)
Authentication control and session management mechanisms are often not properly implemented, allowing attackers to assume the identity of other users.
Software & Data Integrity Failures (A8)
Applications that rely on plugins, libraries, or modules from untrusted sources, repositories, and content delivery networks (CDNs) are at risk of integrity violation. An insecure CI/CD pipeline can lead to unauthorized access, malicious code or system compromise. Measures such as checking digital signatures are necessary to ensure that data comes from a trusted source and has not been modified in transit.
Security Logging & Monitoring Failures (A9)
A lack of logging and monitoring can give attackers time to delve deeper into a system and try to gain permanent access. On average, a leak is only detected after 200+ days. This gives attackers enough time to even access other systems and view, change or even delete stored data.
Server-Side Request Forgery (A10)
Het ophalen van URL’s is een veelvoorkomend scenario binnen applicaties, maar dit kan tot problemen leiden wanneer de URL’s afkomstig zijn van gebruikersinvoer. Zonder enige validatie stelt het een kwaadwillende in staat om de applicatie een verzoek te laten doen naar een onverwachte bestemming, zelfs wanneer deze wordt beschermd door een firewall, VPN of andere netwerktoegangscontroles (ACL). | https://www.whitehats.nl/en_us/owasp-top-10-2021/ |
After the national IoT plan, a digital transformation strategy and discussions around a 5G policy, the Brazilian government has launched a new smart cities program.
An old program, launched in 2012 and called Cidades Digitais, aimed mostly to interconnect city-managed buildings with a fiber optic ring.
Over 200 localities have received infrastructure and related initiatives under this program, which is being terminated.
The new program of strategies for sustainable smart cities was announced Tuesday at the Smart City Business Brazil event in São Paulo by Vitor Menezes, secretary of telecommunications and digital policies at the ministry of science, technology, innovations and communications (MCTIC).
“This national plan is a government policy. MCTIC will organize it and add other ministries to the project,” Menezes said at the event, according to Agência Brasil.
The strategy would bring indicators and set goals for the transformation of Brazilian cities into smart cities under social, environmental, cultural and economic perspectives.
During his presentation, the secretary cited as examples of measures cities could implement the installation of AI-enabled security cameras, facial identification monitoring, crop monitoring, rainwater harvesting systems, electronic medical records and connected urban mobility.
Menezes said the plan will be structured by a smart cities chamber, to be created in August, that will analyze the sector, so a comprehensive study on each city’s preparedness would begin later this year.
“Brazil has an infrastructure problem. Most cities often lack connectivity infrastructure. So you can't talk about smart cities if we don't have connectivity. This is not a program to last months, but years. And it's a constantly evolving program too,” he was quoted as saying.
A decree is expected to be published soon establishing this national policy and providing more details on the chamber’s format, he said. | http://www.ifg.cc/aktuelles/nachrichten/regionen/265-br-brasilien-brazil/57151-brazil-launches-new-smart-cities-program |
The Cybersecurity IndustryIn this article, we will break down common domains in cybersecurity.
Cybersecurity is becoming a broader field as more industries migrate onto the Internet and become a part of the digital landscape. That means there are cybersecurity needs in nearly every industry in addition to cybersecurity being an industry itself. Security roles are no longer just the hacker stereotype of cracking into systems and writing code all the time; cybersecurity as a whole encompasses many skills that work together.
In this article, we’ll break down some of the big domains in the cybersecurity industry. There are lots of overlap between different domains and cybersecurity careers, so keep in mind that the domains are not drawn with hard lines, especially as they keep evolving!
Photo by Clark Van Der Beken on Unsplash
Security engineering
This section refers to the technical implementation of various forms of security.
- Information security, or InfoSec, protects data in any form from being accessed, modified, shared, or deleted by the wrong people.
- Network security is concerned with the network infrastructure of an organization that guards against unauthorized access or data from being intercepted.
- Application security refers to implementing measures that defend an application (mobile, desktop, or web) from attack, including both software and hardware solutions. Examples of application security include secure coding, the use of antivirus programs, firewalls, and encryption.
- Cloud security refers to the new field of making sure resources uploaded into the cloud are secure. Companies and users are constantly moving more resources into the cloud, and professionals in this field need to be familiar with implementing security in this environment.
- Cryptography focuses on methods to hide and un-hide information so that data is only readable or usable by authorized people. This requires familiarity with all types of encryption and hashing algorithms.
- Critical infrastructure security is defending physical systems that are becoming more digital/networked, such as energy grids, hospitals, water and waste systems, and even schools. Among the issues that come up are natural disasters and outages.
Governance and compliance
It’s critical to understand international, federal, and state laws and regulations for security. This has implications on the security operations for all organizations. Compliance refers to making sure an organization enforces certain policies, and continuously auditing as well.
This is becoming an increasingly important area of work. While these roles might not require programming knowledge, these roles require foundational knowledge of cybersecurity as well as all the laws and regulations that impact a particular industry.
Risk management and threat intelligence
No system will ever be perfect, and there will always be risk, so this area of work is about managing that risk.
How is risk managed? Through identifying risks, assessing the likelihood and potential threat of security vulnerabilities, and finding the most cost-effective and efficient security measures.
Threat intelligence is the continuous gathering of knowledge of possible attacks. Intelligence could look like knowing the motivations behind attacks, what the scale of attacks could be, and what vectors that might use. These roles often intersect with data science and machine learning because of the need to process all this information.
Security operations
People who work in this area are responsible for implementing security principles, monitoring for incidents, and recovering from disasters. They work closely with everyone under the security umbrella to:
- Detect when something has gone wrong.
- Implement preventative measures against cyber attacks.
- Make sure there are back-ups in case a system is compromised and data is lost.
- Track changes to a system.
- Come up with disaster recovery plans in advance
- Create documents and organization policies for all of the above.
Education
Security education is a growing area in itself! This domain acknowledges that the most securely designed technologies are only as strong as the people who use them. User education teaches best practices for people to protect themselves against cyber threats. Security training also happens in large organizations, where employees are educated and updated on the organization’s security policies and practices.
This domain can also include the career development and training of new security professionals as well.
Conclusion
There are a broad set of cybersecurity roles that vary in technical expertise and required training. There are roles that intersect with engineering, roles that intersect with education, and roles that intersect with administration and management.
We encourage you to do your research with an open mind. | https://www.codecademy.com/article/the-cybersecurity-industry |
In 2014, hackers found medical records to be ten to 20 times more valuable than a credit card number because they offered copious amounts of sensitive personal data. McAfee Labs referred to it as "The Year of Shaken Trust."
In the time that's followed, we should have taken great steps in securing electronic protected health information (ePHI). Unfortunately, that's not the case.
If anything, healthcare data security breaches have become more common. In one incident, a Southern California hospital was forced to pay a $17,000 ransom to have its network restored. In another, 3.7 million patient records were accessed. The list goes on and on. In 2016 alone, the healthcare industry averaged nearly four data breaches per week. Over the last three years, the number of major HIPAA data breaches for which cyber attackers are responsible has increased by 300%.
Healthcare data is at high risk, which means it's a crucial time for web form security, HIPAA compliance and other healthcare IT measures.
What's happening with healthcare data security?
A single medical record offers countless black market opportunities, from prescription abuse and insurance fraud to credit card and identity theft, which makes access to ePHI a hacker's dream. Healthcare organizations are prime targets for cybercrime because they often lack the sophisticated backup systems that are common in other industries.
That's why the Brookings Institution has predicted that one in 13 patients will be impacted by provider data breaches by 2019, in part because federal mandates forced so many practices to adopt electronic health records (EHR) before they were ready to adequately invest in IT security. According to the report, many facilities share large datasets because they lack the time and resources to regulate who has access to patient information.
How do HIPAA data breaches happen?
Most healthcare data hacks begin with an unsuspecting employee doing something as simple as opening an email attachment from a legitimate-looking address or viewing a patient record over an unsecure network. In one experiment, IT security consultants hacked a computerized medicine dispensary by dropping off malware-filled USB sticks labeled with the hospital’s logo. In another, the same team filled patient portal form fields with malicious code to be triggered when viewed by a doctor or nurse.
A lack of mobile security is also to blame: A 2016 study found that eight in ten Google Play diabetes apps lacked privacy policies. Around the same time, more than 80% of surveyed healthcare employees admitted to being concerned about mobile cyberattacks involving ransomware, malware and blastware.
What can you do to secure your healthcare data?
Choose your vendors carefully. Web forms must be HIPAA compliant, privacy policies should be in place and digital tools should meet stringent security standards. Healthcare institutions must understand that their patients' data is incredibly valuable. At the very least, they need the same security measures now protecting other sectors.
Bottom line: It's up to each healthcare organization to take steps to ensure its ePHI stays secure. Instead of assuming your vendors have a variety of security measures in place to safeguard medical information, be prepared to ask questions such as these:
The future of healthcare data security is dependent upon the answers to these issues.
⸺ Chris Byers is the CEO of Formstack, an Indianapolis-based company offering an online form and data-collection platform. Prior to Formstack, Byers co-founded an international nonprofit that was built via remote relationships among partners in Europe, Africa and the United States. | https://www.darkreading.com/operational-security/compliance/five-questions-for-healthcare-security/a/d-id/734040?print=yes |
FAO warns of the impact of COVID-19 on school feeding in Latin America and the Caribbean
United Nations Organization calls for countries to mitigate the impact of the pandemic on children’s nutrition.
March 17, 2020, Santiago, Chile - Among the measures taken by the Governments of many countries in Latin America and the Caribbean in the face of the rapid expansion of the novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) is the closure of schools and, therefore, the suspension of school feeding programs.
These programs currently benefit 85 million children in Latin America and the Caribbean. For about 10 million, they constitute one of the most reliable daily sources of food.
According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), the suspension of school feeding programs will pose a challenge to the food security and nutritional status of many children, especially those from the most vulnerable groups.
“Ensuring sufficient, diverse and nutritious food contributes to strengthening people’s immune system and increases their capacities to cope with diseases,” explained FAO’S Regional Representative, Julio Berdegué.
FAO called on governments to implement measures to support children whose families have greater difficulties in accessing food, and to provide the nutritional contributions that are usually guaranteed by school feeding programs.
FAO pointed out that, for any action taken by governments, all measures recommended by national and international health authorities should be taken into consideration to stop the spread of COVID-19.
"Social protection systems, for example, can play a key role in guaranteeing the food security of the most vulnerable population in the coming weeks,” explained Berdegué.
Options to ensure child nutrition
Recommendations to minimize the impact of the closure of school feeding programs on food security and nutrition should be decided by each country, taking all precautions to avoid transmission of the virus.
Some possible measures are:
- Food distribution to the most vulnerable families, establishing delivery times in schools, or through mobile units.
- Increase in the economic allocation of social protection programs (such as income transfers) by an amount corresponding to the cost of food rations delivered by school feeding programs.
- Delivery of emergency essential food rations to the most vulnerable communities and territories in coordination with authorized government agencies or international cooperation.
- Exemption from taxes on basic food for families with school-age children, especially for workers in the most affected economic sectors.
- Promotion of at home fresh food delivery, if possible from local agriculture
- Redistribution of food from school feeding programs through donations to entities responsible for providing food assistance (such as food banks, social organizations, non-governmental organizations, churches) during the emergency response phase, under the strict monitoring of security protocols to prevent the spread of the virus.
- Use of digital tool (georeferenced applications) to improve communication regarding access points for food deliveries, distribution times, and recommendations for the proper use of food, and measures to reduce the risk of COVID-19.
The establishment of food and nutrition roundtables, in which sectors in charge of school food programs should participate, may allow the identification of other groups at high risk of food insecurity, such as older adults who live alone or are isolated due to the current situation, to take timely actions to safeguard their nutrition.
All these measures need extensive inter-institutional coordination, under the leadership of the designated authorities in each country, to face this crisis. | http://www.fao.org/americas/noticias/ver/pt/c/1266855/ |
‘Personalised nutrition’ represents any attempt to provide tailor-made healthy eating advice based on the nutritional needs of an individual, as dictated by their behaviour, phenotype and/or genotype and their interactions. Increasing evidence has shown the potential for integrating lifestyle habits, physiology, nutraceuticals, the gut microbiome and genetics into nutritional solutions, specific to the needs of each individual, for maintaining health and preventing disease.
One area that has been gaining attention among both health professionals and the general public is nutrigenomics - the role of nutrients in gene expression. On a molecular level, nutrients work as messengers, transmitting signals that can be translated into changes in gene, protein, and metabolite expression and function, which may ultimately affect health outcomes. By employing molecular tools, nutrigenomics research identifies how nutrients and bioactive food compounds may alter gene expression, ultimately helping us to understand why people respond differently to the same diet and how genes and diet interact and predispose us to disease.
Advances in nutrigenetics - how genes impact nutrient metabolism - and nutrigenomics do seem to encourage more personalised advice when it comes to food intake and nutritional supplements.1
We are used to receiving generalized dietary guidelines and specific recommendations on food intake and nutrient supplements, based on age, gender and other requirements (e.g. during pregnancy or times of illness). For instance, many people will - at least intuitively - be familiar with some of the following daily nutritional recommendations for adults2:
- 200 µg folic acid
- 40 mg vitamin C
- No more than 6 g salt
- At least five portions of a variety of fruit and vegetables
- No more than 11% of energy from saturated fat
Deficiencies in calcium, potassium, dietary fibre and vitamin D are also generally considered a public health concern.3 Some supplementation can be recommended. For example, folic acid taken during pregnancy to reduce the risk of malformations developing in the brain and spinal cord of the unborn child.
By using information obtained from whole genome analysis, an individual’s genome can be scanned for polymorphisms (usually referred to as single nucleotide polymorphisms [SNPs]) in genes related to nutrient metabolism and disease development. For example, the methylenetetrahydrofolate reductase gene is associated with folate metabolism. If the common 677C-->T mutation (also known as the A222V mutation) is present in the methylenetetrahydrofolate reductase gene, it can result in an enzyme that has reduced activity. Should a person’s diet be low in folate, the presence of the 677C-->T mutation may lead to an increased risk of elevated homocysteine levels and a further moderate risk of cardiovascular disease.4,5 On a similar note, genetic variation may, at least in part, explain interindividual differences in plasma triacylglycerol concentrations on administration of polyunsatuared fatty acids, such as those found in fish oil,6 and it may also help explain why vitamin D might confer an increased risk of cancer development in some, while decreasing the risk in others.7
So, is the future of gut (and general) health in personalised nutrition? How can we test it? Evidence-based medicine (EBM) relies on findings from randomized controlled trials to identify whether or not a given treatment or behaviour leads to a certain outcome. We have become used to EBM being critical to medical decision-making. A one-size-fits-all approach may appear inherently incompatible with the concept of personalised nutrition, and challenges arise when agreeing on the extent, quality and interpretation of evidence and consequent implications for dietary recommendations, particularly within the nutrigenomics arena.
When will nutritional research be ready to be translated into public health action? Will personalized nutrition produce greater behaviour change and gains in health and wellbeing than can be achieved by conventional dietary advice?6 Although lowering the levels of dietary salt and saturated fats has had a positive effect on hypertension and lipid profiles, as demonstrated in clinical trials in healthy populations, limited trial data exist that prove a cause–effect relationship and a consequent reduction in disease by these dietary interventions.6 We also need to keep in mind that genes work together and not in isolation. This means that the presence of one SNP needs to be interpreted in the context of a person’s overall biochemistry, nutrition, and other lifestyle factors, such as activity, sleep and stress.
With advances in genetic testing, public awareness of personal genome testing and its potential is increasing. Companies are now offering affordable genetic testing options directly to the public. While there may be benefits to having your genetic information available, including the potential for personalised nutrition, there are also many risks and limitations that need to be highlighted and considered. These include, but are not limited to, whether there are sufficient regulations imposed on companies who perform genetic testing, interpretation and delivery of genetic information (via guidance of a health professional), ethical and social concerns, and privacy in terms of how DNA information is stored and used.
Nutrigenomics and nutrigenetics, albeit an exciting area, is still relatively young and has not advanced enough to allow us to develop a diet based on a person’s entire genome–much more work is required before this can happen. Nonetheless, these tools have developed enough to highlight some nutrient–gene (and environment) interactions. So, for now, our advice is to watch this space as the field of personalised nutrition research continues to develop - who knows where we will find ourselves in the years to come!
Before you go, we would also like to guide your attention to the nutrition guidelines that are available in the UEG Standards & Guidelines Repository, including many from ESPEN and ESPGHAN!
References
- Fenech M, El-Sohemy A, Cahill L, et al. Nutrigenetics and nutrigenomics: Viewpoints on the current status and applications in nutrition research and practice. J Nutrigenet Nutrigenom 2011; 4: 69–89.
- Food Standards Agency. Nutrient and food based guidelines for UK institutions. https://www.ptdirect.com/training-design/nutrition/national-nutrition-guidelines-united-kingdom. (2007, revised October 2007, accessed 11 May 2018).
- Blumeberg JF, Bailey RL, Sesso HD, et al. The evolving role of multivitamin/multimineral supplement use among adults in the age of personalized nutrition. Nutrients 2018; 10: 248.
- Kohlmeier M, De Caterina R, Ferguson LR, et al. Guide and position of the International Society of Nutrigenetics/Nutrigenomics on personalized nutrition: Part 2 – Ethics, challenges and endeavors of Precision Nutrition. J Nutrigenet Nutrigenom 2016; 9: 28–46.
- Liew SC and Gupta ED. Methylenetetrahydrofolate reductase (MTHFR) C677T polymorphism: Epidemiology, metabolism and the associated diseases. Eur J Med Genet 2015; 58: 1–10.
- Görman U, Mathers JC, Grimaldi KA, et al. Do we know enough? A scientific and ethical analysis of the basis for genetic-based personalized nutrition. Genes Nutr 2013; 8: 373–381.
- Davis CD and Milner JA. Nutrigenomics, vitamin D and cancer prevention. J Nutrigenet Nutrigenom 2011; 4: 1–11. | https://www.ueg.eu/education/latest-news/article/article/personalised-nutrition-food-for-thought/?type=title%3DMedia&cHash=471d1f060b86a72621cd7bdaad30f56d |
The general recommendations for addressing non-communicable diseases, are mainly related to lifestyle changes, such as diet and physical activity. The overall aim of this project is to design, develop and evaluate a recommendation system which are able to assess dietary intake, using a validated Food Frequency Questionnaire (FFQ), and propose valid personalized nutrition advice for adults. It is investigating an effective way for providing personalized dietary recommendations to increase diet quality at population-level and of considering an individual user’s preferences, population data and expert’s knowledge in the recommendation. The system is envisaged to be a web-based service, built with commercially available technologies, scalable, replicable and inexpensive system. | https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3364072 |
The new guidelines, published every five years, don’t reflect the nation’s growing diversity, or the particular health and dietary risks that communities of color face.
The new guidelines, published every five years, don’t reflect the nation’s growing diversity, or the particular health and dietary risks that communities of color face.
July 28, 2020
Eat more vegetables. Reduce your sugar. Switch to whole grains.
These are the recently released, rather predictable, recommendations penned by an advisory committee of scientists whose job it is to help shape the 2020-2025 Dietary Guidelines for Americans.
The guidelines, which will be published later this year, dictate federal nutrition policies and form the basis for governmental food assistance programs and nutrition education efforts. But communities of color say the recommendations and the current guidelines are insensitive, largely unreachable, and even irrelevant to the nation’s major racial, ethnic, and cultural groups. They point out that the committee of scientists is mostly white and many of the studies it analyzed don’t reflect the nation’s growing diversity. Such considerations are especially important now, as many of these populations are at elevated risk for COVID-19.
“They’re missing the ball,” said Daphene Altema-Johnson, the food communities and public health program officer at Johns Hopkins University’s Center for a Livable Future. “We know what’s optimal. We also know that chronic diseases affect people of color at a disproportionate rate. Yet there has been no improvement because we’ve done nothing to address the root cause of these health disparities.”
Instead of a one-size-fits-all approach, Altema-Johnson and other advocates want to see the guidelines—and the science-based recommendations that shape them—evolve to address the systemic impacts of racism on nutrition, including food insecurity, the lack of access to healthy foods, and the needs of people with chronic diseases. Advocates also want to see the messaging around the guidelines to include foods that are culturally relevant across different racial and ethnic groups.
“We know that chronic diseases affect people of color at a disproportionate rate. Yet there has been no improvement because we’ve done nothing to address the root cause of these health disparities.”
“Right now, the Dietary Guidelines are not for everyone,” Altema-Johnson said. “Our people are dying because they’re not getting the right nutrition. You can’t make recommendations unless you make adjustments so that the guidelines are accessible to all Americans.”
The Dietary Guidelines for Americans, published every five years since 1980, provide science-based advice to promote health and to reduce the risk for major chronic diseases. They don’t offer specific tips or tailored approaches for people who are already struggling with obesity, diabetes, or other chronic diseases, which critics say prevent a significant number of people from using them.
“It makes them less relevant to populations that have health disparities, which is a large number of people. It puts these populations at a disadvantage . . . it seems unfair,” said Norah Deluhery, coordinator of The Food4Health Alliance, a group that’s pushing for the guidelines for be more inclusive of Americans from disadvantaged minority groups and those with chronic diseases.
Critics say The Food4Health Alliance is using the focus on structural racism to undermine the guidelines’ scientific process. According to the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) and other groups, the Food4Health Alliance was founded in part by the Nutrition Coalition, an organization that is run by Nina Teicholz, a proponent of the low-carb, high fat diet and has worked to discredit some of the guidelines’ science-based recommendations. This week, over 200 members of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics signed a letter (obtained by Civil Eats) asking the Academy to sever ties with the Nutrition Coalition. The letter does not discount the urgent need to address the root causes of diet-related health disparities and stresses the need to find new mechanisms to address these disparities, UCS’s Sarah Reinhardt said.
“This is absolutely an issue of racial equity, and it’s something we desperately need to address,” said Reinhardt. “But dietary guidance isn’t failing us because we lack a rigorous process for developing it. It’s because the federal government spends next to nothing on needed nutrition research, and even less than that on implementing its own recommendations.”
The guidelines form the basis for myriad food assistance programs that are relied upon by low-income Black and Indigenous people as well other people of color (commonly referred to as BIPOC). These include the National School Lunch Program, the Elderly Nutrition Program, the Food Distribution Program on Indian Reservations, and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, as well as the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC).
Little research exists on whether food assistance programs are helping to bridge nutrition gaps, but one recent study suggests that SNAP may not be meeting its potential to alleviate disparities between white and Black households. Another study finds that SNAP participation is not associated with improvements in dietary quality or lower weight status among most Black and Latinx households experiencing food insecurity.
A recent study suggests that SNAP may not be meeting its potential to alleviate disparities between white and Black households.
“It’s critical that the guidelines take into account the needs of the population they serve,” Deluhery said.
But that’s not what the guidelines are meant to do, according to a spokesperson for the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), which oversees the guidelines. “They are written for nutrition policymakers and health professionals and intended to be generalizable to the American population at large. . . . It is beyond the scope of the Dietary Guidelines to be tailored to specific groups or treat specific diseases,” wrote the spokesperson in a recent email. However, the spokesperson added, many government agencies, nonprofits, medical professionals, and health organizations build on the dietary guidelines to provide nutrition guidance tailored to a particular group’s needs or treat specific medical conditions and illnesses.
Another issue, Deluhery said, is that the majority of the research the advisory committee consults is based on white, middle class subjects. The committee, whose report will help the USDA and the Department of Health and Human Services to develop the new version of the guidelines, was presented with nearly 1,500 primary research articles, 16 existing systematic reviews, more than 50 analyses of federal data sets, and numerous food pattern modeling analyses.
But it should also have evaluated more research on the differences in the nutritional needs of non-white Americans, such as studies looking at Vitamin D absorption among African Americans, said Deluhery. The USDA declined to say how much of the research looked at specific ethnic and racial groups. The committee’s report suggests federal agencies should ensure national surveillance systems to expand the diversity and sample size of underreported populations
Despite America’s shifting population, the recommendations have changed little over the years. They recommend that eaters fill half their plate with fruit and vegetables, eat at least 50 percent whole grains, and choose low-fat dairy, among other things. While the committee this month recommended a small reduction in added sugar, most Americans don’t even reach the current limit.
The recommendations also have expanded to include dietary guidance for infants and toddlers, as well as pregnant and breastfeeding women. They continue to focus on dietary patterns—how foods are consumed in various combinations over time. The dietary pattern approach, according to the report, allows people to use food combinations that are both healthy and take into account cultural and culinary preferences. But the recommendations do not give specific examples of patterns for minority subgroups.
Despite America’s shifting population, the recommendations have changed little over the years. Another thing that hasn’t changed: Most Americans don’t follow the guidelines.
Another thing that hasn’t changed: Most Americans don’t follow the guidelines. In 2015, for instance, only 9 percent of Americans ate the recommended amount of vegetables. As a result, diet-related disease such as type 2 diabetes, heart disease, and cancer are the leading causes of death in the U.S. Six in 10 adults have a chronic disease and 4 in 10 have two or more disease conditions, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
The statistics are worse for people of color. Black people have higher rates of diabetes, hypertension, and obesity than whites—all risk factors for heart disease, stroke, and death. Diabetes is also one of the most common chronic diseases among Native Americans and Latinx populations.
People of color are also disproportionately impacted by COVID-19 as a result of such chronic conditions and are at increased risk of experiencing severe illness, hospitalization, and death when infected with the virus. Native Americans and Black Americans have a hospitalization rate approximately five times that of white Americans, while for Latinx people it is four times higher—and diet-related illnesses often put them at greater risk.
The advisory committee, which reviews scientific evidence on topics and questions specifically identified by federal agencies, does acknowledge that COVID-19 has “significant nutritional implications” and “those at most risk for the most serious outcomes of COVID-19 are people afflicted by diet-related chronic diseases.” It also mentions in passing the significant presence of food insecurity and the high cost of many healthy foods and both factors’ impact on the rise of chronic diseases.
But the report states simply that “these relationships should be further examined in future Dietary Guidelines” and suggests it’s up to the federal agencies to address those issues “through appropriate mechanisms.” The report all but ignores the racial and ethnic disparities the pandemic has brought to light.
This is a glaring problem, said Altema-Johnson, because the recommendations are simply unattainable for many Black and brown Americans. In addition, she wants to see the guidelines lead to more research on health disparities and address systemic racism, food insecurity and equity, and identify new policies to improve access.
“When I ask a child in the inner city what type of fruits and veggies he likes, the child says, ‘I don’t eat fruits and vegetables. I eat bananas from 7-11 and fruit cups at school,'” said Altema-Johnson.
One of the reasons that the Dietary Guidelines—and the food assistance programs they influence—are not making much of a dent in improving the health of communities of color may be the fact that they don’t reflect those communities, said Constance Brown-Riggs, a registered dietitian and certified diabetes educator based in New York City.
“The guidelines are culturally insensitive and not practical in many people’s lives. They are not relevant to our community,” said Brown-Riggs.
When Black people read the guidelines or look at the MyPlate guide designed to make them more accessible, she said, “there’s nothing there that resonates.” These resources lack both the foods that are familiar to the Black community as well as information on what to eat when you have diabetes or another chronic condition. Federal agencies could easily adapt MyPlate—which shows food group targets and what and how much to eat within a specific, personalized calorie allowance—to include culturally specific versions for different racial and ethnic groups, said Brown-Riggs, instead of just translating the information into several languages.
As the author of The African American Guide To Living Well With Diabetes, Brown-Riggs has developed her own soul food and Afro-Caribbean-inspired visual guide, in which foods are categorized based on their carbohydrate content (since carbs most significantly impact blood sugar levels). It lists callaloo (a Caribbean green), okra, dandelion greens, collard greens, and cabbage in the vegetables category and catfish, hog maws, goat, and pig’s ears as proteins. Chitterlings, the fried intestines of a hog, are listed in the fat category. Sweet potatoes, cornbread, biscuits, grits, black eyed peas, and pinto beans form the starch group—a category of its own because starch can lead to spikes in blood sugar levels. The USDA, categorizes beans and legumes as either vegetables or “protein foods.”
“If Black people can understand how traditional foods fit in with MyPlate, it will help them get the nutrients they need.”
“These are the foods our people eat. They have a connection to them,” Brown-Riggs said. “Some have never had asparagus or broccoli, but collard greens and okra are good vegetables, too. If Black people can understand how traditional foods fit in with MyPlate, it will help them get the nutrients they need.”
Having a MyPlate experience customized to the Black community is crucial, Brown-Riggs said, because many white doctors and nurses don’t have the knowledge to make nutritional advice that’s culturally relevant. As a result, they give patients general advice to eat from certain groups and “they wonder why their patients don’t follow through,” she said.
The cost of fresh food is also a big barrier, said Ann M. Cheney, assistant professor in the Department of Social Medicine, Population, and Public Health at the U.C. Riverside School of Medicine.
“A lot of how we think about nutrition and lifestyle is based on a dominant model of a middle class, white, nuclear family,” Cheney said. “It’s really difficult for low- income Latinos to eat in a healthy way or make the lifestyle choices that are recommended.”
Cheney is leading a new project to help diabetic and prediabetic Latinx people in Southern California’s Coachella Valley access MyPlate recipes and incorporate them into their daily meals. It’s a tall order. Fruits and vegetables are often expensive or unavailable in the areas where they live, putting them out of reach even to the farmworkers who harvest them. Instead, low-income Latinx folks tend to shop in convenience stores, corner bodegas, or at gas stations, Cheney said.
People in rural communities also have limited access to government food programs. And where such programs exist, the lack of public transportation, nonflexible work schedules, impede access. And when low-income Latinx people do receive produce and other healthier products from food banks, the recipes accompanying the food are in typically English and feature an typical Anglo diet.
In Cheney’s current project, she’s identifying ways to improve MyPlate recipes for this audience. Federal agencies also need to reassess their messaging around the Dietary Guidelines and MyPlate, she said. “They give you stuff to read, they say it’s based on research and studies, and the evidence shows this is how you should eat,” she said. “But a lot of people don’t absorb information like this.”
She adds that the culturally appropriate messaging could include squash and tomatillos instead of lettuce, which is often seen as inaccessible due to cost in Latinx households. And instead of wheat, they could recommend whole-grain corn, a cultural staple. Cheney points to Mexico’s Plato Del Buen Comer as a more visually rich way to share nutrition information.
Among those who are Latinx, storytelling is an important way to share information, she said. “It’s talking about nutrition . . . in a lived-experience way,” she said. For this reason, it helps to use characters in a cookbooks, radio novelas, and popular education.
The current model of nutrition promoted by the Dietary Guidelines is also based on the idea of eating as an individual, making it irrelevant to the family-oriented Latinx culture and to people who live with multiple generations in one household.
The current model of nutrition promoted by the Dietary Guidelines is also based on the idea of eating as an individual, making it irrelevant to the family-oriented Latinx culture and to people who live with multiple generations in one household. “This idea of your diet being an independent choice doesn’t speak to many Latinos,” Cheney said. “They don’t make any decisions, including what to eat, without taking everyone else into account.”
For now, translating the Dietary Guidelines into something that the Latinx population can understand falls to people like Angel Garcia, a health educator with Borrego Health, the largest community health center network in California. Key to his approach is seeing clients frequently, which helps establish a more trusting, communicative relationship.
Garcia, who mainly works with diabetics and pre-diabetics, said many Latinx families still follow tradition when it comes to their diets. And as such, their diets are very high on carbohydrates such as tortillas, rice, corn, and very limited on vegetables, he said. Lard is a commonly used fat.
“My job is to help them continue with their tradition, but also to make some dietary changes,” said Garcia. He promotes traditional vegetables such as nopales, or cactus, which can help lower blood glucose levels. It’s not just about adding vegetables, he said, but also using more whole grain products, leaner meats, healthier fats, and eating smaller portions of fruit. And because carbohydrates impact blood sugar levels, the guidelines and MyPlate don’t work for many. Garcia recommends his clients limit portions of fruits and starchy foods such as corn and eat more non-starchy veggies like peppers and broccoli.
Many Native American communities also feel excluded from the current Dietary Guidelines, said Valerie Segrest, regional director of the Native Food & Knowledge Systems at the Native American Agriculture Fund. Because the guidelines are aimed at nourishing healthy people, she says they often make little sense given the epidemic of diabetes, cancer, heart disease, and asthma in Indian Country.
Segrest, an enrolled member of the Muckleshoot Indian Tribe in Washington state, said the federal government needs to do more to help people access nutrient-dense foods. She points to the method used by WIC, which heavily promotes the importance of folic acid for pregnant women because a lack of this vitamin leads to brain and spinal birth defects. Similarly, she says other nutrients should be promoted to prevent chronic illness.
Another approach, Segrest said, is to encourage Indigenous people to become food producers, on both a small and large scale, and to return to their traditional diets. And while fishing and hunting isn’t realistic for everyone, some tribal governments have begun to promote a return the ancestral diet. Such an approach is much more nutrient-dense than many of the foods mentioned in the MyPlate marketing, she added, because it includes traditional proteins with healthy fats like salmon, deer, elk, and oysters, fruit like huckleberries and other wild berries, seeds like sunflower and pumpkin, and dandelion greens, squash, tomatoes, and traditional corn varieties.
“The remedies are around us, everywhere,” said Segrest. “Our elders told us, ‘You have to create a way for people to go grocery shopping and bring their ancestors with them,’” Segrest said. “What would our ancestors recognize as food?”
Martin Reinhardt has been working to figure out just what it would take to eat an ancestral diet in modern times. An associate professor of Native American Studies at Northern Michigan University and an Anishinaabe Ojibwe, Reinhardt said it’s frustrating that the Dietary Guidelines don’t acknowledge or recommend traditional tribal foods.
“To know these foods are not important enough to the community of scholars that’s putting forward these guidelines is illustrative of the way they feel about Indigenous people,” Reinhardt said. “They don’t see us as part of the core.”
It’s not just a symbolic slight. Reinhardt’s research shows that traditional foods can significantly improve the health of Native American people who have been battered by diabetes and other chronic illnesses. The Decolonizing Diet Project he spearheaded in the Great Lakes region looked at research subjects who ate foods that grew or could be hunted in the region before Europeans came to the Americas—including wild rice, cranberries, fish, venison, corn, beans, squash, and maple syrup—for one whole year.
He found that the diet led to a significant decrease in weight, decrease in “bad cholesterol” and triglycerides, and lowered blood glucose levels, as well as raised vitamin levels.
“It proved that eating Indigenous foods could achieve great health outcomes, which our community badly needs,” Reinhardt said. “These foods are something we’ve had for thousands of years. They were our relatives. They sustained our ancestors and helped them thrive.”
The Native American food system was upended with the arrival of white settlers, he said. Tribes were removed from their lands—and their food sources. Those on reservations were often fed unhealthy government food rations. Indian children were enrolled in boarding schools, where they were fed a white man’s diet.
“Our people were forced into a relationship with flour, sugar, salt, and lard,” Reinhardt said. “We have a lot of scars and a lot of them are food-related. It’s no wonder so many [Indigenous people] today are struggling.”
The Dietary Guidelines could play an important role in reversing these patterns, he said, given that they’re taught in school and used by physicians and dietitians across the country. And promoting local, traditional foods would be a good start; Canada recently adopted an Indigenous food guide that includes traditional foods.
And while Reinhardt is focused on Native American communities, his vision of culturally specific foods applies to everyone who has been marginalized by the guidelines. Another important step would be to fund more studies that look at traditional dietary patterns and the impacts of such nutrition, and improve education efforts around ancestral diets. Funding programs that promote traditional local diets, and opening up more public spaces for growing healthy food could help make it possible for more Americans to eat a balanced diet.
“We need to revitalize the relationship between ourselves and our healthy food relatives,” he said.
August 1, 2022
August 10, 2022
The debate over how to treat water—as a public resource or an investment tool—is escalating as climate change accelerates the water crisis in the West. | https://civileats.com/2020/07/28/should-the-dietary-guidelines-help-fight-systemic-racism/?pn=manage_account |
Improving personalized treatment in oncology
The Dutch Cancer Society (KWF) awarded a grant (€950.000) to LUMC, MUMC+/CAPHRI, Zuyderland and UMCG for the research project ‘Improving personalized treatment in oncology. Towards shared decisions based on integrated information regarding treatment options, health status and patient preferences’.
The introduction of decision-making in multidisciplinary teams (MDTs) in oncology has led to a significant improvement in the quality of care. Practical experience and recent studies show that health care providers are increasingly interested "to look at the person behind the patient". However, it turns out to be difficult to tailor treatment recommendations to individual patients’ profiles and needs, as they are predominantly determined in the provider-only MDT meetings, where time is often lacking for in-depth analysis of general health status and the goals and preferences of the individual patient. Recommendations of the MDT are often based on medical-technical information only and guideline-based. Recent research from the Dutch Federation of Cancer Patient Organizations (NFK) shows that about half of the patients miss attention to what they consider important in daily life. The same NFK study indicates that 80% of patients have a need to 'decide together', but they experience this insufficiently
The project members have, together with stakeholders, developed an Integrated Oncology Decision-making Model (IODM) aimed at generating personalized treatment plans. In the IODM, information regarding three domains (disease-specific treatment options, health status, and patient goals and preferences), is collected by the professionals. Next, this information is discussed with the patient and his relatives in order to jointly decide on an appropriate individualized treatment plan. Goal of the research project is to refine and implement the IODM through co-creation, based on a participatory needs and barriers analysis among all stakeholders (patients, their significant others, patient representatives, general practitioners, nurses, medical specialists). Finally, the effect of the IODM on the decision-making process and outcomes will be assessed.
For this project several parties have joined forces, such as Leiden University Medical Center, Maastricht UMC+/CAPHRI, University Medical Center Groningen, Zuyderland Medical Center, NFK and many other stakeholders. Principal investigator within MUMC+/CAPHRI is prof. Trudy van der Weijden (RL Promoting Health and Personalised Care). | https://www.maastrichtuniversity.nl/news/improving-personalized-treatment-oncology |
I received my training from the Institute for Integrative Nutrition, where I studied over 100 different dietary theories and practical lifestyle coaching methods. With my knowledge, we co-create completely personalized weekly action steps based on your goals to move you toward your ideal state of health based on your unique body, lifestyle, preferences, and resources.
My education has provided me with extensive, cutting-edge knowledge in holistic nutrition, health coaching, and prevention. Drawing on what I have learned, I work with my clients to help them make lifestyle changes that produce real and lasting results. You will develop a deeper understanding of food and lifestyle choices that work best for you, improving your energy, balance, health, and happiness.
You can learn more about my approach to health coaching here.
I studied with some of the top names in health and wellness including: | https://www.thewellnessobjective.com/my-training |
For 14 years oncology dietitian Greta Macaire, RD, MA, has provided nutrition support to cancer patients before, during, and after treatment. She creates tailored nutrition plans that support individual goals and that optimize wellness and quality of life by taking into account a person's overall health, specific cancer, nutritional needs during treatment, and eating patterns. Below, Macaire reflects on developments in nutrition counseling and research, shares general nutrition tips for cancer prevention, and links to some of her favorite holiday recipes.
What does a typical day look like for an oncology dietitian at UCSF?
My typical day starts off with a nice cup of coffee, a run with my dog, Fiona, and a nutritious breakfast. I usually get to work by 7:45 am which gives me time to answer emails, voicemails, and MyChart messages before prepping to see patients for the day. Most of my day will be filled with individual nutrition consults. In some cases, this will include working with the patient’s care team to request nutrition labs, communicate recommendations, make referrals to other support services, or assist with the set-up of home nutrition support.
Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the bulk of our visits are via telehealth for now. On Fridays, I spend my day in the Radiation Oncology department seeing patients being treated for head and neck cancer. Variations to my day come in the form of attending meetings, precepting dietitian interns, teaching a class for patients, caregivers, or staff, or attending a Cancer Center support group as a guest speaker. My day at work wraps up around 5 pm. On weeknights, I enjoy cooking (not so much the clean-up), going for walks after dinner, watching Giants games and travel shows, and researching the latest in nutrition.
You’ve worked at the UCSF Helen Diller Family Comprehensive Cancer Center since 2007. In that time, how has the nutrition program grown or changed? Have you witnessed developments to the role that nutrition counseling plays in patient care?
When I came to the UCSF Cancer Center in 2007 the nutrition program started by my predecessor Natalie Ledesma was already going strong providing individual nutrition counseling, offering nutrition seminars, and more. As the Cancer Center has grown, so has our program. We have gone from a staff of one dietitian to 2.4 full time dietitians in San Francisco (myself, Anna Hom, and Neha Shah) and a one-day-a-week position at the Berkeley Outpatient Cancer Center (Ayana Davis).
We serve as the out-patient nutrition services for all adult oncology clinics at the Mission Bay, Mt. Zion, and Parnassus campuses. As the importance of nutrition for improving cancer patient outcomes is increasingly recognized, so are our roles in patient care. We are now integrated into certain teams including the Cancer Committee, Head and Neck Radiation Oncology, Head and Neck Surgery Multi-Disciplinary Pre-Op Clinic, Neuroendocrine Wellness Clinic, and the Survivorship Wellness Group Program.
How can proper nutrition enhance a patient’s treatment? Do you tailor nutrition plans around the drugs a patient may be receiving? How about for oral cancer patients receiving radiation?
Studies link nutrition interventions with better clinical outcomes for cancer patients. Proper nutrition can enhance a patient’s treatment via decreased weight loss, lower unplanned hospital admissions, better performance status, greater quality of life, higher treatment tolerance, and overall survival.
Personalizing nutrition plans to account for drugs or treatments a patient is receiving, their individual health needs, lifestyle, and goals has been a more effective intervention for my patients than taking a “one size fits all” approach. This is also true for oral cancer patients receiving radiation treatment. They experience side effects including chewing and swallowing difficulties, painful mouth sores, dry mouth, and taste changes. Tailoring nutrition plans for these patients to include nutrient dense foods and liquids, modified diet textures, and when necessary, nutrition support can help them meet their needs at a time when eating and drinking can be extremely challenging.
Are there examples of current UCSF faculty research on nutrition and cancer that have impacted your recommendations?
Yes. One example being many of my nutrition recommendations for our men with prostate cancer come from research conducted by our Lifestyle Studies Research Team in the Department of Urology. The team which includes June Chan, ScD, Stacey Kenfield, ScD, and Erin Van Blarigan, ScD, have explored a variety of dietary and lifestyle factors that appear to affect prostate cancer progression. Based on their research, I encourage men with prostate cancer to maintain a healthy weight, include regular vigorous physical exercise, and routinely incorporate foods including cooked tomatoes, cruciferous vegetables, fish, and healthy sources of vegetable fat such as olive oil, avocados, and nuts into their diets.
Another example is a study from Dr. Van Blarigan that I often reference when talking to colorectal cancer survivors. Her study found that following the American Cancer Society Nutrition and Physical Activity Guidelines for Cancer Survivors (having a healthy body weight, being physically active, and eating a diet rich in vegetables, fruits, and whole grains) after diagnosis of stage III colon cancer is associated with a longer survival.
Tips for Keeping Healthy During the Holidays
What is something you wish all people knew about nutrition in terms of cancer prevention?
About 40% of cancer cases in the United States are linked to modifiable risk factors – and could be prevented. In addition to avoiding tobacco exposure and excess sun, following the recommendations from the American Institute for Cancer Research/World Cancer Research Fund can significantly lower cancer risk. These recommendations include being a healthy weight, being physically active, and eating a diet rich in whole grains, vegetables, fruits, and beans. They recommend we limit consumption of processed foods, red and processed meat, sugar-sweetened drinks, and alcohol.
Additionally, when possible, aim to meet nutritional needs through food instead of using dietary supplements for cancer prevention. Overall, covering 2/3 of more of your plate with minimally processed plant-based foods is their recommended eating pattern for cutting cancer risk. Including a colorful fruit or vegetable at every meal and snack is a great place to start.
What do you find most rewarding about your work?
During college I worked as a concierge in an exclusive four-star hotel in downtown San Francisco. My day was filled with assisting guests by arranging tours, making theater and restaurant reservations, etc. It was there that I learned that I love helping people, but I wanted to help with something bigger, something that was more meaningful to me.
As an oncology dietitian I get the opportunity daily to help and support people during one of the most seriously challenging times in their lives – this can be a patient, a caregiver or another of my Cancer Center team members. Knowing that at the end of the day I have helped someone feel a little better and a little more in control of their life is what I find most rewarding about my work here at the UCSF Cancer Center. | https://cancer.ucsf.edu/news/2021/11/15/food-for-thought-optimizing-nutrition-for-cancer-patients |
The U.S. Department of Agriculture and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services released new dietary guidelines in December, as it does every five years, based on the latest scientific evidence. Following this guidance helps us improve our health, reduce the risk of chronic disease and meet nutrient needs.
March happens to be National Nutrition Month, with a special focus on creating healthful meals that honor our cultural and personal food preferences. It’s a great time to marry the two messages to promote healthful eating: personalize your plate and make every bite count with the Dietary Guidelines for Americans.
The Dietary Guidelines offer four key recommendations to help make it easy to make every bite count:
- Follow a healthy dietary pattern at every life stage. A dietary pattern includes the combination of foods and drinks that you typically eat. Just about everybody, regardless of their health status, can benefit from making changes that lead to a healthier dietary pattern. The MyPlate graphic is a great example of a healthy dietary pattern.
- My favorite of the four recommendations: Honor your personal preferences, cultural traditions and your budget. In other words, personalize your plate! Our food choices are influenced by our likes and our culture, so we should strive to honor that by making these traditional foods part of our healthy eating pattern. The following are some examples of traditional and nourishing foods served up in a healthy pattern. Can you guess which type of cuisine they represent? (Answers are provided at the end of this article.)
- Breakfast – Bitter melon with eggs, mantou (steamed bun) and soymilk
- Breakfast – Beans and rice, with sliced tomato and cooked egg and plantain (Hint: As a Latina, this one is my favorite of the bunch.)
- Lunch – Pancit bihon (sautéed vegetables, rice noodles with prawns or chicken) and extra vegetables
Lunch – A bowl with your choice of leafy greens, cutup vegetables, beans or tofu, fruit, nuts and cooked grains
- Dinner – Bhindi masala (sautéed spiced okra, onion and tomatoes) with dal (lentils) and whole grain roti (bread)
- Dinner – Grilled chicken, koresh bademjan (eggplant and tomato stew), brown rice, pomegranate and yogurt
And let’s not forget tasty and nutritious snacks such as baba ganoush with bread, a licuado (fruit smoothie) made with milk, boiled kamote (yams) with a glass of soymilk, and roasted chickpeas, to name just a few. (Check out Extension’s Chef Suzy’s video on how to make these.)
These foods are just a small snapshot of the delicious and healthy contributions the world’s cultures have to offer. For handouts and tip sheets on specific cuisines, be sure to check out the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics National Nutrition Month Toolkit.
- Focus on meeting food group needs with nutrient-dense foods and beverages, and stay within calorie limits. Nutrient-dense means that a food or drink is packed with beneficial nutrients relative to how many calories it provides, how much it weighs or how many detrimental nutrients it contains. An egg is an example of a nutrient-dense food, as are vegetables, fruits, whole grains, seafood, beans, peas and lentils, unsalted nuts and seeds, fat-free and low-fat dairy products, and lean meats and poultry.
- Limit your intake of added sugars, saturated fat and sodium, and limit alcoholic beverages. High intake of foods and drinks that contain lots of sugar, fat, salt and alcohol can be detrimental to our health, and they are also typically high in calories. The 85/15 is good guide to help make every bite count: 85% of your calories should come from nutrient-dense sources, and the other 15% can include a little bit of those things that you should limit.
To help you get started, you can set goals, track your progress and earn badges while making positive changes with the Start Simple with MyPlate App. Of course, you can learn more about healthy eating by taking an Extension class, reading a health and nutrition publication, watching an educational video, and so much more at healthy living section of the Extension website. Here’s to making every bite count!
Answers to the types of cuisines: (1) Chinese, (2) Latin American, (3) Filipino, (4) Vegetarian, though many cultures feature delicious vegetarian choices, (5) Asian Indian, and (6) Middle Eastern. | https://www.unr.edu/nevada-today/blogs/2020/national-nutrition-month |
You need to understand that the point system is only a rough guideline meant to assist you in evaluating positions or in deciding on potential exchanges. Many factors, particularly the pawn structure, influences how valuable pieces are. Rooks tend to be better in open positions with fewer pieces/pawns on the board, bishops can get hindered in closed ...
9
Have a look at the wikipedia article on relative chess piece values, it provides an extensive discussion on the matter. To see how you can compare two given pieces, let's consider your bishop vs rook question at a basic level: A rook's movement is not restricted to a color, unlike the bishop's. This makes half of the board squares inaccessible to a bishop. ...
9
You say your opponent had a strong attack against your king and you had to "sacrifice" your rook for two minor pieces and went on to lose. I think you have it the wrong way round. It sounds like your opponent had a strong attack against your king and sacrificed two minor pieces for your rook, your one active piece by the sound of it. In general a rook and ...
7
I'm not going to claim in a black-and-white way that your idea of 20...Bf8 is strictly inferior to Teichmann's 20...Kf8 in objective terms, but I can think of two solid reasons not to play into the resulting 20...Bf8 21.Bxf6 gxf6: Contrary to your general operating premise that two bishops are superior to two knights, in this position White's knights are ...
6
King + Bishop + Knight King + Bishop + Bishop King + Rook King + Queen and don't forget the unlikely King + Knight + Knight + Knight Assuming the lone King is attempting to avoid checkmate.
6
According to GM Larry Kaufman, who has worked on the chess engines Rybka and Komodo, and has done extensive database analysis of material imbalances, The bishop pair has an average value of half a pawn (more when the opponent has no minor pieces to exchange for one of the bishops), enough to regard it as part of the material evaluation of the position, and ...
6
Admittedly, it's hard to make general abstract statements of any kind about chess (e.g. to say what "harmonious play" means) as it is a highly complex and concrete game. So everything said about it must be taken with some grain of salt, and with that in mind, here are some thoughts that will hopefully help you: Let's draw an analogy with music: (-> used ...
5
As with many things in chess, the answer is: It depends on the position. You touched on this by discussing open vs closed positions, but it can go much deeper than that. In high level play, the middle game may be closed, but the bishops may be preferred as part of an anticipated endgame strategy. Knights are superior to bishops in more aspects than just ...
5
I would like to add another example. A rook can isolate a lonely king from a portion of the board by forming a barrier. A bishop cannot; for that same task you need 2 bishops. That means, roughly, 1R~2B 2 rooks can form a barrier that blocks a knight. 2 bishops cannot; for that same task you need 3 bishops. In this other scenario we have, roughly, 2R~3B ...
5
As in music, harmony is difficult to define, but two things come to mind. One is the advice given "Talk to your pieces". Ask them if they feel like they belong to a team. If one of them says, "No I don't" then ask them why not and try to fix it. The other is something said to me once by a very strong player "Try to make sure that each of your pieces is ...
4
A bishop pair is rarely worth more than a pawn. That would mean you're willing to sacrifice a pawn to obtain the bishop pair. The value of pieces depends on what those pieces can accomplish, not just how many squares they control. knight/bishop = 3 pawns because at worst, a minor piece can usually sacrifice itself for 2 pawns. So it's worth at least 2 ...
4
Steve Mayer wrote an excellent book on the subject, Knight versus Bishop: The Verdict. You could do worse than have a look at that. It explains the circumstances under which one is better than the other, and the fact that he wrote a well-regarded book about the topic suggests that it's not easily addressed in a forum reply.
4
While this position is probably a dead draw, there is no way white could claim even the slightest advantage here. Sure, there are pawns on both sides of the board, but the d4-pawn closes the juiciest diagonals for the bishop and is an eternal target for the black knight. Even more important is the fact, that after black plays b5 the queenside is ...
4
The pawn point system is only a very rough guideline to judge a piece's value. In the beginning of the game (as long as there are no (half) open lines for the Rooks to operate), a Bishop might very well be more valuable than a Rook. The Rooks get better and better the less pieces there are on the board, because they are more mobile "in vacuum". Not only ...
4
I would suggest the 16th game of the 1985 WC match between Karpov (White) and Kasparov (Black). Look after move 21: [FEN "2rqr1k1/5p2/p2b1n1p/3P1bp1/Np6/1P1n1BB1/P2Q1PPP/1N1R1RK1 w - - 0 1"] Although they don't create immediate threats, all black pieces work together, achieving complete control of all parts of the board until the fourth rank. Even squares ...
3
The point values are based primarily on how many squares a piece can command. Not only can rooks command more squares on an open board, but they can cover both colors, while bishops are restricted to squares of their own color. one on the black squares and the other on the white squares. Incidentally, both pieces move "straight", only the rooks do so ...
3
Yes, a rook is worth less than two bishops (five versus six). But a rook offers more concentrated power in one piece. To utilize the "six," you need to move two pieces rather than one. Add your king to both the rook on one hand, and the two bishops on the other hand, and you realize that it is easier to manage two pieces rather than three. Even if the "...
3
Does White actually have any advantage? No, White has no advantage here whatsoever. With proper play, the game should end in a draw. Why I am I so certain that White has nothing in this position? Well, let us analyze the position using the diagram I submitted below: Red color represent squares that Black knight control, while pink color represents ...
3
I don't see why you should go for d5. Generally speaking opening lines is beneficial for the side with the rooks. And your pieces will get or already occupy nice active squares without d5. I'm not saying it is necessarily bad, but it strikes me as a plan that can definitely backfire. Just imagine you have an isolated pawn on e5 and white's rooks are lined up ...
3
I would like to point another way for Black to try and hold to the dark squared bishop, without allowing doubled pawns on f6. I believe that 1...Bd8 would be a reasonnable choice in that difficult position, but White still seems winning. [fen "2r3k1/1b2bppp/p4n2/1p1p1NB1/8/4P3/PP2NPPP/3R2K1 b - - 0 1"] 1...Bd8 2.Nd6 Rc7 3.Nb7 Rb7 4.Bf6 Bf6 5.Rd5 Rc7 6.Rd2 ...
3
I think it is good to notice the possibility of different fortresses, like the one you mention, and of course the wrong coloured bishop for the h-pawn. But to turn reaching such a fortress into a "plan" is way to early in this position. I think fxg3 was probably ok. At the first glance it looks ugly that now there are white prospects for a passer on the d-...
3
What are the reasons why I should not try to take a Knight with my Bishop if it'll result in doubled pawns?
There are a few disadvantages: You trade your light-squared bishop, your best attacking piece. You give Black the bishop pair. The likely followup is an exchange of queens and an early endgame. If you like to attack and don't like to play against bishop pairs, don't play this variation. Do play this variation if you are confident in your play with two ...
3
Your experience doesn't speak too much to the general question. Your opponent apparently was more skilled than you, which means several things. First, they probably would have won if you hadn't traded. Second, part of dominating a game is making it so that all of the options available to their opponent are bad; thus, it's likely that they deliberately ...
2
If you look at the clean case of having an endgame with two knights against two bishops, then for the majority of cases, two bishops are stronger. Yet, this depends on the pawn structure and the number of pawns still on the board. The strength of two bishops is to quickly switch flanks, the ability to control both flanks at once, as well as to create new ...
2
What are the reasons why I should not try to take a Knight with my Bishop if it'll result in doubled pawns?
Let's see, what is the original question? The poster thinks that taking a knight with a bishop should be good if it results in the opponent getting doubled pawns. And the poster also specifically asks about bishop takes knight. I will address both parts of the question. Of course, everything depends on the position. So it is difficult to give a general ...
2
In the second idea, it looks to me like 8... exd5 is a mistake. I would try 8... e5 instead, accomplishing your idea of putting the pawns on dark squares, followed by f6, Kf8 and Ke7. If the white king comes to g6, you just move back to f8. The knight will always have a move that the bishop doesn't cover. The most challenging idea looks like playing h4 and ...
2
As simple as a Knight or even a pawn, if you consider the fact that your opponent's pieces can block the escape squares too. Example: W: Kf1, Nf2 B: Kh1, h2. The Assume that white played Nf2# in the last move. So, white has just used one knight to checkmate black king.
2
Note, that a Rook alone can block a whole rank or file, enabling the king to get into position alone. B+B and B+N cannot do this.
2
You ask a basic but significant question. The question can be answered in either of two ways. On the one hand, chess masters have found, roughly, that trading a rook and a pawn for two minor pieces (bishops and/or knights) tends (averaged over many games) to leave realistic winning chances on both sides; whereas trading a rook for two minor pieces and a ... | https://chess.stackexchange.com/tags/minor-pieces/hot |
While chess may not be among the oldest known competitive games, it does have a long and rich history that spans the globe, establishing it as one of the most impactful activities in history. By looking back at the origins of the game, it is possible to understand its universal appeal as well as its significance as a form of mental exercise. The exciting and engaging history of chess also underlines its benefits as a tool for use in a modern educational setting (LINK), as it helps to promote the development of more advanced brain functions and enhances the overall learning process.
Early Iterations in Ancient Persia
The earliest known records of chess date back to the Sassanid Empire in the year 600 CE, in the form of an ancient manuscript that references a game known as Chatrang. Other records and evidence suggest that this game was actually an evolution of a game developed in Northern India earlier in the 6th century known as Chaturanga, which means “four divisions” and refers to the four main classes of pieces on a chess board.
Over the next 300 years, the game would spread through the Persian Empire, which was transformed as it fell under Muslim rule. The game finally reached Spain in the year 800 CE, brought over by the Moors and other Muslims spreading into Europe. By 1000 CE the game had taken Europe by storm, quickly establishing itself as one of the most common and prominent activities for people of all classes.
Discecting the Differences
The early forms of Chaturanga were remarkably similar to modern chess, featuring two “armies” of pieces squaring off against each other on a checkered game board. The early pieces took the form of common troop types of the era, including infantry, soldiers mounted on elephants and traditional cavalry. The original games also included a piece representing the monarchy commanding the army. In time, these pieces would evolve to reflect European armies and battles, giving way to the bishops, rooks, knights and pawns of contemporary chess boards.
The game itself underwent remarkably few iterations throughout its lifetime, with the most significant taking place during the 1500’s as Europe was transitioning out of the medieval period. These minor modifications only served to refine movements of some pieces, as well as rename other pieces to more closely resemble European imagery.
Understanding Universal Appeal
The fact that chess traveled across dozens of countries and survived for hundreds of years serves as a testament to its charm and allure. It appeals to its players on many different levels, from the thrill of strategic planning to the glory that comes from a well-planned military victory. The fact that it relies solely on the mind rather than physical aspects also plays a significant role, as it intrinsically opens itself up to any person with enough interest. It does not recognize age, gender, creed or physical skill. It only focuses on the powers of the mind. Thus, as with any skill, repeated practice only serves to sharpen the abilities and enhance the performance. | https://www.kcfe.eu/origins-of-chess/ |
How to improve in chess? How can I get better at chess? Can you tell me one trick on how will I improve my game? What should I focus on? How many hours should I practice to get better at chess? I keep on getting these messages from beginners regarding how to get better at chess.
So, today I have come up with an article on 9 basic concepts for beginners on how to improve in chess. As you must have read our article on Golden Opening Principles, you must be aware of how to develop your pieces in the beginning. But what to do next? So just follow the concepts below.
All generalizations are false, including this one – Mark Twain. So, one must keep in mind that the concepts given below are general and useful in most situations. Yet one might find different opinions which can be discussed in the comments section.
OUTPOST
Outpost is a concept related to the knights. Knights are short-range pieces, so they need to be developed very quickly. Once you develop your knights to c3 and f3, how can you utilize them? So here comes the concept of Outpost.
Knights are easy to attack as they need to enter the opponent’s territory to attack and create threats. So, when we place our knights on e5/d5 with the support of a pawn from d4/e4. We ensure that the knight stays there until attacked by the opponent’s pawn.
The concept of octopus knight is an evolved version of knight outpost.
Rooks in Open/semi-open files
Rooks are long-range pieces. Their optimum utilization is usually seen in endgames where the number of pawns is less. But should we neglect them until we exchange other pieces? Of course no! We have to bring them to open or semi-open files.
A lot of times these open files help us do the back-rank checkmate. Once you place your rooks on open files, you get full control and your opponent needs to bring the pieces to this open file with protection.
Otherwise, you get to capture free pieces. Also doubling the Rooks to control the open file adds to the benefit. If you double your rooks on an open file, your opponent won’t be able to access that file safely.
Castling!
Yes! Yes! Castling. I’ve seen a lot of people ignore the king’s safety. Castling should be followed until you get really good at chess where you understand all the subtleties and start keeping the king in the center.
If you notice all the top players castle as soon as possible. It’s important to realize that none of the other pieces value as much as the king.
Not to exchange Bishop for Knight right away
A very common mistake that beginners do is they just develop their Bishop to g5/b5/g4/b4 and swap it with the knights. This looks like a trade of pieces with the same value, but it is not.
This trade means for the long term you will have less control over the dark squares if you swap your dark-squared bishop or light squares if you swap light-squared bishop.
Also, the bishops are very useful in creating mating patterns. A lot of times you will realize that the g7 square of black is weak but you can’t attack it as you had swapped your dark-squared bishop for the knight on f6. I believe this habit of trading bishops for knights is important to curtail.
Once you manage that, your problem on how to improve in chess will be sorted.
Rook on 7th Rank
A Rook is a strong piece in the open file is what we have seen above. Similarly, if we get one rook in the 7th rank, that gives us the benefit of paralyzing the opponent’s pieces. Moreover, a lot of checkmating patterns are developed with the presence of the Rook on the 7th Rank.
As they say, two is better than one, if you manage to get both your rooks in 7th Rank, they turn out to be strong enough to give you minimum draw. A perpetual check with rooks on 7th rank is common and so are lots of mating patterns.
Controlling the center
The Center is the most important zone in the game of chess. Just like in any war circumstances where any army controlling the important checkpoints can get an upper hand, here in chess the center is crucial.
Once you develop your pieces towards the center, you automatically control them. All the attacking and defensive operations are easily possible from the center.
A prophylactic move
A lot of times I have seen players get checkmated in the back rank. So to avoid such a mate, we have a very simple solution. To make a normal h3/h6 move when things are mild and your opponent is not threatening anything.
This provides a luft to the king. A luft means an escape square. This comes into handy when a lot of pieces are exchanged and you are in a position to move your rooks from the 1st rank.
Avoid doubling pawns
Doubling pawns are usually bad. Due to this, the pawns can no more protect each other. Also, the pawn which behind turns out to be a weakness as it cannot be pushed when under attack.
So whenever your opponent captures any of your pieces and you have an option to capture them back, you should think and decide. This is another quality that leads to the question of how to improve in chess.
Capturing towards the center
When you are posed with a decision to capture a piece with any of the 2 pawns, you should capture it towards the center. This helps in maintaining the pawn structure as well as maintaining control in the game.
If you look at the below positions, you will realize that the two options lead to equal material, but the pawn structure is damaged when you capture with a c pawn while the pawn chain is maintained when you capture with a pawn.
So These were some general tips that will help you level up your game and you will be able to take decisions on how to improve your position when you are clueless about what to do. I hope you all learned something new which will level up your game. Overall in this way you know how to improve in chess. | https://chessarticle.com/9-ways-for-beginners-on-how-to-improve-in-chess/ |
*This article is part of the DAT Chess lesson series; all content covered here was featured in an hour-long chess lesson.
(Note: if you are confused about chess notation, please see this webpage: http://www.chesshouse.com/how_to_read_and_write_chess_notation_a/166.htm. This webpage does an excellent job of explaining everything about chess notation, and should make this article easier to follow.)
The opening can be one of the most daunting areas of chess; so much time is spent by experts analyzing each little variation. Fortunately for you, however, the opening in chess is quite easy to master if you keep these rules and tips in mind while playing.
General things about chess openings:
- · The word opening refers to the first 14 moves or so of the game.
- · Over 50% of chess books written about openings.
- · Due to the vast amount of literature about the opening, its importance is very often overstated. You don’t need to memorize lines or variations; you just need to be acquainted with most openings and their basic ideas. Instead of memorizing lines, your time would be better spent learning more about the middlegame and endgame.
- · White has the slight advantage of having the first move, and the initiative (i.e. being able to move first, and causing your opponent to react to your moves instead of vice versa); White’s goal is to build on that advantage.
- · Black’s goal in the opening is to equalize, and secure some counterplay (i.e. opportunities to counter your opponent’s advantage, and start some plans of your own).
- · If you have a bad opening, it’s not the end of the world. However, to give yourself the best chance to win, you should make moves in keeping with your plan (see below), so that you will have winning chances or drawing chances. Think carefully before you make a move that you aren’t sure about, so that you won’t regret the move later. Does your knight really belong on that square?
- · If you have a general idea of the theory behind most openings-i.e. why which moves are played-you won’t need to memorize anything; you can develop a logical plan.
- · Benefits of being knowledgeable about openings: if you know your openings, you won’t need to waste time thinking about what move to play (see notes about time below).
- · Stick to openings you know-it is okay to play the same thing over and over again. You can even experiment with different openings, to see what works best.
- · This is the one part of the game that you can really prepare for. You know what the beginning position looks like; there’s no excuse if you don’t prepare for it.
Goals of the opening:
- · The goal of the opening is to control the center. This is because your pieces will have most mobility in center! For instance, a knight in the corner can make only two moves; if you move it one space over, it can make 3; one space over, it can make 4. You see that knights on the wings (one side of the board) have little mobility. In the center (c3-c6-f6-f3), the knight can make 8 moves. This maximum mobility also applies to bishops; the better position they are in, the more control over the whole game they exert.
Tips for the opening:
- · Keep king safe by castling, within first 10 moves or so. Don’t castle too early, though, before you have developed most of your pieces.
- · Accomplish whatever plan you have in mind by developing to support it. The importance of this can’t be overstated. If you do this, you will have all of your pieces in all of the right places, and you will gain strategic advantages. However, your plan must still take into account your opponent’s moves, and you must therefore modify your plan accordingly; you can’t just ignore whatever your opponent does, and make the same move no matter what.
- · Go for center before you go for the side. You need to concentrate on taking control of the center before playing on the sides; in fact, you may only play on the sides once you have control of the center, or have at least attained an equilibrium (i.e. both sides are equal) with your opponent.
- · It is okay to “copy” your opponent, if those moves are good ones. There isn’t anything dishonorable about doing this!
- · Usually develop knights before bishops; this rule is subject to change, depending on the opening that you play. It’s okay if you break this rule (for instance, the Bishop Opening (1.e4 e5 2. Bc4) breaks this rule on move 2!).
- · Use every move effectively. Don’t waste time! For instance, don’t play e3, then e4; just play e4 to start out with! As mentioned, White’s advantage lies in his extra move: don’t waste it!
- · You are allowed to exchange pieces if you think it will help your position. Don’t exchange pieces just because you can, though; try not to trade away your bishop for your opponent’s knight, since as more pieces become cleared off the board, the bishop will become more and more powerful.
- · Eventually, you should get your rooks involved; once you clear all of your pieces off of the bottom rank and castle, you should have your rooks connected; get them on open files if you want effective placement for them. The rook is an exception to the above-mentioned mobility rule: it can move an equal number of places from any square on the board. Thus, it doesn’t need to be in the center area; it should instead control the center from a distance, placed in the c1-f1 range.
Things not to do:
- · Don’t bring out your queen too early. It will quickly become a target, and you will lose a lot of time trying to defend it while your opponent is busy developing his pieces!
- · Don’t move a side pawn (a,b, g, or h-file pawn) in the opening; also, don’t play on the sides.
- · Don’t try the 4-move checkmate, or any quick-mating scheme. Take advantage of your opponent’s blunders, but don’t attempt to create them.
- · Don’t move a piece twice. Thus, in most cases, you shouldn’t play Nf3-Ng5, or something like that. Incidentally, you violate this rule when you move out your queen, since you will inevitably move it twice.
- · Don’t move out a pawn in front of your castled king; generally, don’t make moves such as h3 or h6 to kick out your opponent’s bishop, since those moves will usually weaken your king position. Also, don’t make a move like h3 to prevent your opponent from moving his bishop to pin your knight; that just wastes a move.
- · Don’t move out too many pawns, or otherwise make your pawn center too vulnerable. For example, in this variation of the Alekhine defense (1. e4 Nf6 2.e5 Nd5 3.c4 Nb6 4. d4 e6 5. f4), White makes 5 consecutive pawn moves, not realizing that he is playing right into Black’s hands. Black wants White to push all of his pawns to develop a weak, unsupported pawn center, which he will soon attack. Don’t move out too many pawns!
- · Don’t mindlessly make “good” developing moves without having a plan. You know the feeling that you have when you think, “Great, I just developed all my pieces, now what?” You should never feel that way! Rather, your opening should seamlessly play into your middle game, and you should be able to use in the middle game the pieces that you just mobilized in the opening. You should be thinking, “Awesome, I just developed my pieces, now my plan can be implemented and eventually completed.”
- · Don’t exchange one of your stronger pieces. If you have a strong knight, for instance, in an outpost on e5, don’t trade it away easily, even though your opponent will try to.
- · Don’t sacrifice, even a pawn, unless you have a concrete reason to. Don’t play a gambit (an opening where you sacrifice a pawn) unless you have extremely strong compensation. For instance, in the Danish Gambit, a variation is 1. e4 e5 2. d4 exd4 3. c3 dxc3 4. Bc4 cxb2 5. Bxb2. In this instance, White has sacrificed two pawns, but has more than enough compensation: black hasn’t developed any pieces yet, while White has two bishops trained at his king. However, in other cases/gambits, you shouldn’t just give away a pawn without either an expectation of winning it back in the near future, or strong positional compensation that you should soon be able to take advantage of.
- · Don’t lose a piece! You don’t want to get yourself into a hole that you will need to dig yourself out of later. Double check every move to make sure that it is safe. Don’t leave a piece “hanging” (that is, unprotected). Watch out for the squares that the opponent’s bishops and queens guard, and don’t put any pieces there if they aren’t protected!
Finally, you must break these rules sometimes as well! These rules apply to certain situations, but not each and every situation. If you think you should move a piece twice, go ahead (for instance, sometimes you attack another piece, forcing that piece to move twice, you have both moved a piece twice, so it balances out). These rules should be followed mostly, but if you need to break them for a good reason, go ahead! | https://miniblob.com/chess-lesson-1-the-opening/ |
Chess is a game of strategy and maneuvers. Every player rules an army of 16 chessmen, including pawns and other pieces (the queen, knights, rooks, king, and bishops).
A chess game played well has three phases. In the opening, the players prepare their forces in planning for combat. The middlegame starts as the players fight for position and carry out attacks and counterattacks. The end phase is the endgame when, with less pieces and pawns on the board, it is securer for the kings to come out and enter the final battle.
As play proceeds, every player will take some of the opponent’s men. Frequently, the taken pieces are quickly recaptured. As long as the piece a player gives up is usually equal to the piece he receives in return, we consider the players are exchanging. If you inadvertently put a piece where it can be captured without receiving a piece of equal value back, we say that you put that piece “en prise” (means “in take” in French). There are instances when a player may put a piece “in take” to mislead an opponent. If the opponent takes the offered man, it could leave him open to attack.
You’re Ready to Go!
It’s time for you to take a look at these tips to assist you in understanding some easy ways to win more games:
- Observe at your opponent’s move.
- Make the greatest possible move.
- Create a plan.
- Understand the worth of the pieces.
- Learn good and well.
- Command the center.
- Protect your king.
- Realize when to trade pieces.
- Consider your endgame.
- Constantly be alert.
Lastly, the most important fact to remember about chess is not to be in a hurry. Take your time and be sure to examine the examples wisely. Then go out and play – and have a good time! | http://chesssoul.com/2017/06/08/tips-to-winning-chess/ |
Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.5 (MichaelMaggs).
A rook (/ɹʊk/; ♖,♜) is a piece in the strategy board game of chess. Formerly the piece was called the tower, marquess, rector, and comes (Sunnucks 1970). The term castle is considered informal, incorrect, or old-fashioned.
Each player starts the game with two rooks, one on each of the corner squares on their own side of the board.
|This article uses algebraic notation to describe chess moves.|
The white rooks start on squares a1 and h1, while the black rooks start on a8 and h8. The rook moves horizontally or vertically, through any number of unoccupied squares (see diagram). As with captures by other pieces, the rook captures by occupying the square on which the enemy piece sits. The rook also participates, with the king, in a special move called castling.
In the medieval shatranj, the rook symbolized a chariot. The Persian word rukh means chariot (Davidson 1949:10), and the corresponding pieces in the original Indian version chaturanga have ratha (meaning "chariot"), while east Asian chess games such as xiangqi and shogi have names also meaning chariot (車) for the same piece.
Persian war chariots were heavily armoured, carrying a driver and at least one ranged-weapon bearer, such as an archer. The sides of the chariot were built to resemble fortified stone work, giving the impression of small, mobile buildings, causing terror on the battlefield. However, in the West the rook is almost universally represented as a crenellated turret. One possible explanation is that when the game was imported to Italy, the Persian rukh became the Italian word rocca, meaning fortress, and from there spread in the rest of Europe. Another possible explanation is that rooks represent siege towers – the piece is called torre, meaning tower, in Italian, Portuguese, and Spanish; tour in French; toren in Dutch; Turm in German; and torn in Swedish. In Hungarian it is bástya ("bastion"). Another possibility is that, as chess moved to Europe long after chariot warfare had been abandoned, a different symbol was needed to represent the rook's concept of feudal power (the chariot being a method of warfare only used by the elite, very similar to medieval knights), and as such the Europeans adopted a castle to represent a lord and his feudal power, further supported by the (albeit later) name for the rook, the "marquess", named after a nobleperson. Finally, the chariot was sometimes represented as a silhouette, a square with two points above representing the horse's heads, which may have been seen to resemble a building with arrowports to the medieval imagination. An exception is seen in the British Museum's collection of the medieval Lewis chess pieces in which the rooks appear as stern warders or wild-eyed Berserker warriors. Rooks usually are similar in appearance to small castles, and as a result a rook is sometimes called a "castle" (Hooper & Whyld 1992). This usage was common in the past ("The Rook, or Castle, is next in power to the Queen" – Howard Staunton, 1847) but today it is rarely if ever used in chess literature or among players, except in the expression "castling".
In some languages the rook is called a ship: Thai เรือ (reūa), Armenian Նավակ (navak), Russian ладья (ladya).
In Bulgarian it is called the cannon (Топ, Romanised top).
In Kannada it is known as ಆನೆ (āāne), meaning "elephant". This is unusual, as the term "elephant" is in many other languages applied to the bishop.
In general, rooks are stronger than bishops or knights (which are called minor pieces) and are considered greater in value than either of those pieces by nearly two pawns but less valuable than two minor pieces by approximately a pawn. Two rooks are generally considered to be worth slightly more than a queen (see chess piece relative value). Winning a rook for a bishop or knight is referred to as winning the exchange. Rooks and queens are called heavy pieces or major pieces, as opposed to bishops and knights, the minor pieces.
In the opening, the rooks are blocked in by other pieces and cannot immediately participate in the game; so it is usually desirable to connect one's rooks on the first rank by clearing all pieces except the king and rooks from the first rank and then castling. In that position, the rooks support each other, and can more easily move to occupy and control the most favorable files.
A common strategic goal is to place a rook on the first rank of an open file (i.e. one unobstructed by pawns of either player), or a half-open file (i.e., one unobstructed by friendly pawns). From this position, the rook is relatively unexposed to risk but can exert control on every square on the file. If one file is particularly important, a player might advance one rook on it, then position the other rook behind – doubling the rooks.
A rook on the seventh rank (the opponent's second rank) is typically very powerful, as it threatens the opponent's unadvanced pawns and hems in the enemy king. A rook on the seventh rank is often considered sufficient compensation for a pawn (Fine & Benko 2003:586). In the diagrammed position from a game between Lev Polugaevsky and Larry Evans, the rook on the seventh rank enables White to draw, despite being a pawn down (Griffiths 1992:102–3).
Two rooks on the seventh rank are often enough to force victory, or at least a draw by perpetual check.
Rooks are most powerful towards the end of a game (i.e., the endgame), when they can move unobstructed by pawns and control large numbers of squares. They are somewhat clumsy at restraining enemy pawns from advancing towards promotion, unless they can occupy the file behind the advancing pawn. As well, a rook best supports a friendly pawn towards promotion from behind it on the same file (see Tarrasch rule).
In a position with a rook and one or two minor pieces versus two rooks, generally in addition to pawns, and possibly other pieces – Lev Alburt advises that the player with the single rook should avoid exchanging the rook for one of his opponent's rooks (Alburt 2009:44).
The rook is a very powerful piece to deliver checkmate. Below are a few examples of rook checkmates that are easy to force.
In Canadian heraldry, the chess rook is the cadency mark of a fifth daughter.
Unicode defines two codepoints for rook: | https://b2b.partcommunity.com/community/knowledge/en/detail/3765/Rook+%28chess%29 |
Is bishop better than knight?
In completely open positions without pawns, the bishop is superior to the knight… Conversely, the knight is superior to the bishop in closed positions, on the one hand because the pawns are in the bishop’s way, and on the other hand because the pawns form points of support for the knight.
Should I sacrifice a bishop for a knight?
well, in the opening and midgame, it is not good to sacrifice knight for bishop. In the endgame, if you are uncomfterbl’ with the knight being there, it is a fair trade. I dont play with the knight. A good rule for weaker players, is that bishops is better in open positions, and knights is better in closed positions.
Is it better to have a bishop or a knight for the end game?
Bishop vs Knight
Usually, the bishop is the preferred piece in the endgame, because its long range movement allows it to influence events on both sides of the board, whereas it can take the knight several moves to cross from one flank to the other. … Meanwhile, the bishop increases in strength as more diagonals open up.
Which is more valuable in chess?
The Queen.
The modern queen is the most valuable piece in the game of chess, and a key component in countless chess strategies. In material terms, the queen is valued at nine points—equivalent in value to three minor pieces, nearly as valuable as both rooks, and more valuable than every one of your pawns.
Which bishop is more valuable?
Neither bishop is inherently better than the other. Depending on your choice of opening, white’s dark-squared bishop can be far more valuable to him. White’s light (king’s) squared bishop stands on squares of the color occupied by the enemy king.
Can you win chess with just a king?
Under modern rules, a player with a bare king does not automatically lose and may continue playing. A bare king can never give check, however, and can therefore never deliver a checkmate or win the game.
Is it possible to checkmate with two knights?
Checkmate possibilities. In general, two knights cannot force checkmate, but they can force stalemate. … Unlike some other theoretically drawn endgames, such as a rook and bishop versus rook, the defender has an easy task in all endings with two knights versus a lone king. | https://hillsidech.org/theology/question-which-is-more-important-bishop-or-knight.html |
A bishop (â™—,â™) is a piece in the board game of chess. Each player begins the game with two bishops. One starts between the king's knight and the king, the other between the queen's knight and the queen. The starting squares are c1 and f1 for White's bishops, and c8 and f8 for Black's bishops.
The Rooks are at the corners, the Knights are next, and then the Bishops. the middle two pieces are the King and the Queen.
(bishops), "What chess piece is next to the knight?. In traditional sets, the piece looks kind of like a castle tower and begins each chess game as the outside . | https://www.easyweeklymeals.com/types-of-chess-pieces-bishops/ |
The Unintentional Exchange Sacrifice
I have to admit, most of my exchange sacrifices are unintentional. I'm going to guess a bunch of yours are too - unless you are one of my Titled readers, in which case perhaps not. Sometimes they can lead to interesting games. Today I'll discuss some of the nuances of the unintentional exchange sacrifice that I observed from a recent game.
First, see if you can find how my opponent won the exchange! By the way, my opponent is good chess friend Martin Justesen who was recently interviewed on the Perpetual Chess Podcast.
Choosing the Right Sacrifice
When you unintentionally sacrifice the exchange, it is important to find the least painful way to do so. Most intentional exchange sacrifice involve the rook capturing a minor piece such as knight or bishop - often to disrupt the opponent's pawn structure or to remove a key defender. For an example of this, check out this nice game by the 12th World Champion Anatoly Karpov:
As you can see from this game, the sacrifice is made on positional grounds, not to land a quick knockout - although if you can, feel free to do so! So when you sacrifice the exchange unintentionally, if you have the choice (e.g. you spot that you're going to lose the exchange), try to do so in a way that limits the damage or gives you some compensation.
Karpov is one of my favorite players. If you're interested, check out my video presentation of Karpov-Llubojevic, Linares 1989. It doesn't involve an exchange sacrifice but showcases his superb endgame technique.
Minor Pieces are Faster
Activating a rook often takes several steps. First, you need to open a file for the rook to attack down, or spend a move bringing the rook into play. Second, you need to advance the rook to the appropriate rank where it can either pivot to move to a different file (e.g. a rook lift) or attack a target along that rank. Finally, if it's not already attacking a specific target, you need to move it one more time to attack the target - for example, getting behind an opponent's pawn.
Bishops and knights in particular seem to be a little more nimble in the middlegame. You will see this when you play through the entire game, but here is a key move that helps in this strategy.
Compensation and Objective Evaluation
So no matter what side of the exchange sacrifice you are on, you have to understand what compensation if any the player who made the sacrifice gets for the material. In the case of my game, my opponent lost one of its active pieces and my "extra" minor piece was able to stay active and set up a direct attack on my opponent's king.
When you are the one with the extra material, you need to try to activate your rook, and also stay objective when evaluating the resulting positions. Sometimes what can happen is that you - thinking that you are just winning - avoid continuations that are good because they look to drawish. Indeed, if you are objectively better you shouldn't play for a draw (all else being equal).
In the following position, I have achieved nearly full compensation for the exchange sacrifice. My opponent had the opportunity to play into a drawing line, but perhaps because he was looking for more he rejected it. See you can find it: | https://www.chess.com/blog/backrankbrawler/the-unintentional-exchange-sacrifice |
I’ve found that it’s far too easy to use club as a crutch to relational ministry. Oftentimes I’ll let prayer and contacting and appointments and all the other aspects of Campus Life fall to the wayside.
Picture this…
When a Grandmaster chess player is teaching their apprentice to play chess, the first thing they do is to take away the queen. The queen is the most powerful piece on the board, so people learning chess have a tendency to rely almost entirely on this single piece to win the game.
For months, the apprentice will play without the queen, slowly beginning to understand the power of all the other pieces…the rooks, the bishops, the knights, and even the pawns. When the apprentice finally has a grasp on just how useful the rest of the pieces can be, only then will the Grandmaster put the queen back on the board and let them learn to play with all the pieces.
Club can become our queen. We can rely so heavily on it that we forget the power and effectiveness of a one on one conversation or a trip to a football game or of getting on our knees and praying.
This summer, take a step back and learn the power of some of the other pieces on the board. | http://www.yfc.net/campuslife/blog/take-away-the-queen |
# Checkmate
Checkmate (often shortened to mate) is any game position in chess and other chess-like games in which a player's king is in check (threatened with capture) and there is no possible escape. Checkmating the opponent wins the game.
In chess, the king is never actually captured—the player loses as soon as the player's king is checkmated. In formal games, it is usually considered good etiquette to resign an inevitably lost game before being checkmated.
If a player is not in check but has no legal move, then it is stalemate, and the game immediately ends in a draw. A checkmating move is recorded in algebraic notation using the hash symbol "#", for example: 34.Qg3#.
## Examples
A checkmate may occur in as few as two moves on one side with all of the pieces still on the board (as in Fool's mate, in the opening phase of the game), in a middlegame position (as in the 1956 game called the Game of the Century between Donald Byrne and Bobby Fischer), or after many moves with as few as three pieces in an endgame position.
## Etymology
The term checkmate is, according to the Barnhart Etymological Dictionary, an alteration of the Persian phrase "shāh māt" (شاه مات) which means "the King is helpless". Persian "māt" applies to the king but in Sanskrit "māta", also pronounced "māt", applied to his kingdom "traversed, measured across, and meted out" thoroughly by his opponent; "māta" is the past participle of "mā" verbal root. Others maintain that it means "the King is dead", as chess reached Europe via the Arab world, and Arabic māta (مَاتَ) means "died" or "is dead". Moghadam traced the etymology of the word mate. It comes from a Persian verb mandan (ماندن), meaning "to remain", which is cognate with the Latin word maneō and the Greek menō (μένω, which means "I remain"). It means "remained" in the sense of "abandoned" and the formal translation is "surprised", in the military sense of "ambushed". "Shāh" (شاه) is the Persian word for the monarch. Players would announce "Shāh" when the king was in check. "Māt" (مات) is a Persian adjective for "at a loss", "helpless", or "defeated". So the king is in mate when he is ambushed, at a loss, helpless, defeated, or abandoned to his fate.
In modern Persian, the word mate depicts a person who is frozen, open-mouthed, staring, confused and unresponsive. The words "stupefied" or "stunned" bear close correlation. So a possible alternative would be to interpret mate as "unable to respond". A king being mate (shah-mat) then means a king is unable to respond, which would correspond to there being no response that a player's king can make to the opponent's final move. This interpretation is much closer to the original intent of the game being not to kill a king but to leave him with no viable response other than surrender, which better matches the origin story detailed in the Shahnameh.
In modern parlance, the term checkmate is a metaphor for an irrefutable and strategic victory.
## History
In early Sanskrit chess (c. 500–700), the king could be captured and this ended the game. The Persians (c. 700–800) introduced the idea of warning that the king was under attack (announcing check in modern terminology). This was done to avoid the early and accidental end of a game. Later the Persians added the additional rule that a king could not be moved into check or left in check. As a result, the king could not be captured, and checkmate was the only decisive way of ending a game.
Before about 1600, the game could also be won by capturing all of the opponent's pieces, leaving just a bare king. This style of play is now called annihilation or robado. In Medieval times, players began to consider it nobler to win by checkmate, so annihilation became a half-win for a while, until it was abandoned.
## Two major pieces
Two major pieces (queens or rooks) can easily force checkmate on the edge of the board using a technique known as the ladder checkmate. The process is to put the two pieces on adjacent ranks or files and force the king to the side of the board by using one piece to check the king and the other to cut it off from going up the board. In the illustration, White checkmates by forcing the Black king to the edge, one row at a time. The ladder checkmate can be used to checkmate with two rooks, two queens, or a rook and a queen.
## Basic checkmates
There are four fundamental checkmates when one side has only their king and the other side has only the minimum material needed to force checkmate, i.e. (1) one queen, (2) one rook, (3) two bishops on opposite-colored squares, or (4) a bishop and a knight. The king must help in accomplishing all of these checkmates. If the winning side has more material, checkmates are easier.
The checkmate with the queen is the most common, and easiest to achieve. It often occurs after a pawn has queened. A checkmate with the rook is also common, but a checkmate with two bishops or with a bishop and knight occurs infrequently. The two-bishop checkmate is fairly easy to accomplish, but the bishop and knight checkmate is difficult and requires precision.
### King and queen
The first two diagrams show representatives of the basic checkmate positions with a queen, which can occur on any edge of the board. Naturally, the exact position can vary from the diagram. In the first of the checkmate positions, the queen is directly in front of the opposing king and the white king is protecting its queen. In the second checkmate position, the kings are in opposition and the queen mates on the rank (or file) of the king.
With the side with the queen to move, checkmate can be forced in at most ten moves from any starting position, with optimal play by both sides, but usually fewer moves are required. In positions in which a pawn has just promoted to a queen, at most nine moves are required.
In the position diagrammed, White checkmates easily by confining the black king to a rectangle and shrinking the rectangle to force the king to the edge of the board:
The winning side must be careful to not stalemate the opposing king, whereas the defender would like to get into such a position. There are two general types of stalemate positions that can occur, which the stronger side must avoid.
### King and rook
The first diagram shows the basic checkmate position with a rook, which can occur on any edge of the board. The black king can be on any square on the edge of the board, the white king is in opposition to it, and the rook can check from any square on the rank or file (assuming that it cannot be captured). The second diagram shows a slightly different position where the kings are not in opposition but the defending king must be in a corner.
With the side with the rook to move, checkmate can be forced in at most sixteen moves from any starting position. Again, see Wikibooks – Chess/The Endgame for a demonstration of how the king and rook versus king mate is achieved.
In the third diagram position, White checkmates by confining the black king to a rectangle and shrinking the rectangle to force the king to the edge of the board:
There are two stalemate patterns:
### King and two bishops
Here are the two basic checkmate positions with two bishops (on opposite-colored squares), which can occur in any corner. (Two or more bishops of the same color, which could occur because of pawn underpromotion, cannot checkmate.) The first is a checkmate in the corner. The second position is a checkmate on a side square next to the corner square (this position can theoretically occur anywhere along an edge, but can only be forced adjacent to a corner). With the side with the bishops to move, checkmate can be forced in at most nineteen moves, except in some very rare positions (0.03% of the possible positions).
It is not too difficult for two bishops to force checkmate, with the aid of their king. Two principles apply:
The bishops are best when they are near the center of the board and on adjacent diagonals. This cuts off the opposing king. The king must be used aggressively, in conjunction with the bishops.
In the position from Seirawan, White wins by first forcing the black king to the side of the board, then to a corner, and then checkmates. It can be any side of the board and any corner. The process is:
Note that this is not the shortest forced checkmate from this position. Müller and Lamprecht give a fifteen-move solution; however, it contains an inaccurate move by Black (according to endgame tablebases).
One example of a stalemate is this position, where 1. Kb6 (marked with the x) would be stalemate.
### King, bishop and knight
Of the basic checkmates, this is the most difficult one to force, because these two pieces cannot form a linear barrier to the enemy king from a distance. Also, the checkmate can be forced only in a corner that the bishop controls.
Two basic checkmate positions are shown with a bishop and a knight, or the bishop and knight checkmate. The first position is a checkmate by the bishop, with the black king in the corner. The bishop can be on other squares along the diagonal, the white king and knight have to be on squares that attack g8 and h7. The second position is a checkmate by the knight, with the black king on a side square next to the corner. The knight can be on other squares that check the black king. The white king must be on a square to protect the bishop and cover a square not covered by the knight.
With the side with the bishop and knight to move, checkmate can be forced in at most thirty-three moves from any starting position, except those in which the defending king is initially forking the bishop and knight and it is not possible to defend both. However, the mating process requires accurate play, since a few errors could result in a draw either by the fifty-move rule or stalemate.
Opinions differ as to whether or not a player should learn this checkmate procedure. James Howell omits the checkmate with two bishops in his book because it rarely occurs but includes the bishop and knight checkmate. Howell says that he has had it three times (always on the defending side) and that it occurs more often than the checkmate with two bishops. On the other hand, Jeremy Silman includes the checkmate with two bishops but not the bishop plus knight checkmate because he has had it only once and his friend John Watson has never had it. Silman says: "... mastering it would take a significant chunk of time. Should the chess hopeful really spend many of his precious hours he's put aside for chess study learning an endgame he will achieve (at most) only once or twice in his lifetime?"
This position is an example of a stalemate, from the end of a 1966 endgame study by A. H. Branton. White has just moved 1. Na3+? If Black moves 1... Kc1! then White must move his bishop to save it because if the bishop is captured, the position is a draw because of the insufficient material rule. But after any bishop move, the position is a stalemate.
## Common checkmates
### Back-rank mate
A back-rank checkmate is a checkmate delivered by a rook or queen along a back rank (that is, the row on which the pieces stand at the start of the game) in which the mated king is unable to move up the board because the king is blocked by friendly pieces (usually pawns) on the second rank. An example of a back-rank checkmate is shown in the diagram. It is also known as the corridor mate.
### Scholar's mate
Scholar's Mate (also known as the four-move checkmate) is the checkmate achieved by the moves:
The moves might be played in a different order or in slight variation, but the basic idea is the same: the queen and bishop combine in a simple mating attack on f7 (or f2 if Black is performing the mate). There are also other ways to checkmate in four moves.
### Fool's mate
Fool's Mate, also known as the "Two-Move Checkmate", is the quickest possible checkmate. A prime example consists of the moves:
resulting in the position shown. (The pattern can have slight variations, for example White might play f2–f4 instead of f2–f3 or move the g-pawn first, and Black might play ...e7–e6 instead of ...e7–e5.)
### Smothered mate
A smothered mate is a checkmate delivered by a knight in which the mated king is unable to move because it is surrounded (or smothered) by its own pieces.
The mate is usually seen in a corner of the board, since fewer pieces are needed to surround the king there. The most common form of smothered mate is seen in the adjacent diagram. The knight on f7 delivers mate to the king on h8 which is prevented from escaping the check by the rook on g8 and the pawns on g7 and h7. Similarly, White can be mated with the white king on h1 and the knight on f2. Analogous mates on a1 and a8 are rarer, because kingside castling is more common as it safely places the king closer to the corner compared to queenside castling.
## Rare checkmates
In some rare positions it is possible to force checkmate with a king and knight versus a king and pawn.
### Stamma's mate
In the diagram showing Stamma's mate (named for Philipp Stamma), White to move wins:
White also wins if Black is to move first:
This checkmate occurred in Jesús Nogueiras–Maikel Gongora, 2001 Cuban Championship (see diagram), which proceeded:
If 82...a2 then 83.Nb3#.
Reaching the position in the first diagram, with Black to move.
Black resigned here; play would have continued 84...a2 85.Nb3#.
A similar position with the knight on d2 is more than 500 years old, identified as "Partito n. 23" by Luca Pacioli, in his MS De ludo scachorum (Latin for "The game of chess"), dated 1498 and recently reprinted (Gli scacchi) by Aboca Museum Edizioni.
### Unusual mates
There are also positions in which a king and a knight can checkmate a king and a bishop, knight, or rook; or a king and a bishop can checkmate a king with a bishop on the other color of squares or with a knight, but the checkmate cannot be forced if there is no other material on the board (see the diagrams for some examples). Nevertheless, it keeps these material combinations from being ruled a draw because of "insufficient mating material" or "impossibility of checkmate" under the FIDE rules of chess. The U.S. Chess Federation rules are different. In a typical position with a minor piece versus a minor piece, a player would be able to claim a draw if they have a limited amount of time left.
### Two and three knights
It is impossible to force checkmate with a king and two knights, although checkmate positions are possible (see the first diagram). In the second diagram, if Black plays 1... Ka8?? White can checkmate with 2. Nbc7#, but Black can play 1... Kc8 and escape the threat. The defender's task is easy – he simply has to avoid moving into a position in which he can be checkmated on the next move, and he always has another move available in such situations.
In the third diagram, one knight is guarding c1, leaving the other knight to try to checkmate. After 1. Ndc3+ Ka1, White needs to get the knight on e2 to c2. But if White plays 2. Nd4, Black is stalemated.
Under some circumstances, two knights and a king can force checkmate against a king and pawn (or rarely more pawns). The winning plan, quite difficult to execute in practice, is to blockade the enemy pawn(s) with one of the knights, maneuver the enemy king into a stalemated position, then bring the other knight over to checkmate. (See Two knights endgame.)
Three knights and a king can force checkmate against a lone king within twenty moves (assuming that the lone king cannot quickly win a knight). These situations are generally only seen in chess problems, since at least one of the knights must be a promoted piece, and there is rarely a reason to promote a pawn to a piece other than a queen (see Underpromotion). | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Checkmate#History |
As a common and (sometimes) proven belief, deep learning systems seem to learn uninterpretable representations and are far from human understanding. Recently, some studies have highlighted the fact that this may not always be applicable, and some networks may be able to learn human-readable representations. Unfortunately, this ability could merely come from the fact that these networks are exposed to human-generated data. So, to demonstrate their ability to learn like humans (and not that they are simply memorizing human-created labels), it is necessary to test them without any label.
Following this idea, the DeepMind and Google Brain teams, together with the 14th world chess champion Vladimir Kramnik, studied their creature AlphaZero from this point of view. AlphaZero is the descendant of AlphaGo, the super neural network that beat the world champion Lee Sedol in a best-of-five GO match, a turning point in the history of deep learning, as can also be seen in the wonderful Netflix documentary AlphaGo.
Unlike AlphaGo, AlphaZero is trained through self-play (i.e., it learns to play competing against itself) and masters not only GO but also chess and shogi. This trait makes AlphaZero the perfect case study to explore this idea. Moreover, given the fact that it performs at a superhuman level, understanding its functionality is also particularly useful for highlighting unknown patterns which have never been discovered by chess theorists.
AlphaZero is composed of a CNN (convolutional neural network) based on ResNet50, which has two branches and computes a policy (p) and a value (v) and a Monte Carlo tree search to evaluate the state and update its action selection rule. p contains the probabilities associated with possible next moves, and v is a value that predicts the outcome of the game (win, lose or draw). As can be seen from the image below, the network takes an input of shape 8 x 8 x d, whose number of channels d depends on the parameter h (in the paper, h=8), which represents the number of previous positions considered. Different channels encode different information, such as who has the white pieces or the number of moves played.
Three approaches were conducted to investigate the capability of this architecture to acquire chess knowledge: 1) screening for human concepts, 2) studying behavioral changes, and 3) exploring activation.
1. Screening for human concepts
The aim is to find out if the internal representation (i.e., the activations) of AlphaZero can be related to human chess concepts. Concepts can vary from the basic, such as the existence of a passed pawn, to the more complex, such as the mobility of pieces.
Most of the concepts were retrieved from the evaluation function of Stockfish (a very famous hard-coded chess engine). Using a method based on sparse linear regression, the authors were able to compute the what-when-where (what concept is learned, when it was learned during training, and wherein the network) plots.
To demonstrate that AlphaZero develops representations that are closely related to human concepts over the training, the authors evaluated how much importance AlphaZero gives to different pieces and to different basic chess concepts during the training. It can be seen in the figure above how the value assigned to different pieces reaches the conventional theory (9-10 the queen, 5 the rooks, and 3 the knights and the bishops) and how some concepts become more and more important after a considerable number of steps, very close to how a human improve his way of playing.
2. Studying behavioral changes
The objective is to investigate, focusing on chess openings, which are highly theorized, how internal representations evolve over time and subsequently a) relate them to progression through human history b) study the behaviors change in relation to these changing representations.
- When the progression of AlphaZero was compared to the one of human games played after the 15th century (the first game in the dataset was played in 1475!), it was discovered that human players, during the different centuries, tend to focus on a specific opening and play it as default and then branch into different variations, while AlphaZero tries out a wide array of opening moves already in the early stages. A focus was also conducted on the famous Ruy Lopez opening (for chess players: 1. e4 e5, 2. Nf3 Nc6, 3. Bb5) where AlphaZero’s preferences and human knowledge can take different paths. The Berlin defense, which today is considered one of the most effective continuations, rapidly became AlphaZero’s favorite answer to the Ruy Lopez opening, while it took centuries for humans to understand deeply the Berlin defense.
- A very interesting qualitative assessment was also performed by the GM Vladimir Kramnik, who tried to understand different behaviors of AlphaZero related to the training steps done and, therefore to the evolving internal representations. The GM evaluated games played by two AlphaZero trained with a different number of iterations (k). From the comparison between AlphaZero-16k and AlphaZero-32k, Kramnik easily deduced that AlphaZero-16k has a quite basic understanding of material value, which often led to unwanted exchange sequences. From the games between AlphaZero-32k and AlphaZero-64k, came out that the main difference probably lies in the understanding of king safety in unbalanced positions. Finally, from AlphaZero-64k versus AlphaZero-128k, king safety re-emerges, and AlphaZero-128k has a much deeper understanding of which attacks will succeed and which will fail.
3. Analyzing activations
The third aim is to explore activation directly with unsupervised methods instead of the first two approaches. Indeed, the fact that the first two methods are supervised entails the risk of not finding relationships or concepts that have not been included in the dataset.
Hence, through non-negative matrix factorization (NMF), the authors were able to visualize patterns not related to labeled human data, by analyzing the model formerly trained for concept screening in a concept-agnostic (i.e., unsupervised) manner. Given a specific board position, the visualization process highlights the most fundamental squares considered by the network in evaluating the position, as shown in the figure below. Not all results were interpretable with a certain level of confidence (for example the column (d) has a high level of uncertainty) while some possible interpretations were given to other activations. For example, columns (a) and (b) show the development of diagonal moves for white and black respectively; column (c) probably shows a more complex factor: the number of opponent’s pieces that can move to a specific square (the darker the square, the more piece can move in that square).
Conclusion
This paper was a first step into the comprehension of complex systems such as AlphaZero. The next step is summarized at the end of the paper with the following sentence: | https://www.marktechpost.com/2021/12/16/understanding-alphazero-neural-networks-superhuman-chess-ability/ |
Endgames where each side has a king, one or more pawns, and a single minor piece fall into four categories - knight vs knight, bishop vs knight, bishop vs bishop where the bishops are on the same coloured square, and bishop vs bishop where the bishops are on opposite coloured squares. Each has its own character, so we will look at each separately.
In many ways, knight vs knight endgames are similar to pure pawn endgames, as the knight is a fairly slow piece. Usually, the side with an extra pawn will win, just as in pawn endgames, and the technique is much the same - centralise your king and knight, and push your pawns where you have a majority to create a passed pawn. One thing to look out for is opportunities to sacrifice the knight in order to promote a pawn, such as in the following typical example:
Usually, the bishop is the preferred piece in the endgame, because its long range movement allows it to influence events on both sides of the board, whereas it can take the knight several moves to cross from one flank to the other. In general, knights become weaker over the course of the game; as more pieces are exchanged, their ability to jump means less and less, while their slow speed becomes an issue as wide spaces open up on the board. Meanwhile, the bishop increases in strength as more diagonals open up. On an open board, with pawns on both wings, the knight is often unable to keep up with the bishop, as the following example shows.
When both sides have only a bishop, the game can be difficult to win even when you have an extra pawn. This is because it can be difficult or even impossible to budge the enemy king from a square that the bishop cannot attack. Here is an example:
There is even an infamous case where a bishop and pawn against a bare king are not enough to win. If the pawn is a rook pawn, and the queening square of the pawn is of the opposite colour to the bishop's square, then it is actually impossible to force the enemy king out of the corner, as the following example shows:
Bishop endgames aren't always a draw, but they can be difficult to win. The most important thing to do is to make sure you avoid getting your pawns fixed on the same colour as your bishop. Instead, try to fix your opponent's pawns on the same colour as his bishop. As in the middlegame, a bad bishop is a major weakness, but that weakness is greatly magnified when the bishop is your only remaining piece besides the king and pawns. If you can place your pawns on the opposite coloured square to the bishops, that means your opponent will never be able to attack them with his bishop, and if you fix his pawns on the same coloured square as the bishops, your own bishop will be able to attack them and tie the enemy down to defending.
Opposite coloured bishop endgames are notorious for their drawishness. It can be impossible to win, even when you are two pawns up. The problem is that the enemy king and bishop can make a blockade on the opposite coloured square to your bishop, leaving you with no way to break through. Here is an example where even three extra pawns are not enough to win:
In general, if you have extra pawns, you should try to avoid trading down into an opposite coloured bishops endgame. On the other hand, if you're behind on pawns, look out for opportunities to exchange down to opposite coloured bishops, as the opposite coloured bishop endgame is a good place to try and save a draw.
For more information, why not try one of the suggested reading options below? | https://www.chessstrategyonline.com/content/tutorials/introduction-to-chess-endgames-minor-piece-endgames |
In the course thus far, we have covered the early Chinese American experience and have more recently been moving towards contemporary Chinese America. A lot of the material covered was from the past as it acts as an important foundation to recognize and understand contemporary Chinese America.
Through the research paper, you will have the opportunity to explore historical and/or contemporary figures, events or resources in the Chinese American Community. This is your opportunity to further explore the topics we have covered through any of the weeks thus far, for example taking a topic from Choy’s book as a means of relating Chinatown’s past to its present state. Though the focus of his book is San Francisco’s Chinatown (its history and architecture), many of the organizations existed in other Chinese ethnic enclaves across the nation. (You can also select a topic that we have NOT covered thus far)
For the paper, students are asked to:
1) Decide on a topic to explore
2) Utilize any of our books as a means to explore the topic (You can choose something outside of the textbooks as well)
3) Research more information to bridge the past to the present and tie the information to the course (Avoid plagiarism and cite cite cite all sources!)
4)This paper can be an extension of a topic that we have discussed that you are eager to expand upon, or something that strikes your interest by flipping through the textbooks. It can also be a topic that we have NOT discussed pertaining to Chinese American that is of interest to you.
Through this exploration, you can develop an understanding of how it could be possible to use multiple topics/references made to build on a single topic. There are many topics that can be utilized as a springboard for further exploration but it is not necessary to limit yourself to the topics we have covered.
At the end of the paper students should relate their topic with contemporary Chinese America. For example, if you choose to write about the Donaldina Cameron House, from the Choy text should be utilized for the historical background, information from the course should be integrated (stereotypes/roles of women), and further research would be needed to expand upon the significant role of how the Cameron House is utilized in today’s Chinese American society.
Remember to focus on Chinese American issues. Since the course focuses on the experiences of Chinese in America (as immigrants and descendants of immigrants), that should remain the focus for your research paper.
Since all our papers are written from scratch, the papers we submit are plagiarism free and we strictly adhere to lecturer’s instructions. Our writers are highly qualified from all over the world and include graduates and professors from most of the largest and known universities in the world. Once you have assigned us your assignment, we select the most qualified and reliable writer to handle your assignment.
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We do not resell previously-done tasks delivered to other clients. When we deliver orders to our clients, we safeguard their privacy and confidentiality by ensuring the third party does not access the work. By writing the papers from scratch, we have managed to maintain a certain level of originality, which defines our business model. Our qualified editors proofread all submitted work to eliminate mistakes that can interfere with the credibility of the assignment. | https://www.homeworkmarket.college/how-has-covid-impacted-chinese-americans/ |
Leeton Shire Council rangers discuss misconceptions among the community
A DOG or cat goes missing, it's locked up in the pound, never to be seen again.
Right?
Wrong.
This is often the sentiment Leeton Shire Council's rangers have to deal with among the community, but they say it couldn't be further from the truth, especially since this is something the law does not allow for.
According to the Companion Animals Act 1998 a person who seizes an animal under the authority of this act must "cause the seized animal to be delivered as soon as possible to either its owner, to a council pound or to any approved premises".
Leeton Shire Council senior ranger Peter Skarlis said one of the primary objectives of this act was to reunite animals with their owners.
"Whether that is done by a member of the public or by council, it's still achieving the same outcome," he said.
Residents who are members of the I Live in Leeton Facebook group would notice there is usually a post every day about animals, mostly dogs, who are spotted wandering around town.
Posting on Facebook to reunite owners with their animals does help, but council also encourages rangers to be called.
Mr Skarlis reiterated to the community that nothing untoward happens when rangers are called to assist.
"People posting on Facebook obviously have a good intention and want to reunite that dog with their owner," he said.
"But the issue can be it is unknown to that person if that dog has been involved in any offences. In Leeton both our vets our approved premises so residents can also take animals to the vets if they are lost. The vets then have obligations under the Companion Animals Act to notify council.
"What we do encourage is people call the rangers. Council and the vets can scan for microchips.
"The perception we want to dispel is something bad will happen to an animal if it does end up in the pound. That's not the case."
Council is involved in an extensive re-homing program for animals in the pound who are unclaimed by their owners.
In the 2016-17 year, 89 per cent of animals in the pound were reunited with their owner or re-homed, and in 2017-18 and 2018-19 this number was 90 per cent.
Any dogs that were euthanised were proven to be responsible for dog attacks on people or animals, according to Mr Skarlis.
"We work very hard with three re-homing agencies and these days we have wonderful re-homing rates," he said.
"When you look at the break down of the numbers, about half the dogs are returned to their owners and roughly half get re-homed. The reason the re-homed dogs don't go back to their owners is because the owners do not come forward.
"The perception we want to dispel is 'the ranger took my dog, I won't get it back'. This is put out there untruthfully."
Council has many strategies is uses to to encourage people to claim their dogs from their pounds as part of its companion animals management plans.
The perception we want to dispel is something bad will happen to an animal if it does end up in the pound. That's not the case.Leeton Shire Council senior ranger Peter Skarlis
One is if a dog is is simply lost and has done nothing wrong and it comes into the pound, the owner receives no fine as the idea is to reunite the animals and owner quickly. Another misconception is "it will cost too much money to get my dog out of the pound".
"We have fees associated with the pound ...one is the pound release fee which is $35.50, by comparison to Wagga, Griffith or Narrandera, it is significantly less. In cases we have the discretion to wave this fee and we often do," Mr Skarlis said.
"Registration fees though can't be waived as that is a state statutory obligation.
"We do hold dogs for an extended period of time at no extra charge to allow people to come up with the money for that cost. I know other local councils do not (do this)."
MORE NEWS
In 2018-19, there were 330 dogs impounded, which is almost one animal per day.
Mr Skarlis encouraged residents to look after their animals and ensure they are properly restrained at all times.
What residents might not also know is rangers do more than just pick up lost animals.
"Animals are a lifelong responsibility ... it's up to you to ensure they are looked after correctly," he said.
They are also responsible for areas such as abandoned vehicles, education programs, pollution matters (air, noise, dumped rubbish etc), livestock on roads, overgrown vegetation and fire mitigation and more.
Comments
Discuss "Rangers move to dispel common misconceptions"
Please note: All comments made or shown here are bound by the Online Discussion Terms & Conditions. | https://www.irrigator.com.au/story/6652032/rangers-move-to-dispel-common-misconceptions/?cs=6805 |
Foster families sought in Wexford
TUSLA Child and Family Agency is launching a new public information campaign in a bid to recruit more foster carers in the Wexford area.
The campaign is Tusla's first national fostering campaign and it aims to dispel misconceptions about who can foster a child, and encourage people from all walks of life to consider providing a loving stable environment for a vulnerable child.
As part of National Fostering Week, Tusla Wexford will host special information events at The Riverside Park Hotel in Enniscorthy on Thursday, October 17, from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. and again at 7 p.m. to 9 p.m.
Across Wexford and Waterford, 318 foster carers have opened their homes to a total of 358 children and Tusla are hopeful of increasing this figure further.
'Tusla National Fostering Week is an opportunity to dispel common misconceptions about foster care,' said Chief Executive of Tusla Bernard Gloster.
'We are looking for foster carers from all walks of life to provide safe and stable environments for children who, due to a range of reasons, can't live at home.
'It only takes one person to change a child's life. I would encourage anyone who feels they can provide a stable and safe family environment for a child to think about fostering and join the 4,254 Tusla foster carers around the country that open their homes to 5,521 children. In Wexford, we are looking for people from all backgrounds, aged over 25 years who are interested in working with us to provide foster care and respite care for children up to 18 years of age.'
Members of the public in Wexford wishing to inquire about fostering during Tusla National Fostering Week can visit Tusla.ie for more details, call freephone 1800 226 771, email [email protected]. | https://www.wexfordpeople.ie/localnotes/foster-families-sought-in-wexford-38571783.html |
Profile and activities
Limerick City is third largest city in Ireland with a population of 95,854. The city lies on the River Shannon, with the historic core of the city located on King's Island, which is bounded by the Shannon and the Abbey River. Limerick is also located at the head of the Shannon Estuary where the river widens before it flows into the Atlantic Ocean. Limerick is the third most populous city in the state, and the fourth most populous city on the island of Ireland. In 2014, Limerick is Ireland's City of Culture, with a number of events due to take place in the city over the year.
Over 18,000 people living in Limerick County are non-Irish nationals and come from all over the world. The largest ethnic groups in Limerick are people from Poland, Latvia, Lithuania, Pakistan, China, Nigeria and India.
Doras Luimní
Doras Luimní is an independent, non-profit, non-governmental organisation working to support and promote the rights of all migrants living in Limerick. Our mission is to promote and uphold the human rights and wellbeing of migrants through personal advocacy, integration development and collaborative advocacy campaigns at the local and national level.
The anti-rumours campaign aims to dispel the widespread myths and misconceptions around the topic of immigration and migrant integration, by providing evidence-based answers and utilising social networks to spread the message of the campaign far and wide. As part of the campaign, Doras Luimní will provide free training to a team of anti-rumours advocates who will be given the necessary tools to carry out their own projects and workshops which challenge the most common myths.
There are three key stages of the campaign:
- Research: Identifying the most common myths and misconceptions on aspects of migration in Limerick and generating reliable and factual information on immigration and integration in order to counter and address these issues in a local context.
- Communication: The facts will then be presented in a creative and accessible way, which will inform the public and provide evidence-based answers to common misconceptions.
- Training: A wide range of key local stakeholders are invited to attend workshops and training sessions, during which they will gain skills in migrant rights, intercultural awareness, facts and figures around the topic of migration, facilitation skills and access to free learning resources which can be used to carry out their own anti-rumours initiatives. | https://pjp-eu.coe.int/pt/web/c4i/limerick.html |
I finally was able to watch the recording of Lisa Hinchliffe’s Credo webinar, “Predictable Misunderstandings in Information Literacy: Anticipating Student Misconceptions to Improve Instruction,” in which she provides an overview of the preliminary results of a qualitative study she conducted to determine what librarians believe are first-year students’ misconceptions related to information literacy.
In 2017, Library Journal and Credo Reference conducted a survey to learn how two- and four-year institutions tie information literacy to the first year experience. The survey results, “The First-Year Experience Instruction Survey: Information Literacy in Higher Education,” indicate that students are not well-prepared to conduct academic research, lack experience using libraries, don’t understand that they need to learn research skills, and are overconfident in their abilities. Librarians’ challenges in teaching information literacy include limited contact time with students, having too many outcomes, not having specific assignments to contextualize lessons, and not sharing the same expectations as course instructors. There were over 400 comments related to the findings.
Hinchliffe and her research assistants were curious to know if there are student misconceptions that drive errors in information literacy practice. These misconceptions are plausible inferences based on previous experience. Once we can identify these misconceptions, we can help students unlearn habits and strategies that worked for them in high school but may not serve them as well in college [see Wiggins and McTighe’s Understanding by Design (2008)]. Hinchliffe and her assistants coded responses to the report that seemed to answer “What is challenging about teaching first-year students?”, removed duplicates, and then synthesized the responses into nine summary misconceptions to form an initial inventory.
Students:
- think that they shouldn’t ask for help
- don’t see themselves as “scholarly apprentices” (view themselves outside the community of practice)
- think of research as a linear process
- think of the library as the place to find books
- equate relevancy search rankings as a measure of quality vs. relevance to the search statement they enter
- conflate achieving access and information quality (don’t understand that finding information isn’t the same as finding “good” information)
- believe that free online resources are sufficient
- believe that Google is a sufficient search tool
- believe they are information literate (Hincliffe later explains that students interpret information literacy as a cross between computer and digital literacy)
In the second phase of this project, Hinchliffe and the research assistants held librarian focus groups online to discuss the misconceptions. The librarians noted other student misconceptions, including:
- all library resources are credible
- every question has one right answer (rather than seeing research as an opportunity to explore possible answers)
- the library is the place to study or work with fellow students (no mention of collections or resources)
As a practicing librarian with a limited five years of full-time experience, I have an anecdote for each of these. While further research needs to be conducted, what strikes me about this is that we can redirect some things we do in the classroom to help dispel some of these misconceptions. Hinchcliffe also reminds us that the best way to do this is to provide students with the opportunity to encounter these misconceptions so they can self-correct their assumptions.
I am very much looking forward to seeing how this research continues to take off and what it might mean for those of us in the front lines. I also think having a discussion around these misconceptions might be particularly good to have with librarian colleagues who teach, as well as course instructors. | https://lindsayanndavis.com/2018/06/12/predictable-misunderstandings-in-information-literacy-anticipating-student-misconceptions-to-improve-instruction/ |
Despite its name, the Faithbusters discussion series isn't about disproving religion.
Instead, organizers of the series hope to dispel stereotypes and misconceptions surrounding religions that Americans typically know little about. Islam is the topic of the first Faithbusters installment, tonight at 6:30 in the W.T. Young Library Auditorium.
"We hope to educate people on Islam and ourselves," said Yahya Ahmed, president of the Muslim Student Association, whose members will be discussing their faith at the event. | https://hwpi.harvard.edu/pluralismarchive/news/muslim-students-fight-stereotypes-first-faithbusters-installment |
AGENDA:
- Playtest remaining Game Mechanic Remix
- Mobile Application Concept Share
- Demo: LucidChart iOS UI Elements
LUCID CHART: Login
USER: “[email protected]”
PASS: (see whiteboard)
LECTURE HOMEWORK: Rapid Prototyping Tutorial Research
DESCRIPTION: Students will conduct internet research on Tutorials for Rapid Prototyping. Students will post findings from three different tutorials. Topics for tutorials may be as follows:
- Input: 3D Scanners
- Input: Mobile 3D Scanners
- Modeling: Software for animation modeling and riggings
- Fabrication: Software for fabrication and design
- Output: 3D Printing
- Output: Laser Cutting
. DUE: Monday, April 27th, 2015.
PARAMETERS:
- Title: “Name: Rapid Prototyping Tutorial”
- BODY:: Topic 1 & 1-2 sentence description
- Topic 2 & 1-2 sentence description
- Topic 3 & 1-2 sentence description
-
FURTHER EXPLORATION: | https://openlab.citytech.cuny.edu/imt1101/readings-2/1112-game-design-ii/ |
In today's selection, we will dispel some popular myths about mammals.
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Spiders are distributed throughout the globe in huge numbers. The order of spiders includes about 50 thousand species. In today's article, we will dispel many common myths about these mysterious creatures.
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In this article, we will dispel some myths and tell you interesting facts about opossums. In particular, consider one interesting feature of these marsupials – how they pretend to be dead.
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Monkeys have long enjoyed the special sympathy of man. There are about 150 species of monkeys. Will you learn from this article? Do monkeys live only on trees, do they only eat bananas, myths about chimpanzees and bonobos, why do baboons need corns, do monkeys recognize their reflection
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These cute animals have become especially popular thanks to the famous tale of Riki-Tiki-Tavi. And at present, in the homes of Southeast Asia, they are often kept as guards from snakes. Today we will dispel myths and tell interesting facts about mongooses.
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People have long had a strong antipathy towards these animals. Bats have long been an integral attribute of horror films. Today we will look at some misconceptions about bats and try to rehabilitate these animals.
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There are more than 100 species of lemurs, which vary significantly in size, weight and appearance. They live only in Madagascar. Today we will tell readers some interesting facts and dispel a couple of myths about these funny animals.
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Weasel is the world's smallest predator. However, this is not a gentle animal, but a merciless killer, capable of strangling a goose and tearing a dozen chickens to shreds. Weasel can't stop killing, and her predatory instincts can't be turned off...
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There are about 70 species of rats in the world, there are about 14 billion of them around the globe. Rats are very prolific and successfully live wherever a person is. Myths about these rodents are no less successfully born and spread.
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Cats have been living next to people for a very long time, but this does not mean at all that we have managed to comprehend these amazing animals. Much still remains unsolved in them. There are many misconceptions about these "whiskered-striped"...
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Such unpleasant inhabitants of the forests, despite their tiny size, pose a serious danger to humans. In this article, we'll take a look at popular misconceptions and provide some facts about ticks...
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Everyone thinks that kangaroos are constantly jumping across the endless expanses of Australia. And if you say that these animals are able to climb trees, then this will cause a smile. But the way it is... Here you will find a lot of interesting facts and myths about kangaroos...
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Cuttlefish are the best in the world at camouflage, chameleons in this regard just rest. These amazing creatures are able to quickly change their skin color to match their environment and create complex chromatic patterns...
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The ability to change the color and pattern of the body, characteristic of all chameleons, is widely known. At the same time, many are convinced that they change their color depending on the surrounding background. This is an absolute myth and a complete fabrication...
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The idea of mass suicide of lemmings is very common. It is believed that in some years, when the number of lemmings increases very sharply, the animals together rush off the cliff into the sea. Is it really?
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The classics of Marxism-Leninism argued that one of the most important differences between man and animals is his use of tools. Many still believe that the stick turned the ape into a man. And completely wrong...
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Since ancient times, people have been hostile to these amphibians, considering toads the embodiment of everything poisoned, terrible and harmful. However, it is not. Toads are very useful for agriculture...
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We propose to consider the most common misconceptions of mankind about hedgehogs. Also in this article you will find some interesting facts about these familiar animals...
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The wild dog dingo is found throughout Australia. Outwardly, it is a cross between a wolf and a domestic dog, and scientists still cannot agree on its origin...
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Porcupines have the longest quills of any mammal. Some of them reach a length of 40 cm and 7 mm in diameter. Many are interested in the question: are these needles dangerous and can porcupines “shoot” with them? Find the answer in this article
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Dolphins have been loved and popular since antiquity: there are many poetic tales and beliefs about dolphins and their sculptures. In this article, we will tell you some interesting facts about dolphins and dispel the main misconceptions about them...
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Geckos are very peculiar lizards that are known for being able to move on ceilings, glass and other surfaces. Moreover, many details of the mechanism of movement of the gecko on completely smooth surfaces are unclear to this day...
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Perhaps due to the fact that camels are not so common in our country, and there are many misconceptions about them. Let's dispel the most famous myths and look at the most interesting facts about these unique animals.
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Let's dispel the most common misconceptions about monitor lizards and find out interesting facts about these animals. In particular, you will learn about the smallest and largest monitor lizards, where they live and what they eat... | https://factum-info.net/en/zabluzhdeniya/zhivotnye |
About this Research Topic
Despite the enormous success of immune-checkpoint blockade in tumor immunotherapy, the application of immune checkpoint inhibitor (ICI) in lung cancer is obscure since this treatment is only recommended to the advanced NSCLC patients without mutation in oncogenes such as EGFR and ALK. Emerging studies indicate the poor clinical outcomes of ICI treatment for patients with oncogenic mutations except for KRAS. For these patients, there is a high risk of relapse after targeted therapy as the first- or second-line treatment. They are usually excluded from the clinical trials of ICI treatment, which even further worsens the situation, leaving few options for the clinician. It is very urgent to study the roles of immunotherapy, such as ICI, with the combination of other therapies, in these patients.
To develop an efficient and precise treatment for these patients, several mysteries need to be solved, including how the oncogenic mutants affect the “cold” or “hot” tumor microenvironment, the outcome of immunotherapy since patients with KRAS-mutation respond better to ICI treatment than others, and what is the best way to design the combination of immunotherapy with other traditional therapies. To this end, the identification of biomarkers is also in great need.
The aim of this Research Topic is to provide a comprehensive overview of our current and developing knowledge of immunotherapy in NSCLC patients with oncogenic mutations, to clinicians and basic researchers in tumor immunology field as well as personnels in the pharmacological industry. In this Research Topic, we will explore the optimized immunotherapy modality in front- or later-line settings. Secondly, we encourage the investigation and discovery of biomarkers related to the status of immune response in tumor microenvironment. Last but not least, we aim to further the understanding of the mechanisms governing the immune responses in these patients.
We expect the Original Research, Case Reports, and Review articles on the following (but not limited to) aspects of the immunotherapy for advanced NSCLC with oncogenic mutations：
1. New therapeutic exploration
2. The immunotherapy in classical or specific subgroups
3. Biomarkers for response (include HPD), toxicities and so on
4. Strategies for personalized and precise immunotherapy based on the oncogenic mutations.
5. irAEs in the immunotherapy for advanced NSCLC with oncogenic mutations.
6. Changes in TME related to immunotherapy.
Keywords: Cancer Immunotherapy, Oncogenic Driver Variants. Immune Checkpoint Inhibitors, Antitumor Immunity, NSCLC
Important Note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review. | https://www.frontiersin.org/research-topics/15628/immunotherapy-for-nsclc-with-oncogenic-driver-variants |
We are proud to announce the publication of the Student Misconceptions in STEM Database!
Under the tutelage of Dr. Teresa Secules, veteran School of Education faculty and integral member of the Piedmont College Woodrow Wilson Georgia Teaching Fellowship team, Fellows across all three cohorts worked to compile this tool to assist secondary STEM teachers.
You can access the tool using the link below.
This database consists of student misconceptions in science, mathematics, technology, and engineering fields. Each misconception is explained along with the correct scientific or mathematical understanding. Suggested instructional methods to dispel each misconception are included, as well as pertinent research and resources.
All these misconceptions have been encountered by Piedmont Woodrow Wilson Teaching Fellows during the course of their teaching in Georgia's public schools. The suggested instructional strategies and resources have been tried in their own classrooms.
http://studentmisconceptions.pbworks.com
© 2018 Piedmont College. All rights reserved.
Your comment will be posted after it is approved.
Leave a Reply. | http://www.piedmontcollegewoodrowwilson.org/home/student-misconceptions-in-stem-database |
More information:
du Pisani, A.L. 2002. Drought vs aridity. Spotlight on Agriculture, 55. Ministry of Agriculture, Water and Forestry
Description:
This article is to introduce the concepts of aridity and drought and also to dispel some misconceptions about these phenomena.
Summary / Notes:
It needs to be stressed that there is a huge difference between drought and aridity. Namibia is an arid to semi-arid country, but this does not mean that we experience drought every year and everywhere.
Year: 2002
Type: Report
Origin: Ministry of Agriculture, Water and Forestry
Download: Spotlight_055.pdf (2.67 mb)
Preview: Preview this file
Top 50 related results:
You may also be interested in the following items which are on a similar or related topic, listed in order of similarity.
» Links to useful free software for working with shapefiles, kml and kmz files, pdf files and more. | http://www.the-eis.com/searchresults.php?action=moreinfo&id=5616 |
Despite its name, the Faithbusters discussion series isn't about disproving religion.
Instead, organizers of the series hope to dispel stereotypes and misconceptions surrounding religions that Americans typically know little about. Islam is the topic of the first Faithbusters installment, tonight at 6:30 in the W.T. Young Library Auditorium.
"We hope to educate people on Islam and ourselves," said Yahya Ahmed, president of the Muslim Student Association, whose members will be discussing their faith at the event.
"When we conduct these kinds of dialogues, we really emphasize the point that there are no controversial questions," said Ahmed, a biology and Islamic studies senior. "There's nothing that's off-limits or off-target. The more questions you have, the better understanding you can come to."
After the discussion, the traditional Islamic dessert ashure, or Noah's pudding, will be served in the gallery next door. | https://www.cair.com/ky_no_topic_off_limits_at_muslim_student_event |
A study has revealed that though many female motorists may become anxious when their male partner is in the passenger seat, most men are relaxed while being driven around by their women.
The survey, by the Institute of Advanced Motorists (IAM) has revealed that of 520 male motorists questioned, only 5% are sometimes not comfortable or are never relaxed when their female partner is driving.
However, of the 480 women drivers surveyed for the study, 15% are sometimes uneasy and 8% are never relaxed if their man is sitting in the vehicle when they are behind the wheel.
Other findings of the survey show that nearly two fold more male motorists than female ones say they are confident drivers.
The most confident motorists and the least nervous ones are in Yorkshire and Humberside whereas the least confident and most nervous are in North East England.
According to the survey, when couples go out together on the road, men have a four fold higher chance of driving the car than their female counterparts.
However, when partners head out to pubs or parties, women are more likely to take the wheel to drive home.
The study also suggests that a higher number of women in comparison with men say that other motorists unnerve them a little or a lot.
Both sexes however have an equal chance of admitting to parking poorly, speeding, or becoming angry.
Neil Greig, policy and research director, IAM, said: "The findings are positive and dispel a lot of previously-held misconceptions, particularly about women drivers.
"While women are still more nervous in certain environments, such as in fast-moving traffic and bad weather, we encourage them to take the steering wheel more often, and to get as much practice as possible." | https://www.autonetinsurance.co.uk/about-us/news/insurance-news/2011/01/05/men-'happy-to-be-driven-by-women' |
Hello everyone. This is my first real post here, so let me say that i’m happy to be here.
My question is about inter-religious dialogue. What is the Catholic view (and the views of other religions) on what the purpose of it is? From my perspective as a Buddhist, I can see that there are some problems that can happen if you go into dialogue without understanding why you are doing it. Obviously, one form of mistaken dialogue is when the point of it is for both sides to try to convert each other. On the other end of the spectrum, it is just as pointless to try to have dialogue to try to find common ground in hopes of trying to blend the two religions together.
Is the purpose to gain deeper understanding of each other in order to dispel misconceptions and be able to interact more respectfully with each other and to encourage cooperation on social issues like world hunger and poverty? | https://forums.catholic.com/t/the-catholic-perspective-on-inter-religious-dialogue/291772 |
The New Zealand Brain Bee Challenge (NZBBC) is a competition for high school students in Year 11 to learn about the brain and its functions, discover the latest discoveries in neuroscience research, dispel misconceptions about neurological and mental illnesses and find out about the exciting career opportunities brain research has to offer.
The program was started in Australia in 2006 to address deficiencies in the public's perception of neuroscience.
The Brain Bee Challenge is run by the Australasian Neuroscience Society (ANS) with the involvement of Education Perfect. The Centre for Brain Research runs the New Zealand Round 2 Challenge. | http://www.nzbbc.ac.nz/en.html |
After the events of 9/11, misinformation regarding Muslims and Islam rapidly spread throughout the nation and Indiana alike. A small group of leaders within the Muslim Hoosier community realized that the most effective path to dispel these misconceptions was to rally Muslim Hoosiers together and to encourage civic engagement. From this small group, the Muslim Alliance of Indiana was born.
Since its inception, the MAI has worked consistently for an Indiana that not only ensures social justice for Muslims, but for all Hoosiers. We recognize that in bringing Muslims together, we reignite those tenets of our faith that lead us to serve and to dedicate ourselves to a better world. We are committed to developing high-quality educational, outreach, and social, programs designed to foster cooperation and understanding both with other religious communities as well as civic and service organizations.
As the Muslim Alliance of Indiana celebrates its second decade of service, our focus areas are: Access to Justice, Civic Engagement, and Interfaith Cooperation. | https://www.eventbrite.com/o/muslim-alliance-of-indiana-286924510 |
Business Continuity Planning
Business continuity is a means of handling a variety of transfer events and consequences that impact the business and the remaining (or new) owner when the original owner leaves. This white paper discusses business continuity planning in a way that you may not expect.
Business Growth by Acquisition
Business Valuation
Obtaining a valuation helps to dispel many of the common misconceptions that owners have about the value of their businesses and what the values mean to their overall exit plan. Using the services of an experienced appraiser may help you reap all the value of your life’s work.
C vs. S Corporation
It is difficult to imagine a more elementary decision, one made initially when you begin your business and often never changed. Consequences—harmful or beneficial—arising from your choice of business entity come crashing down when you decide to exit the business. | https://www.transitionextadvisors.com/white-papers/ |
The artistry of communication in teaching-learning
One of the important pre-conditions for an individual to grow into a healthy personality is the interdependence upon social webs within which one operates. The life and soul of social interaction is communication. Communication is largely a means for breaking down barriers to human interaction and building up of society, its units and sub-divisions to create a harmonious global world. Owing to the technical nature of sophisticated communicative devices, parts of the world that are geographically remote are remapped both sociologically and psychologically. In other words, communication is a ‘glue’ that keeps people together while relationships grow and strengthen into channels of mutual support, productivity and satisfaction. Any teaching-learning process is essentially a process of communication.
Questioning, the heartbeat of teaching and learning
Let’s begin with a question. Why do we learn? There can be several answers: to imbibe knowledge, to understand better, to be self-reliant, to satisfy our curiosity and so on. Learning is by nature, curiosity.”, said Plato.
The National Education Policy 2020 requires learners to be active questioners in the classroom. Albert Einstein once said,’ The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing’. Questioning is a key skill in the communication cycle. It is a powerful tool in the teaching-learning process. Asking the right kind of questions by the teacher can test learners understanding, dispel misconceptions, fuel the imagination, ignite their critical thinking and problem solving skills, keep interest and motivational levels high, besides promoting a positive self- concept. Effective teachers ask a variety of questions to engage their learners in stimulating discussions and dialogues, The more number of high quality questions a teacher asks, higher is the learning attainment of the learners. Encouraging learners to explore out of the box is the pathway to building thinking minds and successful global citizens.
Questioning and Project-based learning
Project-based learning is a sub set of experiential learning or learning by doing with reflection that encourages learners to be active participants in the process of exploration and discovery. Questioning plays an important role in project-based learning. Learners ask challenging questions to solve authentic problems, participate in simulations, undertake investigations, conduct case studies and develop real-life solutions in order to bring about change. They explore multi-disciplinary connects, work collaboratively and within groups using 21st century skills of communication, critical thinking and creativity leading to learning that is deep and long-lasting.
Leading educationists recommend Project-based Learning because it discourages rote learning, kindles the curiosity of learners and equips them to acquire 21st century skills for successfully contributing to a highly evolving global society.
Understanding that flexibility, adaptability, collaboration, communication, problem-solving and innovation are the key skills to succeed in today’s dynamic society, Macmillan Education, India, in partnership with Foundation for Innovation and Technology Transfer, IIT Delhi, has launched a blended learning solution, Altura– Advancing Learning and Teaching using Resources and Assessments, for Grades 1 to 5. The learning resources follow the experiential-learning approach, are discovery oriented and discussion and analysis based leading to the development of 21st century skills. As educators, it’s time for us to encourage our young learners to dive in and embrace new ways of learning and thinking. | https://macmillaneducation.in/blog/the-artistry-of-communication-in-teaching-learning/ |
It's finals time, and college kids are looking for any approach that will give them the edge they need on their final exams and papers. But according to a recent study, some students are consuming more than copious amounts of coffee and energy drinks to push the limits...
NAGAP, The Association for Graduate Enrollment Management, offers the Graduate Education Research Grant to encourage and support exploration of topics specific to graduate education and the field of graduate enrollment management (GEM). Topic areas include (but are not limited...
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HIV misconceptions in the Philippines still run rampant. Why is this exactly? As with many other diseases, misconceptions about HIV and AIDS stem from a lack of awareness about the condition.
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HIV misconceptions in the Philippines still run rampant. Why is this exactly? As with many other diseases, misconceptions about HIV and AIDS stem from a lack of awareness about the condition.
To better dispel HIV misconceptions in the Philippines, we must establish facts about the condition, rooted in years of research since its first reported cases in the 1980s.
To understand the facts behind HIV misconceptions in the Philippines, we must look to its origins.
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) works by weakening the immune system to make people more susceptible to infections and some types of cancer.
The AIDS Institute, a US-based non-profit advocating policy actions against the disease, attributes human immunodeficiency virus’s (HIV) origins to West Africa, where people might have contracted it from chimpanzees they hunt for meat. In 1983, it was discovered that HIV causes acquired immunodeficiency syndrome or AIDS.
The most advanced stage of HIV is AIDS, which can take up to 15 years if not treated and depending on the individual. At this point, the virus has significantly compromised a person’s immune system that it can no longer fight off diseases.
The WHO said people may get HIV from exchanging body fluids such as blood, breast milk, semen and vaginal secretions from an infected person. An HIV positive mother may transmit the virus to her child during pregnancy and delivery.
However, HIV cannot be transmitted through casual physical contact such as kissing, hugging, shaking hands, or sharing personal objects, food or water. HIV positive people are most infectious during the first few months they contract the virus.
The WHO said that those infected may not feel anything in the first few weeks or experience conditions similar to influenza, rashes or sore throat. Many may only find out they got HIV as the virus progressively ravages the immune system causing signs to manifest such as swollen lymph nodes, weight loss, fever, diarrhoea and cough.
Untreated, HIV may cause further deterioration and lead to more severe illnesses such as tuberculosis (TB), cryptococcal meningitis, severe bacterial infections, and cancers such as lymphomas and Kaposi’s sarcoma. Untreated and undiagnosed HIV may lead to AIDS an advanced stage of HIV causing to develop cancers(e.g Kaposi Sarcoma, Lymphomas) and higher risk to be infected to opportunistic infection (e.g TB, Cryptococcal meningitis, Candidiasis)
The United States Department of Health and Human Services states that since HIV is only transmitted by certain body fluids, it advises against having sex without a condom and other risky sexual behaviors such as having multiple partners as well as sharing injection equipment.
It noted that there is now low risk in the US of getting the disease from donated blood and organs due to the strict screenings being implemented.
Women who are positive for HIV and are pregnant are provided antiretroviral therapy (ART), which works by reducing the levels of virus in a person’s body thus lowering the risk of transmission. ART is the primary treatment method for HIV. It, however, does not completely eliminate the virus.
The WHO, however, said knowledge about the disease has significantly improved since its discovery. The medical community has effective tools and approaches developed for prevention, diagnosis that enable its management and allow those infected to live long and healthy lives.
The advances are due to the huge amounts of time and resources poured by governments and private institutions worldwide to find solutions. From 2000 to 2015 alone, a study in medical journal The Lancet estimated that $562 billion dollars have been spent on HIV/AIDs.
The WHO, however, warns that HIV remains a significant one of the biggest public health challenges across the globe causing over 32 million deaths so far. In 2018, the WHO estimated that 37.9 million all over the world are living with HIV of which two-thirds are in the African region.
The WHO HIV Profile for the Philippines showed that an estimated 77,000 people in the country have the virus. Of these, 59,000 or 76% are aware they are infected, while 33,600 or 44% are receiving antiretroviral therapy (ART). In 1998, the government passed the AIDS Prevention and Control Act, with raising public awareness about HIV and AIDS among its stated objectives.
The Philippines National Demographic and Health Survey which shows prevailing knowledge and attitudes about health issues in the country provides a good measure of the success of this law as HIV and AIDS are among the key topics monitored.
The latest survey published in 2018 was conducted nationally, involving women from close to 28,000 households. It shed light on public awareness about HIV and aids:
A 2010 study on the National Library of Medicine, meanwhile, noted that among the AIDS and HIV misconceptions are that prayer, antibiotics and keeping fit will protect against the disease, that it can be prevented by a cocktail of drinks, douching with detergents, interrupting sex and washing the penis. It also noted that six in 10 believed then that there is already a cure. Among the ongoing questions is whether the virus can be contracted from kissing, oral sex or from public restrooms.
Some believe HIV always progresses to AIDs, and that being diagnosed with HIV is somewhat of a death sentence. But decades of research has shown that these are simply myths borne by the need for better public health education.
These attitudes show that awareness about the disease can still be improved to dispel HIV misconceptions in the Philippines. The Philippines’ Department of Health is doing their part to educate the public, there is still a great need to consistently debunk myths and stick to the facts.
Hello Health Group does not provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. | https://hellodoctor.com.ph/sexual-wellness/hiv-aids/hiv-awareness/ |
The New and emerging areas cross-theme priority is to encourage researchers to work on truly transformative concepts and technologies within and beyond currently recognisable as ICT and which will be recognised as ICT in the future.
To be 'new and emerging' an area needs to comprise something more than an advance, however significant, within an established field. It must be genuinely disruptive, offering real potential to significantly alter current practise in research or industry. Broadly speaking we might see new and emerging ideas in ICT arising in two ways: grown within the ICT research landscape or introduced into it from other themes.
The New and emerging areas priority has been successful in the sense that it has led to the Quantum Technology Theme and has informed the discussions currently underway on 'Human-like Computing'. However, beyond this, the number of grants which address the aims of this priority are low and little comes forward in the way of applications.
In considering how to address this priority researchers should bear in mind the diversity for support mechanisms on offer. Support for a topic under this theme need not necessarily be project based. For example, the topic may need further exploration in order to determine what research is necessary. Under such circumstances rather than project support it might be more appropriate to seek funding for workshops or networks to explore the area in more detail and provide advice for the research community and EPSRC taking them forward. | https://epsrc.ukri.org/research/ourportfolio/themes/ict/introduction/crossictpriorities/newandemergingareas/ |
BY RYAN SCOTT
Bellingham restaurants, hotels, schools, and grocery stores will soon have to move away from providing single-use plastic products as the City Council passed a ban on their use during their meeting on May 10, 2021. The ordinance was originally presented to the council in March 2020 but had to be put on hold due to the COVID-19 pandemic; the reintroduced ordinance passed unanimously at the recent meeting.
By passing this ordinance, the council hopes to “contribute to the start of a solution” to the serious problem plastic waste presents to our oceans and environment, Council Legislative Analyst Mark Gardner said.
With the adoption of this ordinance, Bellingham becomes a leader in the effort to reduce single-use plastics as a city level.
The ordinance presented to the council Monday has “a more extensive implementation timeline to support our local merchants who have weathered the storm of COVID-19,” Council Member Dan Hammill said.
Plastic food service products such as cups, bowls, plates, cutlery, take-out containers and resale containers are specifically targeted by this ordinance. Bellingham businesses will need to find compostable alternatives to these products by July 31, 2022.
“Food service is particularly difficult to recycle because it is usually contaminated,” Gardner said, adding that in these cases the whole load of recyclable material needs to be thrown out if contaminated.
The council acknowledged that for some plastic products, such as produce bags, specialty containers and packaging materials for meat, businesses need more than 13 months to properly source. The council set a separate deadline for these products to switch over to eco-friendly alternatives, taking effect Jan 1, 2023 instead. This deadline can be pushed back even further if businesses still need additional time when this later deadline arrives, Gardner said.
Bellingham businesses are not alone as they attempt to switch away from single-use plastics They have organizations such as Sustainable Connections providing education resources for businesses needing to switch up their sourcing.
“To all of the other fellow businesses out there that this is affecting: lean on them. Take some frustration out of your life,” said Council Member Hollie Huthman, who owns a local restaurant in addition to working on the council.
“I know when you have been doing the same thing for years and years it’s a little difficult to change, and frustrating to have to do the research to make those changes. So, I think we are really lucky to have Sustainable Connection to lean on for that,” Huthman said.
By acting early to ban single-use plastics, Bellingham has also taken an important step in banning Styrofoam. Washington Legislature introduced a bill to ban single-use plastics, mainly plastic bags, across the state, however, Styrofoam was excluded from this bill.
“There was a big compromise made at the state level, I think it was a large step backwards,” Council Member Michael Lilliquist said, “because we had already introduced this regulation and because we are acting now, we and we alone in Bellingham won’t have to wait years to start banning Styrofoam.”
“The more it gets adopted by other cities, the more pressure that’s put on the state to adopt a uniform, similar kind of ban,” Mayor Seth Fleetwood said.
“If we can prove to be successful in our local effort that will be something cited by cities who are hopefully going to be highly motivated to implement versions that are similar to Bellingham,” Fleetwood said. | https://bellinghammatters.com/city-council/bellingham-bans-single-use-plastics/ |
Borough set to reduce single-use plastics
In July, Telford & Wrekin Council declared a climate emergency and committed to remove single-use plastics from the Council’s operations and activities by 2023, replacing them with sustainable alternatives.
Now a report to the Council’s Cabinet on 12 September will outline the action the Council will take over the next year.
The impacts of climate change and plastic pollution are causing serious damage around the world.
Plastic pollution is having a significant impact on the environment, for example:
• 8 million pieces of plastic go into the ocean each day;
• Single-use plastic bottles account for 40% of all litter by volume;
• 1 million seabirds a year die from plastic pollution;
• 1 in 4 fish caught for human consumption now contain plastic.
These issues are compounded by the fact that 50% of plastic produced is used only once and can then remain in the environment for up to 400 years. In many cases there are practical alternatives available that are either re-usable or more sustainable.
The Council has committed to support Surfers against Sewage’s Plastic Free Communities Campaign by:
• Removing single-use plastics from the Council’s operations and activities and replacing them with sustainable alternatives, by 2023;
• Continuing to support national campaigns such as Refill;
• Developing a plan to encourage and promote plastic-free initiatives borough wide;
• Establishing a Taskforce group to help achieve our aspiration for the borough to become a certified Plastic Free Community.
The purpose of the Cabinet report is to provide an update on progress to date in reducing single-use plastic from the Council’s operations and activities and to seek approval for an action plan setting out how the Council will make further improvements over the next 12 months.
The report also seeks approval to establish a Taskforce. Through the taskforce, the Council will work in partnership with local businesses and organisations to become officially certified as a plastic free community by following a framework set out by Surfers against Sewage.
The Council has already taken steps to reduce and remove single-use plastics from its operations and activities, for example:
• The Council has supported the national Refill campaign (www.refill.org.uk) – all Council libraries across Telford and Wrekin are now official Refill stations (Wellington, Madeley, Newport, Southwater One and Oakengates) and there are five other Refill Stations within Council buildings;
• Mobile drinking water fountains were trialled at the Armed Forces Day event in June 2019;
• Balloons have been banned at all Council-run events for some time and this has now been extended to include all external organisations who want to hold events on Council-owned land;
• Single-use plastic cups and water bottles have been removed at all Council meetings;
• The Place Theatre has removed single-use plastic glasses for all events and is working with its brewery supplier to replace plastic bottles with recyclable glass and can alternatives;
• Café Go at Addenbrooke House and Telford Ice Rink have removed plastic stirrers, straws and condiment sachets;
• Café Go has replaced 2ltr semi skimmed milk plastic containers with a Pergal milk dispenser (each Pergal dispenser replaces 48 x2 litre plastic bottles);
• The Council’s Cleaning Service have stopped the use of disposable cleaning cloths (apart from during infection control);
• The Council’s My Options Service, which runs residential care settings in the borough, has stopped using a range of single-use plastic products such as cotton buds;
• The Council has incorporated single-use plastics into its Social Value Guidance used for procurement exercises.
Councillor Hilda Rhodes, Cabinet Member for Parks, Green Spaces and Natural Environment, said: “We recognise that plastic pollution and climate change are amongst the biggest challenges facing our planet and our local communities and we all have our part to play in helping to safeguard the environment for future generations.
“We are committed to working to reduce our impact on the environment and removing single-use plastics is the first step towards doing this. | http://newsroom.telford.gov.uk/News/Details/14853 |
Hobart’s leaders say they’re “serious about leading by example’, which is why they’re set on making the city the first in Australia to be completely single-use plastic free.
Hobart City Council revealed the HUGE news when an 8-4 vote in favour of cleaner practices was passed in a meeting earlier this month.
The ban won’t fully come into place until 2020, giving Tasmania’s capital one year to get its plastic-free act together.
As part of the campaign against destructive materials, according to ABC News, all businesses based in Hobart that provide or sell takeaway food will need to find cleaner alternatives to plastic containers, straws, coffee cups and plastic lids.
All other businesses will also need to start phasing out single-use plastics from their bases and introduce re-usable or eco-friendly alternatives.
“What that [the ban] says is that we’re serious about leading by example and we’re a council that takes the initiative, that makes bold decisions and this is one of those decisions that will have impacts for councils across Australia.”
Councillor Bill Harvey
The ban still needs to be approved by the Director of Local Government and will need to undergo a public consultation period for 21 days. | https://karryon.com.au/community/hobart-plastic-free-hobart-to-become-australias-first-city-to-ban-all-single-use-plastics/ |
New Delhi: Speaking at the 12-hour Swasthagraha by NDTV and Dettol’s Banega Swasth India campaign this morning, UN Environment’s Goodwill Ambassador For India, Dia Mirza, urged people to refuse single-use plastic items and find alternatives to replace them.
Plastic has become an invasive part of our lives,” she said. “It’s almost as if we don’t see the plastic.
Ms Mirza spoke about how the ‘Beat Plastic Pollution’ campaign that she is associated with teaches people to identify the amount of plastic they use before moving on to replace it.
Once you start seeing the plastic in your lives, you discover that you can find alternatives, she said. Start with seeing it.
Also Read: Aaditya Thackeray Spoke About Preventive Healthcare At The 12-Hour Swasthagraha
The 37-year-old also identified some of the biggest sources of plastic and single-use plastic in our lives. Bottled water, plastic bags and plastic straws, she pointed out, are all easily “refusable” and can be substituted with more eco-friendly options.
Listen to her below:
#Swasthagraha | "You will start discovering many alternatives that are sustainable and good for environment but, it starts with seeing the plastic": Actor @deespeak
Watch LIVE: https://t.co/xAvSVB5VvQ#BanegaSwasthIndia @banegaswasthind @DettolIndia pic.twitter.com/btGihk52X3
— NDTV (@ndtv) October 2, 2019
Prime Minister Narendra Modi has also urged citizens to shun single-use plastic. “I am not saying use of plastic should be stopped. What I said single-use plastic should be stopped,” PM Modi had said to party members in Chennai on Monday.
His call to shun single-use plastic was reiterated by Union Home Minister Amit Shah this morning as he addressed a rally ahead of the ‘Gandhi Sankalp Yatra’. Highlighting the perils of single-use plastic, Mr Shah said it takes nearly 400 years for it to degrade. | https://swachhindia.ndtv.com/plastic-an-invasive-part-of-our-lives-says-dia-mirza-at-12-hour-swasthagraha-news-38781/ |
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Plastic Pollution Coalition’s Global Webinar Series brings together our global community to share the latest information, tips, and resources to stop the growing plastic pollution crisis.
Date: Thursday, August 25
Time: 2-3 pm PT, 5-6 pm ET
Click here to convert to your timezone.
Our world is overwhelmed by single-use plastic packaging and products, and it’s having devastating consequences on our climate, communities, and health. But what if all those items weren’t made of toxic, fossil fuel-based plastic? What if they were made from regenerative materials like mushrooms or seaweed?
Join us Thursday, August 25, 2022, as we sit down with three companies providing innovative technologies to replace single-use plastics with renewable, compostable, and eco-friendly alternatives—Ecovative, LOLIWARE, and Sway. Panelists will include Julia Marsh, Co-Founder and CEO of Sway, Meghan Olson, Director of Mushroom® Packaging at Ecovative, and Dr. Victoria Piunova, Chief Technology Officer at LOLIWARE. The panel will be moderated by Julia Cohen, Managing Director of Plastic Pollution Coalition.
2022
Flip the Script on Plastics: Rethinking Single-Use Plastics in Film & Television
January 19, 2022
Don’t Look Down: How Misinformation & Science Denial Obscures the Global Plastics and Climate Crisis
February 16, 2022
The Global Plastics Treaty: What You Need To Know
March 16, 2022
The Power of Service: Moving from Anxiety to Action for the Planet
April 27, 2022
Toxic Tours: Virtually Experience the Impact of Plastic Pollution on Frontline Communities
June 22, 2022
The Challenges & Opportunities of Making Your Business Plastic Free
July 27, 2022
Global Human Health & Ocean Pollution: A Conversation with Dr. Phil Landrigan
January 27, 2021
Will Humanity Survive Plastic Pollution?
Toxic Impact of Plastics’ Chemicals on Fertility
February 24, 2021
Break Down: Explaining the U.S. Break Free From Plastic Pollution Act of 2021
March 31, 2021
Unwoven: Phasing Plastic Out of Fashion
April 14, 2021
Poisoned Planet: Injustice of Disposable Culture & Hope for the Future
June 23, 2021
Plastic Free Periods: Protecting Our Bodies & Preventing Plastic Pollution
July 28, 2021
Plastic Free Outdoors: Honoring Nature, Preventing Plastic Pollution
August 25, 2021
Plastics & Climate: How Single-Use Packaging is Fueling the Crisis
September 29, 2021
The Cost of Convenience: Quest for Solutions to the Plastic Pollution Crisis
October 20, 2021
2020
Getting Ready for Plastic Free July
June 25, 2020
Plastics, Health and Your Family
July 29, 2020
Plastic Pandemic: Strategies & Solutions In Times of COVID-19
August 27, 2020
Plastic Free Planet: Youth Mobilize for Change
September 23, 2020
Unseen: Microplastics Research & Solutions
October 27, 2020
Campaigning Against Corporate Plastic Polluters: How You Can Get Involved
November 18, 2020
Deep Ocean to Outer Space: Plastic Pollution Solutions
December 4, 2020
Starting and managing a business is hard work, and it can be especially challenging if you want to provide products and services that are not encased in toxic plastic. From skin & hair care products to food and cosmetics—plastic is so ubiquitous it can seem like the only option. Fortunately, it isn’t! During the July 27, we had a discussion with business owners who have succeeded in going plastic free, and learned how they did it.
Special thanks to Pangea Organics for sponsoring this webinar.
PANELISTS
– Joshua Onysko, Founder & CEO, Pangea Organics
– Cassia Patel, Director of Programs, Oceanic Global
– Alejandra Warren, Co-Founder & Executive Director, Plastic Free Future
MODERATOR
– Erica Cirino, Communications Manager, Plastic Pollution Coalition
During the June 22, we learned more about some of these communities and this powerful new Toxic Tours platform—which we at Plastic Pollution Coalition nominated for The Earthshot Prize—to help people around the world understand the toxic consequences of plastic production on communities and the environment.
PANELISTS
Lois Bjornson
Impacted Resident, Southwestern Pennsylvania & Field Organizer
Clean Air Council
Erica Jackson
Manager of Community Outreach and Support
FracTracker Alliance
Diego Mayen
Member, East Yard Communities for Environmental Justice, Oil & Gas Committee, West Long Beach, California
MODERATOR
Caro Gonzalez
Global Communications Lead,
Break Free From Plastic
Every day we are faced with news of climate change, the global plastics crisis, depletion of the rainforest, economic injustice, war, and more. With so many imminent threats to our environment and world happening all at once, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed. But there are solutions and there is hope! During the April 27 webinar, we focused on how to move from climate anxiety towards climate action.
PANELISTS
Maya Penn
CEO of Maya’s Ideas, Environmental Activist, Animator & Author
Dr. Britt Wray
Human and Planetary Health Fellow, Stanford University, and author of Generation Dread
MODERATOR
Heather White
CEO & Co-Founder of One GreenThing, author of One Green Thing: Discover Your Hidden Power to Help Save the Planet and Executive Advisory Board Member of Plastic Pollution Coalition
What is the Global Plastics Treaty, and what do we mean when we say it needs to be “legally binding” and “address the full life cycle of plastic”? And what does the United Nations Environment Assembly (UNEA 5.2) in Nairobi have to do with it?
During the March 16 webinar, we heard from experts about the need and opportunity to negotiate a bold and binding global commitment to address plastic pollution, and learned about what happened at UNEA 5.2 from some key people who were on the ground there.
PANELISTS
Christopher Chin
Executive Director
COARE (Center for Oceanic Awareness Research and Education)
Jane Patton
Campaign Manager: Plastics & Petrochemicals
CIEL (Center for International Environmental Law)
Neil Tangri
Science and Policy Director
GAIA (Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives)
MODERATOR
Shilpi Chhotray
Co-Founder & Executive Director
People Over Plastic
During the February 16 webinar, the panelists discussed the impacts of plastics on climate and human health and how industry uses science denial and misinformation to prevent urgent and transformative solutions from being adopted. The webinar featured Yvette Arellano, Founder & Executive Director of Fenceline Watch; Shilpi Chhotray, Co-Founder & Executive Director of People Over Plastic; and Dr. Michael Mann, Distinguished Professor of Atmospheric Science & Director, Earth System Science Center, Pennsylvania State University, whose work and persona provided inspiration for Leonardo DiCaprio’s character in the satirical film Don’t Look Up.
During the January 19 webinar, we had a deep-dive discussion on Flip the Script on Plastics—an initiative to empower the entertainment industry to model real solutions to the plastic pollution crisis, both on set and in storylines.
We were joined by Hollywood activists and artists Yareli Arizmendi, Fran Drescher, and Kyra Sedgwick, following a presentation of the Original report from Dana Weinstein, Project Specialist for the Media Impact Project at the Norman Lear Center, University of Southern California.
We know that life imitates art, and by showing package-free and reusable and refillable systems in popular television shows and movies, we can influence culture and change the perception of toxic throwaway plastic as being normal—because it’s not.
Go behind the scenes with Nikhilesh Paliath and Priscilla Villa Watt, two of the heroes featured in the Emmy-winning documentary film The Story of Plastic together in conversation, moderated by Stiv Wilson, co-producer and visionary behind the film.
During the webinar, they discussed the current state of the plastic pollution crisis two years after the documentary’s debut, focusing on the environmental and social justice elements of the film and the nexus of plastic pollution and human rights. They also talked about the breakneck pace at which the petrochemical buildout is harming communities around the world as single-use plastic products spread into new global markets.
Stiv Wilson is co-founder of Peak Plastic Foundation. He was joined by Nikhilesh Paliath, Founding Member & Senior Mentor, Green Army International; and Priscilla Villa Watt, Racial Justice Organizer for Policy and Research, Voices for Racial Justice.
During the October webinar, we focused on the connection between the plastic pollution crisis and environmental injustice around the world, where economically disadvantaged nations take in a larger share of the world’s trash, and manufacturing chemicals threaten predominantly Black and low-income communities.
We were joined by journalist Erica Cirino, author of a new book, Thicker Than Water: The Quest for Solutions to the Plastic Crisis; Dr. Kerim Odekon, Environmental Justice Advocate & Clinical Assistant Professor of Medicine, Stony Brook University, New York, USA; and Dr. Sedat Gündoğdu, Associate Professor, Microplastic Research Group, Faculty of Fisheries, University of Cukurova, Turkey.
Over 99% of plastic is made from fossil fuels, and greenhouse gases are emitted at every stage of the plastics life cycle. Yet, even as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warns that “climate change is widespread, rapid, and intensifying,” big brands like Coca-Cola, PepsiCo, and Nestlé (including BlueTriton, formerly Nestlé Waters North America) are increasing their production of single-use plastics and packaging—driving a petrochemical expansion that threatens the global climate as well as communities and ecosystems around the world.
The September 2021 webinar featured Judith Enck, President of Beyond Plastics and former Regional Administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency under President Obama, who discussed the nexus between plastic production and climate change, including the immense environmental justice impacts, and Graham Forbes, Global Project Leader of the Plastic-Free Future campaign at Greenpeace, who discussed Greenpeace USA’s new report, The Climate Emergency Unpacked: How Consumer Goods Companies are Fueling Big Oil’s Plastic Expansion. The panel was moderated by Jen Fela, Director of Communications at Plastic Pollution Coalition.
How can we stop plastic from polluting our most beautiful natural places? From trails to beaches, parks to playgrounds, and even protected areas—plastic is impacting the world’s most revered landscapes. During the August 25 webinar, we discussed efforts to truly honor nature by keeping plastic pollution out of it, including the campaign to urge U.S. Department of Interior Secretary Deb Haaland to eliminate the sale and use of single-use plastics in U.S. national parks.
PANELISTS
Lara Levison, Senior Director, Federal Policy, OCEANA
Sarah Barmeyer, Senior Managing Director, Conservation Programs, National Parks Conservation Association
MODERATOR
Heather White, Founder & CEO, OneGreenThing and Executive Advisory Board Member, Plastic Pollution Coalition
The topic of menstruation is still considered taboo to discuss in many cultures, despite the fact that half of the people on our planet menstruate approximately every 28 days. During our July 28 webinar, Plastic Free Periods: Protecting Our Bodies & Preventing Plastic Pollution, we discussed the connections between plastic pollution, menstruation, and social change. Together, we learned from activists, experts and leaders about period justice and how to protect your body from toxic chemicals in products, while exploring the movements happening now around menstrual practices toward a more just, equitable world. This webinar was sponsored by Plastic Pollution Coalition member Natracare and in partnership with Coalition member Menstrual Cup Coalition.
PANELISTS
MODERATOR
SPECIAL THANKS
Thanks to Coalition member Natracare for sponsoring the webinar!
Natracare pioneered the plastic-free, organic, and natural period product movement in the late 1980s. Their period products are made from renewable, biodegradable, and compostable materials. Unlike conventional brands, Natracare’s products won’t be polluting the earth for the next 500 years.
In the June 23 webinar, we discussed the injustice of disposable culture and how to move beyond plastic with Sasha Adkins, Lecturer at Loyola University Chicago and Author of From Disposable Culture to Disposable People: The Unintended Consequences of Plastics, Brittany Davis, Human-Environment Geographer and Independent Researcher, and Frankie Orona, Executive Director of Society of Native Nations.The webinar was moderated by Jackie Nuñez, Plastic Pollution Coalition’s Advocacy Program Manager, and Founder of The Last Plastic Straw.
The conversation centered around plastics, eco-facism, and the consequences of disposable culture on our relationships to ourselves, to each other, and to the planet—as well as how to find hope for our future.
In partnership with Fashion Revolution, during the April 14 webinar, we had an expansive conversation about the connection between plastic and fashion: from the way microplastics in clothing are polluting our air and water to the processing of synthetic materials and their toxic effects on garment workers as well as unintentional greenwashing in the industry. Armed with this knowledge, brands can do better business and stay true to their values while taking real action towards social and environmental justice.
Fashion Revolution Week (April 19-25, 2021) is designed for the global community to create a better fashion industry, and in 2021 will focus on the interconnectedness of human rights and the rights of nature. Their campaign will amplify unheard voices across the fashion supply chain and harness the creativity of the community to explore innovative and interconnected solutions.
PANELISTS
Lauren Ritchie, Founder of The Eco Justice Project and PPC Youth Ambassador
Maxine Bédat, Founder & Director of The New Standard Institute and author of the upcoming book Unraveled: The Life and Death of a Garment
Imari Walker Karega, Science Communicator & Environmental Engineering PhD Candidate, Duke University
Tahirah Hairston, Fashion & Beauty Director, Teen Vogue
MODERATOR
Andrea Arria-Devoe, Executive Producer, STRAWS film & Contributing Editor, goop
During the March 31 webinar, Senator Jeff Merkley of Oregon and Representative Alan Lowenthal of California, Co-Sponsors of the historic Break Free From Plastic Pollution Act (BFFPPA) of 2021, discussed the proposed legislation, with Moderator Judith Enck, former Obama Administration EPA Regional Administrator and Founder of Beyond Plastics. The Break Free From Plastic Pollution Act builds on statewide laws across the United States and outlines plastic reduction strategies to improve the health of people and our planet.
Plastic Pollution Coalition’s February webinar focused on how plastics and endocrine-disrupting chemicals are contributing to decreasing sperm counts and other negative effects on human sexuality and fertility in both women and men.
The webinar was moderated by Dianna Cohen, Co-Founder & CEO of Plastic Pollution Coalition, and panelists included: Shanna Swan, PhD, leading environmental and reproductive epidemiologist, and author of Count Down: How Our Modern World is Threatening Sperm Counts, Altering Male and Female Reproductive Development, and Imperiling the Future of the Human Race, and Pete Myers, PhD, Founder and Chief Scientist of Environmental Health Sciences. The webinar took place on February 24, 2021.
During the January webinar, Dr. Phil Landrigan, leading epidemiologist and pediatrician, and Director of the Program for Global Public Health and the Common Good at Boston College, and Julia Cohen, who holds a Masters of Public Health in Maternal & Child Health, and is Plastic Pollution Coalition’s Co-Founder & Managing Director, discussed the latest findings from Dr. Landrigan’s new report Human Health and Ocean Pollution as well as how each of us can reduce exposure to plastic pollution and its toxic impacts. The webinar took place on January 27, 2021.
Are you concerned about the amount of plastic inside us, in our oceans, and in outer space? During our December 4th webinar, we discussed the impacts of and potential solutions to plastic pollution in the ocean, as well as in outer space. This special event is in partnership with the Conrad Foundation and the Conrad Challenge, which empowers students to change the world. The webinar was moderated by Dianna Cohen, Co-Founder & CEO at Plastic Pollution Coalition, with these esteemed panelists: Dr. Sylvia Earle, President & Chairman of Mission Blue and National Geographic Society Explorer in Residence, and Dr. Kathryn Sullivan, Chair of Aerospace History at the Smithsonian Institution.
During our November 18 webinar, we discussed the most effective campaigns to stop corporations from polluting the planet with single-use plastic. From global cleanups and brand audits hosted by Break Free From Plastic to campaigns scoring companies for their use of toxic PVC plastic and phthalates, there are projects happening near you, where you can add your voice. The webinar was moderated by Emily DiFrisco, Director of Communications at Plastic Pollution Coalition, and panelists included: Shilpi Chhotray, Global Communications Lead, Break Free From Plastic; Mike Schade, Mind the Store Campaign, Director Safer Chemicals, Healthy Families and Judith Enck, President, Beyond Plastics.
During our October 27 webinar, we discussed what the newest research is revealing about the pervasiveness and dangers of microplastics, and highlighted ways to reduce your exposure to microplastics as well as how to support legislation and policy change to make an impact. The webinar was moderated by Abby Barrows, Marine Scientist, and panelists included: Prigi Arisandi, Executive Director, Ecoton; Dr. Charles Rolsky, Postdoctoral student, Biodesign Institute, ASU & Plastic Oceans International, Director of Science, North America; and Thara Bening Sandrina, Captain, River Warrior.
During our September webinar, we discussed how youth activists and the youth movement are mobilizing for positive change for the planet on a policy level. Panelists talked about what they and their organizations are doing to change climate policy and ways youth activism is affecting local, state and federal governments to stop plastic pollution. The webinar was moderated by Hannah Testa, Founder of Hannah4Change, and panelists included: Dan Xie, Political Director, Student PIRGs; Xiye Bastida, Founder, Re-Earth Initiative and Abbigail Ramnarine, Activist, Bahamas Plastic Movement. The webinar took place on Wednesday, September 23, 2020.
During our August webinar, we discussed ways to reduce plastic pollution during and after the pandemic. Panelists talked about how to prevent plastic pollution in your daily life, and advocate for local governments and businesses to help reduce plastic pollution during this unprecedented time. The webinar was moderated by Jackie Nuñez, Founder of The Last Plastic Straw and & Advocacy Program Manager, and panelists included: Eve Fox, Digital Director, Beyond Plastics; Cassia Patel, Program Director, Oceanic Global; and Lindsey Hoell, Co-Founder & CEO, Dispatch Goods. This webinar took place on Thursday, August 27, 2020 from 5-6 p.m. ET.
During this webinar, we explored the effects of toxic chemicals and plastics on human health, and provided practical tips and tools for how to avoid plastic and make healthier choices. The presenters included: Latham Thomas, Maternity Wellness Expert, Founder, Mama Glow & Author of Own Your Glow: A Soulful Guide to Luminous Living and Crowning the Queen, and Amy Ziff, Founder and Executive Director, MADE SAFE. The webinar was moderated by Julia Cohen, MPH Co-Founder & Managing Director, Plastic Pollution Coalition, and took place on Wednesday, July 29, 2020.
Plastic Pollution Coalition hosted a webinar on June 25 to discuss the Plastic Free July movement and alternatives and solutions to single-use plastic in a conversation with Rebecca Prince-Ruiz, Founder & Executive Director of Plastic Free July, and Dianna Cohen, Co-Founder & CEO of Plastic Pollution Coalition. Speakers talked about the creation, evolution, and expansion of Plastic Free July and how we can collaborate for impact locally and globally to address and solve plastic pollution. Guest presenters included Shilpi Chhotray, Global Communications Lead, Break Free From Plastic and Young Grguras, U.S. Coordinator of Plastic Free Campuses of PLAN (The Post-Landfill Action Network). Plus, watch the video now of Tia Grazette, Founder of Le Good Society. | https://www.plasticpollutioncoalition.org/learn/webinars#ppc-webinar-111021 |
Bogor municipality officially implemented on Dec. 1 a ban on single-use plastic bags at all modern stores.
Through Mayoral Regulation No. 61/2018 on the elimination of single-use plastics, Bogor Mayor Bima Arya ordered that modern stores stop providing their customers with plastic bags.
“We are now focusing on modern markets first because they’re easier to regulate. One day, we’ll also apply the regulation to traditional markets,” Bima said.
According to Bima, Bogor residents produce up to 1.7 tons of plastic waste every day. Bima said he believed the residents would slowly adjust to the new regulation. Modern retailers are now obligated to replace plastic bags with eco-friendly alternatives and shoppers are advised to bring their own reusable bags when shopping.
A shopping center in Bogor, Plaza Ekalokasari, has stopped providing plastic bags and offers eco-friendly bags that cost Rp 12,000 (82 US cents) each. Many other shops have put up banners to announce that they no longer provide plastic bags.
Bima suggested that local residents use bags made from cassava or corn fiber. He also hoped the ban would provide an opportunity for the Family Welfare Movement (PKK), a community family welfare organization run by women. In 38 districts across the city, the PKK produces bags made from plastic cooking oil bottles, detergent plastic pouches and coffee sachets.
A resident of Tajur, Wita, 60, said she was happy with the new regulation.
“There is a lot of plastic bag waste in my house alone. The regulation reminds us to always carry a personal bag for the sake of the environment,” she said. (vla)
Editor's note: This article has been updated to correct a statement about the Family Welfare Movement (PKK). The PKK produces bags from recycled materials, not from cassava. | https://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2018/12/02/bogor-bans-single-use-plastic-bags-in-all-modern-retailers.html |
The Human Aquarium is a brand new exhibition, premiering on 15 February 2019 in Leeds.
The exhibition looks at the world through the eyes of sea mammals. Using Mer-folk in place of marine mammals, it delves into the world of aquariums, their inhabitants.
What it is like to spend your life in a tank? For the animals still dependant on their natural habitat - the world’s oceans - what effect are single-use plastics having on their home? And why should we care?
Public engagement
Despite the success of documentaries such as ‘Blackfish’ and ‘Blue Planet’ that provide information about captivity, single-use plastics and recycling, do we really know what we are buying into?
Whether it’s purchasing a disposable bottle of water or a ticket to a marine park, do we consider how our choices affect the planet?
The Human Aquarium is a free, family friendly and thought provoking, interactive event developed by local Leeds artists and activists. Volunteers will engage with the public and discuss these hot topics, present sustainable alternatives and provide opportunities to learn about more ethical choices.
The Human Aquarium team will be taking over an empty shop unit to replicate an aquarium and all things aquatic in Leeds City Centre.
During the exhibition the team will be creating a sculpture from single-use plastics that the public are invited to come along and add to.
Working together
On 22nd Feb 6-9pm they will host an evening of environment-themed talks from some inspirational organisations: The World Cetacean Alliance; Plastic-Free Me; Greenpeace Leeds; Love the Oceans; Zero Waste Leeds; The Real Junk Food Project.
There will also be a variety of free, family friendly workshops including: Mermaid Mondays; Dolphin Scramble; Ocean Plastics Fish Making; Sculpting The Future The Forever Octopus.
This Article
This article is based on a press release from Yorkshire Life Aquatic. See the event website for workshop, event details and opening times. | https://theecologist.org/2019/jan/15/human-aquarium-exhibition |
Next availability:
Available
Unavailable
Reasoned cleaning with eco-friendly products
No single-use plastics
Electricité et/ou eau chaude issues d’énergies renouvelables
Vegetable garden and/or farm for the restaurant
Employment in the local community
Domaine oued el Khil is an agro tourism accommodation in the Tataouine region and focused on sustainable tourismYou
can stay in one of the 2 eco-domes located on the 3 hectares of the
property. These unusual constructions with rounded shapes are easily
integrated into their environment. Their specific design makes it
possible to do without heating in winter as well as air conditioning in
summer.The food comes mainly from the organic garden and permaculture, and it is a good way to discover local gastronomy. | https://ethik-and-trips.com/en/hebergement/tunisia/domaine-oued-el-khil-2 |
New Delhi: After Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s appeal to eliminate single-use plastic, the government is looking to find alternatives to plastic water bottles on a priority basis. Union Minister for Consumer Affairs, Food and Public Distribution Ram Vilas Paswan has issued directions to his departments to come up with alternatives to plastic water bottles. The Minister has also called a high-level meeting with the officials of various departments to deliberate upon the alternatives to plastic that could be looked upon to packaged water, and prepare a strategy to put an end to single-use plastic water bottles.
The representatives from various manufacturing units of plastic bottles as well as the suppliers of packaged drinking water would be invited in the meeting for a brainstorming session.
The government believes since access to water is a fundamental right, a ban cannot be imposed on the sale of water. Therefore, finding an alternative solution to plastic water bottles is necessary.
Also Read: Can India Eliminate Single-Use Plastics By 2022?
According to informed sources, the government wants to get rid of the different sized bottles used for packaged water as well as sealed plastic glasses (filled with water) in a phased manner.
Alternatives should be found to plastic packaging and we should become leaders using ‘Make in India’. We should see how we can take a lead in this field. PM Modi had on August 15 appealed to the nation to put an end to the single-use plastic which is extremely harmful to the environment. This will majorly affect the water sold in plastic bottles, the Minister said on the side lines of an event.
Sources said the government is also preparing a list of products that utilise single-use plastic in large quantities, to ban their usage.
India generates approximately 26,000 tonnes of plastic waste daily, which makes it the 15th largest plastic waste generator globally. A 2018 report by The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI) states that plastic accounts for 8 per cent of the total solid waste generated in the country annually.
Citing data from the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB), the report states that Delhi produces the largest chunk of the plastic waste, followed by Kolkata and Ahmedabad.
Also Read: Home Minister Amit Shah And Other Political Leaders Lend Support to PM Narendra Modi’s ‘Say No Plastic’ Campaign
The Prime Minister had on August 15 called for a nationwide movement to put an end to single-use plastic from October 2, the 150th birth anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi.
PM Modi first made the appeal during his Independence Day speech and exhorted the nation to turn it into a mass movement.
Recently, the Lok Sabha secretariat prohibited the use of non-reusable plastic water bottles and other plastic items within the Parliament from August 20. The government-run Indian Railways has also decided to put a ban on single-use plastic materials on its premises, including trains from October 2.
NDTV – Dettol Banega Swachh India campaign lends support to the Government of India’s Swachh Bharat Mission (SBM). Helmed by Campaign Ambassador Amitabh Bachchan, the campaign aims to spread awareness about hygiene and sanitation, the importance of building toilets and making India open defecation free (ODF) by October 2019, a target set by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, when he launched Swachh Bharat Abhiyan in 2014. Over the years, the campaign has widened its scope to cover issues like air pollution, waste management, plastic ban, manual scavenging and menstrual hygiene. The campaign has also focused extensively on marine pollution, clean Ganga Project and rejuvenation of Yamuna, two of India’s major river bodies. | https://swachhindia.ndtv.com/say-no-plastics-government-to-junk-plastic-water-bottle-37618/ |
I am writing about your story 10 new innovations that will shape a more sustainable future (January 14): technology plays a big role in all of our lives. The easiest way to promote sustainability is through education. By educating ourselves about what sustainable alternatives we have available in our daily lives, like building materials, food, clothes and common household items, we can make better choices for ourselves and for future generations to come. You can teach your friends sustainable habits like recycling and understand the difference between “I want” and “I need”.
I recently attended Masdar’s event called The Festival on January 18 and 19, which had a series of fun and educational activities related to sustainability and recycling. There were various zones with names like “the greenhouse” and “the arcade alley”. This event was a forward-thinking approach to sustainability and the major technologies that are shaping the world today.
Myself and my sister Sai Sahana enjoyed the two days at the event. We did presentations and raised awareness regarding the importance of recycling and I demonstrated my invention, the marine robot cleaner. This device aims to collect waste from the surface of water because about eight million tonnes of plastic end up in our seas and oceans and cause enormous threats to our marine ecosystem.
As youth ambassadors for the Drop It campaign, we told visitors that “plastics are not our body’s best friend”. We raised awareness about single-use plastic pollution and encouraged individuals and organisations to reduce their carbon dioxide emissions through simple, everyday choices. We also asked visitors to take an online pledge to use less single-use plastic. I hope everyone takes a minute to think about what they could be doing too.
Regarding your story Boko Haram killed at least 60 in Nigerian town, Amnesty International says (February 2), the ongoing crisis with extremism and militancy in Nigeria was shocking to read. It is high time the international community came forward to address this issue.
The killing of innocent civilians is contemptible. What a sad and painful day for Nigeria and the world at large.
With reference to your coverage on Pope Francis’s visit to the UAE, I am blessed to be serving as an extra ordinary minister of holy communion for the papal mass.
My son Adley Frank Rodrigues, who plays the piano at St Mary’s Church in Dubai, has been selected after an audition to be part of a 120-member choir for the service.
I have been a lector and an active member of the treasury team for the same church for the past 15 years. My wife Fatima is a catechist, or religious teacher, and teaches every Friday morning, as she has been doing for the past decade.
God bless the leaders of UAE for their kind invitation and God bless the Vatican and His Holiness Pope Francis for accepting the same.
May this channel of peace spread throughout the world. It is a dream come true for this family of parishioners since 1994. | https://www.thenational.ae/opinion/feedback/we-can-all-contribute-to-a-more-sustainable-future-1.821323 |
What policy will you help pass? Decide on your goal, identify your targets, and plan how you will influence them.
- GOAL: What will you achieve and by when? Example: You will pass an ordinance in the city of Sunnyville banning single- use expanded polystyrene foam containers and cups on city property by the end of 2020.
- Who are your targets (decision makers)? (example: Mayor Smith and Councilmember Jones).
- How will you influence them?
- Schedule meetings to educate and make a proposal with the Sustainability Board or city commissioner/mayor.
- Offer suggestions for alternatives to single-use plastics and show them ordinances passed in other municipalities.
- Additional pressure may be needed. Team up with other concerned citizens in your area. Organize residents, student clubs, organizations, neighborhood associations, and influential community leaders to write letters of support and make citizen comments at city meetings. There is power in numbers!
- You may need to start a petition and/or get some media attention through an opinion piece or a local news story. (Petitions are useful if they are signed by constituents in that elected official’s district. They care about voters). Perhaps you can begin a facebook page or group to build support for your campaign. (Example: a Plastic Free Sunnyville facebook page)
- You may need to ask your city if they have a Climate Action Plan. Ask if plastic waste reduction could be added as a goal on that Climate Action Plan.
You will need a majority of councilmembers to state their support for an ordinance before bringing an ordinance for a vote.
Usually, an ordinance requires more than one reading before it becomes a law. Plan to attend both readings to make sure that the ordinance passes.
Materials and data you may need to influence your targets:
- Fact sheets and presentation presenting the problem and solution
- Testimonials from business owners, stating their support
- Examples of ordinances from other Florida cities/counties
- Florida’s plastics preemption language
- Guide for examples of plastic free alternatives
What’s the difference between a tactic and a campaign?
A campaign is when you work together in an organized and active way toward a particular goal. You have a specific objective you are trying to reach by a certain date.
Tactics are actions, programs, and strategies to achieve your goal.
Educating and creating awareness is not a campaign. There is no clear goal. It is an ongoing program. Education and awareness is a tactic that can be used to achieve your campaign goal. (For example, you will begin educating and raising awareness among faculty and students at Sunnyville University in order to help achieve a goal of getting the President of the University to sign a Campus Plastic Free Pledge by the end of 2021.)
Promoting a voluntary plastic free restaurant program is an ongoing program, not a campaign. Plastic free restaurants could be used to help achieve your campaign goal. (For example, you will successfully convince 50 local restaurant owners to join a plastic free restaurant program and then use that business support (and the community’s enthusiasm for that program) to convince the mayor of Sunnyville to pass a plastics ordinance by Earth Day 2021). | https://plasticfreefl.org/campaign-planning/ |
As a Vietnamese person, I’ve witnessed these challenges every day. I have three points on the use of single-use plastics in Vietnam. The first relates to the cheap cost of the material. The cost of plastic including in a product or transaction is barely noticeable, so both seller and consumer should have no difficulty in making decisions to use or not use them.
The next point is that the techniques as well as facilities in Vietnam are not yet ready to support businesses in changing to more sustainable alternatives. The final point is that the after-use process has not been developed yet. In detail, we have no standardised system to classify, recycle, or treat the material. So, we don't have anything to support resolving plastic usage.
We launched plastic-reduction initiatives in 2019 with the hope that we can support consumer behaviour to be more sustainable and collaborate with other stakeholders like government, authorities, partners, employees for system-level impact. Under the project, we have three important missions.
First is to facilitate the habit of refusing plastic bags for customers and employees. We also launched an initiative for customers to rent an eco-bag when they come to AEON. For example, instead of spending VND20,000 (86 US cents) to buy a new eco-friendly bag, customers can deposit VND5,000 (21 US cents) to rent one bag, use it, and return it to us the next time so that they can receive their deposit back.
In addition, we are improving our operations to minimise single-use plastic bags consumption. For example, in the past, one transaction at the cashier counter can consume up to five bags to ensure customer convenience, as well as safety and hygiene standards. However, we have now optimised the process and reduced the maximum number of bags to just three.
And finally, the third mission is to accompany the government regarding the sustainable consumption direction. We are one of 16 active members of the Plastic Alliance to Reduce Single-use Plastic Bags. We believe that, together with other retailers, we can create a case study for the government to have a firm foundation for upcoming legal changes.
Well, we can divide our achievements into two types. The first is what we call the data - the tangible achievement. AEON Japan started a plastic reduction campaign in 1991, and after 30 years, about 80 per cent of its customers regularly say no to plastic bags. Here, we have implemented the project for two years. We’re proud to say that we have achieved a 5 per cent rate, a decent start for AEON Vietnam.
But I think the achievement that we are most proud of is the value that we create. At AEON, we follow the basic principle of contributing to the local community, reflecting through every strategy and action.
However, this would be one-sided love without the help of customers. Based on the data, we strongly believe that customers will eventually support us. Customers are shifting behavior gradually. Coming to AEON, customers are empowered to willingly say no to plastic bags, and not because AEON forces them to do so.
I believe in the power of multi-stakeholder collaboration. The government has already done a great job by setting up and informing us about the action plan until 2030 and upcoming legal changes.
If all businesses, regardless of industry, create impact within and beyond their organisation following the government’s direction, by the time we launch those new policies, both consumers and businesses will be both ready and happy.
What the stars mean: | https://vir.com.vn/aeon-determined-to-fortify-green-lifestyle-94553.html |
Allison Hanes: Ottawa's plan to ban single-use plastics must be bold
After Montreal declared war on single-use plastics, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau wants to ban them across Canada by 2021.
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Cities are often out front when it comes to fighting the climate crisis, a phenomenon that has been observed from Paris to Pittsburgh. In Canada, Montreal has been ahead of the curve, especially when it comes to banning single-use plastics.
For more than a year, Montreal has had a ban on plastic shopping bags (well, the thinner ones, anyway. Thicker ones are still plentiful). And Mayor Valérie Plante recently declared “war” on plastic drinking straws, Styrofoam takeaway containers and disposable cutlery, although a policy isn’t due until after public hearings this fall.
tap here to see other videos from our team.
Allison Hanes: Ottawa's plan to ban single-use plastics must be bold Back to video
While these moves are intended to improve the environment and fight climate change, they are also a response to a mounting garbage crisis that municipalities around the globe are facing as countries like China and Malaysia slam the doors on the world’s refuse.
But now the federal government has single-use plastics in its sights. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau unveiled a national strategy Monday to outlaw throwaway plastics by 2021. Which items are ultimately relegated will be determined by a scientific analysis already under way, but everything from cotton swabs to water bottles to disposable bags are under the microscope, following in the steps of the European Union.
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The federal government also plans to force companies that manufacture or distribute products in plastic packaging to help pay for their disposal (something Ontario also recently announced). After all, why should companies get rights to bottle spring water for a pittance, make billions and wash their hands of the plastic pollution this creates?
While managing the deluge of single-use plastics is a local headache, the problem is national in scope.
In this country, barely 10 per cent of plastics are recycled, despite the fact many plastics could be reused or repurposed.
In this country, barely 10 per cent of plastics are recycled, despite the fact many plastics could be reused or repurposed. A damning study by Deloitte and ChemInfo Services found that it’s generally cheaper and easier to keep producing new plastic and throw it away than to actually give it a new purpose. The plastics industry in Canada dwarfs the recycling industry. Producing plastics generated $35 billion in 2017 and employed 93,000 people while the recycling created just $350 million and provided 500 jobs, HuffPost reports. As a result of this huge imbalance, 12 times more plastic is thrown away than recycled.
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This conundrum was out of sight for decades. But now society’s wasteful ways are becoming alarmingly evident.
Citizens, who may have felt they were doing their duty by filling their recycling bins, are realizing their cans and bottles are ending up in the landfill. Pictures of garbage patches gyrating in the oceans, sea turtles choked by beer-can holders and whales washing up with bellies full of plastic bags are tugging at heartstrings. The shame of our trash rotting on docks in the Philippines or being snuck to illegal dumps in Malaysia is taking a toll.
A recent survey by researchers at Dalhousie University found more than 87 per cent of respondents believe the impact of single-use plastics in the food system are a serious issue and 93 per cent are motivated to reduce its ubiquity, with the highest support in Quebec. Close to 90 per cent of those questioned said regulation was the best way to tackle the plastics problem, while 71 per cent favour a ban on single-use plastics.
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But the impetus for taking action may stem as much from financial or practical concerns as from environmental stewardship. After all, citizens are taxpayers, too.
Municipalities, including Montreal and neighbouring cities, are now struggling to cope with mountains of materials collected for recycling but left rotting in triage centres with little or no market to transform them. The breakdown in recycling programs is leading to rising costs and waning effectiveness.
The Communauté métropolitaine de Montréal recently held roving consultations on modernizing the region’s waste-management strategy and the early consensus is that the amount of rubbish being produced in the first place must be slashed.
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But while Montreal and its neighbours around the CMM are taking action, a more comprehensive approach would strengthen their efforts.
Standardized regulations for acceptable packaging will be much easier to implement and have a greater impact if they are national, rather than a response to the disparate municipal bylaws. Major investments are also needed to find sustainable alternatives to single-use plastics and overhaul the recycling industry coast-to-coast.
Liberals announce plan to ban single-use plastics as early as 2021
Allison Hanes: Montreal 'banned' plastic bags, but we can do better
The everyday objects likely to be hit by federal ban on single-use plastics
But plastic waste has to be choked off at the source.
As with Montreal’s bag restrictions, the devil will be in the details. The federal single-use plastics ban must be bold and avoid creating new anomalies.
Cities like Montreal are leading the way, but they need the might of the federal government behind them. | https://montrealgazette.com/opinion/columnists/allison-hanes-ottawas-plan-to-ban-single-use-plastics-must-be-bold |
Nearly three years ago the European Parliament discussed the plastic bag directive. People were clearly interested in the plastic problem even then. Even so, the atmosphere was electric when I led the parliamentary session in January where two vice presidents – Katainen and Timmermans – presented the EU’s plastics strategy. It was a pleasure to hear the views of the representatives, nearly all of whom praised the commission and encouraged it to be ambitious in the legislative proposals being developed to implement the strategy.
It’s wonderful to see that the European Commission is finally taking the problem seriously and doing something about it. More and more organisations have recognised the scale of the problem. Less than one third of plastic waste in the EU is recycled, one third ends up in landfills and slightly more than one third is burned. And large amounts of plastic waste still end up in our waters.
A lot of plastic waste was previously dumped in China, but China has now banned its import. China’s real reason for this may be protectionism, which is forbidden in trade regulations, an issue that the commission is investigating. However, instead of looking for new dumping sites, the EU should take action and handle the problem itself – in a sustainable way.
One of the targets of the commission’s plastics strategy is to ensure than in 2030 all of the plastic used in the EU area can be recycled or reused. More efficient recycling will create new markets and jobs and increase the value of recycled plastic. The commission reported that it is simultaneously trying to protect the environment and create growth and innovations. Perhaps we’re finally moving away from the destructive polarisation between the environment and the economy?
It’s essential to develop recycling and the reuse of plastics. However, that won’t be enough: we must reduce the amount of waste produced and create new, sustainable alternatives to plastic. A real circular economy is based on the idea that we have less unnecessary material to begin with.
Nearly 60 per cent of the waste produced comes from plastic packaging, and the disposable nature of this material is a huge problem. Although materials that can replace single-use plastics have already been developed, there is still a great demand and need for new innovations. Sustainable alternatives benefit the environment and companies.
New innovations require investments, but they also produce work, more sustainable solutions and ready operating models. Companies need proven models that they can implement. The knowledge, technology and opportunities already exist. EU-level investment is required to develop innovations, but individual member countries can also achieve a lot.
We need everyone to participate in problem solving: researchers, business life and political decision-makers. We also need consumers. People seem to have a great desire to do something, and they need more options. This was what inspired my idea for a Plastic-free March campaign (link in Finnish), which challenges people to avoid single-use plastics as much as possible for one month. Instead of striving for perfection, the aim is to consider how much unnecessary plastic accumulates in a month.
I participated in a recycling industry event in Brussels, where someone aired their suspicion that only 10 per cent of people would adopt this issue and thus nothing would really happen. I can say that even if only 1 in 10 people get involved, that 10 per cent has previously achieved great changes for the good of the environment. This time, opinion formers like the Prince of Wales are part of the campaign.
Now I’m waiting for the commission to provide concrete and ambitious legislative proposals to implement the plastics strategy targets. We have to seize this opportunity. | https://www.sitra.fi/en/blogs/eu-can-leading-developer-plastic-alternatives/ |
Mondragon Unibertsitatea’s Library offers you on trial Access Engineering, a reference tool for professionals, academics, and students in engineering.
You can use the platform as a trial until December the 17th.
Access Engineering provides access to the best-known and most-used international collection of engineering reference information. It also has online interactive features, such as instructional videos, calculators, interactive tables and charts.
Among other resources, it offers you:
- More than 700 engineering references and study guides
- Datavis database, to learn about materials properties
- More than 690 instructional videos
- More than 3900 interactive graphs and downloadable tables
- An international engineering news service
Besides, it provides personalization tools allowing you to organize your information as a user.
This platform offers you different ways of searching, for instance: | https://www.mondragon.edu/en/web/biblioteka/-/acceso-en-prueba-al-portal-access-engineering |
The OER platform houses the MiGreat! learning modules, also available in an eBook /interactive PDF format. The platform provides information, tools, opportunities and access to the learning materials etc. to the target audience.
It is used to promote activities, events, opportunities and key lessons to VETPROS working with immigrants and refugees.
Here you can access the open educational resources: | http://mi-great.eu/en_GB/outputs/output-4-migreat-oer-platform-for-elearning/ |
WESCHOOL is a digital learning platform that was created as a platform for the Flipped Classroom. With WESCHOOL it is possible to interact between students and the teachers through a wall and create digital lessons in collaboration with the students themselves. Interactive boards makes possible to aggregate materials of different kinds (content from social networks, photos, pdfs, presentations, etc.) to the existing lessons; check the students’ learning level through the test section, which provides numerous verification and reporting tools in real time; track the activities carried out through a register; carry out lessons remotely through a dedicated virtual area.
The platform also offers online courses for teachers.
Weschool is available only in Italian.
Examples of application:
WESCHOOL can be used in the classroom and it is recommended for applying the flipped classroom methodology where students become the protagonists of their own learning by carrying out research and finding useful materials on the target subject. | https://mobiliteach.net/weschool-en/ |
Jusoor is an interactive educational platform that offers interactive simulation games (virtual labs) especially in scientific subjects, these labs through which the student can interact with The academic subject and its understanding faster, easier and smarter.
Team: Jusoor Team
Team membersAmeen Abo Diak - Rawan Abo Diak - Kamal Joma - Osama Abbas -Rayen Lounissi -Taima Diab
Members roles and background
Ameen Abo Diak - founder and programer
Rawan Abo Diak - Programmer
Osama Abbas - Educational content writer
Kamal Nnaji - Educational content writer
Taima Diab - Legal Counsel
Rayen Lounissi- Game Developer
Contact details
Solution description
We will work to develop an interactive learning platform (website + application) that displays the virtual laboratories and simulations that we will develop, and it will be in 3D, supporting Arabic and English, compatible with all different screens and devices.
Our solution will be used by the teacher and student in schools and homes so that they can conduct science experiments from home without having to access real laboratories, especially in case of emergency and the Corona crisis.
We will work to measure the impact of the project through tests that the student performs on the platform through simulation, and he will deliver the experiment report to the teacher after taking the results from the virtual laboratory and analyzing them as if he did the experiment in the real laboratory.
The project will be profitable and sustainable by selling subscriptions to schools and individuals in exchange for creating an account on the platform and obtaining a virtual laboratory.
Solution context
Many schools and educational centers lack many of the tools and materials they need to carry out experiments and activities for scientific subjects such as physics, mathematics, and chemistry, which causes students not to understand the subjects. also, universities lack technical tools and digital content that can help them in continuing the teaching process for practical courses such as scientific laboratories, especially in light of the application of e-learning from home or in an emergent state.
In conditions of closure, such as Corona, university students cannot be at the university to conduct experiments in laboratories.
so our challenge is Allowing students to do practical experiments in another way to achieve an understanding of theoretical material.
Solution target group
Students aged 14-22 who study science courses, in addition to their families and teachers of these subjects.
Institutions such as schools, universities, the Ministry of Education and Higher Education. in Palestine and the MENA region.
Education centers specialized in scientific subjects.
Solution impact
The project works to achieve many goals of sustainable development, the most prominent of which is learning, which we work to provide in innovative ways, contribute and make sure to learn females efficiently and effectively, and experiment with difficult materials to provide in real conditions. The project also contributes to gender equality and provides more job opportunities for women in programming, design and business management. This contributed to increasing the woman’s contribution to production, innovation and creativity. The project also achieves an important goal of sustainable development, which is to preserve the environment, as it works to reduce the amount of papers that are wasted in the book and notebook industry, which are repeated annually and permanently.
the project will help the student to have a positive attitude toward science and make them excited for learning and affect their marks and increase their GPA.
In the first year we will provide 6 jobs for programmers and designers and most of them will be women because of the availability of experience and comfort as these jobs will be from home without the need to work in a company so that we work to provide them with comfort and not be harmed to maintain health --- from 2-4 years we will have 35 employees in the fields of programming, design, marketing and public relations. After five years, we will have more than 50 employees.
Solution tweet textSign up now with jusoor platform and get a virtual experience that simulates real laboratories by interactive simulation labs safely and from anywhere and at prices that suit everyone in addition to a free account, join us and learn without limits.
Solution innovativeness
An interactive educational experience
Jusoor provides an interactive learning environment similar to electronic games through a 3D simulation of science experiments to help motivate students and increase their level of interaction while learning.
2- A complete simulation of the real lab
With Jusoor virtual laboratories, students will have the opportunity to practice educational experiments in all its steps through a complete simulation of the tools, devices and materials used in the real laboratory.
3- Enhancing students' learning efficiency
The interactive method of Jusoor Labs helps students master the steps of conducting various laboratory experiments, as they can conduct these experiments at any time without being restricted to a specific place.
4- Ease of use
Jusoor labs have been designed and developed taking into account the ease of students' interaction with the control panels and options inside to ensure that there are no difficulties that hinder their use.
5- Multiple languages support
Jusoor virtual laboratories are available in Arabic and English, providing the language with a correct scientific translation with the ability to add other languages.
6- Use anytime and anywhere
Students can enter Jusoor labs anytime and anywhere, and conduct experiments that suit their time and preferred methods of learning.
7- Scientific ethics and environmental conservation
Jusoor helps reduce the number of experiments in which natural resources are consumed and produce gases that are harmful to the life of living organisms.
Solution transferability
We will work on developing the project so that we will study the curriculum for students of schools and universities in scientific subjects such as physics, mathematics, and chemistry in Palestine and in several Arab and non-Arab countries such as Jordan, Tunisia, the Emirates, Egypt, Sweden, America, and Austria, where we will compare the curriculum between all countries, which studies indicate that it is similar in large proportions. Easy to fit content from other countries and the global market.
The platform will initially support the Arabic and English languages so that everyone can use it and it will be suitable for adding a new language according to the user market and adding modifications to the presentation method for customers and users.
Solution sustainability
The business model will be in various bridges according to the customer if an individual or an institution:
For individuals we offer them four packages:
1- Free package: in which the user can create a free account without using a visa or any of the payment methods and can access 25% of the content, but he does not have access to the tests and certificates.
2- Three paid packages (gold - silver - bronze) that fall behind in the features offered to them and the amount of content they can access and are priced at $ 5 - $ 15 per month.
For institutions, the price depends on the number of users and the features they choose, as we allocate a suitable package for them based on their needs.
Solution team work
We worked to form the best team to solve part of the education problems by developing a platform for virtual laboratories. Our team mainly consists of:
1 The academic team is a specialized team of teachers in schools and universities who have experience in teaching in science courses and in interactive education and in the production of learning aids
2 The technical team is a specialized team of programmers and game developers who work on designing and developing simulations and virtual laboratories. The team works in an integrated manner to test and develop the program and add user modifications and feedback.
Gallery
* Climate-KIC publishes the proposed solutions developed during the DigiEduHack event solely for the purposes of facilitating public access to the information concerning ideas and shall not be liable regarding any intellectual property or other rights that might be claimed to pertain to the implementation or use any of the proposed solutions shared on its website neither does it represent that it has made any effort to identify any such rights. Climate-KIC cannot guarantee that the text of the proposed solution is an exact reproduction of the proposed solution. This database is general in character and where you want to use and develop a proposed solution further, this is permitted provided that you acknowledge the source and the team which worked on the solution by using the team’s name indicated on the website. | https://digieduhack.com/en/solutions/jusoor |
…today’s students are “digital natives”—a generation who like to be able to watch, listen, read, and interact with their technology-rich environment. Consequently, interactive learning resources in various formats (including multimedia tutorials, modules, games, and simulations) are rapidly becoming vital learning resources for faculty and students to enhance both classroom and online learning. Unfortunately, it is difficult and confusing for faculty, librarians, and students to locate and utilize existing high-quality interactive learning resources.
Sponsored by the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL), a division of the American Library Association, INTERACTIVE OPEN EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES: A Guide to Finding, Choosing, and Using What’s Out There to Transform College Teaching … is the only resource to weed through OERs to identify which ones are effective. It helps decipher the best tools, resources, and techniques for discovering, selecting, and integrating interactive learning resources into the higher education teaching and learning process.
Author John D. Shank examines many of the best repositories and digital library websites for finding high quality materials, explaining in depth the best practices for effectively searching these repositories and the various methods for evaluating, selecting, and integrating the resources into the instructor’s curriculum and course assignments, as well as the institution’s learning management system. | https://www.against-the-grain.com/2014/02/atg-book-of-the-week-interactive-open-educational-resources-a-guide-to-finding-choosing-and-using-whats-out-there-to-transform-college-teaching/ |
Virtual Learning Education (VLE) is a rapidly growing area in Education. Traditional forms of teacher education are transformed, as the Internet becomes a new medium for communication. Traditionally teachers have fulfilled dual roles as presenters of structured information and social agents in the educational process. Students are in need of good interactive resources with learning tools and techniques. Hence, there is a need for training in VLE so as to enable the teacher to provide good resources in the web. VLE can improve the quality of teacher education by availing various tools and techniques of assessment. The assessment of Virtual Learning Resources (VLR) helps to provide quality web resources in teacher education. It is also used to help teacher to have better resources and environment in which teaching takes place. The environment includes the organization, the learning materials, use of media, delivery methodology and various approaches in details. Assessment is a judgment regarding the worth or value of something. Typically the assessment process is divided into two parts. The first is a teacher assessment, which relates to interaction and guidance of a teacher with students and the second is a learning resources assessment, which relates to quality of materials and resources of a course. However, the primary function of the assessment is to help teacher to improve the total quality of education in VLE. | https://experts.syr.edu/en/publications/quality-assessment-technique-qat-of-virtual-learning-resources-vl |
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