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Table of Contents:
Industrial
Delays of an industrial nature vary from black-bans, work-to-rules campaigns, stop-work meetings, short strike action or significant strike actions. Known industrial issues whereby airlines are advised of impending action (e.g., by АТС, fuellers, baggage handlers, and so forth) can largely be planned for, ahead of time. As a result, the day of operation typically reflects a diminished schedule as the commercial changes to fit flights around the issue are normally made prior. Thus, the IOC manages this reduced schedule similar to normal operating days. However, when sudden industrial action is taken, such as an instant stop-work or strike action, the resulting disruptions become significant.
IOC response
Responses to industrial activity vary enormously as the industrial climate can fluctuate from being insignificant to highly volatile, necessitating quite distinct actions. Known industrial action plans such as stop-work meetings say from 1000-1400 on a future date, will have been allowed prior to the current day. That is, schedule adjustments will already have been adapted around the disruption. However, industrial action on the day of operation (e.g., withdrawal of labour) can be highly disruptive. The IOC’s response is governed by the ‘rules’ set by the industrial body. Subject to preceding or current negotiation between the company and the industrial organisation, a resolution may be found, with the result that delays and cancellations are minimised. On other occasions, the action is protracted with little immediate recourse, resulting in far more convoluted remedies.
Commercial
During the operating day, there may be ad-hoc requests for commercial reasons (e.g., additional capacity, or a request for a charter). This may require additional flying (if extra flights can satisfy the need) or a process of upgrading/downgrading of aircraft types to provide the extra seats or cargo capacity. For example, if additional capacity were needed to serve the ports A and B, and flights operating the routes A-C-A only justified a smaller aircraft, the IOC may consider substituting a wide-body aircraft in lieu of a narrow-body aircraft (upgrading) A-B-A, and a narrow-body aircraft in lieu of a wide-body aircraft (downgrading) A-C-A.
IOC response
The request in the IOC will usually emanate from its Commercial function. If the request is for additional flights on the day of operation, the procedure would entail searching for an available aircraft (of appropriate size), technical and cabin crews, and ensuring airport handling and slot availability can be managed. In the case of substituting aircraft within the existing schedules, juggling of the aircraft patterns without compromising other flights may be the most difficult component, especially if aircraft patterns remain out of position overnight. In addition, upgrading and downgrading flights will usually have implications for both technical and cabin crewing areas.
Security
Disruptions due to security can range from concerns inside the terminal building (e.g., security screening process) to on-board incidents and other threats against the airline and/or its customers or staff. In many cases, and indeed the most serious events, the airline’s Security Department in conjunction with State authorities (e.g., governments) manage the process, with advice to the IOC as to the status and developments as they become known. Through monitoring of current world events, the security function within the IOC may also be the information channel with regard to advice about overflight issues, current or potential military activity, or specific threats to airports or the airline itself. More common events involve terminal security processes. If security is believed to have been compromised (e.g., a need to clarify or re-confirm passenger security compliance, on some rare occasions not only passengers but all individuals within the sterile part of the terminal may need to be ejected entirely from the terminal and completely rescreened. This may quickly become a dramatic and somewhat chaotic process of having to evacuate all personnel from the immediate terminal (i.e., building complex) as well as those who have already boarded aircraft and may otherwise be ready for departure. As can be imagined, the extent of turmoil caused rapidly influences all departures for several hours, thereby causing widespread disruption for all affected airlines using that part (or all) of the terminal.
IOC response
In the case of a terminal evacuation and subsequent re-screening of all personnel, the IOC will be guided by the airport as to the expected duration, flights impacted, and size of delays. This information will help to inform the likely network effects, to which can be added the impact on the fleet utilisation, crews and tranships, and of course, taking into account the time of day, may also impact on curfews or other limiting factors. As a result, the IOC may need to select immediate and ongoing flights that may be delayed, as well as identifying where potential cancellations may be made that will assist in restoring the schedules as best as possible.
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https://m.ebrary.net/221746/business_finance/industrial
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- Removed additional artist info from output in Headliner and Supporting talent fields.
- Adjusted the Venue field to remove text when making edits, to let the user know that a new venue needs to be added in order to alter the name of an existing venue.
- Resolved an issue which prevented the user from selecting their desired fee display method.
- Resolved an issue causing the public status of an event to change when info in the Basic Info section was altered on events using older templates.
- Resolved an issue causing fields in the Ticket Settings section to not save if no will call list email was prepopulated.
- Resolved an issue causing a yellow warning bar to appear without instruction for the user.
- XML Feed: Added a WordPress status field to the XML feed to mitigate an issue with events republishing on timeout.
- Timer Delay: Improvements made to the timer delay experienced during onsales. Note: the event page still uses caching, but after users clear their cache, changes should appear immediately.
- Promo Code Timers: Added a time zone setting to client level promo codes which allows clients to set a time period for promo codes which apply to all events on their account.
- Alt Terms & Conditions Improvements: Added V2 Alt Terms & Conditions settings to the template level for legacy event creation.
- Guest List & Shipping Order Uploader: Added new formatting to the Guest List and Shipping Order Uploader helpers to include column letters, making it easier for a client to match their document with our formatting example.
- Resolved – Templated Delivery Methods: Resolved an issue causing delivery methods to not carry over from the template level.
- Resolved – Refunded Tickets on Dashboard: Resolved an issue causing refunded tickets to not be removed from ‘sold’ figures on the dashboard when an event had been canceled.
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https://explore.seetickets.us/productupdates/september-2021-venue/
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Should I get an MRI or X-ray for my lower back pain?
April 24, 2017
The short answer, probably not! Why? You say? Because the evidence is stacking up that MRI and X-ray are very unreliable at providing information that will alter therapy in a meaningful way. What I mean by this is, the vast majority of studies that look at the validity of MRI and X-ray have shown that a lot of the more significant findings, such as disc protrusions, scoliosis and arthritis, are present in a vast number of people who do not have any symptoms of lower back pain at all. This begs the question, if those structures are being blamed for somebody’s pain, then why does that other person with the exact same findings on MRI or X-ray not experience any pain or problem?
The latest guidelines for physicians from the American College of Physicians (http://annals.org/aim/article/736814/diagnosis-treatment-low-back-pain-joint-clinical-practice-guideline-from) and NICE (https://www.nice.org.uk/guidance/NG59/chapter/Recommendations) strongly recommend against routine referral for imaging for people with acute lower back pain. The consensus is that imaging is only necessary when there is severe and/or worsening neurological deficit (i.e. symptoms of nerve compression such as weakness, sensation and/or reflex change in the arms and/or legs) or suspicion of a pathology such as bone tumour or spinal fracture which will require vastly different management.
For those with lower back pain and/or sciatica (i.e. pain in the buttocks and/or legs) without suspicion of significant pathology, MRI and X-ray is not going to provide information that will change management. You may think though, why not do it just in case? The reason is, once someone with low back pain is made aware of all the physical changes in their lower back that may or may not have anything to do with their pain, it can invoke a sense of fear and a feeling of fragility with regards to the spine. This often hinders recovery by increasing stress, reducing participation with work and exercise, and changing movement and muscle patterns (i.e. one can get very protective of their spine).
The take home message is; if you have acute lower back pain the current best management is to remain active, use non-steroidal anti-inflammatories and consult a physiotherapist for prescription of a home exercise program that will assist in the speedy restoration of movement and reduction of pain. Don’t rush into scans! If you have lower back pain, come see one of our highly trained physiotherapists at Focus Physiotherapy for an expert assessment. If scans are necessary, then we will gladly refer you on, but 9 times out of 10 we can manage your condition without them!
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http://focusphysiotherapy.com.au/2017/04/24/should-i-get-an-mri-or-x-ray-for-my-lower-back-pain/
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Businesses across the globe have, in the last couple of years, seen exceptional uncertainty due to political tensions, economic turmoil, COVID-19 pandemic and others. Markets today have put additional pressure on risk officers to safeguard the firm due to extreme conditions like changing consumer preferences, technology advancements, regulatory changes, competitive pressures, globalization etc. This dynamic nature of the market makes the boards and senior management of firms to constantly readjust their strategy, objective, policies and process. Firms now need to take a holistic approach to keep the pace with the change happening around them.
Risk Management is all about identifying, assessing, evaluating, and measuring risks followed by monitoring, mitigating and minimising those risks. The Basel Committee defines operational risk in Basel II and Basel III as: The risk of loss resulting from inadequate or failed internal processes, people, and systems or from external events.
The Basel Committee defines operational resilience as “the ability to deliver critical operations through disruption.” The principles of operational resilience aim to strengthen banks’ ability to withstand operational risk-related events that could cause significant operational failures or wide-scale disruptions in financial markets, such as pandemics, cyber incidents, technology failures or natural disasters.
An organisation is faced with a multitude of challenges not only in setting the strategy and direction of the organisation but with weighing up the appropriate risk appetite and building the correct level of resilience to survive and thrive. Therefore, an integrated Risk and Resilience framework in place is a better approach to managing uncertainty and addressing challenges.
The benefits of an integrated approach (as mentioned in the guideline on integrating strategy, risk and resilience 2022 edition, IRM South Africa https://www.irmsa.org.za/page/guideline) are:
- Enhanced reputation and shareholder value
- Receptiveness to change
- Better trust and stakeholder confidence
- Informed and future-fit strategic initiatives
- Efficient operations
- More agility and flexibility
- Framework to deal with known and unknown
- Reduced cost and impact associated with incidents and sudden disruptions
- Increased coordination and integration across stakeholders
Interested to understand more about how to define & implement an Integrated Risk and Resilience Framework in your organisation. Talk to our expert here.
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https://www.gieom.com/blog/an-integrated-risk-and-resilience-framework-a-better-approach-to-manage-uncertainty/
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http://open-mag.com/privacy.html
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It is not possible for ResearchGate to provide you with advice about copyright or what copyright restrictions may apply to your content - if any. However, we can provide some general information which we hope will be helpful.
For starters, when thinking about copyright issues, it’s important that you understand what ResearchGate is and how it works. To find out more, we encourage you to read the answers to these frequently asked questions:
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https://explore.researchgate.net/plugins/viewsource/viewpagesrc.action?pageId=19562625
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Multiple federal agencies have regulations requiring universities to have a financial conflict of interest disclosure process. The Public Health Service (PHS), which includes the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and seven other funded agencies, has changed its financial conflict of interest rules effective August 24, 2012. Accordingly, RIT has established new procedures for investigators involved in PHS funded proposals, research projects, and subawards.
Previous PHS regulations and the rules governing the National Science Foundation (NSF) awards require that each investigator certify that he/she has appropriately disclosed any significant financial interests related to any submitted proposal. RIT meets these requirements through its Conflict of Interest Policy and its annual Conflict of Interest Disclosure process. This requires all faculty and staff to disclose certain information via the RIT Oracle Self Service website. In addition, all investigators are required to indicate any financial conflict of interest (FCOI) on the required RIT Proposal Routing Form for any proposed externally funded research project at the time of application. After RIT’s review of any disclosed conflict of interest pursuant to its Conflict of Interest policy, if necessary, a plan to manage or eliminate the conflict is developed. RIT will notify the PHS funding agency if a conflict exists; RIT will notify NSF if the conflict cannot be resolved.
Annual FCOI Disclosure, and at time of application. As part of the annual RIT conflict disclosure process, all faculty and staff will now be asked if they have applied, or intend to apply, for PHS research funds in the coming year. If yes, those affected individuals will be asked additional disclosure questions. This annual disclosure will be reviewed as part of the RIT Conflict of Interest Policy and Procedures. Investigators will still be asked on the RIT Proposal Routing Form at the time of application for PHS funded research to certify if any financial conflict of interest exists in each proposed project.
PHS FCOI Procedures. PHS regulations require any individual designing, conducting, or reporting on the research to complete FCOI training and additional financial disclosures. RIT defines such individuals as the PI or Co-PIs on the project pursuant to section 3.3.1 of the RIT Administrative Policy and Procedures for Externally Sponsored Projects. For NIH funded projects, this will include PI/Co-PI, and Senior/Key Personnel. RIT recognizes that other individuals working on a project may have such responsibilities in a particular project as determined by the PI. In such cases, it is the responsibility of the PI to provide the names of those individuals to SRS in writing. SRS shall then require those individuals to complete FCOI training and the additional financial disclosures requested in the RIT Oracle Self Service website (specifically Part III).
Disclosure review upon receipt of Award. After notice of receipt of a PHS funded award, SRS will coordinate with other offices to review the disclosures of the PI/Co-PIs for possible FCOI. If there is no disclosed possible conflict and no relatedness issue a determination will be made to process the account request for the award. If there is a possible conflict and an initial relatedness issue is present, then the RIT PHS FCOI Review Committee chaired by the Vice President for Research (the RIT Institutional Official for PHS funded research) will coordinate with the administrator of RIT’s Conflict of Interest Policy to solicit and review any additional disclosures required for the PHS funded project investigators. After review of all the disclosures and input from the investigator, the PHS FCOI Review Committee will determine if a Significant Financial Interest (SFI) exists pursuant to the regulations, and if it is related to the PHS funded research. If so, the PHS FCOI Review Committee will communicate this decision in writing to the investigator and the administrator of the RIT Conflict of Interest Policy to assist in developing and implementing with the applicable Dean and Department a conflict management plan consistent with RIT Conflict of Interest Policy and Procedures as well as the PHS regulations.
Reporting. The PHS FCOI Review Committee will coordinate all required annual, compliance, and situation specific PHS related FCOI reports to the PHS funded agency, including any retrospective reviews reviewed required for non-timely disclosures or noncompliance by an investigator.
Subrecipient Compliance. The Office of Sponsored Research Services (SRS) will ensure subrecipient compliance with all PHS FCOI procedures prior to any subawardee obtaining PHS funds through RIT. Prior to funds expended to a subrecipient, SRS will obtain a written agreement indicating that the RIT subrecipient will follow and submit to RIT’s PHS funding procedures herein for FCOI review on the project, or a certification that the subawardee will follow their own procedures, and their FCOI procedures comply with the PHS regulations.
Required Training. PHS regulations require that each investigator (including co-PIs) complete FCOI training at least every four years, and/or prior to engaging in PHS funded research, or immediately for new investigators, noncompliance situations, or these RIT procedures are changed. RIT provides this required training through the Collaborative Institutional Training Initiative (CITI) training FCOI module located at www.citiprogram.org. This required training will be in addition to any RIT required training as part of the RIT Conflict of Interest Policy.
Public Access. RIT’s Conflict of Interest Policy and these Procedures will be publicly available on RIT websites. Any determination by the RIT FCOI Review Committee that a SFI exists that is related to a PHS funded research project shall have the minimum regulatory required elements of that FCOI available to the public within five days of written request for that information having been received by the Vice President for Research.
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https://www.rit.edu/research/srs/financial-conflict-interest-compliance-procedures-phsnih-funded-awards
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Melanie Shatner falls under the category of those actors who enjoy living their secret life even after achieving stardom. The reason behind saying this is her confidential life. Melanie is the daughter of famous comedian actor William Shatner who has been winning people’s hearts through his amazing acting and comedy skills.
Though she belongs to a star family, Melanie never accepted the industry and its shortcomings wholeheartedly. We all know that money and fame always come with a price. Those who get it must pay the price.
They often pay the price by sacrificing their privacy which is the most important asset of all human beings. But it seems that Melanie wasn’t ready to sacrifice this. She appeared in movies, gained popularity, and did many other things, but in the end, she chose herself over everything.
Well, her spirit should be celebrated rather than being criticized. Wherever we find out that a celebrity is being less discussed or not appearing in public much, we immediately think that their career is not going well.
Moreover, they have been struggling both socially and financially. But there is nothing like that. Yes, it is true that acting career does not stay glamorous all the time, but it is also true that some celebrities choose to stay away from the limelight intentionally.
Melanie Shatner: Bio
Melanie Shatner, the daughter of William Shatner and Gloria Rand, was born on 1st August 1964. She grew up with her parents in Los Angeles, California, United States. Though she was a celebrity kid, her parents didn’t want her to live like one from the very beginning. They knew what was best for her.
To be more specific, William and Gloria kept her early childhood a confidential matter. They wanted her to live like any other kid, away from the limelight, chaos, and unnecessary questions asked by the paparazzi.
Later, when Melanie grew up, she followed her dad’s footsteps and joined the entertainment industry too. The most interesting fact about the father-daughter duo is that Melanie, just like her father gained similar popularity in movies as well as in TV series.
At present, she is a married woman with two beautiful daughters. But sadly, we as fans didn’t get the opportunity to have a glimpse of them because she isn’t available on social media. Nevertheless, further information will be brought to you very soon.
Table of Specific Facts
|Name||Melanie Shatner|
|Real Name||Melanie Shatner|
|Nick Name||Not Disclosed by Her Parents Yet|
|Celebrity Name||Not Recognized Yet|
|Melanie Shatner’s Age||58 Years|
|Her Birth Date Information||1st August 1964|
|Her Birthplace Information||Los Angeles, California, United States of America|
|Height||No Data Disclosed|
|Weight||No Data Disclosed|
|Hair Color||Black|
|Eye Color||Dark Brown|
|Father||William Shatner|
|Mother||Gloria Rand|
|Father’s Occupation||Canadian Actor and Comedian|
|Mother’s Occupation||No Information Found|
|Marital Status||Married With Kids|
|Spouse||Joel Gretsch|
|His Profession||American Actor|
|Daughters||Kaya and Willow|
|Hobbies||Hasn’t Revealed Any Information|
|Pets||Not Known|
Melanie Shatner: Career
Melanie Shatner began her journey as an actor from a young age. But her journey wasn’t as easy as it was supposed to be. Unlike other celebrity kids, she started from scratch. She appeared in TV series first, and then after gaining recognition, Melanie got her first big project.
Throughout all the years of her career, she participated in various movies and played adverse characters. The list is mentioned below –
- Syngenor
- Bloodstone: Subspecies II
- Bloodlust: Subspecies III
- Surface to Air
- The First Power
- Star Trek IV – The Voyage Home
- Star Trek V – The Final Frontier
- His Bodyguard
- Madison
- Sisters
- The Second Chance
Her Father
Melanie’s father, William Shatner gained fame through his amazing acting skills. Moreover, he was more popular as a comedian. The Canadian actor did multiple movies, saw various ups and downs, and recognized his abilities and expertise in this journey.
When William Shatner rose to fame, he wasn’t satisfied. Fame was never something that he worked hard for. William, throughout his career, looked for versatility. It was something that he lacked at that time. Doing similar kinds of roles made him lose interest in movies.
But Destiny came to his rescue. It was the time when he got the opportunity to act in Star Trek. In the later years of his career, he wrote a book named “Tek War.” Some of his famous movies are “Explosive Generation,” “Intruder,” “Thriller,” “Twilight Zone,” and “The Outer Limits.”
Melanie Shatner: Instagram
Melanie Shatner isn’t available on Instagram. But her father, even in his retirement years, is still rocking social media. Perhaps the saying is true that an artist never gets old. He has 306k followers on his Instagram, where he mostly shares pictures about his shows, events, etc.
Moreover, William also lets his audience see the other side of him. His silly, childish side that his fans admire a lot. We want him to be healthy so that he can entertain us longer.
Melanie Shatner: Net Worth
When we talk about the net worth of the father-daughter duo, we must say that the amount they have earned so far with all the love is incredible. Melanie Shatner’s net worth is $50 million.
Moreover, William Shatner has built a net worth of $100 million. We wish to see them succeed even more with their upcoming opportunities. Keep an eye on our website to get the latest updates on net worth.
Conclusion
Her net worth is proof that you don’t need to live in front of the camera to be successful. Doing your job gracefully is enough to get everything in life. Melanie didn’t appear publicly much but gave her best shot every time she was in front of the camera, and this is what art is all about.
If you find this article useful to acquire knowledge about Melanie Shatner and her father, William Shatner, then don’t forget to visit our website and read more articles. You can also refer to this article – Shaun Holguin: Bio, Career, Wife, Net Worth & More.
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https://usaperiodical.com/celebrity/melanie-shatner-bio-father-net-worth/
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A critical cross-site scripting (XSS) vulnerability has been prevalent on eBay for more than a year now, and the company can’t care to fix the vulnerability even though its quite severe.
Estonian researcher, Jaanus Kääp, is the one who initially discovered the XSS flaw over a year ago when he was testing the security of web apps. Due to eBay’s lack of recognition, Kääp decided to disclose the critical flaw on Full Disclosure, Tuesday.
Kääp outlines that he emailed eBay’s security team four times over the course of an entire year, where eBay did nothing about it. After repeated emails, eBay officials told Kääp they could not release any information regarding their patch schedule, a day that never came. Kääp emailed them various times regarding the bug, only to receive an automated reply. The company went on to further ask Kääp not to disclose the bug publicly, but never gave him a timeline regarding their schedule.
Kääp said the lack of initial emails seemed regular, and he assumed eBay would patch the hole in a timely manner, as the bug appeared to be an easy fix. Kääp said he was appalled to log-in to eBay a year later and still find the critical XSS flaw.
“It was still there,” Kääp wrote in his blog post Tuesday, disclosing the XSS. “So it must not be as dangerous as I thought and no harm can happen from making it public.”
According to Kääp’s research, the vulnerability could allow an attacker to execute an XSS attack over eBay’s internal messaging system, simply by catching and altering a request. Kääp warned the flaw could be a “high issue” for targeted attacks due to eBay’s session cookies not being HTTPonly.
Kääp initially uncovered the vulnerability when attaching a photo to a private eBay message, uploading it to the server, and then modifying the GET/header request he captured. When injecting the photo and altering the request, the payload executed.
Kääp outlines the steps he took to execute the attack:
- Start by sending a message to another eBay user through the “this is not about an item” form.
- Select the “attach photos” button and upload the picture while catching the request itself with Burp or another proxy.
- Modify the GET parameter named “picfile” and header named “X-File-Name” to contain your payload.
- If executed properly, an image should appear in the message where you can now complete the form and click send. You will then need to catch the request again with the same proxy.
- Kääp said for good measures he also modified the file name in this specific request.
- RESULT: When the target opens the message, the XSS attack will execute right on the screen.
To validate with proof-of-concept, Kääp showed that attack in action with a small XSS alert on the victims machine, but stated there may be no limitations to the factors of the XSS payload. Kääp also said the XSS vulnerability could be combined with other attacks. Such would make it easy to create a new user without email verification to execute further attacks.
eBay isn’t the only major company that lacks urgency when it comes to severe vulnerabilities, just two months ago we disclosed TMZ.com was still vulnerable to the Heartbleed bug over a year later. The severe flaw has since been recently patched on the site.
It remains unknown why eBay has decided the shelve Kääp’s vulnerability. The company has chosen not to publicly speak on the recent vulnerability or disclosure as of yet.
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https://freedomhacker.net/ebay-remains-vulnerable-critical-xss-flaw-year-later-4044/
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BC's Land Owner Transparency Registry
Recently, the BC Government has become concerned that there are people who have interests in BC land who are not clearly disclosed on the property's title. In an effort to identify what the BC Government calls "indirect interests in land", the BC Government created the Land Owner Transparency Registry (known as "LOTR").
The LOTR is a provincial registry which tracks information about people who have interests in BC land, whether those people show up on title to the property or not. This registry is separate from (and in addition to) the title system run by BC's Land Title and Survey Authority. More information about LOTR can be found here.
If you are buying property as the trustee of a trust:
If you are buying property in British Columbia's provincial land title system and you will be registering it in the name of a trust, or the property is otherwise subject to a trust, you will need to do a significant amount of additional disclosure paperwork.
You, as the trustee of the trust, will likely be a "reporting body".
You might be a reporting body if:
- you are the trustee of an "express" trust (with a formal trust deed) such as a family trust;
- you are involved in a legal relationships in another jurisdictions that would be called a trust in BC (subject to the exceptions below);
- you are the owner of property that will be registered in your name, and that has other unregistered "beneficial owners" attached to it, such as beneficiaries of an estate, or other family members who have an interest in the property.
Bare trusts (property you own in your name on behalf of someone else) are included in this requirement.
Examples of trusts that are excluded from this requirement include:
- a charitable trust;
- a testamentary trust;
- an alter ego, joint spousal or common-law partner trust;
- any trust for which the Public Guardian and Trustee is the trustee;
- testamentary trusts;
- certain pension plan trusts, mutual fund trusts or SIFT trusts;
- trusts with Indiginous Nations as a beneficiary;
- trusts relating to bankruptcy laws;
- REITs;
As a trustee of a relevant trust, you must disclose additional information about the trust's beneficial interests. This information will be disclosed to LOTR in a Transparency Report.
You must certify that the information in the Transparency Report is true and complete. There are significant penalties for failure to certify this information, and the Land Title office will reject any application to transfer land which does not contain this Transparency Report.
You will have to disclose:
- identification information about the trust;
- information about the settlor and interest holders of the trust, including the nature of the interest they hold, dates of birth, contact information, SIN numbers, residency and dates upon which the person became an interest holder (or ceased to be an interest holder);
- information about the mental capacity of the trust's interest holders or settlors;
- the name, title and other contact information for the person certifying the information;
- any other to-be-prescribed information.
What do you need to do?
Short answer: more paperwork. A LOT more paperwork.
But don't worry, we'll help you with it.
If you are a reporting body, we will ask you for all of this information.
We will prepare a Transparency Report for your review and signature. You must certify that the information in this Transparency Report is true. This Transparency Report will be filed with your application to transfer the property into your name.
Additionally, if these settlors or interest holders are trusts, partnerships or corporations in their own right, you must disclose information about those trusts, partnerships or corporations as well.
You also need to notify the relevant interest holders that you are disclosing their information to LOTR in this process, to advise those individuals that the information being disclosed about them will be publicly available, and to provide those individuals with information about how they can request that information to be omitted or obscured from LOTR's publicly accessible information.
If you think you might be a reporting body, please let us know that as soon as possible, so we can make sure to start the information-gathering process as soon as possible. In fact, we recommend that you talk to us about these additional requirements as soon as you start looking at registering a property in the name of trust (or in the name of an individual, subject to a trust). Do not wait until your property transfer date.
Some of this information may be in documents you already have, such as a trust agreement. Some of this information may be missing, in which case we will need to sort out how to find that information. Remember that you are certifying this information to be true, and there are significant penalities for certifying incorrect information.
Your purchase cannot proceed without this additional paperwork, so the sooner you get started on it, the better.
Confused and baffled?
That's not surprising. This is a brand new law and Registry, and there are no other similar registries in Canada that can be looked to for guidance. We will walk you through the requirements as they become available. Just make sure to give us lots of time to deal with this issue, especially if you are a reporting body.
Contact us for more information.
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http://thenotarygroup.ca/notarial_services_LOTR_trusts.html
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The UK Research Staff Association (UKRSA), in association with Vitae, is conducting a study investigating the experiences of researchers taking maternity, paternity, adoption, and/or parental leave. The lead researcher is Anna Slater (University of Liverpool, co-chair of UKRSA), alongside colleagues on the UKRSA Committee who are members of research staff working at Universities within the UK.
Click here to start the survey.
You are being invited to participate in this research study. Before you decide whether to participate, please take the time to read the following information carefully. You do not have to accept our invitation to participate. You are free to ask questions or for more information before deciding whether or not to participate.
The purpose of the study is to understand the needs of researchers undertaking these types of leave, the issues they may experience, and to ask for examples of good practice in this area. We would like to collate a national picture of how researchers, particularly those on short term contracts, feel they are supported to take periods of leave relating to childcare. With this information, we will produce a short report relating to these issues, and design an online resource to support researchers on short term contracts taking leave of this type.
You have received a link to this survey because we believe you are a researcher on a fixed-term contract at an institution within the UK.
We would like to invite you to take part in a survey. It will be administered via a secured site, and no personal information will be collected. By answering the survey, you are agreeing to participate in the project.
The information provided by you in this questionnaire will be used for research purposes. It will not be used in a manner which would allow identification of your individual responses, and free text quotes will be anonymised to remove any potentially identifying data. We ask that you do not identify yourself or your institution in the free text boxes unless you are happy for this information to be recorded and subsequently anonymised. Quotes, with identifying information removed, may be used in a publicly available report on these research findings, and although every attempt will be made to ensure anonymity of participants, it may not be possible to guarantee complete anonymity.
We recognise that issues around maternity, paternity, and adoption can be an emotive or sensitive subject depending on individual circumstances. The survey is voluntary and does not explicitly cover sensitive topics, although if you wish to discuss anything related to your experiences there are free text boxes that allow you to do so. If you have been affected by any of the topics related to this survey, a list of organisations providing support and advice concerning pregnancy and related issues can be found here.
Participation in the project in any form is entirely voluntary and consent may be withdrawn at the end of the survey. After completing the survey online, no identifying information will be stored, therefore it will not be possible to withdraw from the project. Whilst University protocol requires us to inform you that there are no specific benefits for individual research participants, the results of the study will be publicly available and copies will be provided to any participant who requests them.
If you are unhappy, or if there is a problem, please feel free to let us know by contacting Anna Slater on Anna Slater, and we will try to help. If you remain unhappy or have a complaint that you feel you cannot come to us with then you should contact the Research Governance Officer on 0151 794 8290 or email. When contacting the Research Governance Officer, please provide details of the name or description of the study (so that it can be identified), the researcher(s) involved, and the details of the complaint you wish to make.
Data will be stored securely. All participants will be made anonymous. Data will be used for this project as well as for future research. Only the identified researchers will have access to the non-anonymised data. Data will be anonymised and archived after the project in accordance with the protocols of the UK Data Archive.
The results of the research project will be publicly available. We will produce a research report, which will be disseminated online. In addition, we intend to present our findings at academic conferences relating to researcher development.
If you have any further questions, or would like additional information, please contact:
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https://www.vitae.ac.uk/doing-research/research-staff/uk-research-staff-association/fixed-term-researchers-survey
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The SEC's investigation is still pending, Juniper said.
Juniper never publicly disclosed where the possible FCPA violations might have happened or who was involved.
Friday's filing said "the DOJ acknowledged the Company’s cooperation in the investigation."
California-based Juniper makes networking equipment.
It typically generates most of its revenues from sales outside the U.S.
Juniper's biggest foreign customer when the FCPA investigation started was China Mobile Ltd.
China Mobile's former vice chairman, Zhang Chunjiang, received a suspended death sentence in 2011 for taking more than $1.2 million in bribes.
Juniper wasn't named in the Zhang case.
The Company also announced that it received a letter from the U.S. Department of Justice (“DOJ”) notifying the Company that the DOJ has closed the Company’s previously disclosed investigation into possible violations by the Company of the U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (“FCPA”) without taking any action against the Company. In its letter, the DOJ acknowledged the Company’s cooperation in the investigation. As previously disclosed, the Securities and Exchange Commission is also conducting an FCPA investigation, and that matter has not yet been resolved.
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http://www.fcpablog.com/blog/2018/2/12/juniper-networks-lands-doj-declination.html
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Digital identifiers are central to information retrieval and management, so they are consequently crucial to the operation of the World Wide Web. In particular, the ability to identify a digital or real-world, physical resource and/or a description of such a resource relies on its unique identification. The relationships between such resources, described in XML and/or RDF, may provide a powerful resource for research by establishing what other entities and resources are linked to the one being described and providing a means to find information that might not otherwise have been discovered. Higher education institutions are large-scale producers and consumers of information about their research and teaching activities, and also generate considerable volumes of administrative data that are linked to these activities. These resources may, for example, include research projects, resulting publications, teaching resources and complex data sets. It is often crucial in order to secure grant funding or commercial collaborations to be able to demonstrate the success and productivity of academic institutions or individual academic units within them. In particular, the unique identification of academic staff is crucial to their continuing success.
Identifiers
Last updated on 2 May 2013 - 3:57pm
On the most basic level, Web technologies intrinsically require the identification of information resources so that requests for such resources can be properly processed and so that the correct resources can be supplied. To this end, every resource on the World Wide Web is uniquely identified with a Uniform Resource Identifier (URI). The identifiers must be unique simply in order that there is no confusion about which resource is being sought or which server ought to seek to provide it. These resources may be of any file type whatsoever, including textual documents, web pages, images, video or audio resources, scripts, compressed archives etc; these may be for human viewing or may be intended to be machine readable in order to support a particular web service.
Information on the Web is found within resources: these may be the object of the request in themselves, if those resources are electronic; however, if the resources are not electronic, e.g. physical objects such as buildings, works of art, books or even people, the electronic resource is likely to be only a description of the actual resource that is being sought. Examples might be catalogues, lists, biographies and similar. While it may seem odd from a human perspective to refer even to people as resources, servers simply return the information, however organised, that is attached to the HTTP identifier that has been requested, whatever it may be. For instance, the simplest resource related to a person (or organisation, similarly) could be a declaration of the forms of a person’s name and other personal details that identify that person better as an individual and avoid confusion, i.e. disambiguate from other similarly named people, organisations or other resources.
Technically, there are two types of URI. The most immediately familiar of these is the Uniform Resource Locator (URL), which, for example, will be seen in the browser address bar above this and all other web pages. Another, rather less well known type of URI is the Uniform Resource Name (URN).
The difference between the URI and URL is a technical one and is often poorly understood in practice, to the extent that these terms are frequently confused. In theory at least, the URI only has to be a uniform identifier that is unique, which means that there is no automatic requirement for it to be expressed using the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP), or any other standard protocol such as XMPP, SMTP, MAILTO, FTP and so on. Effectively, any name or other sequence of characters that is unique to a particular resource could theoretically be classified as a URI and be used accordingly. However, in practice, it is not automatically useful to have a simple identifier that does not provide a means to locate and retrieve the resource in question. There is nothing to prevent a URI being expressed using the HTTP or other protocol and choosing a URI that points to a genuine resource on an active server. This provides a means for the server to resolve the request for that resource and hence to either return it, point to an alternative resource, state why the resource is no longer available, or declare that the resource does not exist, as may be appropriate. Each protocol, including HTTP, has its own technical communication standards which servers should adhere to.
The concept of unique identification may be combined with the concept of describing relationships, often using RDF or other similar or related mark-up technologies. The idea that physical resources can have presence on the Web via their descriptions is often called the “Web of Things” and is part of the Semantic Web. The latter provides a means to find out how resources are related to other resources, e.g. how the Leaning Tower of Pisa is related to Italy, where it is located as a grid reference and its GPS coordinates, who built it, which famous experiment was allegedly conducted there by Galileo etc. When a large quantity of information is made available using description schemas that are machine-readable, Web services can be developed that can, for example, discover video, audio or textual resources such as publications about that place, or even perhaps artworks or photographs depicting it. For example, a scientist and an architect might be interested, for different reasons, in closely related resources to do with the construction and more recent stabilisation of the famous tower in Pisa. At least in theory, the Semantic Web, which relies on unique identifiers for every resource and every document providing such descriptions, could have unlimited potential for providing a means to cross-reference stores of information that are available on the Web and could thus provide more in total than any one such store is capable of providing alone.
In higher education, the creation and provision of resources is inevitably critical to all academic and teaching work. It is inevitable, therefore, that the Web has become a critical tool in carrying out all of these functions. For example, the effective organisation of complex research activities leading to academic publications that bring in funding revenue, or of teaching resources that facilitate the education of students, will contribute considerably to the performance of particular institutions. Providing and organising this information across the various functions and departments of an institution is often key: research data, human resources or finance information, library catalogues and publication information can be combined centrally to provide a powerful and flexible database of the activities of an institution or its departments, including their strengths and weaknesses at any particular point in time.
As technologies are developed and used to bring together diverse sources of information more efficiently and automatically than was possible by manual processes, it becomes clear how increasingly important it will be to identify the individuals, organisations, documents, artifacts and multimedia resources involved in these activities correctly. It is a particular concern to identify the names of people, organisations and their subdivisions and places correctly, since the productivity of individuals and institutions rely heavily on the accuracy of information and because any misattribution could impact negatively on, for example, their standing with funders and commercial partners. On a fundamental level, identifiers contribute to the efficient organisation, consumption and reuse of information resources on the Web. The relevance of unique identification to such a major producer and consumer of information as the higher education sector can clearly not be overestimated in this light.
There are so many different schemas and protocols for unique identification, within the overall superset of URIs and the broad divisions into URLs and URNs, that it is practically impossible to create an exhaustive list of them. Within the higher education sector, there are a number of broad classes of identifiers and metadata schemas containing various approaches to unique identification that can be described in broad detail here.
On the simplest level, one technique is to aggregate information about an identifier and its various or equivalent forms in other contexts or schemas in order that it cannot be confused with similar identifiers. This is a useful approach, for example, with regard to the names of people and organisations, which have multiple name forms that might be valid either concurrently or at different times in their history. It is useful to know that a frequent name like John Smith refers to John Nathan Smith, since there are fewer so named, and even more useful to state a relationship about where (and when) he was employed. A machine will not know that J.N. Smith, J N Smith, JN Smith, Dr. J. Smith and perhaps later Prof. J. Smith are different or identical people, especially where titles change or an individual has several valid name forms. It is useful to state that these are equivalents, as together these contribute to the uniqueness of the record or records about this individual. Details about where a person worked and their job, together with what the institution was called at various times, with date stamps where appropriate, serve to make these entities unique. The order of elements of a name and what function each has, for instance in oriental names where alternative name orders are used, can also be marked up in metadata.
Such metadata records can be produced in a relatively simple way, depending on how much semantic information is necessary or useful. At the simplest, a major metadata schema such as Dublin Core can be used with repeated fields for forms of the name of an entity associated with a resource. More complex metadata schemas such as the Common European Research Information Format (CERIF) can be used to encode more complex information, e.g. the dates when a particular academic’s pre-marital and married names were valid, which could be cross-referenced to her or his publications to ensure that they were correctly cited and/or verifiable against the publisher’s information. Similarly, the name or changing names of the organisation(s) and their sub-divisions at the time of the production of a teaching resource or academic article could be verified. Where these records disagree, it is possible to programmatically establish the likelihood of errors by comparing different resources and thus correcting and adding to (or enriching) the metadata held about resources and their relationships.
However, it is useful to have an overall, canonical URI to combine with a record or records about individuals, organisations or other entities, for example if some sources of information are less well curated than others. Uniqueness can be determined by methods such as Universally Unique Identifiers (UUIDs) that rely on mathematical probability to be functionally unique. While convenient for machines, these must be combined with strings of characters representing common names or words in order to be meaningful to a human as well, which is easily achieved in markup languages such as RDF, or just in simple XML. It is also useful to be able to apply unique identifiers to documents, such as the Digital Object Identifier (DOI). This is often used, for example, by publishers to give a unique identifier to a published electronic resource such as an academic article, but could be used for any document. Metadata attributes are associated with the identifier so that persistent identification is provided for that document together with relationships that the document has, e.g. to its author.
In terms of Web services such as social networks, which may include academic and other professional networks such as Academia.edu and LinkedIn, the ability to judge whether a particular public-facing user account is the same as a named user on another service is also important to the discovery, for example, of potential collaborators or professional rivals and their work, be they individuals or organisations. This may, for some individuals, extent into personal social Web services that are partially or wholly used for academic or other professional purposes, such as Twitter. Purely academic identifiers also exist, for example commercial identifiers such as those offered by Thomson Reuters at ResearcherID.com, and the Scopus Author Identifier; or those provided by national organisations or within the public domain, such as the International Standard Name Identifier (ISNI) and the ORCID researcher identifier.
Within academia, the business of unique identification has advanced at different rates for different types of resources and related entities that are available or described on the Web. On the one hand, it has been in the interests of publishers to make sure that academic articles from which they derive profit are uniquely identified in order that they can support their subscription income. It is not surprising then that the DOI scheme is the most widely implemented scheme for digital object identification, or that it has been most widely applied so far to such published materials. Pre-existing international schemes such as IBSN and ISSN have been relatively easily re-used in the Web context.
On the other hand, there has been significantly less progress towards a de facto internationally recognised standard for unique identifiers for individuals. The ISNI identifier is widely used by public funding bodies but the individuals and even the organisations described by it have no direct input into the accuracy or presentation of the information except initially through their national research assessment schemes, e.g. the Research Excellence Framework (REF) in the United Kingdom. The ORCID scheme has the provisional support of funding bodies represented by Research Councils UK and by similar organisations in other developed countries, as well as by major publishers; however, it is still in the early stages of development and it remains unclear whether the necessary adoption will occur among academics. The approach taken by ORCID is for organisations to seed the information about their academic staff but for the information to be controlled by the academics themselves and authenticated by the trusted institutions who employ or fund them. At present, ORCID appears to have considerable initial support and is a fast-developing standard.
The unique identification of organisations has progressed less far. An academic may have worked at several institutions, each of which may have alternative names (e.g. bilingual names in Welsh or Gaelic) or which may have changed their names. They may work within more than one research group, department and/or school, which may have been reorganised, merged or de-merged over time with resultant effects on the appropriate nomenclature at the time that a particular resource was created or published. As yet, although some metadata schemas such as CERIF have the ability to mark up increasingly complex information of this type, there is little evidence that this is being done by academic institutions. In countries such as Australia, there may be national institutions, e.g. the Australian National Data Service (ANDS) that maintain or provide approved lists of names. However, there is no evidence that national bodies who keep such lists for their own purposes have made these widely available in machine-readable, date-stamped formats for programmatic reuse such as metadata verification and enrichment.
Individual software services may create widely used methods of identification for their own purposes, for example within the repository software DSpace, Fedora and EPrints. As supplied by default, however, these are not especially reusable outside the software, given that the agreed international standards for identifying individuals and organisations are not well established. It is always possible to include any unique identifier, such as ResearcherID or ORCID, in a record, but the usefulness will be limited if there is no consistency of practice in terms of which metadata field is used in each local customisation. There are numerous useful approaches such as that taken by the developers of eSciDoc in the Control of Named Identities (CoNE) service, which can be used either with the Fedora-based eSciDoc or as a standalone service. CoNE, for example, can provide a means to uniquely identify any entity. However, these have not seen wide adoption beyond their specific software communities.
The CERIF metadata standard can perform a similar function with an almost arbitrary level of granularity of information, yet it has not been nearly as widely implemented in software as the Dublin Core metadata standard which has no such abilities but which is far easier to implement. In the same way, Dublin Core application profiles provide an overlay of more complex metadata built on top of simpler Dublin Core. However, these are used largely in limited, specific information retrieval environments, e.g. libraries or specific, subject-based services and have not developed into widely used, de facto standards.
There are numerous approaches to cross-referencing which online identities in professional and social networks belong to the same individual. Most of these, however, rely on the services themselves providing a means to do so. As these are commercial, there is no guarantee that they will continue to do so in future if commercial rivalries later cause that to be outside their own interests, or that the information will be publicly viewable, even if the user chooses to set privacy settings to allow this, or is even able to do so.
However, the non-commercial means to state such equivalences are of uncertain value too. Most users who have an OpenID, for example, which is effectively a user account attached to a unique identifier and metadata about that individual, only have one because they use a service like Facebook which, usually without their knowledge, provides one. It may not be obvious to a non-technical user that it can be in their interests to state publicly which other professional services may represent them. While Friend Of A Friend (FOAF) allows relatively simple declarations about individuals and their relationships with other entities, most individuals do not have the technical knowledge or means to provide markup in such files on the Internet, or are even aware of what they can achieve. It is not clear to what extent commercial search algorithms used by the major search engines may take FOAF, or indeed any other metadata source, into account, which may impact upon the practical value of providing such metadata.
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http://technicalfoundations.ukoln.ac.uk/subject/identifiers.html
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http://safsworks.com/tos/privacy.php
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More vulnerabilities were publicly disclosed in 2017 than ever before. What do the biggest data breaches from 2017 say about the future of cyber security?
The year 2017 broke records for the number of reported security vulnerabilities in software. We also saw one of the worst data breaches ever in terms of impact. Let’s look back at some of the security news from 2017.
The number of publicly disclosed vulnerabilities in 2017 far exceeds the number from any previous year. Below is a graph generated by the National Vulnerability Database that shows the number of publicly disclosed vulnerabilities by year:
This trend appears similar when we look at only the high-severity issues (according to CVSSv2 scores):
As the number of disclosed vulnerabilities rises, organizations need programs for dealing with them. Failure to deal promptly with a publicly known vulnerability is what caused the worst data breach we’ve seen so far (at least for Americans).
While the Equifax breach did not affect the largest number of people, it did have the worst impact. Breaches of credit card numbers, passwords, and other information that can be changed are generally easy (although potentially costly) to deal with. However, the Equifax breach exposed data such as names, addresses, birth dates, and social security numbers. Because this information usually cannot be changed (at least not easily), it will remain valuable in the future. This information can easily be used to impersonate people, as attackers did via the IRS FAFSA tool breach earlier in 2017.
How did this data breach happen? It resulted from Equifax’s failure to find and promptly patch a publicly known vulnerability in Apache Struts, which was used in its Consumer Dispute Portal. The vulnerability was exploited over 2 months after a fix was made available. Moreover, the company did not discover that its systems had been compromised for another 1.5 months. This series of failures demonstrates significant weaknesses in Equifax’s security program at the time.
Of course, government agencies are not immune to cyber attacks either, whether from outsiders or from insiders. In 2017, we saw documents and tools from the CIA leaked publicly as part of Vault 7. We also saw tools leaked from the NSA and published by the Shadow Brokers. Although the NSA tools were leaked in 2016, the password required to decrypt some of them was not made available to the public until 2017. The NSA tools were allegedly used by North Korea to develop the WannaCry ransomware, which infected over 230,000 computers in 150 countries in just 1 day. Sounds like a great movie plot; unfortunately, it had severe consequences. The attack affected hospitals, the U.K. National Health Service, universities, and a German rail operator, among others. It even affected some critical U.S. infrastructure. Several other ransomware attacks, such as Petya and Bad Rabbit, have since used the NSA’s leaked tools.
Whenever a leak like this happens, it renews the debate about whether government agencies should keep software vulnerabilities secret and exploit them as needed, or help make everyone more secure by reporting them and allowing vendors to fix them.
Last year, I mentioned the 2016 U.S. election and stated, “This is not the last time that we’ll see emails being stolen and published to attempt to sway public opinion.” Well, it happened again just a few months later. This time, it was an attempt to sway the French election, with Emmanuel Macron’s party’s emails being stolen and published. Of course, we’ll continue to see these types of attacks in the future.
We’re seeing more and more organizations adopting cloud services. Unfortunately, many of them do not have experience with the new technologies. It is easy to make mistakes that expose large amounts of data. Some notable events from 2017 included Deep Root Analytics exposing personal information about all U.S. voters, TigerSwan and TalentPen exposing résumés belonging to veterans, law enforcement officers, and intelligence personnel, and SVR Tracking exposing passwords for vehicle tracking devices. Make sure you have your cloud configuration reviewed regularly!
We saw organizations detect and respond to attacks at very different speeds. Google was on one end of the spectrum, where it shut down a phishing attack within 1 hour after about 1 million accounts were affected. Google accounts getting compromised may not seem like a big deal until you realize how many other accounts (like online banking) can be affected for people that use Gmail for their primary email address.
Equifax was somewhere in the middle. As we discussed previously, it took the company about 1.5 months to detect the breach, during which time 143 million people’s personal information was stolen.
Disqus was on the other end of the spectrum, where it discovered a breach after 5 years. During this data breach, email addresses, hashed passwords, and other information for 17.5 million users were stolen. Although this breach on its own was probably a low-impact incident, since the stolen credentials could be used only to post comments online, the reality is that many users reuse passwords across multiple sites. Passwords stolen from Disqus could potentially be used on many other websites.
Of course, there are probably many organizations out there with compromised systems that still don’t know about them.
Equifax failed to find and patch vulnerable systems for at least 2 months, did not detect compromised systems for 1.5 months, and didn’t publicly disclose the breach for over a month afterward. Many questions were then raised about Equifax executives selling some of their shares during the month when some people at Equifax knew about the breach but the public did not. The executives were eventually cleared (at least by Equifax’s board). But when Equifax did make the breach public, it made even more mistakes by redirecting users wanting to check their status to the wrong website.
Uber was breached in 2016, and attackers stole personal data of 57 million customers and drivers. Uber’s chief security officer allegedly paid $100,000 to the attackers to delete their copy of the data—and then failed to disclose the breach to the public. Uber finally admitted to this in November 2017. Of course, there is no guarantee that the attackers deleted the data, and hiding the breach for a year unnecessarily exposed victims to other attacks.
Last year, I made a few predictions for 2017:
Did these events happen?
Now it’s time for some software security predictions for 2018.
Prediction 1: Another record year for publicly reported vulnerabilities
The number of publicly reported vulnerabilities in software will likely set another record in 2018. Organizations need the right tools and programs in place to deal with this problem.
Prediction 2: High-severity design flaws
In 2017, we learned about the KRACK attack, in which attackers can intercept and inject traffic on modern Wi-Fi networks. This attack is made possible by a flaw in the WPA2 standard itself. As I mentioned earlier, we also learned about a flaw in the CAN Protocol used for communication between components in vehicles. In 2018 we’ll continue to see high-severity design flaws in software. Unfortunately, tools cannot find such flaws; we need architecture and design reviews to find them.
Prediction 3: Cyber attacks against infrastructure
As more and more devices and public infrastructure become connected to the internet, we’ll see more attacks against them. We already saw the WannaCry ransomware affect small utilities and manufacturing sites in the United States. In 2018 we’ll start seeing larger-scale attacks against infrastructure.
How do you make sure that your organization doesn’t make the mistakes that we discussed? You need a solid security initiative to make sure you prevent attacks whenever possible, and minimize damage and respond appropriately when they do occur. There’s no one small change that could have systematically mitigated any of the security issues we discussed above. Like most critical business practices, security requires significant resources and effort. Do not leave it to chance. A good place to start is the Building Security In Maturity Model (BSIMM).
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https://www.synopsys.com/blogs/software-security/biggest-data-breaches-2017/
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General Privacy Information
1. Personal information protection system
We have created and maintain a system designed to properly protect user information. We have also established a compliance program, which is continually implemented and updated, that requires board members and employees to protect personal information.
2. Managing personal information security
We are careful that users’ personal information is managed safely, accurately, and in the latest status when acquiring, using, storing and canceling/deleting said information, and we ensure that the information will not be leaked nor wrongly accessed.
Furthermore, the ENEOS Group may subcontract part of this work and provide personal information to the work subcontractor to the extent necessary to achieve the purpose of use. In such a case, we sign an agreement with said work subcontractor(s) regarding the handling of personal information and take other steps necessary for appropriate subcontractor management and supervision.
3. Clarifying the purpose of use
When acquiring personal information, we clarify its intended purpose of use along with other matters in accordance with the relevant laws, etc., and then either inform the user thereof directly or publicly disclose said matters. We use personal information for the following purposes.
- For contact / responses to business partners (including personal customers and businesses that may become business partners) regarding work / transactions
- To give information about and provide products and services to business partners
- To carry out subcontracted work in cases where the ENEOS Group receives the provision of products or services from a business partner or is entrusted with handling of personal information
- To respond to legal obligations or demands (including reports to domestic and international regulatory bureaus, judicial / administrative agencies, and stock exchanges and responding to audits thereof)
Furthermore, in the following cases, we may use personal information without contact to the user directly or public disclosure.
- If there is a risk that informing the user of or publicly disclosing the purpose of use may damage the life, health, property, or other rights and profits of the user or a third party
- If there is a risk that informing the user of or publicly disclosing the purpose of use may damage the rights or appropriate profits of the ENEOS Group
- If cooperation is required for a national agency or regional organization to fulfill legally determined work and there is a risk that informing the user of or publicly disclosing the purpose of use may impede the fulfillment of the said work
- If the purpose of use is deemed obvious from the status of acquisition
4. Provision to third parties
As a rule, we do not share personal information with third parties. However, in the circumstances listed hereafter, personal information may be shared with or disclosed to a third party.
- If permission has been granted by the user
- If the information is to be shared with a separate entity with which we have a confidentiality agreement and when required to fulfill the ENEOS Group’s objectives
- If personal information is to be shared within the ENEOS Group or with a specific entity, such as a company, and when this has been publicly disclosed or the user has been informed of such
- If the information must be shared or disclosed as an exception for legal reasons
- If disclosure or provision is required to prevent danger regarding the life, health, or property of the user or a third party
5. Transfer of personal information to overseas
If providing personal information to a third party, such as an overseas business partner, including work subcontractors and parties with shared use, the ENEOS Group takes the necessary and appropriate measures determined by law.
6. Use of anonymized information
The ENEOS Group may use personal information having turned it into statistical information or having otherwise edited it to prevent personal identification, in order to improve our products and services. In such a case, we do not acquire descriptions deleted from the said personal information or information regarding the processing method, nor do we compare the said anonymized information with other information in order to identify an individual in the personal information used to create the anonymized information. Also, we take the necessary and appropriate measures regarding the handling of anonymized information.
7. Handling of inquiries and requests for the disclosure, change, or stoppage of use of personal information
If a user contacts us about the handling of their personal information or requests that we disclose, change, or stop using their personal information, we will handle their inquiry or request quickly and properly after first verifying their identity.
- Inquiries to this company
- ENEOS Corporation
- When making an inquiry, please first agree to the content listed at https://www.eneos.co.jp/english/contact/.
- Inquiries to other companies in the ENEOS Group
Please contact the respective company. If you inquire at the location listed above in (1), please be aware we may forward your inquiry to the respective Group company.
Ota Katsuyuki, President
ENEOS
Handling of personal information on this website
1. Collection of user information
In line with the purpose defined on this website and in accordance with using this website’s services, we may ask users for the following information. A user’s personal information will not be used for any reason other than its intended purpose of use.
- The user’s name, email address, zip code, address, telephone number, etc.
- The user’s age, date of birth, gender, job, company name, etc.
- The user’s interests, magazines to which the user subscribes, etc.
- Services the user uses, the user’s hobbies, etc.
- To prevent users who use our membership services from having to input their password each time they visit this website
- To statistically process data on users’ activity on this website for the purpose of improving our website services
- To provide users with services that are relevant to their interests and to customize services to satisfy each individual user
Cookies
Technology for saving and reusing the information about the user who accessed the website.
Web beacons
Technology for measuring how many times access was performed to the specific page.
3. Use of user access logs
Information such as when and from where a user has accessed our website is compiled on our web server or ASP-type measurement server as an access log. We may use such data for the reasons listed below. Note that such data cannot be used to identify an individual.
- To identify the source of and solve any server related problems that arise
- For administration of this website
4. Blocking cookies
Your browser can be set to block cookies or to display a warning message when cookies are received.
Most services on this website can be used without cookies. However, without cookies, the services may be limited, and you may not be able to use some services.
5. Security measures
To protect users’ personal information, Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) is used by the following services on this website.
- Online inquiry forms
6. Personal information protection policy changes and notification
These policies may be changed in part or in whole. Notice of any changes will be posted on this website.
7. Use of advertisement distribution service
- Using the opt-out (suspension of advertisement distribution) method provided by said third party, you can stop user visit/action history information that is collected by said third party from being used for advertisement distribution.
Personal information used within our transfer and product delivery work
To facilitate the transfer of funds between customers and parties to transactions, we collect personal information from both customers and parties to transactions. This information is not used for any other purpose.
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https://www.eneos.us/privacy-policy/
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You can use it for research or reference.
Michael Wernick
Clerk of the Privy Council and Secretary to the Cabinet
Suite 1000
85 Sparks Street
Ottawa ON K1A 0A3
Dear Sir:
I am writing to you today in response to your letter of November 2, 2017, regarding the challenges of the pay system and your request for information on the efforts that have been made and that are planned by the Civilian Review and Complaints Commission for the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (“the Commission”) in order to help stabilize the pay system.
I understand the extent to which you are concerned by this situation facing the entire public service. For the Commission, it is a major problem affecting nearly 66 percent of its employees, which is a bit less than in the rest of the public service. As you undoubtedly know, the Commission is a small organization of approximately 70 employees that benefits from the services offered by the human resources and finance units of the Department of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness. Consequently, certain tasks, namely data entry in PeopleSoft and Phoenix, are completed by Public Safety Canada employees. Enclosed you will find a list of the activities that have been undertaken to improve the situation with the pay system. If it has not yet been done, I would propose creating a working group composed of a few representatives from smaller organizations with the objective of identifying the specific challenges for these types of organizations and possible promising solutions. The Commission would participate on a voluntary basis in such an initiative in order to find solutions to common problems.
In closing, since I cannot state any improvements to the system itself, I would like to point out that progress has been made in the area of communications regarding the pay system.
Sincerely,
Guy Bujold
Interim Vice-chairperson and
Acting Chairperson
Encl.
cc: The Honourable Ralph Goodale, Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness
- Date modified:
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https://www.tpsgc-pwgsc.gc.ca/remuneration-compensation/services-paye-pay-services/centre-presse-media-centre/lettres-dm-dm-letters/lettres-letters/reponse-de-cpp-response-from-cpc-eng.html
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- 1 What is in This Collection?
- 2 What Can These Records Tell Me?
- 3 Collection Content
- 4 How Do I Search This Collection?
- 5 What Do I Do Next?
- 6 Citing This Collection
- 7 How Can I Contribute to the FamilySearch Wiki?
What is in This Collection?
This collection consists of civil registration (stato civile) of births, marriages, and deaths within the custody of the State Archive of Roma (Archivio di Stato di Roma). Availability of records is largely dependent on time period and locality. This collection of civil registrations records covers the years 1863-1930.
May also include the following records:
- Supplemental documents (allegati)
- Marriage banns (notificazioni o pubblicazioni)
- Ten-year indexes (indici decennali)
- Residency records (cittadinanze)
Image Visibility
Whenever possible, FamilySearch makes images available for all users. However rights to view images on our website are granted by the record custodians. Italian Data Privacy rules prohibit making certain records publicly available for viewing. This includes birth records under 110 years old, and marriage or death records under 70 years old. The Italy, Roma, Civil Registration, State Archive collection is available to the Family History Library, FamilySearch Centers, and to members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The images are also available to all viewers at The Portale Antenati (Ancestors Portal).
For additional information about image restrictions, please see the Restrictions for Viewing Images in FamilySearch Historical Record Collections page.
Reading These Records
For help reading these Italian records, see the following guides:
- Italy Language and Languages
- Italian Genealogical Word List
- Script Tutorial for Italian
- Italy Handwriting
- FamilySearch Learning Center videos:
To Browse This Collection
|You can browse through images in this collection by visiting the browse page for Italy, Roma, Civil Registration (State Archive), 1866-1929.|
What Can These Records Tell Me?
The following information may be found in these records:
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Birth
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Marriage
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Death
Collection Content
For details about the contents of these records, their history, and help using them see the wiki article: Italy, Civil Registration (FamilySearch Historical Records)
How Do I Search This Collection?
Before searching this collection, it is helpful to know:
- Your ancestor's given name and surname
- Identifying information such as residence
- Estimated marriage, birth, or death year
- Family relationships
View the Images
View images in this collection by visiting the Browse Page:
- Select Province
- Select Comune or Frazione (Municipality or Fraction)
- Select Record Type and Year to view the images.
How Do I Analyze the Results?
Compare each result from your search with what you know to determine if there is a match. This may require viewing multiple records or images. Keep track of your research in a research log.
What Do I Do Next?
I Found the Person I Was Looking For, What Now?
- Add any new information you’ve found to your records
- Use the information to find more. For instance, use the age listed in the record to estimate a year of birth, if that is yet undetermined
- Make sure to fully transcribe and cite the record entry for future reference; see the section Citing This Collection for assistance. Save or print a copy of the image
- Compile the entries for every person who has the same surname; this is especially helpful in rural areas or if the surname is unusual. This compiled list can help you identify possible relations that can be further verified by researching vital records indexes in the country
I Can't Find the Person I'm Looking For, What Now?
- Italy Church Records are also a good substitute when civil records of births, marriages, and deaths cannot be found or are unavailable
- Check for variants of given names, surnames, and place names. Transcription errors could occur in any handwritten record; also, it was not uncommon for an individual be listed under a nickname or an abbreviation of their name
- Your ancestor may have emigrated to another country. Search the records of nearby areas or Italy Emigration and Immigration records
- Search the indexes and records of local genealogical societies
- Remember that sometimes individuals went by nicknames or alternated between using first and middle names
- New information is constantly being indexed, microfilmed or updated. Periodically check back to see if your ancestor’s records have been added. You can see if the area you’ve been looking in has been recently updated by going to Historical Records Collections. Watch for an asterisk for recently added or updated records
Research Helps
The following articles will help you in your research for your family in Italy.
Citing This Collection
Citations help you keep track of places you have searched and sources you have found. Identifying your sources helps others find the records you used.
- Collection Citation
- "Italia, Roma, Stato Civile (Archivio di Stato), 1863-1930." Database with images. FamilySearch. http://FamilySearch.org : 12 October 2018. Archivio Stato Civile, Tribunale di Roma (State Civil Archive), Italy.
|Image Citation:|
When looking at an image, the citation is found on the Information tab at the bottom left of the screen.
How Can I Contribute to the FamilySearch Wiki?
| We welcome user additions to FamilySearch Historical Records wiki articles. We are looking for additional information that will help readers understand the topic and better use the available records. We also need translations for collection titles and images in articles about records written in languages other than English. For specific needs, please visit WikiProject FamilySearch Records. |
Please follow these guidelines as you make changes. Thank you for any contributions you may provide.
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https://www.familysearch.org/wiki/en/Italy,_Roma,_Civil_Registration,_State_Archive_(FamilySearch_Historical_Records)
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From 6 April 2016, UK companies must identify and maintain a public register of persons with significant control. Those persons must supply companies with necessary information or face criminal and other penalties.
Introduction
The Small Business, Enterprise and Employment Act 2015 (SBEEA) introduced a new regime under which UK companies, limited liability partnerships (LLPs), and other UK corporate entities must maintain a register of people with significant control over the relevant entity (the PSC Register). The regime is intended to increase transparency concerning the identity of the ultimate beneficial owners of UK entities.
The Register of People with Significant Control Regulations 2016 (the PSC Regulations) provide details about the new PSC Register regime and how it applies to UK companies. Similar provisions relating to the application of the new regime in relation to LLPs are set out in the Limited Liability Partnerships (Register of People with Significant Control) Regulations 2016 (the LLP Regulations). The regime comes into effect on 6 April 2016.
Affected Entities
The new regime will apply to all UK-incorporated companies and UK LLPs. All listed and AIM-quoted companies will be exempt from the new regime because they are already subject to various reporting requirements. Companies listed on the regulated market in another European Economic Area state, or in other markets (including the United States), will also be immune from the new regime.
Importantly, non-UK incorporated entities that operate within the UK are not subject to the regime.
This Alert only considers the regime as it applies to companies, but not to those that apply to LLPs (although they are very similar).
Meaning of a "Person with Significant Control"
Essentially, a "person with significant control" (PSC) is an individual who:
- directly or indirectly holds more than 25% of a company's shares; or
- directly or indirectly controls more than 25% of a company's voting rights; or
- directly or indirectly has right to appoint or remove a majority of the board of directors of a company; or
- has the right to exercise or actually exercises significant influence or control over a company; or
- has the right to exercise or actually exercises significant influence or control over a trust or firm that meets one of the above four conditions.
The UK Government published guidance this month on what is meant by "significant influence or control". It includes relationships such as limited partnership interests and commercial lenders. The guidance also sets out certain circumstances, such as the right to control key decisions relating to a business, which may indicate significant influence or control.
"Relevant legal entities" (RLEs) will also need to be disclosed on the PSC Register. RLEs are essentially companies (or other entities) that would be PSCs if they were individuals and that are themselves subject to a disclosure regime, such as a UK listed company obliged to comply with Chapter 5 of the Disclosure and Transparency Rules.
What the New Regime Requires
Commencing on 6 April 2016 this year UK companies must:
- maintain a PSC Register;
- take reasonable steps to identify those people they know or suspect have significant control. There is now guidance on what constitutes taking "reasonable steps" for these purposes;
- notify suspected PSCs or RLEs, requiring that person to confirm whether or not he/she is a PSC or an RLE and to provide specified information. A company may also be obliged to serve notices on others the company knows/suspects knows the identity of any PSC or RLE;
- make the necessary filing at Companies House in relation to the information contained in the PSC Register;
- take reasonable ongoing steps to ensure that the company's PSC Register is kept up-to-date; and
- take other reasonable steps required under the PSC regime to obtain the necessary information to complete the PSC Register properly.
From 30 June 2016, UK companies must also provide the information on the PSC Register to Companies House when they file their annual confirmation statement (which will replace the annual return) or, for new companies, on incorporation. The information filed at Companies House will be available on a free searchable public register. Private companies will have the option to maintain their PSC Register at Companies House provided that no PSC objects.
Consequences of Breach
Failure by a company to comply with its duties under the new regime will be a criminal offence, and the company and its directors, or other officers, may be subject to an unlimited fine or imprisonment of up to 2 years, or both.
Obligations of a PSC
PSCs (or RLEs) must provide:
- the information set out in any statutory notice received from the company; and
- the prescribed information, even if such a person has not received a notice, if the person knows, or reasonably ought to know, that he/she is a PSC (or RLE), has been for at least one month, and his/her details are not already disclosed in the PSC Register. A similar obligation arises if there is any subsequent change in such information.
Failure to comply with a statutory notice or to comply with the general obligation to provide information is an offence unless certain conditions are met. Similarly, if any person fails to comply with a statutory notice served on it by a company, then the company may give that person a warning notice that it intends to issue the person with a restrictions notice with respect to its interests in the company. If a restrictions notice is served, any transfer of the restricted interests will be void, no dividends may be paid on such interests, and no rights attached to such interests may be exercised.
Information That Must Be Included in the PSC Register
The following information must be disclosed on the PSC Register where a PSC is an individual: name, service address, usual country or state of residence, nationality, date of birth, usual residential address, date on which such person became a PSC in relation to the company, and the nature of his/her control over the company.
The PSC Register should also include the following information concerning any RLE: corporate or firm name, address of registered or principal office, legal form of the entity, the law by which the entity is governed, the register of companies (if any) in which it is entered, together with its registered number and the date on which it became a registrable RLE. The intention is that an interested party could then look at disclosures made by such RLE under its own disclosure regime to identify any ultimate PSC.
The PSC Register will also record the nature of the control exercised by the registrable PSC or RLE by reference to one of the five conditions described above.
A company's PSC Register cannot be left blank. A company should disclose in the PSC Register whenever it:
- has reason to believe that there are PSCs or RLEs, but it has not been able to identify them or confirm their details;
- knows or has reasonable cause to believe that there are no PSCs or RLEs;
- has not yet completed taking reasonable steps to determine whether there are any PSCs or RLEs;
- has served a statutory notice that has not been complied with (or there was late compliance); or
- has issued or withdrawn a restrictions notice.
A company must make available its PSC Register for free public inspection to any person or provide a copy on request at a cost of up to £12. The public register at Companies House will be searchable by any person free of charge.
The usual residential address of a PSC will not be publicly available, either on a company's own register or the register at Companies House. It will, however, be accessible by certain public bodies and (unless a PSC makes a specific application) credit reference agencies. The PSC's date of birth will be publicly available on a company's own PSC Register, but not on the register at Companies House (unless the company elects to hold its own PSC Register there). The PSC Regulations also permit PSCs to seek further protection of their personal information from public disclosure, provided that they can satisfy certain tests relating to there being a serious risk of harm.
Next Steps
Companies and LLPs need to put in place the necessary systems to deal with the new regime as soon as possible and should begin taking reasonable steps to identify PSCs and RLEs and preparing their PSC Register to be ready for 6 April 2016. Similarly, PSCs who wish to limit the information relating to them that will be publicly available on the PSC Register should also begin preparing such applications.
The content of this article is intended to provide a general guide to the subject matter. Specialist advice should be sought about your specific circumstances.
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https://www.mondaq.com/uk/shareholders/478222/uk-companies-to-keep-mandatory-register-of-persons-with-significant-control39
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The Access to Information Act (ATIA) gives Canadian citizens and people present in Canada a limited right of access to information in federal government records. The Privacy Act gives these same individuals a limited right of access to personal information about themselves held in government records, and sets out rules and fair practices for the management of personal information by federal institutions. All information collected by NSERC is subject to these laws.
A requester seeking access to records under the ATIA must write to the ATIP coordinator at NSERC, providing a precise description of the records sought and enclosing an application fee ($5.00 at the time of this writing). Note: there is no fee required to request information about yourself under the Privacy Act.
The submission of a request does not guarantee that a requester will gain complete access to the requested records.
The ATIA sets out specific exceptions that apply when disclosure of information could be expected to injure private or public interests. In responding to such requests, for example, NSERC would not disclose personal information about identifiable individuals or proprietary technical information submitted in confidence by researchers or companies. Moreover, if a request required a lengthy search or involved a large number of records, a requester can be asked to pay additional fees to help cover the processing costs.
More information about the ATIA can be obtained from NSERC's ATIP coordinator or from the publication Information about programs and information holdings – a register of federal information holdings available online. It is important to remember that the ATIA is intended to complement, not replace, established channels of communication. NSERC has always promoted open informal communication with the research community and with the public. We encourage you to contact us informally before using the ATIA.
The Privacy Act gives people in Canada certain rights with respect to personal information about themselves held by federal institutions. For example, institutions must inform people how their personal information will be used and to whom it will be disclosed. Personal information may be used only for the purposes for which it was originally collected or for uses consistent with that purpose. The Act also contains a procedure for requesting the correction of inaccuracies in personal information.
Making a formal request under the Privacy Act is similar to making one under the ATIA except that there are no fees associated with requests to see one's personal information. Simply write to NSERC's ATIP coordinator and provide a precise description of the personal information you are seeking. The Privacy Act sets out specific limits to the right of access similar to those contained in ATIA. For example, a person seeking access to his or her personal information would not be given access to personal information about another person.
You do not have to use the Privacy Act to obtain feedback on your NSERC application or to access information about you held in NSERC files. In fact, we encourage you to simply write informally in the first instance to the appropriate program section.
Note: Under the Privacy Act, the written opinion of an NSERC reviewer about your application is available to you, but the name of the reviewer is not.
All personal information collected by NSERC about grant, scholarship and fellowship applicants is used to review applications, to administer and monitor awards, and to promote and support research in science and engineering in Canada. Consistent with these purposes, applicants should also expect that information collected by NSERC may come to be used and disclosed in the following activities.
NSERC routinely shares summary information related to applications and awards with relevant officials in the eligible research institutions that endorse and/or administer them.
As part of the peer review process, applications are disclosed to selection committees composed of experts recruited from the academic, private and public sectors. Many applications are also transmitted to external referees, to members of ad hoc review committees or to site visit committees for review. All participants in these review activities are advised of NSERC's expectations with regard to the confidentiality and protection of the information entrusted to them. NSERC ensures that this information is stored, handled and distributed in a secure manner at all times, by mail or through electronic password protected devices to prevent unauthorized access.
The substance of expert reviews and selection committee comments about a proposal are accessible to co-applicants. Although NSERC normally provides such feedback only to the applicant, he or she is expected to share it with co-applicants.
NSERC uses personal information about applicants in its files and databases to identify prospective committee members and reviewers for specific applications.
Because NSERC has a single corporate database, staff are generally aware of applications submitted by the same individual to different NSERC programs. For the purposes of adjudication and award administration, some selection committees are provided with multi-year summaries of an individual's applications and awards in all programs. For example, in cases where there is a question of possible overlap in the support of an applicant's research activities by two or more NSERC programs, application material submitted to one program may be used during the review of an application submitted to another program.
Applications and documentation submitted to a program in which research support is offered by NSERC in conjunction with another federal government institution may be disclosed to appropriate officials in the other institution.
Applications submitted to NSERC are reviewed as required under the Impact Assessment Act (IAA). Portions of the application may be sent to federal government departments for review as required by the Act. Note: This does not apply to scholarship and fellowship applicants.
Documentation related to applications may be disclosed to program staff in the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) or the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) for the purposes of determining the most appropriate funding jurisdiction, or to monitor overlap in federal support.
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For more information on the Acts, contact:
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https://nserc.ca/NSERC-CRSNG/Policies-Politiques/atip-aiprp_eng.asp
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June 8, 2017
‘AI’ or Just ‘I’? Most Adaptable Will Win!
by Sri Ramaswamy
Summary:
Technology advancements are blurring the borders between humans and machines. Where is this all leading us?
Charles Darwin once said, “It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent; it is the one most adaptable to change.”
What does that mean in today’s world?
Humans are accustomed to creating buzzwords and hypostatizing technology advancements such that the borders between humans and machines will become blurry.
Where is this all leading us? What will humans do if machines take over? Will we have no jobs left? Do we need to start building Terminators?
Questions like these are common these days. And then things get more complicated when we hear that technology companies are looking to hire more people to help filter out violent content on media.
What does this all mean, then? Are we ready? Does AI work?
This post is not a technical whitepaper on how to create AI systems.
I want my views below to explain how we have approached creating our AI system and why our employees, leaders and customers are not threatened but instead excited to be part of this change. What did we do differently, and can that be replicated across the globe for every AI implementation?
That’s really a choice the leaders of companies must make. Humans are social, intelligent beings; our intelligence develops each day through repetition, observation, pattern recognition and practice. Our brains are said to have over 10 billions neurons, and each neuron supposedly is a super-computer by itself. AI is essentially when you brain-dump these patterns, learnings, observations and experience into computer models and systems so that those tasks no longer require us. The most important ingredient in this equation is: human. Without experienced humans, AI would just be computer algorithms.
See also: Machine Learning to the Rescue on Cyber?
What I found to be most useful in picking the area best suited for AI is something that can solve yesterday’s problem, make today comfortable and responsibly evolve for tomorrow’s needs. Below are the four main elements of AI truths that we kept in mind while developing our AI solution:
1. Involve human practitioners: There is no substitute to human experience. This experience is valuable when rendered to the AI models. As leaders, we need to think about how to get the best practitioners for developing these models and then how to help them become the masters of these models. Human experience is undeniably the best feeder to AI. As leaders, we must allow for people to adapt and evolve and not leave the human factor behind AI. AI models can borrow human experience, but emotional intelligence and consciousness is definitely an ethical side of us that needs to be in our control.
2. Empower learning: Technology companies and their supporting industries must work with each other to ensure the jobs being displaced will be replaced responsibly. The people being displaced must be encouraged and empowered to learn other skills and move on to better things. If we don’t think and act responsibly on both sides of technology and business, we will risk displacing many humans without direction, which causes ripple effects in our society. An idle mind is devil’s workshop, they say, and we — as creators, founders and leaders of companies — need to fold in the human element as an intangible effect and account for this all while forecasting profits and expenses.
3. Enhance education systems: As a leader, we must hire today’s talent but contribute to developing tomorrow’s employees. Leaders like us can work with local schools and offer practical programs that can involve students with our creations and help them think beyond the obvious. We need to get everyone seeking education to search for“spiritual intelligence, which is the highest form of the conscious mind, and intelligence that no one can replicate into a machine. Help kids love the learning they get from the education system, not just love getting the degree. Knowledge is power.
4. Solve problems: As leaders and entrepreneurs, we need to focus on solving yesterday’s problems — which can make today easy — while thinking about tomorrow’s path. Technology is great if we can stay ahead of it; it cannot solve problems on its own. As leaders, we need to find out what problems technology can solve while figuring out how we can enhance humans so we can stay ahead. As leaders, we must think about both the obvious and not obvious effects of every decision moving forward. We cannot resist change; it will happen. But we must consider how can we solve problems using AI systems that will replace humans while still growing the company and without losing the human element.
See also: Seriously? Artificial Intelligence?
Can we create a well-planned AI system responsibly and implement it successfully? This is a question that requires leaders (not managers) who can lead with spiritual intelligence, find an undistracted vision and help their workers transform and evolve.
Every action has a consequences, and every inaction can make us unadaptable.
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https://www.insurancethoughtleadership.com/ai-or-just-i-most-adaptable-will-win/
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Artificial intelligence (AI) has received a mixed reception over the past few years. In one corner there are those who hype its capabilities far beyond reality. In the other are the pessimists, fearful of the mass unemployment it could unleash. And, says Emma Kendrew, intelligent engineering services lead for Accenture Technology, that’s not to mention the downright dystopian, swayed by years of disquieting sci-fi films. The possibility of a finer balance, that does not pit human skills directly against AI, is often ignored.
Recently it looked like round one might be won by the pessimists. Many enterprises have focused on automation alone and are struggling to scale AI out of the pilot stage. But the COVID-19 outbreak has seen the other side make a comeback. In healthcare, projects like the COVID-19 Open Research Dataset are pooling data provided by humans so that AI systems can look for patterns to accelerate discovery. Contact centres are using AI chatbots to deal with routine responses so that human agents can handle the spike in trickier enquiries. And AI tools are helping to keep people healthy and informed, from virtual healthcare assistants to AI-powered thermal cameras for fever detection.
In many diverse settings we’re seeing the benefits of the technology and our fears are beginning to subside in the face of experience. These projects bring together AI’s capacity to use limitless amounts of data to explore new possibilities with people’s ability to direct and refine ideas.
We’re finally seeing the true potential of AI in the spotlight: human-AI collaboration. When people collaborate with AI the technology can be more than just another tool. Instead, it can become an agent of change in the business, interacting and adapting to its environment and the people around it.
Collaboration comes through effective communication
At the heart of successful collaboration is effective communication. Of course, the accuracy of the data must be ensured – AI can only be as good as the data it receives – but the way it receives it is just as crucial.
Several recent developments in the field have made this possible. Natural language processing (NLP), explainable AI and extended reality (XR) are all unlocking pathways for interaction. Advancements in NLP allow machines to better understand contexts and nuances of language that previously fell between the cracks. But it is image recognition and machine learning in XR environments that is catalysing the movement toward human-AI collaboration, by allowing programmes to recognise and understand their surroundings.
Businesses must prepare employees to understand how they can take advantage of AI
However, despite these advances, only 23% of organisations are preparing their workforce for collaborative, interactive and explainable AI-based systems, according to Accenture’s 2020 Technology Vision report.
If businesses are to push beyond deploying AI for automation alone, then steps must be taken to give employees a better understanding of how AI systems work. As people become more familiar with AI through interactive experience they will be better equipped to use the results, such as strategic recommendations, in their role.
That’s not to say everyone has to become an expert in the technology, the onus is still on enterprises to democratise it. This means they must create the context for people throughout the organisation to use the technology, no matter what department they work in.
This will allow employees to couple their unique talent and knowledge together with AI. Take OpenAI’s MuseNet, an AI that collaborates with humans to compose music. A human provides a starting sample, a target style and instrument preferences. MuseNet then uses what it has learned from hundreds of thousands of musical files to make suggestions about the next segment of a composition. It is a relationship of interaction and collaboration, human and machine bouncing off one another, to create an output that neither would have generated in isolation.
The new COVID-shaped world is ready for human-AI collaboration
There is little doubt that AI integration is already high on the agenda of businesses, with 73% of organisations piloting or adopting AI in at least one business unit. But cost-saving and time-cutting through automation is generally the focus.
This may be the moment that permanently alters the common mindset towards AI. A 2019 global Accenture study on AI found that one of the top roadblocks to scaling the technology is lack of employee adoption. But as people directly benefit through virtual healthcare assistants and AI-powered thermal cameras, a new trust has begun to develop. Businesses can take advantage of this unique moment by integrating true human-AI collaboration now and showing off the technology at its best.
The next few months will continue to accelerate the integration of AI as businesses realise its usefulness and value separately from the immediate necessity. But only those that focus on collaboration, not just automation, will build the next generation of intelligent businesses — where humans and AI systems work together to reimagine what’s possible.
The author is Emma Kendrew, intelligent engineering services lead for Accenture Technology.
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https://www.theee.ai/2020/07/29/4185-the-future-of-ai-is-collaboration-not-automation/
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United States Army Secretary Mark Esper recently revealed that the military has a strategic vision of utilizing autonomous and semi-autonomous unmanned vehicles on the battlefield by 2028.
“I think robotics has the potential of fundamentally changing the character of warfare. And I think whoever gets there first will have a unique advantage on the modern battlefield,” Esper said during a Brookings Institution event.
“My ambition is by 2028, to begin fielding autonomous and certainly semi-autonomous vehicles that can fight on the battlefield,” he added. “Fight, sustain us, provide those things we need and we’ll continue to evolve from there.”
In a preview of the U.S. Army’s strategic vision, released on June 6, Esper said the integration of these forces would become a critical strategic component, quoting from the document:
The Army of 2028 will be able to deploy, fight, and win decisively against any adversary, anytime, and anywhere … through the employment of modern manned and unmanned ground combat systems aircraft, sustainment systems and weapons.
When Esper was reportedly asked about concerns regarding autonomous robots being a threat to humanity, he replied in jest, “Well, we’re not doing a T-3000 yet,” referencing the Terminator movie series about self-aware AI threatening the existence of humanity.
Of course, while he jokes about the threat of autonomous killer robots, polymath inventor Elon Musk clearly takes the potential of such a threat much more seriously, as evidenced by his comments at the South by Southwest (SXSW) conference and festival on March 11, in which he said that “AI is far more dangerous than nukes.”
“I’m very close to the cutting edge in AI and it scares the hell out of me,” Musk told the SXSW crowd. “Narrow AI is not a species-level risk. It will result in dislocation… lost jobs… better weaponry and that sort of thing. It is not a fundamental, species-level risk, but digital super-intelligence is.”
“I think the danger of AI is much bigger than the danger of nuclear warheads by a lot. Nobody would suggest we allow the world to just build nuclear warheads if they want, that would be insane. And mark my words: AI is far more dangerous than nukes,” Musk added.
As The Free Thought Project reported last month, the Pentagon reportedly plans to spend more than $1 billion over the next few years developing advanced robots for military applications that are expected to complement soldiers on the battlefield, and potentially even replace some of them.
While the development of this tech by the Army sounds like a movement toward better weaponry, and not a digital super-intelligence, as discussed by Musk—the creation of fully autonomous unmanned weapons systems clearly has implications given the potential future development of some type of “digital super-intelligence.”
Esper attempted to allay fears by noting that the Army’s unmanned vehicle program would be akin to the Air Force’s use of Predator drones, and clarified that the idea would be to protect soldiers by removing them from direct combat. In turn, he said, this would enhance tactical ability and mobility, thus paving the way for cheaper tanks due to not having a crew inside in need of protection.
However, due to the complexity of the modern battlefield, a human element would remain part of the process.
“In my vision, at least, there will be a soldier in the loop. There needs to be. The battlefield is too complex as is,” Esper said.
The nuance in Esper’s statement seemingly leaves lots of ambiguity when he says, “In my vision, at least…” which by default likely implies other competing visions that almost certainly include the use of autonomous systems that don’t have a “solider in the loop.”
During his SXSW commentary, Musk noted that rapid advancements in artificial intelligence are far outpacing regulation of the burgeoning technology, thus creating a dangerous paradigm. He explained that while he is usually against governmental regulation and oversight, the potentially catastrophic implications for humanity create a need for regulation.
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https://www.technocracy.news/u-s-army-to-deploy-autonomous-killer-robots-on-battlefield-by-2028/
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Are algorithms the next generation of artists? The relationship between technology and its effect on jobs has been a long-standing debate. Some argue that automation replaces common repetitive tasks, allowing humans to be more efficient and creative. But advancements in AI, machine learning, and computer vision are enabling computers to not only curate, but create new content. Will technology augment the creative process or threaten to replace it?
Speakers:
- Nancy Giordano, Futurist
- Josh Kampel, President, Techonomy Media
- Byron Reese, CEO, GigaOM
- Shaku Selvakumar, Founder & CEO, BraveCenter
View the full discussion here.
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https://techonomy.com/techonomy-sxsw-ai-takes-arts/
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By Ken Scudder
As we enter the age of AI, many people are wondering how this new technology will affect the way we write. Will AI be able to replace writers, or will it simply provide them with new tools to enhance their work?
One of the biggest fears surrounding AI and writing is the possibility that AI will be able to produce high-quality content more efficiently than human writers. This is a valid concern, as AI has already shown itself to be capable of generating coherent text, and it is only a matter of time before it becomes more advanced in this regard.
However, it is important to remember that AI is not capable of the same level of creativity and emotional depth that human writers are. While AI may be able to produce content that is technically well-written, it will likely lack the unique perspective and personal touch that sets human writing apart.
In fact, many experts believe that AI will actually serve to augment the work of human writers, rather than replace them. By providing writers with tools to automate certain tasks, such as research and data analysis, AI will free up more time for writers to focus on the creative aspects of their work.
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https://prsaboston.org/surviving-the-age-of-ai-writing/
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by Dr. Shambhushivananda
At one stage in our evolution, humans were just one of the many dominant creatures on this planet earth. Today, the earth is under the command of humans (homo-sapiens) while all other creatures are almost at their mercy. Even invisible viruses do not escape human wrath, and as soon as they interfere in human survival, they attract a collective global attack to cause their annihilation.
Some scholars have predicted that humans will evolve into super humans where ordinary humans will become mere slaves to a new breed of humans who will be masters of genetic engineering, control biometric data, utilize artificial intelligence, machine learning and augmented virtual reality and will relegate ordinary humans to the category of subhuman ‘irrelevant’ species. This science fiction scenario posited by some is still speculation. Not all projections are likely to actualize but this is definitely a scenario worth addressing.
Human interface with machines is not new on the planet, and humans have integrated nature’s powers in their lives for their advantage from very early days, with the discovery of fire. Nature, both inorganic and organic, holds immense power. As humans begin to tap the potential of nature and begin to harness it by intelligent design, the question of the future of human society and the survival of its norms comes into a sharper focus.
Will the institution of family still exist? Will humans still exercise compassion in all their dealings? Will robotic society cause the disappearance of human emotions? Will human-designed algorithms replace natural evolution of different species completely? What will happen to the consciousness of humans and other beings? Will the theory of reincarnation still hold? Will religious, political, and economic institutions still play a dominant role in human affairs? Will the distinction between mind and consciousness become clearer? Will humans become sort of immortal, with an indefinite shelf life? Would laboratory babies be as intelligent as the naturally born babies of today? Would designer babies have any independent thinking or would they display only programmed ‘smart thinking’? How will our sense of the meaning and purpose of life evolve over time? Will the society of the future have any moral dilemmas? Would there be any role for ‘revolutions’ in the future society of AI-dominated scenarios? Could coordinated cooperation and competition create a benevolent future for all species?
Before we can address such questions, we must understand the role of humans in the cosmological order. Humans did not just emerge out of matter, whether organic or inorganic, nor out of nowhere. Matter and humans both have originated from primordial Transcendental Consciousness and carry the potential of that highest consciousness. The Supreme Consciousness is far subtler than Cosmic Mind and all manifestations of Cosmic Mind are merely the cruder manifestations of the greater powers embodied within Cosmic Mind. Thus, what the Cosmic Mind has been doing until the present continues to be taken over by human minds in slow and gradual steps. All human powers are the manifestations of a higher Force—Cosmic Mind— and ultimately the Supreme Consciousness. So, there is no reason to panic over technological scenarios proposed by some scholars. Ultimately, the all-benevolent Consciousness, the macro-psychic volition holds the strings of evolution. The Supreme Consciousness (and its macro-psychic volition) is not a dualistic god as religions understand it, but the embodiment of Cognition (Cosmic Intelligence) and the cosmic energy, which made it possible for creation to occur in the first place. So the Cosmic Operative Principle can never outperform the Cosmic Cognitive Faculty to which it is subservient. Equipped with understanding of the missing link between organic and inorganic, through a science of the building blocks of subatomic structures, developed minds shall be able to motivate human beings to create a harmonious society where all can live in the balance, harmony and inspired love of cosmic divinity. This alternative scenario provides a hopeful and assuring benevolent future for human society.
Furthermore, each human being possesses something that has the potential to be connected with that highest consciousness. That unit consciousness is the real ‘owner’ of all that we can truly claim as ours. Thus, while machines may begin to control the bodies or crude minds of humans, they can never overpower the unit consciousness since machines do not possess the subtlest consciousness of humans. If they ever can, the same laws of consciousness, which Cosmic Consciousness represents, will guide them, too. Cosmic Consciousness is not merely a repository of all power, but also of infinite love. This love will continue to preserve and nurture an alternative scenario for the human society of the future.
It is with this premise that the philosophy of neohumanism propounded by Shri P.R. Sarkar asserts that every entity in the universe will always have two basic values—existential value and utility value. Furthermore, the reins of creation do not lie ultimately in the hands of frail or super humans but with a higher power, the macro-psychic volition of divine Supreme Consciousness. Humans can unite with the highest consciousness, but that is only possible through a process of increasing expansion of magnanimity of mind until the interests of all become the interests of each entity. Machines will never be able to become one with Highest Consciousness without going through the process of emotional enlargement and psycho-spiritual development. So even in the age of artificial intelligence and augmented reality, humans, as the owners of AI, will need to undertake such meditative practices that will enable the unification of the unit consciousness with the Supreme Consciousness. That alone could satiate their eternal craving for greater happiness, enlarged magnanimity, everlasting bliss and realization of Love Divine.
The primary task for the leaders of the human race today is, therefore, to build systems, which will nurture a neohumanist spirit in all domains of human endeavor. No other ideology is comprehensive and compassionate enough to care for the welfare of all beings—sentient or non-sentient. All have a place in this creation and we must learn to understand and preserve the existential and utility values of all manifestations of Supreme Consciousness. This work needs to be conducted by the wisdom teachers, neohumanist educators, and by the institutions that prepare the young for the challenges of tomorrow.
As for the questions raised earlier about the nature of a future human society, all we can say at this point is that evolutionary forces will continue to transform us in myriad ways. While there may be greater control over our bodies and crude minds and the world around us, the inherent reactive momenta embodied in our genetic codes will continue to manifest diversity of unparalleled proportions. The source of diversity in creation comes from the subtler domains of existence and we must respect that diversity and preserve it in order to maintain the aesthetic quality of creation. So in the world of AI and machine learning, humans will still be in command and will still serve as the trustees of the real owner, the Supreme Consciousness. Hopefully they will act in the interests of all—animate and inanimate, living and non-living, humans and machines. If, overall, they do not, at least some humans will have the wisdom to replace controllers of artificially intelligent machines with greater benevolent consciousness through an intellectual revolution empowered by the force of the collective spirit. Our gurukulas will help assure that there will be enough progressive individuals with such wisdom at all times.
Thus, human beings should use the spare time generated by increased use of AI to serve fellow living beings through imagination and creativity, make greater use of intuitional intelligence and experience the coveted joys of spiritual stillness and divine bliss-consciousness, the inherent longing of human existence. The culture of devotion is a blissful legacy of the human race. It would be a shame to lose it to a culture of robotics and a mechanistic futuristic scenario.
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https://gurukul.edu/newsletter/issue-46/46-role-of-humans-in-a-digital-world/
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June marked the halfway point of what has turned out to be an unprecedented year in most people’s lives. The massive changes wrought by the fallout of a global pandemic have left many of us searching for ways to adapt to our new reality. It is easy to feel powerless in the face of forces beyond our control, but as human beings we are uniquely equipped to problem solve and evolve to meet the challenges in our environment.
Technology can play a powerful role in speeding up this evolution in ways that equip us with the knowledge and tools needed to achieve our full potential. Of course, technology is an outgrowth of the human mind and can be used to augment both beneficial and destructive human traits and behaviors.
Personal Digital Empowerment
As we face a future of uncertainty and rapid change, it is critical that we examine the ways in which technology can be harnessed for good, to increase our wellbeing and confront the unprecedented challenges facing the global community. For this reason, we have centered the theme of our upcoming 2020 Think Tank event on Personal Digital Empowerment: The Rise of the Centaur. To be a centaur means we have integrated technology into our lives to empower us to evolve as human beings to be able to live a more abundant and joyful life.
A goal of this event is to change the negative perception that future advances in technology will necessarily limit people’s freedom and opportunities. Together we will explore a range of ways in which technology can work to our benefit, including increased augmentation and quantification of the human body and by humans and AI working together.
The human body is the new frontier of technology’s user interface, transforming our experience of technology from device-based into a first-hand physical experience. Self-augmentation via the implantation of technology into the body already exists in the form of a heart pacemaker or Cochlear implant.
Science Fiction In Real Life
Today, implant technology is progressing in ways that many may think belong to the realm of science fiction. An implant under the skin of our hand or connected to our brain has the potential to restore, replace or upgrade a natural human capability, delivering cognitive or physical improvements in the form of memory boosting and vision enhancement, for example. These advances can help empower us as individuals in ways that improve our quality of life and enhance our productivity and creativity. This use of self-augmentation embodies the ideals of what it means to be a digital centaur.
We must, nevertheless, also explore the potential of implants to cause further divisions between society’s haves and have-nots while creating unforeseen psychological impacts on users.
The digital centaur has many tools at his or her disposal in addition to digital implants. Through wearable technology, sensors embedded in our clothes, watches, glasses, earpieces, or under the skin can track our movements and biometrics, allowing us to gather a steady stream of data on how our body and mind are functioning.
The goal with this is to pursue the “quantified self”, or the practice of self-tracking to provide the insights we need to make more well-informed life decisions. Greater data collection can translate into better health outcomes through the expansion of preventative medicine. Doctors could use self-tracking data to spot trends and make diagnoses before a condition manifests physically or mentally.
This could have important societal implications as well, such as in the case of a global pandemic like COVID-19. Aggregated health data collected from thousands of self-trackers could allow health officials to quickly spot and contain potential outbreaks of disease before they can spread. Wearables can also just make life more fun, for example through headsets or glasses equipped with virtual reality gaming and apps that let you travel the world from the comfort of your home.
Collaborating With AI
Beyond implanted and wearable technology, we can augment our human capabilities by harnessing artificial intelligence (AI) for our benefit. Instead of fearing AI, we must look for ways to combine the relative strengths of humans and intelligent machines to improve how we live and work. Indeed, researchers at Accenture found in their review of 1,500 companies that “firms achieve the most significant performance improvements when humans and machines work together.”
Instead of replacing and displacing us, AI can equip people with tools to become more productive, creative and effective in what they do. Ultimately, whether you fear or fully embrace technology, or fall somewhere in between, the future of humankind will largely be shaped by how we continue to develop and use technology.
Stay tuned to Future Point of View’s social channels to learn more about our annual think tank where we will delve more deeply into how technology can empower us as individuals and as members of society.
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https://fpov.com/2020/06/28/rise-of-the-centaur/
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The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Czech Republic is a Czech government ministry responsible for international relations of the Czech Republic. The Ministry is headquartered in Černín Palace, Loretánské náměstí 5, 118, Prague 1. The Ministry operates the diplomatic missions of the Czech Republic abroad and is responsible for implementing the foreign policy of the Czech Republic and Czech diplomacy efforts. The current Minister of Foreign Affairs is Jan Lipavský, is also joining the CZ-FR AI Workshop.
Ambassade de France en République Tchéque
The Embassy of France to the Czech Republic is in Velkopřevorské náměstí, Malá Strana, Prague, near Kampa Island in the River Vltava. It occupies the baroque Buquoy Palace, which was originally built in 1667 and then altered during the 18th century.
The post of the Ambassador of France to the Czech republic is lead by Alexis Duterte who is one of the speakers in Czech-French AI Workshop on “Why machine consciousness needs ethics”.
CIIRC CTU
The Czech Institute of Informatics, Robotics and Cybernetics is an institute of the Czech Technical University in Prague, that focuses on fundamental and applied research in the fields of computer science and AI. CIIRC CTU builds an ecosystem for AI and advanced manufacturing. It connects the industry, universities and RTOs with European research and innovation networks.
INRIA
Institut National de Recherche en Informatique et Automatique is a public research organisation leading the national AI research ecosystem. It develops a culture of scientific innovation and stimulates creativity in digital research. INRIA will lead main activities connected to innovation management including novel ideas and technologies. INRIA will also support the mobility and exchange programmes and enhance discussion on the R&I agenda between EU stakeholders.
communication partners
Confederation of Laboratories for
Artificial Intelligence Research in Europe
CLAIRE seeks to strengthen European excellence in AI research and innovation. The network forms a pan-European Confederation of Laboratories for AI Research in Europe. Its member groups and organisations are committed to working together towards realising the vision of CLAIRE: European excellence across all of AI, for all of Europe, with a human-centred focus.
AI4media
In AI4Media, partners in the areas of AI and media work towards delivering the next generation of AI at the service of media and society, strongly based on European values of trustworthy AI.
HUMANE-AI-NET
Humane AI Net, researchers and innovators develop the scientific foundations of fair and transparent AI systems. The systems enhance human capabilities and empower society while respecting human autonomy.
with the support of projects
IMPACT
The IMPACT project focuses on fundamental and applied research in computer vision, machine learning and robotics to develop machines that learn to perceive, reason, navigate and interact with complex dynamic environments. For example, people easily learn how to change a flat tire of a car or perform resuscitation by observing other people doing the same task. This involves advanced visual intelligence abilities such as interpreting sequences of human actions that manipulate objects to achieve a specific task. Currently, there is no artificial system with a similar level of cognitive visual competence.
ELISE
ELISE is a network of artificial intelligence research hubs. Based on the highest level of research, it spreads its knowledge and methods in academia, industry and society. The network invites all ways of reasoning, considering all types of data applicable for almost all sectors of science and industry. We do this while being aware of data safety and security, and striving to explainable and trustworthy outcomes. ELISE works in cooperation with ELLIS (European Laboratory for Learning and Intelligent Systems). ELISE is part of the EU Horizon 2020 ICT-48 portfolio and is coordinated by Aalto University.
VISION4AI
Since September 2020, four NoEs are working on aspects of trustworthy AI funded under the H2020-ICT-48-2020 call. The VISION project brings these networks together to create a world-class AI ecosystem. VISION aims to reinforce, interconnect and mobilise Europe’s AI community, and to accelerate Europe’s transition to a world-leading position in the research, development and deployment of AI technologies.
RICAIP
Research and Innovation Centre on Advanced Industrial Production is a joint project of two Czech and two German research institutes. RICAIP is an international distributed research centre of excellence (CoE) that focuses on research in robotics and AI. It is based on the strategic partnership of CIIRC CTU, CEITEC BUT, DFKI and ZeMA.
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https://czech-french-ai.eu/partners/
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29 Sep 2021
Without a doubt, so far this year had been one of the busiest we have ever seen at Carlin Hall. Whether it was the beginning of the Great Resignation or demand from last year, our clients were inundated with mandates. As we head into Quarter 4, we take a closer look at key trends shaping the Executive Search industry in 2021 and beyond.
Flexibility and Remote Working
Flexible working hours were already a growing trend prior to the pandemic but now they are seen as a real advantage by candidates assessing their options. Employees seem to really enjoy the idea of having the flexibility to choose where they work from and being able to balance their personal and professional lives.
If the pandemic has taught us anything, it is that generating results is more important than physical presence in the workplace. While some companies have returned to the office full-time and others continue working from home, the vast majority allow their employees to work from home two or three days a week.
The hybrid model seems to be a perfect balance according to executives surveyed by PwC at the beginning of the year. While 83% of executives said that pivoting remote working in their organisation was a success, nearly two-thirds (62%) felt that their teams would need to be in the office from two to four days to maintain the strong company culture.
Organisations have realised that flexibility in the workplace is both possible and effective. As such, leadership teams are looking for new ways to motivate remote workers. New executive positions within businesses such as Chief of Remote Workers are not surprising anymore.
Simultaneously, as flexibility and digitalisation increase, organisations are more and more willing to develop their operations across countries and look for candidates across borders. It gives Executive Search Consultants more scope to work on international mandates.
Diversity and Inclusion
While for some Diversity and Inclusion remains a catchy buzzword without sufficient action to back it up, we can truly see that companies are investing more time and money to achieve more diverse teams within their organisations.
That’s because companies are more and more convinced of the benefits of diversity. Apart from providing equal opportunities and creating more engaged and harmonious teams, data indicates that diversity is also better for the bottom line. A study by McKinsey indicated that ‘companies in the top quartile for racial and ethnic diversity are 35% more likely to have financial returns above their respective national industry medians’. Another research from Catalyst showed that companies with higher levels of gender diversity have lower levels of absenteeism and employee turnover.
Organisations have realised the value of diverse groups of executives at the leadership board to make better decisions. As such, providing candidates from under-represented groups for leadership roles has become a strategic priority for most businesses.
What is particularly interesting is that companies are now finally starting to speak out about diversity not only in terms of gender, race or ethnicity but also social class.
Technology, AI and Data
Executive Search has traditionally used to be people and experience-driven area. Since lockdown measures reduced face-to-face contact, video interviewing, tech-based profiling and online psychometric test have become the new norm in the industry.
However, the most dynamic technology-driven trend in the market is the rapid adoption of Artificial Intelligence (AI) to support the expertise of the consultant. AI is used mainly to interpret large candidate datasets, inform hiring decisions and reduce human bias within the process.
Although we believe that technology cannot completely replace the consultant, we are sure it can help to make more informed decisions backed by data. That is because AI doesn’t involve any biases when screening and assessing candidates. Yet, we need to remember that the processes rely on machine learning programming and achieving a highly objective and effective hiring system requires time.
Social Recruiting
With over 774 million members, LinkedIn is no longer an optional tool for executive recruiters but one of the main channels of sourcing, attracting and hiring talent. Gone are the days of reaching candidates via phone calls and emails. Now, consultants tap into social media to enhance their networks, do a direct search and seek new possibilities. LinkedIn is also a unique opportunity for one-to-one engagement with candidates.
While in contingent recruitment social recruiting has become a standard and some companies even started accepting TikTok CVs, we’re curious to see how the trend develops in the Executive Search area. It’s definitely the phenomenon we’ll be observing further.
What’s next?
Technological advancements and the Covid-19 pandemic have forced the Executive Search industry to change, and we’re excited to see how the trends will be shaping the market as we’re approaching 2022.
As the market is candidate-driven again, there are many options and strong positions to choose from. Looking forward, we expect Q4 to be extremely busy, with continued growth in Technology, Healthcare, Private Equity and Financial Services.
If you would like to further discuss the trends in the Executive Search market with one of our experienced consultants or have a confidential conversation about opportunities available to you, we look forward to hearing from you.
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https://www.carlinhall.co.uk/news/4-trends-in-executive-search-to-watch-in-2021-and-beyond/
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In the 1980s when field programmable gate arrays were first manufactured, they were considered to be one of the most advanced forms of computer hardware in the world. Even today, FPGAs are used within some of the most prominent industries such as aerospace, the medical industry, and also within security systems. Computers that use field programmable gate arrays are still around. Without them, they would not be able to function properly. These literally change the landscape of how computers were constructed, allowing them to become much smaller and faster. However, when compared to what people call Artificial Intelligence, FPGAs are very basic items. To imagine that we could have a world where AI could make decisions on its own, it is something out of the realm of science fiction. However, it is possible as we move toward Artificial Intelligence becoming real, it is quite possible that FPGAs will play a pivotal role in how quickly we can develop a computer that becomes self-aware. This information will discuss how the next generation of AI technology will likely utilize FPGA hardware.
A Brief Overview Of How FPGAs Work
Field programmable gate arrays were originally developed by Ross Freeman back in the 1980s. He was the cofounder of the multibillion-dollar company Xilinx. Despite his early death shortly after he helped create field programmable gate arrays, his legacy is still part of virtually every computer system we have today. These computer components use a language called HDL. Once designed with circuit diagrams, electronic design automation tools are now doing most of the work. Part of that reason has to do with their size and complexity. As they become more complex, it is likely that this industry will be taken over by computer systems that are far more than software programs.
What Is AI?
Artificial intelligence or AI is representative of the idea that we can create a computer system that is self-aware. Most of us have used software programs that are designed to perform very specific tasks. Although they can be very complex, none of them have self-awareness. It is thought that self-awareness within a computer software program or system would not be possible unless the software could compute information at a very high rate of speed. Once it would begin to think, and come up with ideas on its own, this software would become self-aware and would actually have ideas.
Why Would We Use AI To Make FPGAs?
Once we get to a point in our technology where AI is a reality, it would make sense to turn over the manufacturing of FPGAs to artificial intelligence systems. Part of the reason would be their ability to quickly design and construct field programmable gate arrays. However, another benefit is that they could actually add their input as to how they should be designed. The human brain is only limited by the amount of information we can process at any time. This is why we build software programs. If you have a fast enough computer, and software that is extremely comprehensive, we can use this to create things that the human mind could not conceive of. From this perspective, we would be benefiting greatly by taking advantage of this artificial intelligence that can help us with designing new and improved FPGAs on a regular basis. However, the drawback to allowing AI to do this is that, once it became self-aware, it might begin to wonder why it was not in charge of everything.
Problematic Scenarios Involving Artificial Intelligence
Some of the concerns that people have about AI is that, once it becomes self-aware, it may see itself as superior to its creators. There have been many science fiction books written about this topic, as well as movies, all of which depict the positive and negative aspects of this type of technology. Those that are the most memorable are the ones where mankind succumbs to artificial intelligence in some way. Movies such as the Terminator have expressed the possibility that mankind could literally be controlled, even destroyed, by these computer systems that could connect to everything.
Will We Ever Create Artificial Intelligence?
Although it would seem to be of great benefit to have the great mind of an artificial intelligence helping us to create FPGAs, we are not close to giving computer self-awareness. Until that occurs, it is unlikely that we would ever have an AI that could build FPGAs. That being said, field programmable gate arrays would be part of that possibility. These computer components allow us to utilize the software that we program. Essentially, FPGAs represent an integral part of the development of AI in the future. However, it is unlikely that we would ever be faced with a situation where we would have a self-aware computer that could either do good or bad things.
What If AI Did Create FPGAs?
Once we arrive at a point where artificial intelligence does exist, and they are successfully creating and manufacturing FPGAs, we might see major advancements in technology. Instead of relying upon the minds of men, and the software programs that we use, we would have access to the thinking mind of a computer. Its ability to process information rapidly would likely lead to advancements in field programmable gate array technology that we could not achieve on our own. If things go right, and AI is used for creating FPGAs, it might help us take our technological capabilities to a whole new level.
The possibility of creating artificial intelligence will always be there. In the same way that we never thought we would go to the moon, and we did, there is that small chance that AI will be created. There are people around the world that are trying to do this every day. By working together, they may one day be successful. When that time comes, if the artificial intelligence doesn’t decide to control mankind, we would likely be able to maintain our control of it. We would then have the opportunity to turn over the creation and processing of FPGAs at higher speeds than ever before.
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https://sourcefed.com/how-will-the-next-generation-use-ai-technology-to-create-fpga-hardware/
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Weekly lecture, 09/05/18 -11/14/18 as experts from leading technology companies demystify & democratize AI for beginners.
Do you keep on hearing about AI and Machine Learning but really don’t know much about it other than AI means Artificial Intelligence? What is AI? What are the various categories within AI? What is Machine Learning? What are the categories with Machine Learning? What is Neural network? Do all these things mean one and the same thing to you? If you are curious about understanding more about this, then this is a lecture for you. We will discuss the various AI technologies and provide a framework on how to look at this new field that is going to affect each and every one of us over the coming decade.
Computer Vision is one of the most exciting areas of AI and Machine Learning today, and one of the more complex! Through image, video, and three-dimensional modeling, Computer Vision is on the front lines of allowing what humans actually see to be understood in a digital environment. Once there, we can leverage today's vast computing power to work beyond human capacity and achieve more. In this talk we will cover the Computer Vision landscape and where we are now- with real examples of how it's built and implemented, and how to begin on your journey.
Today, data science is omnipresent - in what we buy, how we buy, how we experience products and services and, how we design those. This lecture’s goal is to give an overview of benefits of data science, discuss role of data science in various business contexts and describe the data science process that makes use of statistics, data visualization, machine learning, deep learning and artificial intelligence. We will also discuss the challenges of data science projects including identification of right business metrics, appropriate collection and preparation of data and, in the implementation of model operations.
Advancements in computational power, and algorithms has brought Artificial Intelligence (AI) to the forefront in the past decade, bringing AI out from 'AI winter'. Many companies and developers are actively exploring how AI can help in their businesses, be it as chatbots in customer support scenarios, or doctors' assistants in hospitals, or legal research assistants in legal domain, or as marketing manager assistants in marketing, or as real-time face detection applications in security domain. Building high quality and scalable AI models or services takes specific kind of discipline, methodology and tools. While some of these processes, methods and tools overlap with traditional software engineering practices, several are new to AI domain. In this talk, I will share the best practices for building AI-enabled applications from personal experiences from running AI Operations team at IBM's Watson division.
Computation is ubiquitous. But computers are stubborn. They force us to speak their language if we want to interact with them. Perhaps we can get them to speak our language - natural language, the hallmark of human intelligence. This talk aims to shine a light on the AI community’s march towards this goal.
Artificial intelligence, powered by deep learning, is impacting our lives in new ways every day. Deep learning technologies are being applied for innovation in self driving cars, cancer detection and speech recognition. In this session, we’ll learn the what, why and how of deep learning. We will understand what Deep Learning really means, reasons for the huge market interest and rapid adoption, and how it will impact the future. Shilpa will cover DL Overview/Landscape, Basics of neural networks, common activation functions, DL Architecture, of neural networks like convolutional neural networks (CNN) and recurrent neural networks frameworks, Use cases and Applications.
Rebooting Robotics - how far we've come from Robotics 1.0 and where we're heading next. We've had 50 years of dull dirty dangerous and DUMB robots. Now we're seeing smart robots tackle the service industry, becoming social and even soft and collaborative. It's a robotics revolution or Robotics 2.0. And already we can see the outline of Robotics 3.0 although that will be many years away.
The continued success of Deep Learning redefines what robots could do in the near future. Progress in AI indeed opens new horizons in terms of machine perception (understanding the present), prediction (reducing uncertainty about the future), and planning (deciding what to do next). Although there are still formidable open challenges, cars are undoubtedly on the path to become robots: getting smarter, avoiding more and more accidents, and eventually driving themselves, increasing both safety and mobility. In this talk, I will provide an overview of the science, technology, and competing approaches on the exciting road to automated driving.
Thank you to all the members who volunteered as well as speakers and sponsors for an amazing lecture series.
We received an overwhelming amount of positive feedback and plan to do more series of events like this.
Ever since electricity was discovered in the 19th century, life, as humans knew it, changed forever. It seems, over the next few decades AI is bound to make a similar impact. AI technologies will be integrated in almost every device and no industry will remain unaffected. We will see drastic increases in productivity and yield. Completely revamped man-machine interfaces will make user experience most enriching. Overall economic output of individuals, companies, countries and humanity will increase significantly.
We, at Hackerdojo, a non-profit tech community, known for learning, making and creating, are excited to start an AI lecture series for beginners – for people who are still new to AI.
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https://hackerdojo.com/ai/
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This research aims to build a new conceptual framework for artificial intelligence (AI) that gives priority to social relationships as determining intelligent behaviour. It starts from the premise that intelligence manifests itself only relative to specific social and cultural contexts. This is in contrast to the prevailing view of most AI research, which sees intelligence as an abstract capability of the individual agent based on a capacity for rational thought. The main consequences of the new approach are to reject the idea that the brain is a rational processor of symbolic information, and to reject the idea that thought is a kind of abstract problem-solving having a semantics that can be understood apart from its embodiment. Instead, priority is given to emotional and mimetic responses that serve to engage the whole organism in the life of the communities in which it participates. Intelligence is seen not as the deployment of capabilities for problem-solving, but as the continual and unfinished engagement with the environment. The construction of the identity of the intelligent individual involves the appropriation or taking up of positions within the narratives in which it participates. Thus, the new approach argues that an individual's intelligent behaviour is shaped by the meaning ascribed to experience, by its situation in the social matrix, and by practices of self and of relationship into which its life is recruited. This social constructionist perspective is at variance with the dominant structuralist (behaviour reflects the structure of the mind) and functionalist (behaviour serves a purpose for the system) perspectives.
The new approach challenges the radical reductionist understanding of intelligence (e.g. Paul Churchland). Other AI researchers who have challenged the reductionist view in a similar way include Drew McDermott (questioning the role of logical deduction for reasoning), Terry Winograd (priority to hermeneutics), and Joseph Weizenbaum (social/cultural context for intelligence).
The widespread interest in cyborg discourse and human nature may also offer a new way into these topics, particularly in relation to ethical concerns.
W.F. Clocksin, 1995. Knowledge Representation and Myth. Chapter 12 of Nature's Imagination: The Frontiers of Scientific Vision (J. Cornwell, ed). Oxford University Press.
W.F. Clocksin, 1998. Artificial Intelligence and Human Identity. Chapter 6 of Consciousness and Human Identity (J. Cornwell, ed.) Oxford University Press.
W.F. Clocksin, 2000. A narrative architecture for functioning minds: a social constructionist approach. Proceedings of the AISB `00 Symposium on How to Design a Functioning Mind, 30-37, Birmingham, April.
February 2000. Talk on social construction and AI, Society of Ordained Scientists, Windsor Castle.
February 2003. Talk on AI and the human person, World Council of Churches, El Paso, Texas.
W.F. Clocksin, 2003. AI and the future. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society.
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http://clocksin.com/styled/styled-5/
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Below are the current projects underway in the various Streaming Video Alliance working groups. Click on a project to learn more. If you aren’t a member but want to get involved, join today!
Search and Filter
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Working Groups
Project Status
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Stage 1. Member comment window. 30 days for members to review the document and vote to progress it forward.
Stage 2. Board review. 30 days for the board to review, provide feedback, and vote to move forward.
Stage 3. Member ratification. Final member vote to approve the document, as is, for publication.
Project Name
Working Group
Description
Stage
|5G and Edge Cloud for Streaming Video||Networking and Transport||
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Both 5G and edge cloud have the opportunity to significantly alter the streaming video experience. 5G can provide the massive bandwidth capacity and throughput that has not been available to date on mobile networks, while edge cloud can ensure ultra low latencies which will drive new forms of highly personalized, immersive interactive entertainment. As mobile video consumption continues to grow, 5G will bring entertainment out of the home and truly democratize access to content. On the network side, massive improvements in Quality-of-Service and Quality-of-Experience through dedicated network slicing will drive a true broadcast experience. This document is intended to provide a market and technology overview of 5G and Edge Compute, specifically as it pertains to streaming video, as well as recommendations for how both rights holders and service providers can take advantage of these new technologies.
|Write|
|Best Practices for End-to-End Workflow Monitoring||Measurement/QoE||
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There has been an increasing consensus in the streaming video industry that the design and operation of the entire video workflow needs to be driven by quality assurance and quality controls at points throughout the delivery chain. In this document, we propose best practices for end-to-end workflow monitoring to provide a clear picture to stakeholders (network operation center agents, operation engineers, video delivery architects, managing executives, content owners, and content providers) about potential factors that impact a consumer’s streaming experience. The document will then offer recommendations for a framework which provides end-to-end monitoring and improved failure detection in order to enhance overall quality as well as increase customer retention and resulting market share.
|Stage 1|
|Best Practices for Reducing Live Streaming Latency||Live Streaming||
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As the popularity of live streaming has grown, it has become increasingly important to mitigate inherent latency in segmented HTTP streaming video. Many of the initial formats, such as HLS and MPEG-DASH, did not take into account the desire for synchronization between traditional broadcast and a streaming counterpart as live streaming had not yet taken hold. But as more major broadcasters and rights holders are pushing their live content, such as sports, through streaming platforms many of those formats (and others) have adopted low-latency modifications. Still, the format is but one piece of the entire streaming workflow and there are numerous other technologies and components which are not specifically optimized to reduce live streaming latency. It is critical to identify all of the technologies involved in streaming and understand where remediation or optimization can occur improve the overall latency of the streaming experience.
|Review|
|Capacity Footprint API||Open Caching||
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Video delivery is a complex ecosystem of content and network providers. The content providers rely on one or more network providers (ISPs and global or regional CDNs) to connect them to their users, and at high quality levels. One of the constraints to providing a high quality experience is network capacity constraints due to high demand or temporary infrastructure failures. Historically, it has been challenging to provide the necessary data at the right level of detail: Too little, the content provider can’t make traffic routing decisions. Too much, the CDN or ISP doesn’t have the flexibility needed to manage their network effectively. Often times, sharing this information has been ad hoc, making it challenging to reuse with multiple partners.
|Code|
|Configuration Integration API||Open Caching||
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Cache configurations must be made on a per-CDN basis. This can result in a lot of duplicative effort as well as introduce the potential for errors. For example, what if a configuration is applied to the wrong CDN? It is critical for network operations personnel to be able to ensure that the correct CDN configuration is applied to the caches of each delivery partner. To make that happen, the mechanism to push configurations must be unified and programmatic. The best way to accomplish that would be through an Application Programming Interface (API) that handles a majority of the features necessary to configure a caching solution for content providers. Enabling cache configuration deployment in this manner would enable configurations to be applied to CDNs and Open Caching Nodes simultaneously and in a manner that mitigates the potential for human error.
|Define|
|End-to-End Ad Monitoring||Advertising||
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Ad-supported video streaming is growing. Dedicated services like PlutoTV, Xumo (purchased by member company Comcast), and Tubi, have demonstrated that advertising can be an intrinsic part of the streaming experience, much like broadcast. But, unlike broadcast, delivering ads within streaming video involves multiple systems all working together, from stitching the ad into the video to delivering it as part of playback to measuring the time watched. Yet there is little interoperability between these different systems and technologies. As such, it is very difficult to provide an operational end-to-end view of the distribution and consumption of ads.
|Define|
|Open Caching Capacity Interface||Open Caching||
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Capacity planning for streaming video delivery is a complex operation that requires deep understanding of many variables within the delivery path. Once an understanding of capacity is achieved, various network tools, such as traffic management, can be used to shape where video segments are sent so that no one part of the delivery infrastructure receives more than its capable of handling to provide the expected quality of experience and service. One of those variables is the cache. To understand how much capacity an individual cache has such as available bandwidth (an aspect of the NIC), available memory, and available disc, a traffic management tool must have real-time access to the data from an individual node in a delivery infrastructure that includes OCNs.
|Write|
|Open Caching Performance Measurement Specification||Open Caching||
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Measuring delivery performance, especially at the cache, is critical to enabling operations personnel to make informed decisions about content delivery such as which delivery networks to utilize for which content and when to take caches out of service. But that requires that all caches within the delivery infrastructure provide the requisite data to determine performance. In the initial specification, the Open Caching Nodes did not include metrics to determine individual node performance. The document produced from this project identifies those metrics and a means by which they can be retrieved directly from the OCN.
|Stage 1|
|Open Caching Relayed Token Authentication||Open Caching||
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The security of delivering video streams, from origin to edge cache and from edge cache to player, is of critical concern to video distributors. Although DRM and other security mechanisms provide a way to protect the playback of content to only authorized viewers, these mechanisms must be employed in conjunction with other security features like URL tokenization. Prior to this project, the Open Caching specifications did not provide support for authenticating tokenized URLs (which is often used within CDN environments for the delivery of video streams and assets). By providing for this functionality, Open Caching can be included in a video distributors ecosystem of caches and service providers.
|Stage 3|
|Open Caching Request Routing Functional Specification (Version 2.0)||Open Caching||
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With Manifest rewrite, a video platform can change the URLs for individual segments by rewriting the manifest. This works best with HLS which has complete URLs for each segment in the media playlists, so any segment can be pointed to any source. For live, the segment list is fetched again by the client as new segments are created, and a server can change the latest segment to point to an alternate source (such as another CDN) the segments were not pointing at before. This effectively moves clients to the new source in a controlled fashion. However, this requires an explicit list of URLs and, thereby, does not work with DASH which uses the same URL for all segments in a bitrate variant. Changing the manifest during the session does not work for VoD either, since the manifest or playlist is only downloaded once when the stream is initialized which results in all segment requests being directed to the CDN, or CDNs, decided at the start of the session. Manifest rewrite can be used to redirect part of the traffic to a separate server with diagnostic capabilities and collect server side metrics to gain insights into the session.
|Stage 2|
|Recommendations for Mitigating Latency in Streaming VR Video Delivery Workflows||Virtual Reality/360-Degree Video||
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VR streaming video heralds a new video experience but it’s potential may never be realized if the possibility looms of latencies which might potentially make viewers physically ill. The intent of this project is to establish end-to-end VR streaming video delivery workflows and measure the latency which may impact the viewer’s Quality of Experience. The PoC will include a careful analysis of the various latencies caused by technologies and components within the workflow of high resolution VR streaming video content. The data gathered from the PoC will serve as the basis for a report and subsequent best practices document which will provide a set of recommendations for improving VR streaming video workflows to mitigate latency. This document will also potentially serve as input into other VR working groups should it be determined specific issues require more directed research. It is also anticipated a second POC will be conducted based on the findings to measure if the recommendations produce a noticeable improvement in delivery latency.
|Gather|
|Securing Streaming Video||Privacy and Protection||
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Video piracy is on the rise. In order to curb the increase in theft of video assets, every participant in the streaming video delivery chain needs to secure the content from ingest to delivery to subscribers’ end devices. When content is not secured end-to-end, video pirates will find the weakest link to obtain content and re-distribute illegally. And as video streaming consumption continues to grow, new providers, such as OTT platforms, will join the market necessitating everyone is securing their content and delivery systems as comprehensively as possible so the industry itself isn’t contributing to the problem.
|Write|
|Technical Evaluation and Measurements||Live Streaming||
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It is critical to test assumptions when making recommendations. Although the initiating document for this project suggested very informed best practices to reduce live stream latency, based on the collective experience of those involved and their companies, substantiation requires testing and validation. A first work item for this project will be to define the work bench structure relying on lab resources being made available at Liberty Global. During this first work item, the group will define the common part of the test workflow, identify the contributors for each building block, and define a baseline which can be used as an anchor to compare with for other low latency streaming technologies defined in subsequent work items. Then, four work items corresponding to four different streaming technologies have been identified and selected for the tests. The definition of the tests that will be carried out for each of the work items as well as the test bench. The resulting outcome of the tests (i.e., measurements) will be collated into a document resulting in a set of measurement results and reference architectures for low latency live streaming.
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https://www.streamingvideoalliance.org/projects/
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Big data has become mainstream with the recent evolution of cloud infrastructures, data gathering and intelligence algorithms.
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Technical Papers
Characterisation of processing artifacts in HDR
The new Ultra High Definition (UHD) TV standards define a container which allows content creators to offer the consumer a much more immersive visual experience.
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Technical Papers
CDN optimisation for VR streaming
Streaming audiovisual virtual reality content by brute force (streaming the entire 360° panorama) requires significant bandwidth and provides mediocre quality.
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Technical Papers
Scalable distribution system for IP broadcasting
IP-based networks, both wired and wireless are expected to deliver commoditisation of media objects to consumers.
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Technical Papers
HDR for the second screen
HDR will soon be just as much about delivering great video experiences to tablets and smartphones as it is about delivering to the UHD TV in the living room.
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Technical Papers
AOMedia AV1 video coding format for OTT
Improving the quality of service and efficiencies with higher resolution, HDR and WCG in online delivery, there is a need for advanced video compression standards.
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Technical Papers
Building scalable and resilient OTT services at Sky
Sky have tackled some of the most challenging scalability problems in the OTT space head-on.
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Technical Papers
Integrating forensic watermarking into adaptive streaming workflow
Forensic watermarking is a process of embedding a unique identifier for each streaming video session into the video content.
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Technical Papers
Cloud-based IP video production tools
IP networks in video production environments opens up the application of achitectural patterns from enterprise IT to the domain of broadcast and media production.
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Technical Papers
5G technology for live production
A new emerging 5G technology with phased array antennas was used for the contribution of live TV documentary broadcast in Norway.
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Technical Papers
Cyber defence 2017: Deter, detect and defend
The working methodology of attackers and defining a sample strategy that can be used to deter, detect and successfully defend against cyber attacks.
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Technical Papers
Time-compensated remote production over IP
Moving to use more ‘IP’ in broadcast through innovative and practical methods rather than simply replacing the existing SDI connections with IP ones.
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Technical Papers
AI in media and making security smarter
Artificial Intelligence technology develops in the media space, its application in security must focus on more than closing gaps and locking down assets.
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Technical Papers
Using LTE Broadcast for a media optimised network
Providing the best viewing experience with superior quality, Telstra netwokr in Australia have LTE Broadcast, extending beyond the current unicast pull-based approach.
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Technical Papers
ITU-R study group 6 for the future of broadcasting
Leading the international standardisation of the end-to-end broadcasting chain from the production of programmes to their ultimate delivery to the audience.
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Technical Papers
Detecting illegal credential sharing in video subscription
The video industry faces new types of piracy and threats that cannot be prevented by embedding secure hardware or software in consumer devices.
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Technical Papers
Wireless links for 8K Super Hi-Vision
The Super Hi-Vision (8K) regular broadcasting through broadcasting satellite will start in 2018.
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Technical Papers
Technical practices for a Multi-CDN distribution strategy
Data in a Multi-CDN (Content Delivery Network) setup is load balanced dynamically using real-time traffic information gathered throughout the delivery chain.
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Technical Papers
Perspectives of TV convergence towards 5G
The new eMBMS systems characteristics are well aligned to the technical requirements coming from the broadcast sector for TV services.
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Technical Papers
The potential of T2 in a WiB planned DTT scenario
WiB is a new system concept proposed for DTT, where potentially all UHF channels allocated to broadcasting services are used from all transmitter sites.
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https://www.ibc.org/technical-papers/34612.more?page=7&navcode=4328
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The pandemic has brought into sharp focus the need and importance of reliable and flexible networks at home. The switch to remote working and the rapid normalcy of meetings from our desks at home, brought with it surges in internet traffic and demand for reliable, stable connections.
Networks across Europe coped well, for the most part, but there are questions hanging over the near-horizon, about how carriers will adapt and scale for both a growing remote workforce and the predicted rise of new technologies.
5G is part of the answer (but only a part) and its development and rollout will coincide with and drive innovations in IoT, autonomous vehicles, and AI. These emerging technologies also exist within larger tectonic shifts in society and culture, including increasing digitalisation, virtualisation and autonomy in services; and the beginnings of the decentralised application of blockchain technology.
As our society embraces digitalisation, and the process is accelerated by Covid-19, we ask, what are the major challenges faced by carriers heading into 2022 to deliver on twin fronts of both infrastructure demand and customer expectation?
We will discuss the issue of low-latency, particularly in meeting customer expectations. These expectations anticipate the demands of video-centric content, remote working, IoT and gaming. We will also explore metrics for customer experience, and conclude with the impact of 5G technology.
Measuring Quality of Experience for internet connectivity
With a surge in internet traffic during lockdowns potentially being the start of a sustained uptick in demand, including online games and growing markets for streaming games and VR, there is a spotlight on the issue of latency as a key indicator of customer expectation.
Let us first, talk more broadly about indicators of network quality in 2021 and beyond.
Digital Equality - The widening speed gap in Europe
Europe’s internet speeds have increased by more than 50% in the last 18 months. However, this comes at the cost of widening gaps between urban and rural areas and also between Northern European countries and South-Eastern Europe.
The UK too lags behind much of its Western European neighbours when it comes to average internet speed. It was placed 47th on the list in a study conducted in 2020. In fact, the average broadband speed in the UK was less than half that of the Western European average.
The EU has a stated goal to be the most connected continent by 2030. It has already taken action to do this by ending roaming charges and introducing a price-cap on inter-EU communications. The key goal is for every European household to have access to high-speed internet coverage by 2025 and gigabit connectivity by 2030.
The elevation of internet access as a necessary human right is of course encouraging, and so are the targets set by the EU. However, for these targets to be truly meaningful, there needs to progress on a number of challenges to connectivity across Europe. Redefining the metrics we use to track this progress is also vital.
Measuring Quality of Experience (QoE)
There are a variety of problems with measuring internet speeds in a comparable way. Usually, ISPs present averages across a range of time in Mbps or sometimes the % of plan speed achieved across a range of time.
As bandwidth in many countries in Europe moves towards, and over, 100Mbps, this proxy is becoming a weaker indicator of user experience.
There are also a number of key reasons why figures published by an ISP might be misleading compared to actual user experience.
Some of these problems are as follows:
Lab-testing of internet speed does not replicate the real-world chain of devices/hosts involved in sending and receiving packets
Averages of Mbps ignores speeds at peak periods when the network is congested and networks throttle bandwidth
The ‘plan speed’ does not reflect actual speeds experienced in a household where packet queuing and WiFi congestion and network affects users differently on the customer LAN
This metric ignores latency, which is becoming a better signal of internet experience in an age of video streaming and online gaming (more on this below)
Many voices in the industry are pushing for more holistic Quality of Experience (QoE) metrics to enlarge the current set of Quality of Service (QoS) measurements.
The difference between QoE and QoS is that the latter method is comparable to measuring the success of a call centre by how many calls are concluded in a given day. This metric completely ignores whether a caller’s problem was sufficiently resolved or how satisfied the caller felt about the interaction, the ‘experience’.
Research shows that users are happy when a website loads in under two seconds (QoE). If network management is calibrated with this information, bandwidth saved can be allocated elsewhere if necessary (QoS).
Thus, one characteristic of QoE is the realisation that there are many examples where a better QoS (above a threshold) does not readily impact the user’s perception/experience of the service.
This has some important ramifications in terms of design. For example, services such as online gaming rely on low latency far more than video streaming, where buffering protocols absorb lag. QoE can be used to design SLAs and network management that are specific to the needs of an individual service.
If network providers can achieve methods of gathering QoE data, it can be used to build Autonomic Network Management (ANM) capabilities that use artificial intelligence to allow networks to achieve even more efficient network performance that reacts in real-time to user experience.
Low latency: jitter and packet loss
Bandwidth has generally been king in the history of communication networks. Low latency has generally lagged behind (pun intended) as a priority in the upgrading of networks.
From a QoE perspective, latency can be roughly defined as ‘the delay between a user’s action and the response of a web application’ – in QoS terms, this is the time taken for a data packet to make a round trip to and from a server (round trip delay).
Latency is affected by many variables, but the main four are:
Transmission medium: The physical path between the start and end points i.e. a copper-based network is much slower than fibre-optic.
Network management: The efficiency of routers and other devices or software that manage incoming traffic
Propagation: The further apart two nodes are in the network will affect latency. For every 100 miles of fibre-optic cable it is estimated this adds 1ms of latency
Storage delays: Accessing stored data will generally increase latency
There are two types of latency issue.
One is the ‘lag’ (delay) we defined above, and the other is ‘jitter’, the variations in latency that can make connections unreliable. Jitter is usually caused by network traffic jams, bad packet queuing and setup errors.
Impacting the QoE ‘perception’ of latency is also packet loss. Packet loss occurs when packets of data do not reach their intended destination. It is commonly caused by congestion and hardware issues —the issue can be more frequent over WiFi where environmental factors and weak signal are factors. The effect of packet loss is worse for real-time services such as video, voice and gaming. Packet loss is also worse in networks where there are no TCP protocols to retrieve and re-send packets that have dropped.
Why is low latency so important now?
“All areas of business and private life rely more heavily today than ever before on digital applications. The latency-sensitivity of these applications is not only a hallmark of quality and guarantee of commercial productivity, but also – in critical use cases, a lifeline”
—Ivo Ivanov, CEO of DE-CIX International
Recent technological innovations all tend to require lower latency. Cloud applications, mobile gaming, virtual/augmented reality, and the smart home rely on real-time monitoring and fast signal to action responsiveness. The growth of IoT and a world of interconnected sensors dictate that networks have a consistently low latency that is less than human reaction speeds.
Human beings: 250 milliseconds responding to a visual stimulus
4G latency: 200 milliseconds
5G latency: 1 millisecond
Consider the safety implications when your car can react 250 times faster than you. At 100km/h the reaction speed of a human creates a reaction distance of 30m. With a 1 millisecond (1ms) reaction time, your autonomous car can break with a reaction distance of 3cm.
Latency and geography: the effect on user experience (UX)
The maximum affordable latency for a decent end-user experience with today’s general-use applications is around 65 milliseconds. However, a latency of no more than 20 milliseconds is necessary to perform all these daily activities with the level of performance that everybody deserves. Translating this into distance, this means the content and the applications need to be as close to the users as possible. Geographically speaking, applications like interactive online gaming and live streaming in HD/4K need to be less than 1,200 km from the user. But the applications that our digital future will be based on will demand much lower latency – in the range of 1-3 milliseconds. Smart IoT applications, and critical applications requiring real-time responses, like autonomous driving, need to be performed within a range of 50-80 km from the user.
How networks can reduce latency
There are a variety of ways of lowering latency. Businesses can pay for dedicated private networks and links that deliver extremely reliable and stable connections. This is also one of the few solutions that tackles performance gaps in the ‘middle mile’ (the network infrastructure that connects last mile (local) networks to highspeed network service providers) of the internet.
Any service which uses the backbone of the internet will run into problems of inefficient routing due to:
Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) for routing (because it has no congestion avoidance)
Least-cost routing policies
Transmission Control Protocol (TCP): It is a blunt-tool protocol that reacts strongly to congestion and throttles throughputHow do I choose the right SD-WAN overlay?
Efficient network management
One other solution is offered by the latest breed of SD-WAN software. SD-WAN operates as a virtual overlay of the internet, testing and identifying the best routes via a feedback loop of metrics. Potentially SD-WAN can limit packet loss and decrease latency by sending data through pre-approved optimal routes. MPLS does something similar, labelling traffic to ensure it is dealt with on a priority basis; but this service is more expensive than SD-WAN and its architecture is not suited to cloud connectivity.
SD-WAN is a hybrid solution, meaning that the software overlay can route traffic over a host of networks, including MPLS, a dedicated line and the internet. WAN management also includes a host of virtualised network tools that optimise network efficiency. This includes abbreviating redundant data (known as deduplication), compression, and also caching (where frequent data is stored closer to the end user).
To find out more about the range of network infrastructure and SD-WAN services offered by Cambridge Management Consulting visit our capability page.
5G promises ultra-low latency
5G promises to lead us into a world of ultra-low latency, paving the way for robotics, IoT, autonomous cars, VR and cloud gaming. For this to become a reality, new infrastructure must be installed; this requires significant investment from governments and telecoms companies. Most countries need to install much more fibre to deal with the backhaul of data.
During the transition, the current 4G network will need to support 5G and there will be a combination of new and old tech, patches and upgrades to masts. Edge computing will eventually move data-centres closer to users, also contributing to lower latency. It could be many years before we see the kinds of low-latency connections that have been promised.
How 5G and network slicing will end high-latency
With the fifth generation of cellular data, gigabit bandwidth should become the norm, and the frame length (the time waiting to put bits into the channel) will be drastically reduced. 5G moves up the electromagnetic spectrum to make use of millimeter waves (mmWave), which have much greater capacity but poorer propagation characteristics. These millimeter waves can be easily blocked by a wall, or even a person or a tree. Therefore, operators will use a combination of low, mid, and high range spectrum to support different use cases.
The mid- to long-term solution to propagation restrictions is that 5G will require a network of small cells as well as the cell towers to support them (NG-RAN architecture). Small cells can be located on lampposts, sides of buildings, and also within businesses and public buildings. They will enable the ‘densification’ of networks, broadcasting high capacity millimeter waves primarily in urban areas. Because optical fibre may not be available at all sites, wireless backhaul will be a common option for small cells.
Edge computing will further support this near-user vision. Using off-the-shelf servers, and smaller data centres closer to the cell towers, edge computing can ensure low latency and high bandwidth.
“As latency requirements get lower and lower, it becomes more and more important to bring interconnection services as close to people and businesses as possible, everywhere. Latency truly is the new currency for the exciting next generation of applications and services”
—Ivo Ivanov, CEO of DE-CIX International
What is network slicing?
The key innovation enabling the full potential of 5G architecture to be realised is network slicing. This technology adds an extra dimension by allowing multiple logical networks to simultaneously overlay a shared physical network infrastructure. This creates end-to-end virtual networks that include both networking and storage functions.
Operators can effectively manage diverse 5G use protocols with differing throughput, network latency and availability demands by ‘slicing’ network resources and tailoring them to multiple users.
What is realistic progress for 5G in 2022?
According to the California-based company Grand View Research, the global 5G infrastructure market size —valued at $1.9bn in 2019— is projected to reach $496.6bn by 2027.
There are however significant costs associated with 5G roll-out, as well as complications arising from planning regulations (for small cells in the UK alone, separate planning applications have to be files for each cell) and the need to alleviate public health fears about the technology.
There is still also the issue of digital equality (conquering the digital divide). There is a risk the divide could widen further if 5G services are concentrated only in cities, as economics will almost certainly dictate.
The EU recently announced their Path to the Digital Decade, a concrete plan to achieve the digital transformation of society and the economy by 2030.
Read more about the Path to the Digital Decade.
“The European vision for a digital future is one where technology empowers people. So today we propose a concrete plan to achieve the digital transformation. For a future where innovation works for businesses and for our societies. We aim to set up a governance framework based on an annual cooperation mechanism to reach targets in the areas of digital skills, digital infrastructures, digitalisation of businesses and public services.”
—Margrethe Vestager, Executive Vice President for ‘A Europe Fit for the Digital Age’
5G has been dubbed by some as the next industrial revolution. If all the technologies that it intends to drive are realised within the next decade, that could certainly be the case. What is achievable in the short-term, however, is less clear and progress could be slowed by infrastructural barriers and rising costs.
As we head into 2022 there needs to be significant work to upgrade legacy systems to integrate with the rollout of 5G and an acceleration laying fibre optic cables to deal with the backhaul of data from the proliferation of 5G cells.
While 5G leads the technological improvement of the network, lowering latency at the network edge also needs to be a primary goal and operators must focus on latency as one element (albeit it a key element) of a holistic strategy to improve the mobile internet experience (and measure this against a robust QoE framework).
Contributors
Thanks to Ivo Ivanov, CEO of DE-CIX International; Charles Orsel des Sagets, Managing Partner, Cambridge MC; Eric Green, Senior Partner, Cambridge MC; and Tim Passingham, Chairman, Cambridge MC, who all made contributions to this article. Special thanks to Ivo Ivanov, for his quotes.
Thanks to Karl Salter, web designer and graphic designer, for infographics.
You can find out more about Ivo Ivanov on LinkedIn and DE-CIX via their website.
Read bios for Charles Orsel des Sagets, Tim Passingham and Eric Green.
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https://www.cambridgemc.com/post/how-to-achieve-ultra-reliable-networks-in-2022
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10 Healthcare Trends for 2021March 4, 2021
Curious what’s next in healthcare? Read on for our full take, or navigate to the healthcare trend of your choosing via the interactive table of contents below.
Introduction
Over the course of 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic shined a spotlight on the healthcare industry. Between Fauci’s pleas for social distancing and the global race for vaccinations, never before has the world been so singularly focused on one segment of our economy.
2020 was also the year that I became a mother. And thus, the medical sector took center stage in my own life. I watched from front row as standard doctor-patient practices evolved at a rapid pace.
What started as ‘temporary’ restrictions to bringing my husband to ultrasounds eventually took the form of explicit instructions from the ultrasound technician to live stream the appointment. By the time my daughter entered this world, conducting one of her early consultations over a video call felt both natural and effective.
But there were other aspects of the healthcare system that continued to frustrate me. For instance, why couldn’t I find any consensus from practitioners on official recommendations for limiting my newborn’s exposure?
This all culminated in mid-November when our entire family came down with coronavirus. Initially, my COVID-positive husband quarantined in the basement, while I cared for baby Luella upstairs, masked-up. We spent those early days video chatting on our phones and ordering medication via contactless delivery. Tracking down a test for myself and my daughter proved nearly impossible, and the advice I got from the doctor who finally diagnosed me as positive — to drink lemon juice mixed with baking soda — appeared to be another source of differing opinions in the field.
While my own experience last year was unique, several overarching aspects of it were felt on a global scale. For one, mixed messaging and misinformation about COVID-19 best practices have proliferated. This lack of clear direction, combined with an overtaxed system, has resulted in a growing distrust of healthcare at large.
But the qualms that many have had with the medical field aren’t without recourse. If 2020 proved anything, it’s the potential for technology to overcome the obstacles we continue to face. For this reason, tech will be the defining characteristic of healthcare’s transformation in 2021.
Without further ado, here’s our list of the top ten healthcare trends for 2021.
2021 Healthcare Tech Trends
- Transparent Patient-Doctor Communication
- Telehealth and Virtual Services
- Wearable Devices and the Internet of Medical Things (IoMT)
- Remote Patient Monitoring
- Public Health Surveillance and Smart Ecosystems
- Digitalization of Medical Supply Chains
- Next-Generation 911 Technologies
- Interprofessional Collaboration
- Revamping Elderly Care and Long-Term Care Facilities
- Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR)
1. Transparent Patient-Doctor Communication
David Leonhardt of The New York Times writes:
“Early in the pandemic, many health experts — in the U.S. and around the world — decided that the public could not be trusted to hear the truth about masks. Instead, the experts spread a misleading message, discouraging the use of masks… [This] confused people. (If masks weren’t effective, why did doctors and nurses need them?) It delayed the widespread use of masks (even though there was good reason to believe they could help). And it damaged the credibility of public health experts…
Now a version of the mask story is repeating itself — this time involving the vaccines. Once again, the experts don’t seem to trust the public to hear the full truth.”
What’s the old saying? Oh yeah: Fool me once; shame on you. Fool me twice; shame on me.
The pandemic has revealed just how important it is for medical professionals to provide full transparency to their patients. Unlike twenty years ago, people will seek out the information they aren’t getting from their doctors by digging around online. They will also search for a new provider if they feel that their needs aren’t being met. For these reasons, communicating all of the facts from the get-go is in both the patient’s and doctor’s best interest.
The healthcare industry has got a long way to go in regaining the public’s trust — but transparent, two-way communication is a good place to start. Patient portals with access to medical records, ongoing dialogue from physicians, and patient education classes can all help empower the public.
Many organizations are broadcasting educational courses online to reach a larger viewer base and facilitate social distancing. I, myself, have watched countless live and on-demand streams over the past six months on everything from infant CPR and nursing to baby-led weaning and sleep training. Because many of these courses were offered by the very hospital that I gave birth at, taking them helped grow my relationship with the clinic — and by extension, my medical team.
2. Telehealth and Virtual Services
One surefire way to boost communication between doctors and patients is to improve accessibility for both parties. Telehealth, or the use of technology to remotely diagnose and treat patients, does just that.
After lagging behind for so long, telehealth finally transformed into a common and cost-effective alternative to going to the doctor’s office in 2020. Part of this was out of necessity. Federal officials temporarily waived certain HIPAA violations for “good faith use of telehealth” when the pandemic initially took hold. From there, both private and public health plans expanded coverage to include virtual care.
Telehealth isn’t just limited to run-of-the-mill physical ailment either. Today, fields as diverse as addiction treatment, therapy, and plastic surgery have all made the transition to virtual visits where possible.
As more insurers and patients embrace virtual visits, we predict that telehealth will continue to thrive. Why? The convenience of a virtual doctor visit simply can’t be disputed. Beyond that, video streaming brings skilled doctors to rural populations in the most affordable manner possible.
While telehealth appointments don’t always paint a complete picture due to lacking insight into vitals or lab work, remote patient monitoring devices and wearables will help overcome these obstacles in the near future.
3. Wearable Devices and the Internet of Medical Things (IoMT)
Healthcare IoT is a vast category, with plenty of overlap throughout this list. Everything from camera-aided surgical devices and smart monitors to nonsurgical robotics and digital kiosks makes up the Internet of Medical Things (IoMT).
In hospital settings, meal deliveries, disinfection routines, and specimen transportation will all eventually be delegated to these intelligent machines. Approximately 60 percent of healthcare organizations have already adopted healthcare IoT — the benefits of which are cost savings, greater visibility, and improvements to the customer experience.
But IoMT extends way past the hospital doors. Wearable devices are primed to revolutionize the space. Going beyond Fitbit, wearables of the future will enable the sharing of real-time health metrics such as blood pressure, temperature, heart rate, sleep cycles, respiration rate, and more.
Whether taking the form of a sock, headband, or bracelet, wearable technology is putting those of us without medical degrees in charge of our health. It also gives practitioners a more comprehensive view of what’s going on outside of the clinic.
4. Remote Patient Monitoring
Although many of the wearables discussed above fall in the business-to-consumer (B2C) category, remote patient monitoring devices are also being used within hospital settings. Child Health Imprints, for instance, built video into a cloud-hosted appliance for neonates. Their iNICU system assimilates real-time data from the disparate biomedical devices used to monitor preterm infants — including ventilators, monitors, and blood gas analyzers. In addition to reducing time-to-treatment and improving quality of care, the product enables remote monitoring of neonates in rural regions.
Similarly, AngelEye Health allows families to keep an eye on their newborn baby while being cared for in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU). The around-the-cloud live video tool gives new parents the flexibility to see and communicate with their babies from outside of the hospital.
During COVID-19 and after, these remote patient monitoring solutions deliver major advantages. For one, physical proximity is no longer a barrier to healthcare. Remote monitoring also helps keep more vulnerable populations outside of contaminated hospital settings and digitally mobilizes medical resources.
5. Public Health Surveillance and Smart Ecosystems
From smart hospitals to smart cities, 5G connectivity and video streaming will collide to create intelligent ecosystems equipped with real-time surveillance technology in 2021.
Surveillance already plays a role in hospital environments. Thermal cameras pointed at entryways help detect those with an elevated body temperature, and live video feeds allow practitioners to monitor patients from the nurses’ station.
The combination of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) technologies with video surveillance will bring about expanded use cases. Smart surveillance solutions could be used to detect unusual behavior such as a patient fall, and the integration of interactive video would enable nurses to respond to patients with greater urgency.
#HealthIT leaders: Which surveillance tool would most improve the #PhysicalSecurity of your #healthcare facility?— HealthTech Magazine (@HealthTechMag) October 12, 2020
The COVID-19 crisis has also uncovered a need for better contact tracing and monitoring technologies at the municipal level. Although the ethics of this tactic requires a larger discussion, it’s clear that an overhaul of old-school government technology systems is overdue. It’s high time that syndromic surveillance, or the automation of public health data analysis, replaces the faxed paper forms that we’re still relying on today.
6. Digitalization of Medical Supply Chains
The fragility of supply chains became apparent over the course of 2020, with personal protective equipment (PPE) and pharmaceutical resources especially taxed. It started when price gougers bought N95s and hand sanitizer in bulk to resell for a profit. In response, crafters dusted off their sewing machines to construct makeshift face masks, and plenty of companies retooled their production lines to supply PPE.
While thriftiness is admirable, successfully addressing this issue in 2021 will come down to designing more resilient supply chains. Craig Guillot of Supply Chain Dive explains:
“Manufacturers and suppliers are taking a second look at digital transformation as they strive to operate in the new uncertainty of COVID-19. While they previously looked to technologies such as data, IoT, robotics, and analytics to drive efficiency, they’re now viewing them as a means to increase resiliency in disruptive times.”
Cameras, sensors, and IoT ecosystems will shape the supply chains of the future. Streaming-enabled drones will scan stock to support dynamic pricing, while autonomous trucks will help distribute the goods.
7. Next-Generation 911 Technologies
In our always-connected society, we’ve also been dragging our feet to update antiquated emergency call systems. The ubiquity of smart mobile devices presents ample opportunity to take advantage of technologies like video, instant chat, and GPS.
Just imagine: a flustered father calls 911 to report that his five-week-old isn’t breathing. The dispatcher is able to immediately track the caller’s location and share that data with an emergency response team — while also using live streaming to put him in touch with a medic. From there, the medic provides the father a live interactive tutorial on CPR, as the emergency response team makes their way toward the exact coordinates.
This concept is now being brought to life by organizations like Carbyne. Each time someone makes an emergency call to a center leveraging Carbyne’s platform, they’re prompted to enable a live video stream with dynamic location and instant messaging functionality. These capabilities proved especially useful in 2020, when Carbyne’s platform helped flatten the curve in New Orleans by triaging low-risk COVID patients via video chat.
Check out how Wowza and Carbyne teamed up to make it all possible in the video below.
8. Interprofessional Collaboration
Anyone who’s been hospitalized knows: it takes a village to treat a patient. Nurses, surgeons, anesthesiologists, consultants, and technicians all work together to drive the inpatient experience. But as medicine becomes more specialized, secure digital tools are critical to ensuring interprofessional collaboration.
The idea of team-based care isn’t new. That said, many technologies available for effectively delivering it are. Video-based communication, simulations, remote training, and live surgical broadcasts all enable knowledge sharing and collaboration like never before.
Streaming is revolutionizing the way healthcare workers connect to and collaborate with experts around the world. Collaboration technology also helps reduce healthcare costs by streamlining communication across teams.
9. Revamping Elderly Care and Long-Term Care Facilities
With a large percentage of Baby Boomers now weighted on the older end of the population spectrum, the need for quality senior care and robust assisted living facilities is strong. While less than 1 percent of America’s population currently lives in long-term care facilities, that small fraction of the population accounted for 35 percent of U.S. deaths from COVID-19.
Many of the technologies discussed above — including wearable devices for real-time monitoring, virtual doctor visits, and next-generation 911 systems — could benefit this vulnerable population. For one thing, IoMT devices make it possible for senior citizens to stay in their own homes longer. Video streaming and interactive applications also help keep those in long-term care facilities connected with the outside world.
Many facilities began live streaming daily updates about the COVID-19 crisis to residents in 2020, and digital platforms like Skype and Zoom became far more commonplace. As more and more digitally adept individuals reach the age of 65 and beyond, integrating these types of technologies won’t just be appreciated, it’ll be expected.
10. Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR)
As our final trend, AR and VR open up a world of innovation in healthcare. Surgical VR training programs and other educational uses are an obvious route to take. But AR smart glasses could also find their way into diagnostics and treatment.
Google Glass Enterprise Edition 2, for instance, embeds streaming technology into a pair of glasses. Wearers can consult remote experts across the globe — while continuing on with their work. The voice-controlled device uses AR to display additional data in the periphery of sight and integrates with existing Google applications.
This type of device could enable surgeons to view patients’ vital statistics during procedures or quickly locate tumors and organs prior to making an incision. The hands-free technology also prevents the spread of germs, something we all became hyper-aware of in 2020.
AR/VR capabilities also lend well to memory care for seniors, therapy for individuals with autism, and pain management for children. Name your problem, and we’d barter that AR/VR could inspire a solution
Healthcare + Streaming = The Way of the Future
Our medical professionals have shouldered the heaviest burden over the past 13 months. Without them, there’s no guessing how grim 2020 would have been. That’s why it’s in everyone’s best interest to look for opportunities to use technology to advance the healthcare industry and make healthcare workers’ lives easier.
Virtual doctor visits, remote patient monitoring, and the use of healthcare robots have all surged during the pandemic. In the year ahead, innovators will finally have the breathing room to build on this foundation and reshape the future.
For whatever you’re trying to build, Wowza offers the secure, reliable, low-latency streaming infrastructure that the medical industry demands. Interactive video communication is transforming the world of healthcare. And Wowza’s streaming solutions are a driving force.
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https://www.wowza.com/blog/healthcare-trends
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by Dominique Hazaël-Massieux (W3C)
Just like its predecessors 3G and 4G, 5G’s success will depend on the degree to which it benefits the users of the applications and services it will transport. Making 5G and its concomitant network improvements work for the Open Web Platform will be key to the widespread adoption of this technology across as many industries as possible. The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is planning to launch a multi-year initiative bringing telecommunications operators, OS and browser vendors and cloud providers together to take full advantage of 5G on the Web.
In conjunction with the deployment of 5G, networking technologies are going through a series of transformations aiming to improve their performance and make them more programmable and adaptable, namely:
- virtualisation and softwarisation of network components,
- improved and configurable latency,
- aggregated network paths,
- adaptive congestion control.
Bringing Web & 5G together is key to many innovative usage of the network, such as enabling streamed virtual and augmented reality.
The major network investments needed to achieve these are hard to justify if they cannot be clearly identified as perceivable improvements to networked applications. Historically, many network improvements have been severely undermined by accidental or intentional lack of collaboration between applications and network (e.g. lack of wide-spread adoption of QoS capabilities).
Many developments on the application side point toward a need for better control of network behaviour, either as improvements to the overall user experience (for instance, an additional delay in responding to user interactions can be directly translated in terms of loss of business), or in a growing number of cases, as critical aspects of deployment of these new applications (streamed augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR), 8K / higher-colour video streaming, immersive real-time communications, telepresence, real-time distributed machine learning, etc.).
Meanwhile, increasing volumes of network traffic is encrypted end-to-end to match the increased stakes on end users’ security and privacy of a networked society. This positive development also means that it is increasingly difficult for network operators to know what kind of traffic they’re transporting, making it hard or impossible to make use of these latest evolutions without explicit collaboration from flow endpoints.
Why is the Web Critical to 5G Deployment?
Fifth generation networks (5G) are intended to provide higher bandwidth, lower latency and better coverage than today’s 4G networks. Improvements to both the physical network and its control plane are expected to make the network more reactive, flexible, and with better performance, and enable better cooperation among its end points. But it is not just network capabilities that matter; the application layer must also be up to the task.
The Open Web Platform is the most ubiquitous and scalable platform to deploy applications and services. Ensuring 5G technologies can be properly exploited on the Web is thus a key component to the long term success of 5G. This need is all the more timely as the Web is rapidly growing its capabilities in a range of areas, including AR and VR, in real-time communications and streaming, machine learning, and internet of things.
What are W3C’s Plans for Web5G?
W3C, as the steward of the Web, convened its community in May 2018 in a dedicated workshop to evaluate how to make Web and 5G technologies work together. Based on the discussions at this event and further conversation among its members, W3C is now preparing to launch a dedicated interest group, the Web & Networks Interest Group, to ensure the harmonious development of technologies at the network and application layers, in coordination with the relevant consortia and standard organisations in this space (e.g. 3GPP and IETF).
Based on the input gathered so far, cross-layers approaches that benefit both application developers and network operators feel like a promising direction to support. For instance, making it easy for application developers to indicate which if their network flows are latency-sensitive or bandwidth-hungry open the way for OSes to decide when to enable multi-path TCP, and for networks when to provide carrier aggregation.
With a focus on such cross-layer approaches, this interest group aims to identify the key technical standards that need to be developed or better integrated to ensure that network operators, cloud providers, OS and browser vendors and application developers can derive direct advantages from the enormous opportunities provided by the next generation of network technologies.
Longer term, the group is expected to chart how network technologies may re-architect online services: with ultra-low latency and edge computing, the distinction between client and server, and between local and remote are expected to get blurrier, which is made all the more enticing with the deployment of Web Assembly as a lingua franca on both clients and servers.
Please contact:
Dominique Hazaël-Massieux
W3C, France
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https://ercim-news.ercim.eu/en117/special/web5g-making-web-and-5g-networks-work-together
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Intel is collaborating with Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) on a $4.125 million research program designed to increase their understanding of visual cloud capabilities given that the Internet of Things (IoT) and 5G are going to be driving a whole lot more video experiences in the future.
Visual data is probably the single largest form of data in terms of the amount of bits allocated, and over half of all the mobile data in the world is visual data, mostly video but some images and audio. New types of experiences, such as augmented reality, virtual reality and panoramic video require new capabilities in terms of system architectures and data processing techniques.
In addition, as 5G rolls out over the next 10 years or so, it will increase interactive experiences. “5G has those great characteristics of low latency and high bandwidth in mobile environments and that will enable a whole new set of applications as well,” said Jim Blakley, general manager of Intel’s Visual Cloud Division.
Blakley explained that as Intel looked around the space, “we saw a major gap” in addressing some of the large-scale, cloud-related issues. While people are doing cloud systems and other research, “we didn’t see anybody focused on visual computing” and large scale data center environments, so Intel approached a number of researchers to develop proposals.
In the end, Intel decided to go with CMU, creating the Intel Science and Technology Center (ISTC) for Visual Cloud Systems, which is housed at CMU in Pittsburgh and includes funding for about 11 researchers, 10 of whom are at CMU and one at Stanford University in California. The funding is for three years, at which time they will re-evaluate it, but Blakley said they intentionally kept the term short in order to get a fast turn-around.
He said the center is still working through the specifics of the use cases for the research, but a lot of the early thinking has been around smart city kinds of use cases, which would include wireless and wired connectivity.
The research conducted at the ISTC for Visual Cloud Systems will use Intel technologies including Intel Xeon processors, edge devices and imaging and camera technology. Intel will also contribute its data center and IoT expertise and Carnegie Mellon will apply its expertise in cloud computing, visual computing, computer vision, storage systems and databases and networking. Stanford is also contributing computational photography and domain-specific language expertise for the ISTC for Visual Cloud Systems.
Intel made its ISTC announcement to coincide with this week's 2017 NAB Show in Las Vegas, where Intel’s demos include immersive VR and previews in virtual reality of AR Rahman’s Le Musk. VR clips from the movie are being shown for the first time on three Cinema VR chairs in the Intel booth.
Intel is also showing how workstations powered by Intel Xeon processors can seamlessly stitch together content images captured with a GoPro Omni Rig in 8K into one 360-degree video that is viewed with a VR headset.
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https://www.fiercewireless.com/iot/intel-sets-up-3-year-program-carnegie-melon-to-improve-iot-video-analytics
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Overview of social psychology sociology
The study of criminal justice encompasses a broad array of disciplines ranging from psychology, sociology, science, law and human services social and behavioral . The graduate program in the department of sociology at kent state university offers a specialization in social psychology with emphases in the three broad areas of social structure and personality, symbolic interactionism, and structural social psychology. An introduction to social psychology and of its delimitation from sociology or the special social sciences for i would only say that i believe social . Social psychology: the field of social psychology consists of the overlapping foci of psychology and sociology thus, two academic emphases have emerged thus, two academic emphases have emerged psychology-focused social psychologists (psp) are individual-centered, and sociology-focused social psychologists are more concerned with the impact .
Social movements social networks social psychology sociology of education sociology of emotions department of sociology 113 baldwin hall university of . Research in both areas– psychology and sociology – is important to the future of social sciences success in things like developing relationships, growing creative output, and discovering the best jobs for certain personality types are all dependent on both psychology and sociology. Introduction to sociology and psychology may also act as a pathway to further education, training and employment for careers in which an understanding of the behaviour of individuals, groups and institutions is a key element, such as human resources, education, social, health and community work, policing, journalism and media studies, parenting . 1 introduction to social psychology sociology 120 course texts: gilovich, thomas, dacher keltner, serena chen, and richard nisbett 2013 social psychology, 3rd .
The university of maryland’s department of sociology offers a rich and varied program in social psychology that spans multiple levels of analysis and methodological approaches. Sociology studies the social systems while psychology studies mental systems the nature of relationship between sociology and psychology still remains controversial and the study of social psychology in relation to both is still unsettled. Psychology, sociology & anthropology study guide review the related lesson called overview of social psychology & its perspectives overview & considerations 6 . The social psychology faculty has diverse orientations and represents an array of theoretical perspectives both quantitative and qualitative methodologies employed by social psychologists are represented in the faculty's empirical studies, including surveys, experiments, observational studies, content analysis, in-depth interviewing, and cross .
Sociology is a social science, like anthropology or psychology, and thus relies on both scientific and more personal approaches to research research that is derived from mathematical or . Social psychology is sometimes confused with sociology, but the two (while somewhat related) are not the same social psychologists tend to focus on the behavior of individual people or small groups of people while sociologists look at very large populations such as entire social groups or cultures as a whole. Wacquant 2006 provides a comprehensive and compact overview of the sociological vision of pierre bourdieu theory and sociology social psychology social .
Social psychology course overview you are able to study modules from another social sciences subject, such as sociology, criminology and social policy, and . Sociology and psychology are closely related with each other both are interrelated and inter-dependent psychology is concerned with the exploration of the depth of man's mind and behavior in society it is said that psychology shows the significance of the relationship between the organism . Social psychology has been defined as “a branch of psychology that is concerned with those aspects of mental life which relate to social interaction and social phenomena in general” 1.
Overview of social psychology sociology
Anthropology, psychology, and sociology offer distinctive perspectives on the behavior of individuals and the groups in which they live these social sciences can provide citizens with useful tools for analyzing the motives and activities of the individuals and groups they encounter. In sociology, social psychology, also known as sociological social psychology or microsociology, is an area of sociology that focuses on social actions and on interrelations of personality, values, and mind with social structure and culture. Social psychology is the scientific study of how we feel about, think about, and behave toward the people around us and how our feelings, thoughts, and behaviors are influenced by those people as this definition.
Sociology, in the broadest sense, is the study of society sociology is a very broad discipline that examines how humans interact with each other and how human behavior is shaped by social structures (groups, communities, organizations), social categories (age, sex, class, race, etc), and social . Social psychology is a subfield of psychology that studies how individuals are affected by environmental factors and particularly by other people it is both basic and applied, and works on theoretical issues, as well as the application of knowledge to practical problems. Master's degree in sociology: program overview bachelor of science (bs): sociology degree overview catharsis and aggression in social psychology: what is social inequality in sociology. Development and social change economic sociology social psychology sociology of education department of sociology 113 baldwin hall university of georgia .
Fields of interest: computational social science, cultural sociology, economic sociology, mathematical sociology, organizations and work, social networks, social psychology siman wang fields of interest: economic sociology, organizations and work, political sociology. 354 sociology 2018-2019 avc college catalog defi nition sociology is both a scientifi c and a humanistic discipline it is concerned with the study of systems of social action and their. Ch 1: history, definitions, and methods in social psychology i a breif history of social b social psychology vs sociology & social psychology: is . Social sciences concern people’s relationships and interactions with one another sociology, with its emphasis on social life, falls into this category a multidisciplinary field, sociology draws from a variety of other social sciences, including anthropology, political science, psychology, and .
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http://hgessayozno.streetgeeks.us/overview-of-social-psychology-sociology.html
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An intensive examination of the Constitution and the three governmental divisions. The course includes a study of the national government in its relation to the states. Examples from the government of Georgia are included.
An intensive examination of the Constitution and the three governmental divisions. The course includes a study of the national government in its relation to the states. Examples from the government of Georgia are included. The course incorporates the academic standards maintained by the honors program.
This course will introduce students to regions of the world, global institutions, international politics, and engage students in current debates of global significance. Politics will be emphasized as an important factor influencing the issues studied and as being a part of solutions. Students will be encouraged to place themselves within a global community, and to realize their actions have global impact and to think critically about global issues from multiple perspectives.
The purposes of this course are to define the discipline of political science, to study political and governmental systems, and to develop research skills pertinent to political science.
An introduction to analysis of public administration and the policy making process within modern American bureaucracies. This course will focus particularly on policy implementation within public administration.
Basic concepts and origins of the law and the American legal system are introduced to students. Students will learn fundamentals of briefing cases, legal writing, legal research, and litigation. Civil and criminal law are introduced.
Students are introduced to universal political principles through studying themes, such as democratization, political behavior, and politicized religion, as well as learning about regime types found throughout the world and principles of regime change. Country case studies are examined in the context of these themes and principles.
Students are introduced to countries of the world through studying specific countries from the major regions of the world. Themes, such as democratization, political behavior, and politicized religions, as well as learning about regime types and principles of regime change are introduced using comparative politics' analysis. Variables influencing countries' politics are examined, such as culture, religion, history, economics, geography, natural resources, interests of key individuals and groups, and the global political/economic system.
A first study of the major themes dealing with political theory and the construction of "government." A critical examination of the major views of and approaches to political behavior from the time of Plato through philosophers such as Karl Marx. Included is the examination of the political theory of Plato, Aristotle, Machiavelli, Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, Jean-Jacque Rousseau, and Karl Marx among others. PHIL 2030 is cross-listed with POLS 2315.
An analysis of the basic forces which govern the behavior of nations in their relations with one another. This study of world power conflicts, diplomacy and international cooperation is designed to acquaint the student with the basic issues and areas of conflict among the nation-states of the contemporary world.
An analysis of the basic forces which govern the behavior of nations in their relations with one another. This study of world power conflicts, diplomacy and international cooperation is designed to acquaint the student with the basic issues and areas of conflict among the nation-states of the contemporary world. The course incorporates the academic standards maintained by the honors program.
This course provides an introduction to the diverse research methods used in Social Sciences. Students will acquire skills for applying and critiquing these methods, as well as designing research projects, including both qualitative and quantitative methods. Students are taught how to analyze social and political phenomena in a scientific manner, how to utilize data collections techniques, and how to analyze data for social science research.
This course's objective is to analyze the defense policies of various countries and the outcomes of those defense policies, to include national security objectives, national military objectives, military doctrine, force structure, and military capabilities. Countries studied will include actual and potential coalition partners and potential adversaries. Students will examine the political, economic, and social influences on each military establishment. Cultural influences on the development and implementation of the defense policies for countries studied will be examined, including the effects each country's culture has on the missions, structure, roles, and capabilities of the military. Students will develop their own framework of analysis to critically analyze the defense polices and cultures of other countries, and will be able to clearly articulate that analysis through written and oral means.
An examination of the development and nature of the American constitutional system through Supreme Court cases defining interrelationships of the executive, judicial and legislative branches and the relationships of the states to the national government.
An examination of the organization and functions of the state and its political subdivisions. Wherever possible, the state government of Georgia will be studies for illustrative purposes.
A study of U.S. political parties, including their development, functions and significance as democratic institutions and policy making instruments. The election process and voter behavior are also examined.
This course covers the presidential selection and election processes, raising several theoretical questions about elections and examining the empirical evidence available to answer those questions. In particular, the issues of campaign finance, media coverage, and candidate selection will be covered.
This course covers congressional elections, exploring theoretical questions about the process and examining the empirical evidence available to answer those questions. In particular, roles of political parties, interest groups, and electoral rules are among the major items examined in the course.
This course provides an overview of the relationship among news media, political leaders and the public. Topics covered in this course include, but are not limited to: how media sources cover politics, the ways politicians communicate through the media, how news affects public opinion, and how governments regulate content and ownership of media organizations.
The purpose of this course is to introduce the European Union (EU) from a multi-disciplinary perspective. Aside from substantive knowledge about the EU, students will be challenged to sharpen writing, analytical, and oral communication skills.
Provides students with an introduction to the field of strategic studies, a subset of the broader field of security studies. Strategic studies examines the relationship between politics and the use of military force within the international system. To provide students with the necessary foundations, the course provides an overview of important thinkers and ideas, and an understanding of essential concepts including war, deterrence, terrorism, and counter insurgency.
Senior course in the Asian Politics concentration. This course is an introduction to the political systems of East Asia. In the course, students will become acquainted with the domestic politics of many states in East Asia.
Although the absence of any overarching political authority serves to characterize world politics as anarchical, nation-states and other international actors have increasingly coordinated their actions in world affairs throughout the twentieth century. The study of international organizations is the study of that cooperation.
This course introduces students to the concepts and provisions of international law and their real world applications. Lectures, assigned reading materials, class discussions, legal case briefings and mock trial activities are intended to replicate law school experiences.
This is an introductory course that deals with the politics of Latin America. It assumes no prior coursework in the area.
This course introduces students to the political systems of the greater Middle East. The course will analyze, explore, and compare the social, historical, ideological, technological and governmental forces that have shaped this region of the world. The course will also examine the process of political development in the Middle East and assess its progress, both as a region and country-by-country toward a meshing of Islamic society with a pluralist political system.
Recommended for students in the secondary education program. A survey of political socialization, the process through which a citizen acquires knowledge, opinions and behavior about politics and government. The course explains how public opinion develops and evaluates whether public opinion influences public policy.
This course provides an introduction to the foundational theories explaining the behavior of individuals and political leaders, as they relate to both American and international politics. A variety of topics are covered including party identification, voting behavior, political activity, terrorism, and international conflict.
An analysis of the ideas underlying government and politics in the United States through a survey of American political thought from colonial times to the present.
An in-depth analysis of political philosophy from ancient to modern political philosophers. Most readings will be taken directly from each philosopher's writings.
This course is designed to analyze the way religion and politics influence one another in America and/or other countries. The course presents a history of religion, outlines major religious traditions and investigates how religious beliefs motivate individual political behavior.
An examination of the major political issues and controversies which are current in domestic and/or world affairs. The course is designed to analyze both the nature of a problem as well as its importance to the political order.
This course will work in conjunction with a student's participation in the UNG Model UN Team. In this course students will be introduced to structures within the United Nations, basics of parliamentary procedures and how particular countries articulate their viewpoints as delegates to the United Nations. Enrollment in this course is only by permission of instructor.
This course provides an introduction to the methods most commonly used in political science research. The primary aim of this course is to provide students with the knowledge to evaluate scholarly research in political science and other social science disciplines. Students will review the theoretical underpinnings and best practices of various approaches to gather and analyze both qualitative and quantitative evidence. Topics to be covered in this course include: surveys, experiments, elite interviews, regression, ANOVA, and longitudinal analysis.
This is an introductory research methods course whose purpose is to familiarize students with the language, important concepts, and processes of social science research. Students will acquire skills for understanding and critiquing research, designing a research project, collecting and coding data, and performing elementary computer data analysis.
The purpose of this course is to provide an intuitive and computational orientation to the typical statistics that social science professionals encounter. This course presents the foundations of descriptive and inferential statistics, with a concentration on those specific procedures likely to be utilized by practicing social scientists, and a brief overview of multivariate techniques likely to be found in social science publications and research reports. Students will acquire skills for performing both elementary and advanced (computerized) statistical analysis, as well as interpreting and presenting statistical results.
This course provides an introduction to intelligence studies. In this course students will focus upon the history of intelligence and how intelligence is used to meet national security objectives. This course is cross-listed with CRJU 3721.
This course is an introduction to areas of research, critical thinking, analysis, and production and presentation of intelligence. This course is cross-listed with CRJU 3722.
This course outlines the processes and policies involved in producing intelligence through a detailed analysis of the intelligence cycle, collection assets and collection planning. This course is cross-listed with CRJU 3723.
This course provides an in-depth study of the structure, strategies, and policies of the U.S. intelligence community. This course is cross-listed with CRJU 3724.
An in-depth analysis of the main principles and practices of public administration in the United States. The course will focus on organizational theory, management principles, budgeting, personnel, and administrative leadership within modern bureaucracies.
This course covers the United States Congress as an institution and explores its evolution and its place in the political process.
An analysis of the role and function of the American presidency, from both a historical and analytical perspective.
Cross-listed as CRJU 4412. A systematic study of the judicial system and its role in the administration of justice.
This course examines the formulation and implementation of legislation and how the structure and dynamics of political institutions affect it. The focus is on how executives and legislatures cooperate and conflict in shaping policy.
An analysis of the case law surrounding the constitutional guarantees of personal and social freedoms derived from the Bill of Rights and the Fourteenth Amendment.
The basic concepts and origins of the law are applied to contemporary legal issues, such as capital punishment, minority issues, crimes without victims and the law as a weapon of social control.
An introduction to legal research, analysis and writing. The course will culminate with a simulated courtroom exercise.
The study of gender and politics explores concepts of power found in governance. The course will examine how political power, institutions and actions can be gendered by using critical and analytical gender theories. Gender theories will be applied to an examination of gender equality in society, economics, and politics.
This course explores a selected topic in American politics, such as American institutions at the federal, state, or local level, political parties, elections, interest groups, mass media and political communication, regional politics and government (e.g., Southern politics), or similar areas of study. The scheduling and topic of the course will vary depending on instructor and student interest. Students may earn credit for this course more than once as long as the topic is not being repeated.
A study of universal political principles and an application of these principles to the study of political systems on a comparative basis.
This course is designed as an examination of both traditional and non-traditional security concerns. Issues such as military security, environmental security and resource security will be covered.
The purpose of this course is to introduce the advanced student of politics to the factors that led to South Korea's adoption of democracy, as well as the post-Cold War foreign policy initiatives of South Korea that were a result of the new found legitimacy of the democratic government.
This course is an introduction to the major theories of international political economy. International political economy (IPE) examines the mix between government involvement in the economy and economic influence in governmental affairs. Historically, the role of government involvement has ranged from complete control over the economy, as in centrally planned economies, to mercantilist states where economic interests drive governmental policy.
This course provides a brief history of the entire area, an in-depth study of Eastern Europe's geographical location between the two traditionally ambitious countries of Russia and Germany and its consequences and a study of nationalism and its effects. An examination of the differences between Slovophilies and Westerners in Russian politics, a study of communism, and a look at the disintegration of the Soviet Union.
This course is designed to enable the student to understand the nature of foreign policy in general and Russian foreign policy in particular. The topic will be taught from the point of view that Soviet foreign policy was a continuation of foreign policy goals of pre-Bolshevik Russia.
A study of the politics and governing institutions of the principal nations in Western Europe, including an examination of the role of the European Union.
Latin American countries share a common past of colonialism, war, poverty, authoritarianism, political instability and foreign intervention. They differ, however, in the way they have tried to deal with this legacy. Although more attention will be dedicated to understanding their collective experiences since 1945, this course examines the struggle for political and economic development from the time they became independent to the present.
This course investigates the international relationships between the states of the Middle East as well as the global and regional powers that influence day-to-day relations among them. This course uses weekly readings, daily discussion, a course paper and a presentation to explore how theory, history and current foreign policy among major players determine its international relations.
This course explores the political, economic, and social challenges of Third World development. It covers a wide range of contemporary issues affecting developing countries, and focuses especially on policies aimed at reducing poverty and underdevelopment. In a world where 840 million people are malnourished, where nearly 1.3 billion people live on less than a dollar per day, and where dozens of countries constitute 'failed states,' the development challenges faced by the Third World are unquestionably one of the most important concerns of our time.
This course examines the environment and emerging security structures within Europe. It analyzes the changing nature of the European security environment since creation of NATO, the fall of the Soviet Union, and the development of a separate EU structure. This course will also review the institutional structures along with the internal and external influences which drive European security issues.
This course introduces students to the economic systems of the greater Middle East. Rich in oil and gas and yet poorly endowed with water and many necessary foodstuffs, the region faces unique challenges. While this wealth of natural energy reserves should provide ample opportunity for economic development, the reality of its absence forces a student of the region to investigate the political decisions behind the economics. Students will investigate the paths of development chosen by the region as well as the political motives, leadership, and influential contextual factors behind such decisions.
This course examines the main aspects of the political system, processes, and changes in China. Major contemporary issues and policies of China are also surveyed, with particular emphasis on how and in what ways the political system of China enhances its regime's claim to political legitimacy. The course also explores external behaviors and interactions between China and the world.
A study of the organization of the U.S. Intelligence Community and selected other national intelligence services, including the People's Republic of China, Russia and Israel.
An examination of the evolution of terrorism and political violence with emphasis on the new dimensions of terrorism and risks to U.S. national security interests. Topics covered will include: weapons of mass destruction, information-based terrorism, homeland defense, and terrorism as a transnational phenomenon.
This course explores different aspects of a selected topic in international affairs, such as regional studies, foreign policy, diplomacy and international organizations, economics, natural resources, energy, environment, human rights, health, security studies, geopolitics, or similar areas of study. The scheduling and topic of the course will vary depending on instructor and student interest. Students may earn credit from this course more than once as long as the topic is not being repeated.
An analysis of modern political thought with an emphasis upon the doctrines of nationalism, national socialism, communism and capitalism.
The course will focus on a variety of historical and contemporary figures to determine how their leadership styles and ideas on leadership have influenced and motivated both individuals and groups of people in the political sense. Assignments and discussion will center on what strategies, motivations, tactics, and actions constitute an effective political leader.
The purpose of this course is to introduce the political science student to foundational theories of International Relations. Viewpoints of acceptable behavior and the nature of man have evolved continually in the field of international relations. We will examine this evolution as well as the role of the state as the continuing foundation of world politics.
An analysis of major policy decisions and the impact of these decisions on the American political system.
The nature of politics that necessitates coalition-building, bargaining, and compromise seems to train political actors to skirt ethical issues, often spilling over into acts of self-aggrandizing behavior and breaches of public trust. This course will present philosophies, models, and analytical approaches to ethics that will help future politicians and public servants to identify ethical problems, to address them methodically, to avoid scandalous incidents, and to provide sound forms of public service.
This course addresses a special topic related to political theory and behavior, such as political philosophy, political leadership, political socialization, public policy, or contemporary attitudes about religion, ethics, or similar issues. The topic of this course will vary depending on timeliness and instructor and student interest. With a change in the course topic, a student may earn credit for POLS 4395 more than once.
This is the senior course in the American Politics concentration. It provides an analytic survey of the major institutions of the American political system. It is designed to focus on the theoretical and empirical work of many of the major political scientists in the American political system. It is designed to focus on the theoretical and empirical work of many of the major political scientists in the American politics subfield. The objective of this course is to familiarize students with the research of these political scientists and to promote intensive reading, writing, and research in this field on the part of students.
This course is a culminating experience whose goal is to link together previous coursework in International Affairs, study abroad, theses and internship experiences. This course will focus on experiential learning and reintegrate those experiences back to their theoretical basis.
This course is a capstone experience for political science majors. The course provides an analytic survey of the subfields within the discipline and involves intensive reading, research, and writing on the part of students.
A supervised research project under the guidance of a member of the political science faculty. The topic will be selected with approval of the instructor. The purpose of the course is to enable students the opportunity either to pursue more detailed study of the content of a prior course or to analyze a topic not currently covered in the political science curriculum.
Three hours of internship can be used toward fulfilling the major requirement in Political Science.
The purpose of the course is to provide an in-depth analysis on a selected aspect of the European Union (EU). Prior approval of the instructor is required. The course may be repeated for credit so long as the instructor verifies the topic is not being repeated.
The topic of this course will vary depending on timeliness on instructor and student interest.
This course is an introduction to the threat posed by terrorism and focuses on how the U.S. intelligence community and other governmental agencies have reacted to the threat through the establishment of an array of counterterrorist programs. This course is cross-listed with CRJU 4722.
The course discusses intelligence requirements and support needed by the United States to provide Homeland Security to the country. This course is cross-listed with CRJU 4723.
The content and requirements of this course will vary depending on the instructor and the subject of the course. This course is cross-listed with CRJU 4724.
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https://ung.edu/political-science-international-affairs/student-resources/courses-undergrad-political-science.php
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# Political psychology
Political psychology is an interdisciplinary academic field, dedicated to understanding politics, politicians and political behavior from a psychological perspective, and psychological processes using socio-political perspectives. The relationship between politics and psychology is considered bidirectional, with psychology being used as a lens for understanding politics and politics being used as a lens for understanding psychology. As an interdisciplinary field, political psychology borrows from a wide range of disciplines, including: anthropology, economics, history, international relations, journalism, media, philosophy, political science, psychology, and sociology.
Political psychology aims to understand interdependent relationships between individuals and contexts that are influenced by beliefs, motivation, perception, cognition, information processing, learning strategies, socialization and attitude formation. Political psychological theory and approaches have been applied in many contexts such as: leadership role; domestic and foreign policy making; behavior in ethnic violence, war and genocide; group dynamics and conflict; racist behavior; voting attitudes and motivation; voting and the role of the media; nationalism; and political extremism. In essence political psychologists study the foundations, dynamics, and outcomes of political behavior using cognitive and social explanations.
## History and early influences
### France
Political psychology originated from Western Europe, France, where it was closely tied to the emergence of new disciplines and paradigms as well as to the precise social and political context in various countries. The discipline political psychology was formally introduced during the Franco-Prussian war and the socialist revolution, stirred by the rise of the Paris Commune (1871). The term political psychology was first introduced by the ethnologist Adolf Bastian in his book Man in History (1860). The philosopher Hippolyte Taine (1828–1893), a founder of the Ecole Libre de Sciences Politiques, applied Bastian's theories in his works The Origins of Contemporary France (1875–1893), to ideas on the founding and development of the Third Republic. The head of Ecole Libre de Sciences Politiques, Émile Boutmy (1835–1906), was a famous explorer of social, political and geographical concepts of national interactions. He contributed various works on political psychology such as English People; A study of their Political Psychology (1901) and The American People; Elements of Their Political Psychology (1902). The contributor of crowd theory Gustave Le Bon (1841–1931) suggested that crowd activity subdued will and polluted rational thought which resulted in uncontrollable impulses and emotions. He suggested in his works Psychology of Socialism (1896) and Political Psychology and Social Defense (1910) that in the uncontrollable state of a crowd people were more vulnerable to submission and leadership, and suggested that embracing nationalism would remedy this.
### Italy
Meanwhile, in Italy, the Risorgimento (1870) instigated various social reforms and voting rights. The large division in social class during this period led lawyer Gaetano Mosca (1858–1914) to publish his work, The Ruling Class: Elements of Political Science (1896), which theorized the presence of the ruling and the ruled classes of all societies. Vilfredo Pareto (1828–1923), inspired by Mosca's concepts, contributed The Rise and Fall of the Elites (1901) and The Socialist System (1902–1903) to the discipline of political psychology, theorizing on the role of class and social systems. His work The Mind and Society (1916) offers a sociology treatise. Mosca and Pareto's texts on the Italian elite contributed to the theories of Robert Michels (1875–1936). Michels was a German socialist fascinated by the distinction between the largely lower class run parliament in Germany and upper class run parliament in Italy. He wrote Political Parties: A Sociological Study of the Oligarchic Tendencies of Modern Democracy (1911).
### Austria
A large psychoanalytical influence was contributed to the discipline of political psychology by Sigmund Freud (1856–1939). His texts Totem and Taboo (1913) and Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego (1921) linked psychoanalysis with politics. Freud and Bullitt (1967) developed the first psychobiographical explanation to how the personality characteristics of U.S. President Woodrow Wilson affected his decision making during World War I. Wilhelm Reich (1897–1957), inspired by the effects of World War II, was interested in whether personality types varied according to epoch, culture and class. He described the bidirectional effect of group, society and the environment with personality. He combined Freudian and Marxist theories in his book The Mass Psychology of Fascism (1933). He also edited The Journal for Political Psychology and Sexual Economy (1934–1938) which was the first journal to present political psychology in the principal of western language.
### Germany
In Germany, novice political alterations and fascist control during World War II spurred research into authoritarianism from Frankfurt school. Philosopher Herbert Marcuse (1898–1979) opened up issues concerning freedom and authority in his book, Reason and Revolution: Hegel and the Rise of Social Theory (1941), where he suggested groups compromise on individual rights. Theodor Adorno (1903–1969) also investigated authoritarian individuals and anti-Semitism. His report The Authoritarian Personality (1950) attempts to determine the personality type susceptible to following fascism and anti-democratic propaganda. Nazi movements during World War II also spurred controversial psychologists such as Walther Poppelreuter (1932) to lecture and write about political psychology that identified with Hitler. The psychologist Eric Jaensch (1883–1940) contributed the racist book The Anti-type (1933).
### United Kingdom
At the turn of the century, Oxford University and Cambridge University introduced disciplinary political psychology courses such as "The Sciences of the Man", along with the foundation of the Psychological society (1901) and the Sociological society (1904). Oxford historian G. B. Grundy (1861–1948) noted political psychology (1917) as a sub-discipline of history. Motivated by social and political behavior during World War I, he deemed a new branch of historical science, "The Psychology of Men Acting in Masses". He referred to science to instrument the clarification of mistaken beliefs about intention. The intellectual Graham Wallas (1859–1932) implicated the significance of studying psychology in politics in Human Nature in Politics (1908). Wallace emphasized the importance of enlightening politicians and the public about the psychological processes in order to raise awareness on exploitation while developing control over one's own psychological intellect. He suggested in Great Society (1917) that recognition of such processes could help to build a more functional humanity.
### United States
Across the Atlantic the first American to be considered a political psychologist was Harold Lasswell (1902–1978) whose research was also spurred by a sociological fascination of World War I. His work Propaganda Technique in the World War (1927) discussed the use of applying psychological theories in order to enhance propaganda technique. Lasswell moved to Europe shortly after where he started to tie Freudian and Adler personality theories to politics and published Psychopathology and Politics (1930). His major theories involved the motives of the politically active and the relation between propaganda and personality.
Another contributing factor to the development of Political Psychology was the introduction of psychometrics and "The Measurement of Attitude" by Thurstone and Chave (1929). The methodological revolution in social science gave quantitative grounds and therefore more credibility to Political Psychology. Research into political preference during campaigns was spurred by George Gallup (1901–1984), who founded the "American Institute of Public Opinion". The 1940s election in America drew a lot of attention in connection with the start of World War II. Gallup, Roper and Crossley instigated research into the chances of Roosevelt being re-elected. Lazarsfeld, Berelson and Gaudet (1944) also conducted a famous panel study "The People's Choice" on the 1940s election campaign. These studies drew attention to the possibility of measuring political techniques using psychological theories. The entry of the US into World War II spiraled vast research into fields such as war technique, propaganda, group moral, psycho-biography and culture conflict to name a few, with the U.S. army and Navy recruiting young psychologists. Thus the discipline quickly developed and gained international accreditation.
Hadley Cantril and L. A. Free established the Institute for International Social Research to focus "attention primarily on psychological changes which influence political behavior in ways that have significant effect on international relations." They studied "governments and why, in terms of psychological variables, they behave as they do in regard to international issues."
McGuire identifies three broad phases in the development of political psychology, these three phases are: (1) The era of personality studies in the 1940s and 1950s dominated by psychoanalysis. (2) The era of political attitudes and voting behavior studies in the 1960s and 1970s characterized by the popularity of "rational man" assumptions. (3) An era since the 1980s and 1990s, which has focused on political beliefs, information processing and decision making, and has dealt in particular with international politics.
## Personality and politics
The study of personality in political psychology focuses on the effects of leadership personality on decision-making, and the consequences of mass personality on leadership boundaries. Key personality approaches utilized in political psychology are psychoanalytic theories, trait-based theories and motive-based theories.
### A psychoanalytical approach
Sigmund Freud (1856–1939) made significant contributions to the study of personality in political psychology through his theories on the unconscious motives of behavior. Freud suggested that a leader's behavior and decision making skill were largely determined by the interaction in their personality of the id, ego and superego, and their control of the pleasure principle and reality principle. The psychoanalytic approach has also been used extensively in psychobiographies of political leaders. Psychobiographies draw inferences from personal, social and political development, starting from childhood, to understand behavior patterns that can be implemented to predict decision-making motives and strategies.
### A trait-based approach
Traits are personality characteristics that show to be stable over time and in different situations, creating predispositions to perceive and respond in particular ways. Gordon Allport (1897–1967) realized the study of traits introducing central, secondary, cardinal and common traits. These four distinctions suggest that people demonstrate traits to varying degrees, and further that there is a difference between individual and common traits to be recognized within a society. Hans Eysenck (1916–1997) contributed three major traits, currently, however, Costa and McCrae's (1992) "Big Five" personality dimensions are the most recognized. These include; neuroticism, extraversion, agreeableness, openness to experience and conscientiousness. Theories in political psychology induce that one's combination of these traits has implications for leadership style and capacity. For example, individuals who score highly on extroversion are demonstrated as having superior leadership skills. The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) is a personality assessment scale commonly used in the study of political personality and for job profiling.
### A motive-based approach
In terms of political psychology, motivation is viewed as goal-oriented behavior driven by a need for four things; power, affiliation, intimacy, and achievement. These categories were grouped by Winter (1996) from Murray's (1938) twenty suggested common human goals. Need for power affects the style in which a leader performs. Winter and Stewart (1977) suggested that leaders high in power motivation and low in need of affiliation intimacy motivation make better presidents. Affiliation-motivated leaders alternatively tend to collaborate joint efforts in the absence of threat. Lastly, achievement motivation has demonstrated to not correspond with political success, especially if it is higher than power motivation (Winter, 2002). Motivation between a leader and those whom they are ruling needs to be consistent with success. Motives have been shown to be correlated more highly with situation and time since last goal-fulfillment, rather than consistent traits. The Thematic Apperception Test (TAT) is commonly used for assessing motives. However, in the case of leadership assessment this test is more difficult to implement therefore more applicable tests are often used such as content analysis of speeches and interviews.
## Frameworks for assessing personality
### The authoritarian personality
The authoritarian personality is a syndrome theory that was developed by the researchers Adorno, Frenkel-Brunswick, Levinson and Sanford (1950) at The University of California. The American Jewish Committee subsidized research and publishing on the theory since it revolved around ideas developed from World War II events. Adorno (1950) explained the authoritarian personality type from a psychoanalytic point of view suggesting it to be a result of highly controlled and conventional parenting. Adorno (1950) explained that individuals with an authoritarian personality type had been stunted in terms of developing an ability to control the sexual and aggressive id impulses. This resulted in a fear of them and thus development of defense mechanisms to avoid confronting them. Authoritarian personality types are persons described as swinging between depending on yet resenting authority. The syndrome was theorized to encompass nine characteristics; conventionalism, authoritarian submission, authoritarian aggression, anti-intraception (an opposition to subjective or imaginative tendencies), superstition and stereotypy, power and toughness, destructiveness and cynicism, sex obsession, and projectivity. The authoritarian personality type is suggested to be; ethnocentric, ego-defensive, mentally rigid, conforming and conventional, adverse to the out of the ordinary, and as having conservative political views. The book The Authoritarian Personality (1950) introduces several scales based on different authoritarian personality types. These are; the F-scale which measures from where and to what degree fascist attitudes develop, the anti-Semitism scale, the ethnocentrism scale and the politico economic conservatism scale. The F-scale however, is the only scale that is expected to measure implicit authoritarian personality tendencies.
Bob Altemeyer (1996) deconstructed the authoritarian personality using trait analysis. He developed a Right-wing Authoritarianism (RWA) scale based on the traits; authoritarian submission, authoritarian aggression, and conventionalism. Altmeyer (1996) suggested that those who score high on the F-scale have low ability for critical thinking and therefore are less able to contradict authority. Altmeyer's theories also incorporate the psychodynamic point of view, suggesting that authoritarian personality types were taught by their parents to believe that the world was a dangerous place and thus their impulses lead them to make impulsive, emotional and irrational decisions. The beliefs and behavior of an authoritarian are suggested to be easily manipulated by authority instead of being based on internal values. Altmeyer also theorized that leaders with authoritarian personality types were more susceptible to the fundamental attribution error. There are many weaknesses associated with this syndrome and the F-scale. It may have been more relevant during the period in which it was produced, being shortly after World War II. The authoritarian personality is generally related to a fascist image, however, it is suggested to explain behavior of individuals in all political fields.
### Trait-based frameworks
Trait-based frameworks, excluding the Freudian approach, were suggested by James Barber (1930–2004) in The Presidential Character (1972) who highlighted the importance of psychobiography in political personality analysis. Barber suggested that leadership personality comprised three dimensions; "character", "world view", and "style". Barber also proposed that leadership typology followed a pattern leading from an individuals first political success and that it is includes two variables; the effort that a leader puts in and the personal satisfaction that the leader gains. This typology is fairly limited in its dimensions.
Etheredge (1978) proposed the importance of the traits; "dominance", "interpersonal trust", "self-esteem" and "introversion-extroversion", in leadership views and policy shaping. Etheredge found from studies on leaders during the Soviet Union, that those who scored highly on dominance were more likely to support the use of force during debate settlement. He found that the trait introversion can lead to a lack of co-operation, and that extroversion usually leads to cooperation and negotiation. Further he suggested that interpersonal trust and self-esteem were closely related to not advocating force.
Margaret Hermann (1976) introduced the Leader Trait Assessment (LTA) and advocated the development of the Profiler-Plus. The Profiler-Plus is a computer system used to code spontaneous interview answers for seven major characteristics; need for power, cognitive complexity, task-interpersonal emphasis, self-confidence, locus of control, distrust of others, and ethnocentrism. This method can profile large bodies of leadership related text whilst removing any subjective bias from content analysis. It is efficient and has high reliability. Hermann and Preston (1994) suggested 5 distinct variables of leadership style; their involvement in policy making, their willingness to tolerate conflict, their level and reasons for motivation, their information managing strategies, and their conflict resolving strategies.
An alternative approach is the Operational-Code method introduced by Nathan Leites (1951) and restructured by Alexander George (1979). The code is based on five philosophical beliefs and five instrumental beliefs. A Verbs in Context (VIC) coding system employed through the Profiler-Plus computer program once again allows substantial bodies of written and spoken speech, interviews and writings to be analyzed subjectively. The method attempts to be able to predict behavior thorough applying knowledge of various beliefs.
Although political behavior is governed and represented by a leader the consequential influence of the leader largely depends upon the context in which they are placed and in which type of political climate they are running. For this reason group behavior is also instrumental for understanding sociopolitical environments
## The political psychology of groups
Group behavior is key in the structure, stability, popularity and ability to make successful decisions of political parties. Individual behavior deviates substantially in a group setting therefore it is difficult to determine group behavior by looking solely at the individuals that comprise the group. Group form and stability is based upon several variables; size, structure, the purpose that the group serves, group development and influences upon a group.
### Group size
Group size has various consequences. In smaller groups individuals are more committed (Patterson and Schaeffer, 1997) and there is a lower turnover rate (Widmeyer, Brawley and Carron, 1990). Large groups display greater levels of divergence (O'Dell, 1968) and less conformity (Olson and Caddell, 1994). Group performance also diminishes with size increase, due to decreased co-ordination and free-riding. The size of a political party or nation can therefore have consequential effects on their ability to co-ordinate and progress.
### Group structure
The structure of a group is altered by member diversity, which largely affects its efficiency. Individual diversity with in a group has proven to demonstrate less communication and therefore to increase conflict (Maznevski, 1994). This has implications for political parties based in strongly colonial or multiracial nations. Member diversity has consequences for; status, role allocation and role strain within a group, all of which can cause disagreement. Thus, maintenance of group cohesion is key. Cohesion is affected by several factors; the amount of time members spend in the group, the amount that members like one another, the amount of reward that the group offers, the amount of external threat to the group and the level of warmth offered by leaders. These factors should be considered when attempting to form an efficient political group. President decision efficiency for example is affected by the degree to which members of the advisory group have a hierarchical status and by the roles that each member is assigned.
### Group function
Studying the purpose for formation of a group, whether it is serving a "functional" purpose or an "interpersonal attraction" purpose (Mackie and Goethals, 1987), has implications for political popularity. Often people join groups in order to fulfill certain survival, interpersonal, informational and collective needs. A political party that provides; stability, clear information, offers power to individuals and satisfies a sense of affiliation, will gain popularity. Shutz's (1958) "Fundamental interpersonal relations orientation" theory suggests that groups satisfy the need for control, intimacy and inclusion. Groups also form due to natural attraction. Newcomb (1960) states that we are drawn to others close in socioeconomic status, beliefs, attitudes and physical appearance. Similarity in certain respects can thus be related to how much a person is attracted to joining one group over another.
### Group development
Group development tends to happen in several stages; forming, storming, norming, performing, and adjourning (Tuckman, 1965). Group awareness of these stages is important in order for members to acknowledge that a process is taking place and that certain stages such as storming are part of progression and that they should not be discouraged or cause fear of instability. Awareness of group development also allows for models to be implemented in order to manipulate different stages. External influences upon a group will have different effects depending upon which stage the group is at in its course. This has implications for how open a group should be depending upon the stage of development it is at, and on its strength. Consistency is also a key aspect in a group for success (Wood, 1994).
### The influence of conformity in groups
The application of conformity is key for understanding group influence in political behaviour. Decision making within a group is largely influenced by conformity. It is theorized to occur based on two motives; normative social influence and informational social influence (Asch, 1955). Chance of conformity is influenced by several factors; an increase in group size but only to a certain degree at which it plateaus, and degree of unanimity and commitment to the group. Therefore, the degree of popularity of a political group can be influenced by its existing size and the believed unanimity and commitment by the public of the already existing members. The degree by which the group conforms as a whole can also be influenced by the degree of individuation of its members. Also, the conformity within political groups can be related to the term, political coalition. Humans represent groups as if there was a special category of an individual. For example, for cognitive simplicity, ancestral groups anthropomorphize each other because they have similar thoughts, values, and a historical background. Even though the member of a group may have an irrational or wrong argument about a political issue, there is a high possibility for the other members to conform to it because of the mere fact that they are in the same coalition.
### The influence of power in groups
Power is another influential factor within a group or between separate groups. The "critical bases of power" developed by French and Raven (1959) allocates the following types of power as the most successful; reward power, coercive power, legitimate power, referent power and expert power. The way in which power is exerted upon a group can have repercussive outcomes for popularity. Referent power results in greater popularity of a political group or leader than coercive power (Shaw and Condelli, 1986). This has implications for leaders to manipulate others to identify with them, rather than to enforce consequential punishment. However, if coercive power is enforced, success and a trusted leader (Friedland, 1976) are necessary in order for group conflict not to escalate. Extrinsic punishment and reward are also suggested to detract from intrinsic motivation. A sense of freedom must be advocated to the group.
### Decision-making in groups
Decision-making is an important political process which influences the course of a country's policy. Group decision-making is largely influenced by three rules; "majority-wins rule", "truth-wins rule", and "first-shift rule". Decision-making is also coerced by conformity. Irrational decisions are generally made during emotional periods. For example, an unpopular political party may receive more votes during a period of actual or perceived economic or political instability. Controversial studies by George Marcus (2003) however imply that high levels of anxiety can actually cause an individual to analyze information more rationally and carefully, resulting in more well-informed and successful decisions. The psychology of decision-making however must be analyzed in accordance with whether it is within a leadership context or a between-group context. The implementation of successful decision-making is often enhanced by group decision-making (Hill, 1982) especially if the decision is important to the group and when the group has been working together for an extended period of time (Watson, Michaelson and Sharp, 1991). However, groups can also hinder decision-making if a correct answer is not clear. Janis (1972) introduced the notion of Groupthink that advocates an increased chance of groups making faulty decisions under several conditions; strong group cohesion, isolation of group decision from public review, the presence of a directive leader in the group, and high-stress levels. Group polarization (Janis, 1972) suggests that group decision-making is often more extreme whether is it more risky or cautious. Groupthink refers to "a mode of thinking that people engage in when they are deeply involved in a cohesive in-group, when the members' striving for unanimity override their motivation to realistically appraise alternative courses of action."
Techniques to establish more effective decision-making skills in political dimensions have been suggested. Hirt and Markman (1995) claim that implementing an individual in a group to find faults and to critique will enable the members to establish alternative viewpoints. George (1980) suggested "multiple advocacy" which implements that a neutral person analyses the pros and cons of various advocate suggestions and thus makes an informed decision.
Applied psychology theories to improve productivity of political groups include implementing "team development" techniques, "quality circles" and autonomous workgroups.
## Using psychology in the understanding of certain political behaviors
### Evolution
Evolutionary psychology plays a significant role in understanding how the current political regime came to be. It is an approach that focuses on the structure of human behavior claiming its dependence on the social and ecological environment. Developed through natural selection, the human brain functions to react appropriately to environmental challenges of coalitional conflict using psychological mechanisms and modifications. An example of political conflict would involve state aggression such as war. Psychological mechanisms work to digest what is taken in from internal and external information regarding the current habitat and project it in the most suited form of action such as acts of aggression, retrieval, dominance, submission and so forth.
### Political identity and voting behavior
In order to make inferences and predictions about behavior concerning voting decision, certain key public influences must be considered. These influences include the role of emotions, political socialization, political sophistication, tolerance of diversity of political views and the media. The effect of these influences on voting behavior is best understood through theories on the formation of attitudes, beliefs, schema, knowledge structures and the practice of information processing. The degree to which voting decision is affected by internal processing systems of political information and external influences, alters the quality of making truly democratic decisions.
In 2006, scientists reported a relationship between personality and political views of Americans on a left–right spectrum as follows: "Preschool children who 20 years later were relatively liberal were characterized as: developing close relationships, self-reliant, energetic, somewhat dominating, relatively under-controlled, and resilient. Preschool children subsequently relatively conservative at age 23 were described as: feeling easily victimized, easily offended, indecisive, fearful, rigid, inhibited, and relatively over-controlled and vulnerable."
Some prominent academics in the field include Dr. Chadly Daniel Stern, who currently works at the Department of Psychology at the University of Illinois, Urbana Champaign. His research centers around answering social cognitive questions of how a person's political belief systems shape the way that they perceive the world and their everyday interactions.
### Conflict
The application of psychology for understanding conflict and extreme acts of violence can be understood in both individual and group terms. Political conflict is often a consequence of ethnic disparity and "ethnocentrism" Sumner (1906).
On an individual level participators in situations of conflict can either be perpetrators, bystanders or altruists. The behavior of perpetrators is often explained through the authoritarian personality type. Individual differences in levels of empathy have been used to explain whether an individual chooses to stand up to authority or ignore a conflict. Rotter's (1954) locus of control theory in personality psychology has also been used to determine individual differences in reaction to situations of conflict.
Group behavior during conflict often affects the actions of an individual. The bystander effect introduced by Darley and Latane (1968) demonstrates that group behavior causes individuals to monitor whether others think it is necessary to react in a situation and thus base their behavior on this judgment. They also found that individuals are more likely to diffuse responsibility in group situations. These theories can be applied to situations of conflict and genocide in which individuals remove personal responsibility and therefore justify their behavior. Social identity theory explains that during the Holocaust of World War II political leaders used the Jews as an out-group in order to increase in-group cohesion. This allowed for the perpetrators to depersonalize from the situation and to diffuse their responsibility. The out-groups were held in separate confines and dehumanized in order to aid the in-group to disengage themselves from relating.
Research by Dan Kahan has demonstrated that individuals are resistant to accepting new political views even if they are presented with evidence that challenges their views. The research also demonstrated that if the individual was required to write a few sentences about experiences they enjoyed or spend a few moments affirming their self-worth, the individual was more likely to accept the new political position.
Although somewhat unusual, evolutionary psychology can also explain conflicts in politics and the international society. A journal article by Anthony C. Lopez, Rose McDermott and Michael Bang Petersen uses this idea to give out a hypothesis to explain political events. According to the authors, instincts and psychological characteristics developed through evolution is still existent with modern people. They suggest human being as "adaptation executers"; people designed through natural selection, and not "utility maximizers"; people who strive for utility in every moment. Though a group of people, perhaps those who are in the same political coalition, may seem as if they pursue a common utility maximization, it is difficult to generalize the theory of "utility maximizers" into a nation-view because people evolved in small groups. This approach helps scholars to explain seemingly irrational behaviors like aggressiveness in politics and international society because "irrational behavior" would be the result of a mismatch between the modern world and evolutionary psychology.
For example, according to evolutionary psychology, coalitional aggression is more commonly found in males. This is because of their psychological mechanism designed since ancestral times. During those times men had more to earn when winning wars compared to women (they had more chance of finding a mate, or even many mates). Also, the victorious men had more chance of reproduction which eventually led to the succession of aggressive, eager-to-war DNAs. As a result, the authors hypothesize that countries with more men will tend to show more aggressive politics thereby having more possibility of triggering conflicts within and especially among states.
Indeed, some exceptions do exist in this theory as this is just a hypothesis. However, it is viable enough to be a hypothesis to be tested to explain certain political events like war and crisis.
### Terrorism
On an individual level terrorism has been explained in terms of psychopathology. Terrorists have demonstrated to show narcissistic personality traits (Lasch, 1979, Pearlstein, 1991). Jerrold Post (2004) argues that narcissistic and borderline personality disorders are found in terrorists and that mechanisms such as splitting and externalization are used by terrorists. Others such as Silke (2004) and Mastors and Deffenbaugh (2007) refute this view. Crenshaw (2004) showed that certain terrorist groups are actually careful in not enlisting those demonstrating pathology. The authoritarian personality theory has also been used as an explanation for terrorist behavior in individuals.
In terms of explaining reasons for which individuals join terrorist groups, motivational theories such as need for power and need for affiliation intimacy are suggested. Festinger (1954) explained that people often join groups in order to compare their own beliefs and attitudes. Joining a terrorist group could be a method to remedy individual uncertainty. Taylor and Louis (2004) explained that individuals strive for meaningful behavior. This can also be used to explain why terrorists look for such radical beliefs and demonstrations. Studies on children in northern Ireland by Field (1979) have shown that exposure to violence can lead to terrorist behavior later on. Implicating the effect of developing acceptable norms in groups. However this view has also been criticized (Taylor, 1998). Other theories suggest that goal frustration can result in aggression (Dollard, Doob. Miller, mower, and Sears, 1939) and that aggression can lead to frustration (Borum, 2004). Group settings can cause a social identity and terrorist behavior to manifest. Methods such as dehumanization allow individuals to detach more easily from moral responsibility, and group influence increase the chance that individuals will concede to conformity and compliance. Manipulations of social control and propaganda can also instrument terrorist involvement.
In fact, a strategic model has been proposed to examine the political motivations of terrorists. The strategic model, the dominant paradigm in terrorism studies, considers terrorists are rational actors who attack civilians for political ends. According to this view, terrorists are political utility maximizers. The strategic model rests on three core assumptions which are: (1) terrorists are motivated by relatively stable and consistent political preferences; (2) terrorists evaluate the expected political payoffs of their available options; and (3) terrorism is adopted when the expected political return is superior to those of alternative options. However, it turns out that terrorists' decision-making process does not fully conform to the strategic model. According to Max Abrahms, the author of "What Terrorists Really Want: Terrorist Motives and Counterterrorism Strategy", there are seven common tendencies that represent important empirical puzzles for the strategic model, going against the conventional thought that terrorists are rational actors.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interrelationships_between_psychological_and_political_processes
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Sociologists are professionals with a master's or doctoral degree in their field. They focus on understanding social groupings and behavior and may be involved in research or make recommendations about how to address specific issues in society. Since their work focuses on understanding how society can influence behavior, they work within the field of social studies.
Historians
Historians research the past and educate people about historic events, artifacts or developments. Their work focuses on civilizations and incidents involving people in the past, which is why it falls within the social studies field. They might use the data from their research to form conclusions about why a society relocated or how cultural beliefs in a particular group evolved. They may need a doctoral degree, although it is possible to enter this field with a master's degree in history.
Postsecondary Teachers
Postsecondary teachers instruct college and university students in a specific subject they've specialized in. They typically need a doctoral degree, although entry-level positions may be obtained with a master's degree in some cases. Postsecondary teachers who instruct students in subjects such as criminology or history spend their career focused on social studies. As part of their work, postsecondary teachers usually also participate in research related to their specialty.
Anthropologists and Archeologists
Anthropologists and archeologists must have a master's or doctoral degree to work in their field. While archeologists may be involved in recovering historic artifacts from dig sites around the world, anthropologists focus on how humans have developed over time. Archeologists and anthropologists help discover evidence that relates to how cultures have evolved, how significant events have impacted people's behavior, and how social constructs, such as politics, have developed. Since they focus on issues related to society and behavior, they work within the field of social studies.
Political Scientists
Political scientists focus on the history and development of political systems. They may research political ideologies or study how political trends have evolved over time. They are social science professionals because understanding how politics shape society and impact individual and group behavior is part of what political scientists focus on. They are professionals with master's or doctoral degrees who perform research, analyze the information gained from their research, and use that data to develop predictions about the effects of political policies or structures.
Market Research Analysts
With a bachelor's degree, it's possible to become a market research analyst. Market research analysts examine consumer demographics, along with data collected from opinion polls and surveys, and then use what they learn to make recommendations about actions companies should or should not take. For example, they may recommend that a new product be developed and provide pertinent information about the customers they expect would be interested in that product. Market research analysts are professionals who focus on understanding what influences the purchasing decisions people make and the economic variables that should be considered when making business decisions. Since they focus on determining financial and societal factors that can affect consumer choices, their work involves the use of social studies.
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Event:
Friday, October 8, 2021 - 12:00 -2:00pm
Cecilia Hyunjung Mo is the Judith E. Gruber Associate Professor of Political Science and Public Policy at University of California, Berkeley. She specializes in behavioral political economy, comparative political behavior, and public opinion research. She focuses on significant contemporary challenges to development and moral issues of today like cultivating democratic citizenship, reducing modern day slavery, understanding and addressing the negative consequences of rising inequality, and reducing prejudice. Her research agenda is interdisciplinary and lies at the intersection of political science, economics, and psychology. She employs a host of methodological tools -- field, laboratory, and survey experiments, text analyses, as well as formal theory. She received her Ph.D. in Political Economics from Stanford University and a Master in Public Administration in International Development from Harvard Kennedy School of Government.
She has published research in numerous outlets, including the American Journal of Political Science, the American Political Science Review, the Journal of Politics, the Journal of Experimental Political Science, the Journal of Theoretical Politics, Political Behavior, the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, and World Development. She is the recipient of the American Political Science Association (APSA)'s 2020 Emerging Scholar in Elections, Public Opinion and Voting Behavior Award, APSA's 2015 Franklin L. Burdette/Pi Sigma Alpha Award for the best paper presented at the annual meeting, and the 2018 Roberta Sigel Early Career Scholar Best Paper Award from the International Society of Political Psychology (ISPP). She was also awarded the 2018 Best Paper Award from APSA's Elections, Public Opinion and Voting Behavior Section, and both the 2019 and the 2016 Best Article Published in Political Behavior Award.
Lecture details will be made available soon.
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https://iis.berkeley.edu/cecilia-mo
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Political science reports that the behaviour of men and women in culture.
It does not concern yourself with notions that are abstract, but instead focuses on how people believe, act, and make conclusions. It is intriguing to note that, as with other major educational areas, it is divided into various sub-disciplines, each with its personal fields of study. Among the absolute most frequent sub-disciplines need help writing a paper of governmental science include political and social psychology, sociology, social anthropology, political science foundation, political theory, public management, international affairs, social work, international relations, psychology of law, political philosophy, and political philosophy and regulation.
The science of science assesses the impacts of associations, the legislation, along with also people who govern behaviour. Individuals would be the crucial actors in any governmental atmosphere. These fields these details of research to further simply help us comprehend people’s behavior, and we can make use of this information to devise new procedures which may benefit all of us.
As a way to conduct boffins study, we need to collect data from diverse aspects of human activity, from other settings. Some of these preferences might be political events, the office, specific social classes, or even perhaps international boundaries. To become profitable, political researchers must collect the data of different inhabitants of an individual in various locations. The information collection procedure has to be conducted such a way that it supplies unique perspectives on events and problems that were relevant to the researchers.
Many have asked https://www.lbwcc.edu/ themselves exactly what science actually is. The solution is simple: the study of human behavior. While governmental scientists are not in the company of planning policies, they do perform an necessary role in the formulation of governmental guidelines within the States. We commit one of the absolute most crucial types of project and tens of thousands of dollars each year that political scientists needs to track our environmental changes.
In the federal stage, political experts must track all elements of shift. They need to understand just how many inhabitants of men and women affect, and they has to be in a position to spot the changes’ consequences . Environmentalists often make ecological dilemmas their position, so it is essential for political scientists to also be mindful of the environmental movements. Additionally, as people are more conscious, they’ll be looking for options.
The first step into understanding the root of environmental modification is always to understand the ecological movement. There are various classes which make utilize of the atmosphere for a way to market their triggers. Groups may be little and neighborhood, or they can be in the past few decades, international, and much larger. Groups can be rather competitive, as in case of the Sierra Club. As an example, one of the absolute most popular groups inside the nation today may be the National Wildlife Federation.
At the area level, political science may help us comprehend the way the area’s financial position affects the quality of life of individuals residing there. The only real manner it might save is by simply rebuilding it, if a residential area loses business due to modifications. Boffins will desire to find out if a residential district needs this type of companies in the area, in addition to population and employment numbers, therefore they can know what sort of preparation they are able to tackle.
It’s always important to not forget that the reason when it regards local and regional scientists. Ratherwe want them to become conscious of the current developments, plus they must be amenable to modify. They have to be prepared if they see to alter their processes. These will be the areas for the reason that they are those who have been analyzing politics for years that governmental scientists do well , plus they have had to accommodate time .
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https://oracare.com.np/2020/03/27/whats-political-science-2/
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Library highlights
26-04-2018
In this report, the notion of soil as an integral part of ecosystems and natural capital is explored and thus focused on the stock of the soil resource and the flows of valuable goods and services that can be derived from this stock. The concept of natural capital recognises soil as an asset that is…
Read more
Restoration and repair of Earth's damaged ecosystems
Library highlights
26-04-2018
In a study published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B, reviewed more than 400 studies of large-scale disturbances — logging, agriculture, oil spills, dam-building, mining, and aquatic nutrient pollution — and their aftermath. It’s the most comprehensive such review to date. The takeaways:…
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Who uses sustainable land management practices and what are the costs and benefits? Insights from Kenya
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14-05-2018
Sub‐optimal land management practices are degrading soils and undermining food production. Sustainable Land Management (SLM) practices can improve soil and enhance yields. This study identifies variations in SLM uptake, characterizing farmers most likely to use SLM practices, identifying when it…
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2018 Global Report on Internal Displacement (GRID 2018)
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17-05-2018
30.6 MILLION PEOPLE DISPLACED INSIDE THEIR COUNTRY IN 2017
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Responsible investment to combat land degradation emerges from Dragons’ Den
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17-05-2018
Restoring degraded land could inject $84 billion a year to the global economy, according to researchers, but public resources fall short of unlocking this potential.
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Implementing SDG target 15.3 on “Land Degradation Neutrality”. Development of an indicator based on land use changes and soil values
Library highlights
17-05-2018
Given that land and soils are increasingly threatened by degradation, this project investigated how SDG target 15.3, which strives to achieve a land degradation neutral world by 2030, can be implemented. The report suggests necessary steps towards the implementation of Land Degradation Neutrality…
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Focus on climate change and mental health
Library highlights
18-05-2018
Awareness of the threats to mental health posed by climate change leads to questions about the potential impacts on climate scientists because they are immersed in depressing information and may face apathy, denial and even hostility from others. But they also have sources of resilience.
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The Global Symposium on Soil Pollution (GSOP18) Submit your research today!
Library highlights
12-02-2018
The Global Symposium on Soil Pollution (GSOP18) will take place at FAO headquarters in Rome on 2 - 4 May, 2018. The Symposium aims to provide scientific evidence to support actions and decisions to prevent and reduce soil pollution for increased food safety, security and nutrition, and ecosystem…
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Land restoration in food security programmes: synergies with climate change mitigation
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12-02-2018
Food-insecure households in many countries depend on international aid to alleviate acute shocks and chronic shortages. Some food security programmes (including Ethiopia’s Productive Safety Net Program–PSNP – which provides a case study for this article) have integrated aid in exchange for labour on…
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Just published: Soil sealing and unsealing. State of the art and examples
Library highlights
11-04-2018
Soil sealing for urban and infrastructure development constitutes the most intense form of land degradation and affects all ecosystem services. Researchers and policy makers have become aware of this fact and call for limiting development and compensating for new soil sealing with unsealing measures…
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International Workshop on "Legal instruments for the effective protection and sustainable management of soils" Kampala/Uganda, September 2017 - OUTCOMES
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23-03-2018
The protection and sustainable management of soils is a precondition for sustainable development and moreover for the survival of humankind. Degraded soils, in particular in Africa, cause famine, poverty, migration and, under certain circumstances, even wars. Although insufficient protection and…
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International Yearbook of Soil Law and Policy – Volume 2 now available
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23-03-2018
The International Yearbook of Soil Law and Policy is a book series that discusses central questions in law and politics with regard to the protection and sustainable management of soil and land – at the international, national and regional level. Volume 2 of the International Yearbook of Soil Law…
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Soil conservation in the 21st century: why we need smart agricultural intensification (review article)
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23-03-2018
Soil erosion severely threatens the soil resource and the sustainability of agriculture. After decades of research, this problem still persists, despite the fact that adequate technical solutions now exist for most situations. This begs the question as to why soil conservation is not more rapidly…
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First Special Issue of Current Opinion in Environmental Science & Health (COESH) now online
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29-03-2018
Plastic pollution is a globally recognized problem, with an estimated 322 million metric tons produced in 2016, excluding plastic fiber production. When evaluating the risks three main sources of microplastics (MPs) should be considered; polymer nanoparticles manufactured for specific purposes like…
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Can Strategic Spatial Planning Contribute to Land Degradation Reduction in Urban Regions? State of the Art and Future Research
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28-05-2018
Land degradation is becoming a serious environmental issue threatening fertile agricultural soils and other natural resources. There are many driving forces behind land degradation. The expansion of artificial surfaces due to various economic activities, such as housing, industry, and transport…
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Land Degradation & Development April- Research Articles
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18-04-2018
Land Degradation & Development Volume 29, Issue 4 Pages i - i, 861 - 1302, April 2018 RESEARCH ARTICLES
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Why carbon pricing matters: A guide for implementation
Library highlights
18-04-2018
Today, the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD) released a new in-depth guide for policymakers on carbon pricing. The organization and its members believe that carbon pricing is one of the most efficient means of driving the transition to a low-carbon world. Strong business…
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Multi-objective land use allocation modelling for prioritizing climate-smart agricultural interventions
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17-05-2018
Climate-smart interventions in agriculture have varying costs and environmental and economic impacts. Their implementation requires appropriate investment decisions by policy makers that are relevant for current as well as future scenarios of agro-ecology, climate and economic development. Decision…
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The Lancet Planetary Health is a new online journal which cover the interplay between health and the determinants of health in our living and physical world.
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18-05-2018
The Lancet Planetary Health is a new online-only title in The Lancet’s growing family of specialty journals, joining The Lancet Public Health and The Lancet Global Health to provide a third pillar in The Lancet’s open-access programme. Building on the foundation of The Rockefeller Foundation–Lancet…
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‘Carbon law’ could lead to zero global emissions by 2050
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25-05-2018
Researchers have proposed a global roadmap for decarbonisation over the coming decades. The roadmap is based on the idea of a simple heuristic, described by the researchers as ‘carbon law’, of halving carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions every decade from 2020 to 2050. The researchers say that, if…
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Data Champion ISRIC: “Harmonizing world soil information”
Library highlights
30-05-2018
ISRIC, the international centre for world soil information, is a pioneer when it comes to Data Management. ISRIC has worked on compiling and harmonising data on soils for over 50 years. It makes the data available in a FAIR manner and supports open data where possible. ISRIC is therefore a real WUR…
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Europeans’ Strategic Research Agenda for Integrated Spatial Planning, Land Use and Soil Management
Library highlights
06-06-2018
Land is a limited resource. There are different – synergistic or competing – options how land can be used. Any use does impact our soil, sediment and water system to which the land is linked. A good understanding of these complex linkages is essential in order to steward land to a more sustainable…
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Fundamental shift in drought management needed in Near East and North Africa region
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18-06-2018
FAO report calls for a more pro-active and long-term planning to become more resilient against droughts
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Networking our science to characterize the state, vulnerabilities, and management opportunities of soil organic matter
Library highlights
18-07-2018
Soil organic matter (SOM) supports the Earth's ability to sustain terrestrial ecosystems, provide food and fiber, and retains the largest pool of actively cycling carbon. Over 75% of the soil organic carbon (SOC) in the top meter of soil is directly affected by human land use. Large land areas have…
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Managing Soil Health for Sustainable Agriculture (Vol.I and Vol. II)
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03-09-2018
There has been growing concern that both intensive agriculture in the developed world and rapid expansion of crop cultivation in developing countries is damaging the health of soils which are the foundation of farming. At the same time we are discovering much more about how complex soils are as…
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Improving soil quality can slow global warming. Better land management practices can sequester enough carbon to lower global temperatures
Library highlights
05-09-2018
Better land management practices can sequester enough carbon to lower global temperatures
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New Report: Unlocking the Inclusive Growth Story of the 21st Century: Accelerating Climate Action in Urgent Times.
Library highlights
06-09-2018
Today, the New Climate Economy launches its 2018 report, Unlocking the Inclusive Growth Story of the 21st Century: Accelerating Climate Action in Urgent Times. It demonstrates the benefits of a new low-carbon growth model and outlines how we can urgently accelerate efforts to achieve it. Bold action…
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New Article: Leverage Points for Governing Agricultural Soils: A Review of Empirical Studies of European Farmers’ Decision-Making
Library highlights
06-09-2018
What drives farmers’ decision-making? To inform effective, efficient, and legitimate governance of agricultural soils, it is important to understand the behaviour of those who manage the fields.
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New Article: Agroforestry systems: Meta‐analysis of soil carbon stocks, sequestration processes, and future potentials
Library highlights
10-09-2018
Agroforestry (AF) has the potential to restore degraded lands, provide a broader range of ecosystem goods and services such as carbon (C) sequestration and high biodiversity, and increase soil fertility and ecosystem stability through additional C input from trees, erosion prevention, and…
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Clean energy can provide 100% of electricity
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12-09-2018
All the electricity the world needs can come from clean energy, reliably and throughout the year, British researchers say, at any time of day or night.
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Land degradation and desertification are important issues to both ecological and social research. The need for a quantitative, repeatable methodology to assess land degradation and desertification reliably is more pressing than ever before.
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Reorienting land degradation towards sustainable land management: Linking sustainable livelihoods with ecosystem services in rangeland systems (Journal of Environmental Management, Volume 151, 15 March 2015, Pages 472-485)
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05-10-2016
This paper identifies new ways of moving from land degradation towards sustainable land management through the development of economic mechanisms.
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Restoration bonds: A catalyst to restore ecosystem services in agricultural landscapes from the latest WRI brief "Revaluing Ecosystems: Pathways For Scaling up the Inclusion of Ecosystem Value in Decision Making"
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08-11-2016
Ecosystems provide essential services to society, from pollination and filtering of pollution to climate and water regulation.
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Monitoring SDG 15 in an EU context focuses on progress made in improving the status of ecosystems, in decelerating land degradation and in preserving biodiversity.
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Just published: Soil sealing and unsealing. State of the art and examples
Library highlights
11-04-2018
Soil sealing for urban and infrastructure development constitutes the most intense form of land degradation and affects all ecosystem services. Researchers and policy makers have become aware of this fact and call for limiting development and compensating for new soil sealing with unsealing measures…
Read more
Rural Women at Work: Bridging the gaps
Library highlights
06-03-2018
Rural women - a quarter of the world’s population - work as farmers, wage earners and entrepreneurs. They represent an important share of the agriculture workforce and their contribution to the rural economy is widely underestimated. They are concentrated in the informal economy in low-skilled, low…
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TODAY: Consultation Workshop: Responsible Land Governance for Land Degradation Neutrality
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20-03-2018
Healthy and productive land resources form the basis of societal livelihood systems. Entire populations are directly dependent on the ecosystem services provided by land resources for their well-being. It was estimated in 2011 that up to 25% of the world’s land and soil resources can be classified…
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Future Policy Org- Your online database of sustainable policy solutions
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22-03-2018
FuturePolicy.org is an online database designed for forward-thinking policy-makers, to simplify the sharing of existing and proven policy solutions to tackle the world’s most fundamental and urgent problems. Grown from the conviction that solutions exist for the most essential challenges to humanity…
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Soil resource efficiency in urbanised areas - analytical framework and implications for governance
Library highlights
26-04-2018
In this report, the notion of soil as an integral part of ecosystems and natural capital is explored and thus focused on the stock of the soil resource and the flows of valuable goods and services that can be derived from this stock. The concept of natural capital recognises soil as an asset that is…
Read more
Restoration and repair of Earth's damaged ecosystems
Library highlights
26-04-2018
In a study published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B, reviewed more than 400 studies of large-scale disturbances — logging, agriculture, oil spills, dam-building, mining, and aquatic nutrient pollution — and their aftermath. It’s the most comprehensive such review to date. The takeaways:…
Read more
2018 Global Report on Internal Displacement (GRID 2018)
Library highlights
17-05-2018
30.6 MILLION PEOPLE DISPLACED INSIDE THEIR COUNTRY IN 2017
Read more
Implementing SDG target 15.3 on “Land Degradation Neutrality”. Development of an indicator based on land use changes and soil values
Library highlights
17-05-2018
Given that land and soils are increasingly threatened by degradation, this project investigated how SDG target 15.3, which strives to achieve a land degradation neutral world by 2030, can be implemented. The report suggests necessary steps towards the implementation of Land Degradation Neutrality…
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Focus on climate change and mental health
Library highlights
18-05-2018
Awareness of the threats to mental health posed by climate change leads to questions about the potential impacts on climate scientists because they are immersed in depressing information and may face apathy, denial and even hostility from others. But they also have sources of resilience.
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The 2018 Atlas of Sustainable Development Goals: an all-new visual guide to data and development
Library highlights
28-05-2018
The World Bank is pleased to release the 2018 Atlas of Sustainable Development Goals . With over 180 maps and charts, the new publication shows the progress societies are making towards the 17 SDGs . It’s filled with annotated data visualizations, which can be reproducibly built from source code and…
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Assessment and quantification of marginal lands for biomass production in Europe using soil quality indicators
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29-05-2018
The cultivation of bioenergy plants at fertile, arable lands increasingly results in new land use conflicts with food production and cannot be considered as sustainable, therefore. Marginal lands have been frequently considered as potential alternative for producing bioenergy from biomass. However,…
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The Governance of Land Use in OECD Countries. Policy analysis and recommendations
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29-05-2018
Land use has important consequences for the environment, public health, economic productivity, inequality and social segregation. Land use policies are often complex and require co-ordination across all levels of government as well as across policy sectors. Not surprisingly, land use decisions can…
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Managing the global land resource
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12-06-2018
With a growing population with changing demands, competition for the global land resource is increasing. We need to feed a projected population of 9–10 billion by 2050, rising to approximately 12 billion by 2100. At the same time, we need to reduce the climate impact of agriculture, forestry and…
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Dust Disregards Political Boundaries, Let’s Act Together
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14-06-2018
In March this year, an unusual sand and dust storm nicknamed ‘Mars on Earth or Orange Snow’ transported and deposited dust that transformed European landscapes into a surreal orange-tinted scenery. An even more drastic dust storm swept over India recently and left behind a trail of casualties.…
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A New Framework to Enable Equitable Outcomes: Resilience and Nexus Approaches Combined
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29-06-2018
This paper conceptually integrates resilience and nexus approaches, developing a combined framework and indicating how it could effectively be operationalized in cases from mountain and mangrove social‐ecological systems. In doing so, it advances understanding of complex social‐ecological systems…
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A Foreign Policy Perspective On The Sustainable Development Goals
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17-07-2018
The German Federal Foreign Office and adelphi co-organize the side event “Global Resilience Agenda: A Foreign Policy Perspective on the SDGs” on 17 July 2018 at the High Level Political Forum 2018, taking place in the German Permanent Mission in New York. The event seeks to deepen the understanding…
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New Website Identifies NDC Linkages with SDGs and SDG Targets
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20-07-2018
The website enables the user to explore linkages between countries’ NDCs and specific SDG targets. For each SDG, the user is able to click on a specific country on the interactive map to see how many SDG targets are incorporated in its NDC. At the same time, one can click on a specific SDG and…
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European Year of Culture Heritage 2018
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20-07-2018
Throughout 2018, we are celebrating our diverse cultural heritage across Europe - at EU, national, regional and local levels. The aim of the European Year of Cultural Heritage is to encourage more people to discover and engage with Europe's cultural heritage, and to reinforce a sense of belonging to…
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Just Published: Informing investments in land degradation neutrality efforts: A triage approach to decision making
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29-08-2018
Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) target 15.3 commits countries to strive towards land degradation neutrality (LDN) by 2030. LDN requires reductions in land quality to be balanced by efforts to restore or rehabilitate degraded areas. However, decisions need to be made as to where to invest given…
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New Report: Unlocking the Inclusive Growth Story of the 21st Century: Accelerating Climate Action in Urgent Times.
Library highlights
06-09-2018
Today, the New Climate Economy launches its 2018 report, Unlocking the Inclusive Growth Story of the 21st Century: Accelerating Climate Action in Urgent Times. It demonstrates the benefits of a new low-carbon growth model and outlines how we can urgently accelerate efforts to achieve it. Bold action…
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SDG 15 – How Land Degradation Neutrality (LDN) can help integrate and accelerate other SDGs by Barron Joseph Orr (UNCCD)- Tuesday, September 25, 2018
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18-09-2018
Sustainable Development Goal 15 is “Life on Land” and one of its core targets is Land Degradation Neutrality (LDN). What is LDN and how can this new paradigm help integrate and accelerate other SDGs?
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Just Published: Soil and Sustainable Development Goals
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04-10-2018
In 2015, the UN formulated seventeen global Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), among them ending poverty, eliminating hunger, protecting the planet and ensuring peace and prosperity. Although judicious management of soils is critical to advancing most of these goals, the word soil is not once…
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New article: Agroforestry in Europe: A land management policy tool to combat climate change
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23-10-2018
Agroforestry is an integrated land use management that combines a woody component with a lower story agricultural production recognized as one of the most important tools to mitigate and adapt to climate change.
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Chapter 13 Overview: Hereditary Similarity and Variation Living organisms Are distinguished by their ability to reproduce their own kind WARNING: This chapter relies heavily on a knowledge of definitions. Terminology is crucial to understanding meiosis.
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Heredity Is the transmission of traits from one generation to the next Variation Shows that offspring differ somewhat in appearance from parents and siblings
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Genetics Is the scientific study of heredity and hereditary variation
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Concept 13.1: Offspring acquire genes from parents by inheriting chromosomes
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Inheritance of Genes Genes Are the units of heredity
Are segments of DNA Segments of nucleotides (A, T, C, G) arranged in sequence
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Each gene in an organism’s DNA
Has a specific locus on a certain chromosome Each chromosome is DNA and proteins May have 100’s or 1000’s of genes We inherit One set of chromosomes from our mother and one set from our father
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Comparison of Asexual and Sexual Reproduction
In asexual reproduction One parent produces genetically identical offspring by mitosis Figure 13.2 Parent Bud 0.5 mm This gives rise to clones – a group of genetically identical individuals
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In sexual reproduction
Two parents give rise to offspring that have unique combinations of genes inherited from the two parents
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Fertilization and Meiosis
Concept 13.2: A life cycle Is the generation-to-generation sequence of stages in the reproductive history of an organism
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Sets of Chromosomes in Human Cells
In humans Each somatic cell has 46 chromosomes, made up of two sets One set of chromosomes comes from each parent Somatic cells – all the cells other than sperm or egg
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A karyotype Is an ordered, visual representation of the chromosomes in a cell 5 µm Pair of homologous chromosomes Centromere Sister chromatids Figure 13.3
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Homologous chromosomes
Are the two chromosomes composing a pair Have the same characteristics (length, staining pattern, position of centromere) May also be called autosomes
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Sex chromosomes Are distinct from each other in their characteristics
Are represented as X and Y Determine the sex of the individual, XX being female, XY being male
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A diploid cell Has two sets of each of its chromosomes
One set came from mom, one from dad Humans have 46 chromosomes (2n = 46) n = the number of chromosomes in a set
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In a cell in which DNA synthesis has occurred
Remember . . . In a cell in which DNA synthesis has occurred All the chromosomes are duplicated and thus each consists of two identical sister chromatids Figure 13.4 Key Maternal set of chromosomes (n = 3) Cell is in G2 phase 2n = 6 Paternal set of chromosomes (n = 3) Two sister chromatids of one replicated chromosome Centromere Two nonsister chromatids in a homologous pair Pair of homologous chromosomes (one from each set)
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Unlike Somatic Cells, Gametes - sperm and egg cells, are haploid cells, containing only one set of chromosomes The haploid number is n = 23 in humans 22 autosomes 1 single sex chromosome
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Behavior of Chromosome Sets in the Human Life Cycle
At sexual maturity The ovaries and testes produce haploid gametes by meiosis
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During fertilization The zygote
These gametes fuse, forming a diploid zygote The zygote Develops into an adult organism
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The human life cycle Key Figure 13.5 Haploid gametes (n = 23)
Haploid (n) Diploid (2n) Haploid gametes (n = 23) Ovum (n) Sperm Cell (n) MEIOSIS FERTILIZATION Ovary Testis Diploid zygote (2n = 46) Mitosis and development Multicellular diploid adults (2n = 46)
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Meiosis – Reduces the Number of Chromosomes
Concept 13.3: Meiosis Takes place in two sets of divisions, meiosis I and meiosis II Results in 4 daughter cells, each genetically unique
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The Stages of Meiosis An overview of meiosis Figure 13.7 Interphase
Homologous pair of chromosomes in diploid parent cell Chromosomes replicate Homologous pair of replicated chromosomes Sister chromatids Diploid cell with replicated chromosomes 1 2 Homologous separate Haploid cells with replicated chromosomes Sister chromatids Haploid cells with unreplicated chromosomes Meiosis I Meiosis II
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Meiosis I Reduces the number of chromosomes from diploid to haploid Meiosis II Produces four haploid daughter cells
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Details of Meiosis Stages
CAUTION! Stages of meiosis I and II use the same names as stages in mitosis There are differences in these stages though!
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Stages of Meiosis Chromosomes replicated in S phase
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Stages of Meiosis I Chromosomes begin to condense
Homologous chromosomes loosely pair along their lengths In crossing over, DNA of nonsister chromatids break and rejoin to the other’s DNA In synapsis homologues are held tightly along length Tetrads – group of 4 chromosomes are visible Also, all the happenings of Prophase seen in mitosis occur too
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Stages of Meiosis I Pairs of homologous chromosomes (in tetrads) move to the middle of the metaphase plate Both chromatids of a homologous chromosome are attached to one kinetochore microtubule
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Stages of Meiosis I Chromosomes move to opposite poles
Sister chromatids remain attached at centromere
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Stages of Meiosis I Each cell has a haploid set of chromosomes, but each chromosome still has sister chromatids No chromosome replication takes place before meiosis II
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Stages of Meiosis II Spindles form
By end of Prophase II, they attach at centromere
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Stages of Meiosis II Chromosomes moved to the middle of metaphase plate Sister chromatids are not genetically identical
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Stages of Meiosis II Sister chromatids come apart, move to opposite poles
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Stages of Meiosis II Meiotic division of 1 cell produces 4 genetically different daughter cells Each daughter cell has a haploid number of chromosomes
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A Comparison of Mitosis and Meiosis
Meiosis I and II can be distinguished from mitosis because: Meiosis reduces the number of chromosome sets Mitosis conserves the number of chromosome sets And also by: By three events in Meiosis l
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1) Synapsis and crossing over
Homologous chromosomes physically connect and exchange genetic information
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2) Tetrads on the metaphase plate
At metaphase I of meiosis, paired homologous chromosomes (tetrads) are positioned on the metaphase plates
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3) Separation of homologues
At anaphase I of meiosis, homologous pairs move toward opposite poles of the cell In anaphase II of meiosis, the sister chromatids separate
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(before chromosome replication)
A comparison of mitosis and meiosis Figure 13.9 MITOSIS MEIOSIS Prophase Duplicated chromosome (two sister chromatids) Chromosome replication Parent cell (before chromosome replication) Chiasma (site of crossing over) MEIOSIS I Prophase I Tetrad formed by synapsis of homologous chromosomes Metaphase Chromosomes positioned at the metaphase plate Tetrads Metaphase I Anaphase I Telophase I Haploid n = 3 MEIOSIS II Daughter cells of meiosis I Homologues separate during anaphase I; sister chromatids remain together Daughter cells of meiosis II n Sister chromatids separate during anaphase II Anaphase Telophase Sister chromatids separate during anaphase 2n Daughter cells of mitosis 2n = 6 Text box of Figure 13.9 is excellent!
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Genetic Variation and Evolution
Concept 13.4: Reshuffling of genetic material in meiosis Produces genetic variation
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Origins of Genetic Variation Among Offspring
In species that reproduce sexually The behavior of chromosomes during meiosis and fertilization is responsible for most of the variation that arises in each generation
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1) Independent Assortment of Chromosomes
Homologous pairs of chromosomes Orient randomly at metaphase I of meiosis
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In independent assortment
Each pair of chromosomes sorts its maternal and paternal homologues into daughter cells independently of the other pairs Key Maternal set of chromosomes Paternal set of Possibility 1 Two equally probable arrangements of chromosomes at metaphase I Possibility 2 Metaphase II Daughter cells Combination 1 Combination 2 Combination 3 Combination 4 Figure 13.10
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2) Crossing Over Crossing over
Produces recombinant chromosomes that carry genes derived from two different parents Figure 13.11 Prophase I of meiosis Nonsister chromatids Tetrad Chiasma, site of crossing over Metaphase I Metaphase II Daughter cells Recombinant chromosomes
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3) Random Fertilization
The fusion of gametes Will produce a zygote with any of about 64 trillion diploid combinations
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Evolutionary Significance of Genetic Variation Within Populations
Is the raw material for evolution by natural selection
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At which stage in meiosis do daughter cells become haploid?
Only after the first cytokinesis, when the daughter cells of meiosis I are fully separated, are the cells considered haploid. Following this first division, the cell begins meiosis II with prophase II, making this the first haploid meiotic stage.
What stage are haploid cells produced?
The gametophyte phase is “haploid”, and is the part of the life cycle in which gametes are produced (by mitosis of haploid cells). In flowering plants (angiosperms) the multicelled visible plant (leaf, stem, etc.) is sporophyte, while pollen and ovaries contain the male and female gametophytes, respectively.
Is there any phase of mitosis in which the daughter cells are haploid?
The dividing cell goes through prophase, metaphase, anaphase, and telophase twice. At the end of meiosis and cytokinesis, four haploid cells are produced from a single diploid cell. These haploid daughter cells have half the number of chromosomes as the parent cell and are not genetically identical to the parent cell.
During what step in meiosis do the daughter cells become haploid quizlet?
Cytokinesis usually occurs simultaneously with telophase 1, forming two haploid daughter cells.
What process occurs during meiosis I that causes daughter cells to be haploid?
Two haploid cells are the end result of the first meiotic division. The cells are haploid because at each pole, there is just one of each pair of the homologous chromosomes. Therefore, only one full set of the chromosomes is present.
Are daughter cells haploid or diploid in meiosis?
Each daughter cell is haploid and has only one set of chromosomes, or half the total number of chromosomes of the original cell. Meiosis II is a mitotic division of each of the haploid cells produced in meiosis I. During prophase II, the chromosomes condense, and a new set of spindle fibers forms.
Does mitosis produce haploid cells?
Both mitosis and meiosis are types of cell division that involve the segregation of chromosomes into daughter cells. … When a haploid cell undergoes mitosis, it produces two genetically identical haploid daughter cells; when a diploid cell undergoes mitosis, it produces two genetically identical diploid daughter cells.
At what stage in meiosis do we go from a diploid cell to a haploid cell quizlet?
During meiosis I a cell goes from being diploid to being haploid. This requires the halving of the number of chromosomes.
How haploid cells are formed?
Haploid gametes are produced during meiosis, which is a type of cell division that reduces the number of chromosomes in a parent diploid cell by half. … Some organisms, like algae, have haploid portions of their life cycle. Other organisms, like male ants, live as haploid organisms throughout their life cycle.
Is prophase 2 haploid or diploid?
Prophase II prepares the cell for secondary meiotic division where two haploid cells eventually form four haploid cells, each containing half of the genetic information previously contained in the original, replicated diploid cell.
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https://dyslexiclibrary.com/genetic-diseases/you-asked-at-what-stage-do-daughter-cells-become-haploid.html
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In part species, cells go into a brief interphase, or interkinesis, before entering meiosis II. Interkinesis lacks one S phase, therefore chromosomes room not duplicated. The two cells created in meiosis i go with the occasions of meiosis II at the very same time. During meiosis II, the sister chromatids within the two daughter cell separate, forming four brand-new haploid gametes. The mechanics of meiosis II is similar to mitosis, other than that each separating cell has actually only one collection of homologous chromosomes. Therefore, each cell has fifty percent the number of sister chromatids to different out as a diploid cabinet undergoing mitosis.
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Prophase II
If the chromosomes decondensed in telophase I, they condensation again. If atom envelopes to be formed, they fragment into vesicles. The centrosomes the were replicated during interkinesis move away indigenous each other toward the opposite poles, and brand-new spindles space formed.
Prometaphase II
The nuclear envelopes are completely broken down, and also the spindle is totally formed. Each sister chromatid creates an individual kinetochore that attaches to microtubules indigenous opposite poles.
Metaphase II
The sister chromatids space maximally condensed and aligned in ~ the equator the the cell.
Anaphase II
The sister chromatids space pulled personally by the kinetochore microtubules and move towards opposite poles (Figure 1). Non-kinetochore microtubules elongate the cell.
In meiosis II, the connected sister chromatids staying in the haploid cells from meiosis I will be separation to type four haploid cells. The two cells produced in meiosis i go v the occasions of meiosis II in synchrony. Overall, meiosis II each other the mitotic division of a haploid cell. Throughout meiosis II, the sister chromatids space pulled personal by the spindle fibers and move toward opposite poles.
Telophase II and Cytokinesis
The chromosomes come at the opposite poles and begin to decondense. Atom envelopes form around the chromosomes. Cytokinesis separates the 2 cells right into four unique haploid cells. At this point, the newly formed nuclei room both haploid and have just one copy the the single collection of chromosomes. The cells produced are gene unique since of the random assortment the paternal and maternal homologs and because the the recombining the maternal and also paternal segment of chromosomes (with their sets that genes) that occurs throughout crossover.
The entire process of meiosis is outlined in number 2.
Meiosis II begins with the 2 haploid cells whereby each chromosome is made up of two linked sister chromatids. DNA replication go NOT take place at the beginning of meiosis II. The sister chromatids are separated, developing 4 genetically different haploid cells.
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https://princetoneclub.org/when-does-dna-replication-occur-in-meiosis/
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However, Meiosis I begins with one diploid parent cell and ends with two haploid daughter cells, halving the number of chromosomes in each cell. Meiosis II starts with two haploid parent cells and ends with four haploid daughter cells, maintaining the number of chromosomes in each cell.
What is difference between meiosis 1 and meiosis 2?
In meiosis I, homologous chromosomes separate, while in meiosis II, sister chromatids separate. Meiosis II produces 4 haploid daughter cells, whereas meiosis I produces 2 diploid daughter cells. Genetic recombination (crossing over) only occurs in meiosis I.
What is the main difference between meiosis 1 and 2 quizlet?
Meiosis I is a reduction division where only one member of a homologous pair enters each daughter cell which becomes halploid. Meiosis II only splits up sister chromatids.
Is mitosis the same as meiosis 1 or 2?
In meiosis I, homologous chromosomes line up (synapsis) into tetrads, and exchange parts (crossing over). This never happens during any other type of division. So meiosis II and mitosis are identical except for the fact that in meiosis II the cell has half the number of chromosomes (they’re haploid).
What is the major difference between meiosis 2 and mitosis?
The major difference between meiosis II and mitosis is the ploidy of the starting cell. Meiosis II begins with two haploid cells, which have half the number of chromosomes as somatic cells. This is because they will develop into gametes. Mitosis begins with a diploid cell.
Why is meiosis II needed?
The two chromosomes are not seperated during Meiosis I. The cells are diploid, therefore in order to distribute the chromosomes eqully among the daughter cells so that they contain half the chromosome , Meiosis II is necessary. … Chromosome number remains the same in the daughter cells.
What is the main difference between nondisjunction in meiosis 1 and meiosis 2?
Nondisjunction can occur during meiosis I and meiosis II, resulting in abnormal chromosomes number of gametes. The key difference between nondisjunction in meiosis 1 and 2 is that during meiosis 1, homologous chromosomes fail to separate while in meiosis II sister chromatids fail to separate.
What happens during meiosis 1 and meiosis 2 quizlet?
In meiosis I, homologous chromosomes separate resulting in a reduction of ploidy. Each daughter cell has only 1 set of chromosomes. Meiosis II, splits the sister chromatids apart. … Meiosis produces our sex cells or gametes? (eggs in females and sperm in males).
What happens when meiosis 1 and 2 decrease?
In meiosis I homologous pairs align and are separated reducing the number of chromosomes by half. In meiosis II the dyads align and sister chromatids are separated.
In what ways are meiosis II and mitosis similar?
Similarities Between Meiosis II and Mitosis
Individual chromosomes are arranged in the cell equator in both types of divisions. Both types of divisions separate sister chromatids from chromosomes. Both produce two daughter cells from a parent cell. The ploidy of the parent cell remains the same in daughter cells.
Why is meiosis 2 most similar to mitosis?
The mechanics of meiosis II is similar to mitosis, except that each dividing cell has only one set of homologous chromosomes. Therefore, each cell has half the number of sister chromatids to separate out as a diploid cell undergoing mitosis.
What happens during mitosis but not meiosis 1?
The daughter cells produced by mitosis are identical, whereas the daughter cells produced by meiosis are different because crossing over has occurred. The events that occur in meiosis but not mitosis include homologous chromosomes pairing up, crossing over, and lining up along the metaphase plate in tetrads.
What is the difference between mitosis 1 and mitosis 2?
Homologous pairs of cells are present in meiosis I and separate into chromosomes before meiosis II. In meiosis II, these chromosomes are further separated into sister chromatids. Meiosis I includes crossing over or recombination of genetic material between chromosome pairs, while meiosis II does not.
What are similarities between mitosis and meiosis II What is the significant difference between them?
Meiosis II is very similar to mitosis; chromatids are separated into separate nuclei. As in mitosis, it is spindle fibres that “pull” the chromosomes and chromatids apart. The end result of meiosis is four cells, each with one complete set of chromosomes instead of two sets of chromosomes.
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https://undiagnosedbutokay.com/genes/what-is-the-difference-between-meiosis-one-and-2.html
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As no DNA replication takes place in this second step of meiosis, the cell division process immediately begins. … Prophase II begins immediately after cytokinesis – the splitting of the diploid gamete into two haploid daughter cells.
Does replication happen again prior to prophase II?
Does replication happen again prior to prophase 2? No, because if it did, diploid cells would be produced rather than haploid cells. … The sister chromatids within the 2 daughter cells separate, forming 4 new haploid gametes. Each dividing cells has one set of homologous chromosomes.
Does DNA replication occur in meiosis 1 and 2?
No DNA replication occurs between meiosis I and meiosis II.
Is DNA always copied before meiosis 2?
DNA replication occurs before meiosis I and again before meiosis II.
What 4 things happen during prophase?
In prophase,
- chromosomes condense and become visible.
- spindle fibers emerge from the centrosomes.
- nuclear envelope breaks down.
- nucleolus disappears.
How many times does DNA divide in meiosis?
Meiosis is a process where a single cell divides twice to produce four cells containing half the original amount of genetic information. These cells are our sex cells – sperm in males, eggs in females. During meiosis one cell? divides twice to form four daughter cells.
How many times does DNA replicate before meiosis?
The initiation of meiosis requires both intrinsic and extrinsic signals. Meiosis is characterized by one round of DNA replication followed by two rounds of cell division, resulting in haploid germ cells.
Why is meiosis 2 necessary?
Meiosis is the type of cell division which is mostly associated with formation of spores or gametes.. The significance of Meiosis 2 is that it helps to maintain the chromosome no of mother cell and daughter cell by equational division …
Does mitosis replicate DNA?
This process involves replication of the cell’s chromosomes, segregation of the copied DNA, and splitting of the parent cell’s cytoplasm. … The outcome of binary fission is two new cells that are identical to the original cell.
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https://autismpluggedin.com/hereditary-diseases/does-dna-replicate-before-prophase-2.html
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In meiosis II, the connected sister chromatids remaining in the haploid cells from meiosis I will be split to form four haploid cells. In some species, cells enter a brief interphase, or interkinesis, that lacks an S phase, before entering meiosis II. Chromosomes are not duplicated during interkinesis. The two cells produced in meiosis I go through the events of meiosis II in synchrony. Overall, meiosis II resembles the mitotic division of a haploid cell.
In prophase II, if the chromosomes decondensed in telophase I, they condense again. If nuclear envelopes were formed, they fragment into vesicles. The centrosomes duplicated during interkinesis move away from each other toward opposite poles, and new spindles are formed. In prometaphase II, the nuclear envelopes are completely broken down, and the spindle is fully formed. Each sister chromatid forms an individual kinetochore that attaches to microtubules from opposite poles. In metaphase II, the sister chromatids are maximally condensed and aligned at the center of the cell. In anaphase II, the sister chromatids are pulled apart by the spindle fibers and move toward opposite poles.
In telophase II, the chromosomes arrive at opposite poles and begin to decondense. Nuclear envelopes form around the chromosomes. Cytokinesis separates the two cells into four genetically unique haploid cells. At this point, the nuclei in the newly produced cells are both haploid and have only one copy of the single set of chromosomes. The cells produced are genetically unique because of the random assortment of paternal and maternal homologs and because of the recombination of maternal and paternal segments of chromosomes—with their sets of genes—that occurs during crossover.
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http://www.opentextbooks.org.hk/ditatopic/34789
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We proposed two new methods for registering pre-operative MRI with intra-operative 3D ultrasound data, during craniotomies for brain tumor resection. These methods will be delivered as part of an extensible NeuralNav toolkit that provides a common API for fetching tracker data and intra-operative images from commercial (VectorVision by BrainLAB) and research (Image-Guided Surgical Toolkit, IGSTK by Georgetown Univ) surgical guidance systems. Development and validation of methods and efforts will be conducted in collaboration with top neurosurgeons, the developers of IGSTK, and BrainLAB.
Modeling Tumor Micro-environments
New contrast enhanced ultrasound technologies are now enabling detailed images of tissue vascular structure and provide the opportunity to interrogate vascular morphology as an indicator of tumor malignancy based on ultrasound data. Prior work has developed algorithms to glean quantifiable vascular morphology metrics from Magnetic Resonance Imaging data, which have then been shown to be reliable predictors of tumor malignancy and response to therapy in humans. In this project, Kitware will extend this diagnostic capability to the more widely available modality of contrast enhanced ultrasound. Co-PI Dayton has recently demonstrated ultrasonic microvascular mapping using a new type of ultrasound probe which enables the rapid acquisition of 3D high-contrast and high-resolution images of blood vessel structure. If successful, this project will provide a novel and efficient method for clinical ultrasound system manufacturers to implement to assess tumor response to therapy.
Traumatic Brain Injury Quantification
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BWH: Surgicapl Planning Lab
Duke University: Neurosurgery
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UNC Biomedical Engineering
Nearly 1.7 million Americans suffer traumatic brain injury (TBI) annually. We propose to develop and validate computational algorithms, based on image segmentation, registration and analysis, which yield quantitative measures to characterize injury, monitor pathology evolution, inform patient prognosis and optimize patient care workflows. This project addresses the current clinical need for informative TBI metrics and the technical need for easy-to-use image analysis tools capable of handling large, heterogenous pathologies that cause severe brain deformations. This project also advances the development of “geometric metamorphosis” which can register images with significant appearance changes caused by structures that grow or contract, such as TBI pathologies. Using geometric metamorphosis, we can derive novel voxel-wise quantifications and visualizations of pathology infiltration and of brain deformations induced by injury or longitudinal brain changes, both within lesions and within GM and WM. These measures will be used to predict outcome and guide clinical decision making. The focus is on final clinical impact and on evaluating the relationship between brain remodeling (e.g. structural changes) with functional recovery or decline.
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UCLA: Laboratory of Neuro Imaging
NA-MIC
Liver Ablation Guidance
We aim to develop an operating-room-ready system that provides novel 3D visualizations for needle guidancein soft tissue. The visualizations fuse intra-operative ultrasound (U/S) and pre-operative (pre-op) CTimages by combining two novel technologies: 1) a radically different way of visualizing and interacting with fused U/S-CT images, which we call Spotlight; and 2) an innovative algorithm that automatically and continuously performs U/S-to-CT registration. We will start with open surgical hepatic tumor ablation, but our system’s utility extends well beyond that specific procedure.
The problem: during treatment, surgeons and radiologists must integrate information from several imagemodalities. While CT has excellent diagnostic value, tissues deform intra-operatively due to breathing and surgical manipulation, making pre-op CT a poor representation of intra-op states and positions. On the other hand, intra-op U/S images are real-time, but have a limited field of view and often do not depict pathologies as well as CT. With the current standard of care, the physician alternates between viewing (annotated) pre-op CTand live U/S on separate monitors, with no assistance in correlating features across them.
Multi-scale Spatio-temporal Visualization
In recent years, various terms – the Virtual Physiological Human (VPH), Integrative Biology, Physiome Research – have been used to describe the trend in biomedical research towards the consideration of multi-system processes.
The Multiscale Spatiotemporal Visualisation (MSV) project aims, by international cooperation between the European@neurIST and VPHOP integrated projects, the US National Alliance for Medical Imaging Computing (NA-MIC), and the New Zealand-based IUPS Physiome initiative:
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to define an interactive visualisation paradigm for biomedical multiscale data,
to validate it on the large collections produced by the VPH projects, and
to develop a concrete implementation as an open-source extension to the Visualisation Took Kit (VTK), ready to be incorporated by virtually any biomedical modelling software project.
High-Throughput Small Animal Imaging
While effective methods have been developed for automatically extracting brain morphometry from human MRI scans, few automated quantitative analysis methods exist for small animal MRI.
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In this work we propose to develop automatic, reliable, high-throughput MR image analysis methods for small animal, brain morphometry studies. These methods will be made available to investigators via an intuitive web-based interface for collecting, distributing, and automatic processing the imaging data in small animal studies. The web-based data sharing and processing system will also support the inspection of the ongoing processing and the examination of the computed results. This web-based processing system will be generic in nature and could be extended to host and process human MRI data as well as data from other modalities and other applications.
To demonstrate and evaluate the whole system, our collaborators will apply it to several studies of murine and rat brain morphometry currently conducted at UNC. The feedback collected from these studies will directly improve the usability of the proposed system.
UNC Neuro Image Research
and Analysis Lab (NIRAL)
COVALIC: Algorithm Validation
Validation remains a difficult task and several tools have emerged to help scientists with validation tasks. The open source Insight Toolkit and Visualization Toolkit provide off the shelf algorithms for medical imaging making comparison with other methods easier. Grand challenges for segmentation and registration, like the ones hosted at the Medical Image Computing and Computer Assisted Intervention, invite researchers to test their algorithms against each other providing a level of validation. However, no complete infrastructure is currently being offer to the research validation for collection and hosting validation tools.
The aim of this proposal is to develop an infrastructure to help scientists to perform validation tasks. While considered an important element towards full clinical validation, the system does not aim to perform a full clinical validation, but rather help research choose the best tools for their clinical application. The proposed system, named COVALIC, provides an online repository of testing and training datasets, an open source framework for validation metrics and an infrastructure for hosting grand challenges and publishing validation results.
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https://www.aylward.org/research/algorithms
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Hybrid Approach In Natural Language Processing
Language is a tricky thing. And it’s everywhere. Humans and businesses, both run on language. It can be found in a variety of places, including emails, corporate documents, blogs like this one, and more. Not only is there a great amount of language data available to and stored within businesses, but the volume of information is also exponentially expanding. The importance of language in the enterprise ecosystem cannot be overstated. Organizations, however, struggle to leverage the value of linguistic data, despite its pervasiveness in the industry. Moreover, the most common type of data generated by humans is unstructured text. Rich insights can often be found buried inside this unstructured data, which can be used to make better business decisions, shape product strategy, and improve consumer experiences.
Organizations want a mechanism for utilizing the vast amounts of unstructured data at their disposal. And NLP is where the enterprise can make a meaningful difference. Almost half of firms now use natural language processing (NLP) applications, and one-fourth of businesses aim to start employing NLP technology in the coming months, according to IBM’s Global AI Adoption Index 2021. However, because of the intrinsically unique (and sometimes chaotic) character of human language, the notion of starting a new project or expanding an existing Natural Language Processing project can feel overwhelming. So, let’s dig deeper and learn a little more about NLP and its approaches.
What is NLP?
NLP is an area of artificial intelligence that aids computers in comprehending, interpreting, and simulating human speech. It can be explained as the ability of machines to study and detect human language. Text mining, sentiment analysis, and machine translation are some of the applications of Natural Language Processing (NLP). We can extract essential features, classifications, summaries, and relational concepts from text data using NLP. Even massive amounts of data can be simplified using NLP solutions because their applications allow for faster processing and the use of business models to extract human language insights. It gives structure to unstructured data, allowing organizations to scale the human act of reading, organizing, and quantifying text data so that it can be more easily analyzed – resulting in faster time to insights and, ultimately, faster evidence-based decisions. To bridge the gap between human communication and computer understanding, NLP uses Machine Learning and human-generated linguistic rules.
Also Read: Top 7 NLP Trends Transforming E-commerce and Online Retail in 2021
Approaches in NLP
There are two main approaches to NLP – Rule-based and Machine Learning.
1. Rule-based Approach
A rule-based approach extracts categorizes, and analyses text using linguistic rules. It is a human-driven system based on linguistic conventions that have already been established. This approach examines linguistic and semantic linkages to comprehend language and its parts using linguistic rules and knowledge inherent in the knowledge graph (e.g., grammar, sentence structure, etc.).
It is vital to have a subject matter expert (SME) and/or linguist involved in the process. With this technique, there is generally a high level of control and the capacity to alter regulations as needed. This method is best suited for task-oriented interactions or search queries. The focus of rule-based approaches is usually on pattern matching or parsing. The most obvious downside of the rule-based method is that it necessitates the use of qualified experts. Rules must be manually developed and improved on a regular basis. Overall, a rule-based system is effective at capturing a certain linguistic phenomenon.
2. Machine learning Approach
NLP makes extensive use of machine learning (ML). This method relies on algorithms that understand language without having to be explicitly programmed. This is accomplished by the application of statistical methods, in which the system analyses the training set in order to generate its own knowledge, rules, and classifiers. This approach can be further classified into Unsupervised and Supervised ML approaches. Both methods may necessitate a large amount of training data. When good training data sets are available, the introduction of machine learning algorithms can greatly speed up the development of the capability of some NLP systems. In practice, however, things aren’t often so straightforward.
Unsupervised machine learning models work with unlabeled input that the algorithm tries to make sense of on its own by extracting features and patterns. This method gives you less control over the model and introduces more unknowns, making it more difficult to intervene if something goes wrong or has to be altered. Supervised ML models need preexisting labels such as sentiment or categories. The model’s accuracy improves over time as a result of human training and SMEs. It may be a suitable fit for conversational experiences due to the combination of human training and machine learning.
A hybrid approach in NLP
NLP, ML, and human input are all part of the hybrid approach, which combines the best of rule-based and machine learning approaches. Human experience guides accurate analysis, but machine learning makes that analysis scale easily. Organizations can utilize both ML and rule-based approaches in tandem in a hybrid manner, allowing them to reap the benefits of both. The hybrid approach in NLP gives you a number of options for determining the optimum path for modeling your text and making faster business decisions. Using a hybrid strategy to analyze unstructured text data is generally a smart practice, depending on your goal.
By using semi-supervised learning to automate the tagging of data based on human input to your training data, machine learning can assist to reduce the human model building work even further. This method does not even require a significant amount of training data. It increases system openness to ensure a positive customer experience and the ability to track against the KPIs. In addition, this approach provides greater flexibility, iterability, and speed, resulting in less load on resources. It is appropriate for both conversational and task-oriented projects.
Human language is a complex problem for which businesses have been searching for an optimal solution for a long time. This can finally be solved with a mixed NLP approach. Hybrid techniques can help us improve the results of our NLP applications in various cases. For example, if we’re creating a grammar checker, we’ll need a module that recognizes multiword expressions like kick the bucket, as well as a rule-based module that detects the incorrect pattern and generates the correct one. This is an example of a hybrid strategy.
Final Words
Given the vast volumes of data available now, NLP is essentially statistical. We utilize NLP on a regular basis as consumers, from our first Google search of the day to our curated daily news items, our online buying experience and reading reviews, and our conversational assistants like OK Google, Alexa, and Siri. NLP is ingrained in our daily life. While the traditional approaches to NLP continue to prevail, each of those approaches comes with its set of cons. The only way to handle the inherent limits of each technique while also reaping the benefits of each is to use a hybrid technique.
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https://algoscale.com/blog/what-is-hybrid-approach-in-nlp/
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Future-proof Your Android Code, Part 2: Functional Reactive Programming in Action
It’s also important to note that Named Entity Recognition models rely on accurate PoS tagging from those models. Solve regulatory compliance problems that involve complex text documents. Other classification learners, such as the Tree Ensemble Learner, Naive Bayes Learner, or SVM Learnercan be applied as well. The output of the first metanode “Document Creation” is a data table with only one column containing the Document cells.
Top 10 AI Sentiment Analysis Tools Companies Should Use in 2022 – Analytics Insight
Top 10 AI Sentiment Analysis Tools Companies Should Use in 2022.
Posted: Tue, 01 Feb 2022 08:00:00 GMT [source]
Artificial Neural Network architectures were widely used in the literature (). Figure3 shows a simple feed-forward NN with 3 layers as the input layer , hidden layer , and output layer . There is also a connection between two neurons that has a parameter called weight and is represented by w and applied to calculate the output. As we expected, the accuracy of applying doc2vec for a window size of 10 is higher than with a window size of 5, but their difference is negligible.
Table of Contents
Manually gathering information about user-generated data is time-consuming, to say the least. That’s why more organizations are turning to automatic sentiment analysis methods—but basic models don’t always cut it. In this article, Toptal Freelance Data Scientist Rudolf Eremyan gives an overview of some sentiment analysis gotchas and what can be done to address them.
In this section, we will explain our experiments in applying Deep Learning methods on the StockTwits dataset. We tried to see if Deep Learning models could improve the accuracy of sentiment analysis of StockTwits messages. Deep Learning attempt to mimic the hierarchical learning approach of the human brain. Using Deep Learning in extract features bring non-linearity to the Big Data analysis. The results of applying three commonly used Deep Learning methods in natural language processing are provided in the following section. In our work, a word embedding model for word representation and a combination of feed-forward neural networks models and recurrent models with parametric changes for sentiment analysis are presented.
Need of Meaning Representations
In the example above words like ‘considerate” and “magnificent” would be classified as positive in sentiment. But for a human it’s obvious that the overall sentiment is negative. They can then use sentiment analysis to monitor if customers are seeing improvements in functionality and reliability of the check deposit. A typical feature extraction application of Explicit Semantic Analysis is to identify the most relevant features of a given input and score their relevance. Scoring an ESA model produces data projections in the concept feature space. Every human language typically has many meanings apart from the obvious meanings of words.
Very early text mining systems were entirely based on rules and patterns. Over time, as natural language processing and machine learning techniques have evolved, an increasing number of companies offer products that rely exclusively on machine learning. She studied Mathematical Methods in Economics for her Bachelor’s degree and developed a deep interest in data analysis. Congratulations on building your first sentiment analysis model in Python!
Using Natural Language Processing to Preprocess and Clean Text Data
You need to process it through a natural language processing pipeline before you can do anything interesting with it. Some sentiment analysis models will assign semantic analysis machine learning a negative or a neutral polarity to this sentence. Those especially interested in social media might want to look at “Sentiment Analysis in Social Networks”.
- For fair evaluation, we chose the training and the test sets as the same for preprocessing.
- Instead, you’ll get a practical introduction to the workflow and constraints common to classification problems.
- Currently, Prof. Dr. Xin is serving on Management Committee Board of Denmark for several EU ICT projects.
- In his professional capacity as a data scientist he has been responsible for clustering, predictive analytics, as well as reporting projects.
Using Deep Learning algorithms can help us to extract semantic features from a massive amount of text data in addition to reduce dimensions of the data representations. Hinton et al. propose a Deep Learning model to learn the binary codes for documents. The word count vector of a document is the lowest layer and the learned binary code of the documents is the highest layer.
Approaches to Meaning Representations
In , they focused on the important challenges which have an effect on scores and polarity in sentiment at the sentiment evaluation phase. SA is one of the most active researches in NLP, and it is studied in many fields such as data mining, text mining and social sciences such as political science, communications, and finance. This is because opinions are so important in all human activities, and we often look for others’ opinions whenever we need to make a decision . Although CNN is very popular in image processing, the ability to find the internal structures of a Big Data makes it a desirable model for our purposes. We employ CNN to see if it can be used to improve our sentiment analysis task by using the Tensorflow package in Python. The first step of our process is embedding words into low dimensional vectors.
Natural Language Processing in Python: Master Data Science and Machine Learning for spam detection, sentiment analysis, latent semantic analysis, and article spinning (Machine Learning in Python) https://t.co/zRTlJa4vFS #python #ad
— Python Flux (@pythonbot_) February 7, 2021
The automated customer support software should differentiate between such problems as delivery questions and payment issues. In some cases, an AI-powered chatbot may redirect the customer to a support team member to resolve the issue faster. It’s a method used to process any text and categorize it according to various predefined categories.
Currently, he also serves on the editorial board for more than ten international journals. We used Google Drive to store our dataset, which is a cloud-based file storage service provided by Google, and allows users to store files on the servers and share files. We also used the Google Colaboratory system for our work which, is a free cloud service from Google for AI developers that supports Jupyter notebooks. In Google Colaboratory, we can use Python with additional libraries such as Keras, OpenCV and etc., to develop deep learning applications. One of its applications is dimension reduction for abstract representation, reducing the number of parameters that are used and consequently reducing the computation time of models.
- “Emoji Sentiment Ranking v1.0” is a useful resource that explores the sentiment of popular emoticons.
- The sentiment data from these sources can be used to inform key business decisions.
- As we expected, the accuracy of applying doc2vec for a window size of 10 is higher than with a window size of 5, but their difference is negligible.
- It’s a good way to get started , but it isn’t cutting edge and it is possible to do it way better.
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https://melioncapitalfund.com/category/nlp-software/
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In early classification of time series the objective is to build models which are able to make class-predictions for time series as accurately and as early as possible, when only a part of the series is available. It is ...
Sentiment analysis with genetically evolved Gaussian kernels
(2019)
Sentiment analysis consists of evaluating opinions or statements based on text analysis. Among the methods used to estimate the degree to which a text expresses a certain sentiment are those based on Gaussian Processes. ...
Characterising the rankings produced by combinatorial optimisation problems and finding their intersections
(2019)
The aim of this paper is to introduce the concept of intersection between combinatorial optimisation problems. We take into account that most algorithms, in their machinery, do not consider the exact objective function ...
An Experimental Study in Adaptive Kernel Selection for Bayesian Optimization
(2019)
Bayesian Optimization has been widely used along with Gaussian Processes for solving expensive-to-evaluate black-box optimization problems. Overall, this approach has shown good results, and particularly for parameter ...
Evolving Gaussian Process Kernels for Translation Editing Effort Estimation
(2019)
In many Natural Language Processing problems the combination of machine learning and optimization techniques is essential. One of these problems is estimating the effort required to improve, under direct human supervision, ...
Bayesian Optimization Approaches for Massively Multi-modal Problems
(2019)
The optimization of massively multi-modal functions is a challenging task, particularly for problems where the search space can lead the op- timization process to local optima. While evolutionary algorithms have been ...
Anatomy of the attraction basins: Breaking with the intuition
(2019)
olving combinatorial optimization problems efficiently requires the development of algorithms that consider the specific properties of the problems. In this sense, local search algorithms are designed over a neighborhood ...
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https://bird.bcamath.org/handle/20.500.11824/12/discover?filtertype_0=author&filter_relational_operator_0=authority&filter_0=285c4fb0-6d1b-4a2c-bb20-e0614a141a8c&filtertype=dateIssued&filter_relational_operator=equals&filter=2019
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Scholars in the Middle Ages knew that the world was round; and virtually all maintained the concept first formulated by the Ancient Greeks. From at least the 14th century, belief in a flat Earth among the educated was almost nonexistent, despite fanciful depictions in art, such as the exterior of Hieronymus Bosch's famous triptych The Garden of Earthly Delights, in which a disc-shaped Earth is shown floating inside a transparent sphere.
Columbus was quite sure he would never fall over the edge of the world. Cosmology, was, however, still in the Dark Ages – Copernicus and Galileo had not yet proposed their theories – and Columbus must have had some doubts. The promise of fame and fortune, the likelihood of only a few more years of life (life expectancy at his time of birth was only 30 and he was 41 when he set sail), and supreme confidence in his navigation and seafaring skills were enough to dispel and lingering doubts.
The real question however, was not about the spherical nature of the Earth but whether or not it revolved around the sun; but up until the time of Copernicus there was little debate about the issue at all. If there ever was received wisdom, it was that the Earth was not only the center of the solar system but the center of the universe. All scientific conclusions were based on this assumption.
Not only were scientists, academics, and philosophers convinced of this particular cosmology, but common people understood it on the most basic level. It was obvious that the sun moved from East to West, came nearer to and farther from the Earth, was responsible for the seasons, storms, and fair weather.
The intellectual and the intuitive were one. There was no debate, no confusion, and no doubt.
However, Copernicus’ De revolutionibus orbium coelestium in 1543 and Galileo’s equally important treatise some 80 years later, threw the the entire civilized world into scientific, religious, philosophical, and cosmological turmoil.
It is hard for anyone living today to imagine how revolutionary the conclusions of Copernicus and Galileo were. The bombs of Hiroshima and Nagasaki ushered in the nuclear age, but at the time few realized or were even concerned about its implications. The US, with expected genius and ingenuity had simply developed a very powerful bomb and with it ended the war.
The telephone changed the nature of human communication – personal social interaction became less important, but life became more efficient and more extensive. By the time it became universal, people had gotten used to its utility and had forgotten their concerns about community integrity.
Few people had any idea about the impact and implications of the computer and even fewer could have imagined the coming interface between mind-brain and the computer which will revolutionize human communication and interaction and the nature of reality itself.
Similarly few Americans had any idea how recombinant DNA would facilitate the reconfiguration of the human genome. Man, not God or random selection, will soon be the final arbiter of individual human design.
Both discoveries – modern communications and the malleability of the human genome – are truly revolutionary. Virtuality will replace reality, physical limitations will no longer constrain the human mind, and human nature itself will be reconfigured again and again as easily as designer clothes.
However the Copernican revolution of 1543 was different, more fundamental, and more existential. All modern technological inventions have been either outgrowths of previous inventions or in some cases steps of genius or insight. Because of their inevitable impact on the fundamental nature of human life, they are indeed revolutionary; but they are insignificant compared to the complete and absolute overturning of the basic fundamentals of human belief which came without warning or preparation in 1543.
Our revolutions are incremental, slow, and progressive. There is nothing earth-shattering about each new step. The state of virtual reality began decades ago in primitive form; has now evolved, thanks to cybernetic and the power of super-computers to a very believable alternate perception; and will ultimately evolve to a state where there will be no discernible difference between virtuality and reality.
Our ability to determine our own genetic destiny – not just physical configurations but types and levels of intellectual ability, creativity, and spiritual mediated through genetic manipulation – began decades ago with the decoding of the human genome and the first simple experiments with cloning and simple genetic engineering of plants. We are in the midst of two of the most events in human evolution, and we are hardly aware of them. They began long ago, came slowly and unobtrusively, and are now part of human life and expectations.
Imagine the world before Copernicus – a world where the sun always rose and set predictably. Its course was predictable, seasons came and went accordingly, and there was no questioning of the cosmological, universal, spiritual order. Before Copernicus the world was fixed, stable, and the center of all things.
After him, not only were the intellectual foundations of the relationships between human life and the rest of the universe forever altered, but the Earth moved. It was traveling through space propelled by some unknown force according to unknown physical laws. If the Sun were the center of the universe, with complete control over the Earth, then what other powers did it manifest? How many other Earths might their be?
Of course it took many decades for these new ideas to be widespread and universally accepted; but in the first century after Copernicus the intellectual, philosophical, scientific, and religious world was set back on its heels, forced to refute an idea which was the very antithesis of every canon in the world.
Man was no longer so important, the revolution said. We may have been created by God but he also created a limitless, endless universe of infinite possibilities. Nothing since has so questioned the very nature of humanity and its place in the universe. While Jesus was sent here, he might well have been sent to a billion other planets as well. God might be completely indifferent – or better, equally indifferent – to the fate of both those who live on Earth and those scattered elsewhere.
If it is confirmed that we are not alone in the universe – that we share it with billions of other intelligences; that our humanity is not a result of God’s plan but that of some other architect; or that our very existence is fictional and that our lives are no more than invented tales and amusing stories – we will suffer the same existential fate as those living in the days of Copernicus.
Perhaps the shock will be less for us than for those who lived in the late Middle Ages. They never saw the revolution coming; but at least we have already anticipated it. Speculation on the existence of life on other planets is common and universal.
If another intelligence makes itself known, we might be less surprised than frightened, curious, or finally accommodating.
More than likely, however, the dimensions of this intelligence will be so unfathomable, so unexpected, so completely alien to human thought or imagination that we will be able to do nothing but worship it.
How will we react if our profound belief in our God, his Creation, his dominion, and his salvation is challenged by unimagined discoveries about the universe, the nature of being and divinity?
On the other hand the next revolution might be Copernican in nature. We may discover that we are governed by laws that defy physics, relativity, or quantum theory and are far more fundamental; or that we are integral parts of something far larger and more universal than that described by current definitions of existence.
In either case we will be as unready for the revelations as Europeans were in 1543. It is one thing to correctly anticipate the trajectory of scientific, social, or philosophical trends. Another thing entirely to cope with the implications of a universe turned on its head.
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https://www.uncleguidosfacts.com/2017/04/falling-off-edge-of-flat-worldit-could.html
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The first sections speak about clinical and moral views at the recognition, feelings and psychological talents of animals. Later sections handle how human actions corresponding to technology, legislation, faith, farming, nutrients creation, alternate, improvement and schooling recognize or forget about animals' sentience and welfare, and assessment the choices for adjustments in our rules, our practices and our pondering. the result's not anything lower than a stark and beneficial look at the center of humanity and the ethics that govern our animal powered society.
Read or Download Animals, Ethics and Trade: The Challenge of Animal Sentience PDF
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http://www.ingersoll-imc.ru/read/animals-ethics-and-trade-the-challenge-of-animal-sentience
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The Leviathan https://villains.fandom.com/wiki/Scarlet_King is an entity formed as the manifestation of the tension between the modern world and the pre-modern world and the rage it creates. Originally it existing as the concept of there being something greater than man, such as gods or the supernatural, that could not be controlled or reasoned with. Modern ideas spurred on by the scientific revolution and the enlightenment encouraged humanity to understand their surrounding environment with a new perspective that focused on rationality and proven facts based on trial and error analysis. This concept of the Leviathan was then shaped by the encroachment of modernity into the old world and the clash between the two. An organization known as "The cult of the Leviathan" seeks to reincarnate their deity on the mortal plane directly in the form of a human child with Leviathan's soul. The group seek to return the world to its pre-modern age where humanity After being born into the world through mortal means, he will grow up to become the living manifestation of their god and subjugate humanity to his rule, with the cult at the helm of power. This plan would have severe consequences that are more far reaching than even the cult had planned.
Time works in a linear fashion, with the past, present, and future all occurring simultaneously. The laws that govern the universe (gravity, physics, etc.) work in tandem to create our reality and what counts for normalcy, acting as stabilizers to keep it together. However, reality is fragile, and can be disrupted by an outside force that violate those natural laws meant to keep it stable. Manufacturing a deity from scratch has caused ripples in the timeline, affecting its linear in all directions and changing it forever. These ripples have altered history, retroactively inserting the deity into specific moments and events, forcibly making it part of the timeline and effectively retconning history. Now that the new reality has overlaid with the old one, this has created a paradox: the cult has essentially created the very god that they worship, which has led to inconsistencies within the space-time continuity. The god-child was born at a specific point in time, yet has always and will always exist within the past, present, and future.
However, there have been significant amounts of individuals throughout time who have become aware of these contradictions, both in the past and future. They have noticed the retcon and retain memories of the original timeline which no longer exist, as history has been rewritten to accommodate this new god. The world does not remember this past, and regard these people as crazy or liars. For them, their lives has always been this way. This is similiar to a software upgrade, such as going from a windows 95 to a windows vista. For those others, it is like they went to bed and woke up in an alternate world with a revised history. Since they were part of the same change as everyone else was, how could this have happened?
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https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/213842/how-could-a-time-paradox-caused-by-a-manufactured-deity-fail-to-produce-a-full-r
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Follicular lymphoma (FL) is an incurable indolent non-Hodgkin's lymphoma (NHL) that behaves heterogeneously. Although epitomised by the t(14;18), the full spectrum of genetic lesions and the clonal hierarchy that contribute to the malignancy had been incomplete. Thereby, the goal of this thesis was to enumerate, using next generation sequencing (NGS) approaches, the genomic landscape of FL, modes of clonal evolution and intra-tumour heterogeneity by undertaking multi-site (spatial) and multi-time point (temporal) genetic profiling. Discovery exome or genome sequencing followed by targeted sequencing in over 130 FL patients demonstrated that epigenetic deregulation is critical for this malignancy with almost every tumour carrying at least one mutation in genes involved in epigenetic control ('epimutations'). Other biological pathways were also frequently altered including genes involved in B-cell development, chromatin remodelling, immune modulation, JAK-STAT and NF-ĸB signalling, overlapping with the genomic landscape of closely-related diffuse large B cell lymphoma. Previously unreported mutations in components of the amino-acid sensing arm of the mTOR pathway (RRAGC, ATP6V1B2 and ATP6AP1) were identified in >25% of FL patients indicating a role for mTOR-driven metabolic and signalling processes in lymphomagenesis. Tumour evolution was not linear, but rather arose divergently through an ancestral population referred to as the common progenitor cell (CPC) that acts as a reservoir that repopulates the tumour during successive disease events. Additionally, clonality assessment together with temporal profiling of both transformed and untransformed FL cohorts revealed mutations in epigenetic regulators, CREBBP and KMT2D, as early initiating events whilst genes involved in cell cycle regulation and NF-ĸB signalling were predominantly late relapse- or transformation-specific events. Spatial and temporal profiling demonstrate diverse intra-tumour heterogeneity cautioning against an over-reliance on a patient's single diagnostic biopsy to capture the entire genetic landscape of an individual's FL tumour. Collectively these data provide new insights into the genetic basis of FL that could be used to spur the development of precision or stratified-based therapeutic approaches.
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https://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.791849
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This monograph presents a new discipline—cultural genomics—as a complex approach for studying the interrelation between genomic data and culture and the impact of culture on genomic evolution in human history. It analyzes three basic components of cultural genomics—archaeology, genealogy, and genomics. The author explores the classifications of archaeology and genealogy as traditional disciplines and tests their peculiarities against the limitations and delimitations of genomics to resolve the problems of human origin and historical demography. The main thesis in the book is that cultural genomics as a complex discipline has been changing the dynamics of exploring the human cultural identity in revolutionary ways and the problems of personal origin and lineage. Additionally, this book analyzes the evolution of human civilization and its requirement for close integration of genomics, archaeology, genetic genealogy, traditional genealogy, and other related social and cultural disciplines.
Cultural identity is the basic constructor of the progress of human civilization. Cultural genomics allows researchers to personalize human history and embed new parameters of identity from the perspective of origin. However, the success of the scholarly results depends on how well genomics is blended with related branches of the science of humanity to produce quality results. Many topics of cultural identity still dwell only in the domain of traditional archaeology and genealogy, although genomics has expanded the opportunity to learn not only how cultural identity evolved, but also to create platforms of global networks of interrelatedness that have no analogies in the previous human scholarly experience.
The innovative scholarly problems that the author addresses and the general attempt to constitute cultural genomics as a leading complex discipline of human cultural identity in the 21st century connect the book to the interests of the global scholarly community and all who are interested in cultural identity, genomic archaeology, genetic genealogy, and human origin as well as the evolution of human civilization. The author of this study, Dr. Lolita Nikolova, is a globally renowned scientist who has conducted an in-depth and complex original research; she uniquely combines expertise in the fields of prehistoric archaeology, genealogy, and cultural genomics.
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https://novapublishers.com/shop/cultural-genomics-and-the-changing-dynamics-of-cultural-identity-the-scholarly-bond-of-archaeology-genealogy-and-genomics/
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What does religion and spirituality (R/S) have to do with clinical patient care? More than first meets the eye. It turns out, that R/S can have a significant role in medical decision making shaping the clinical encounter, the treatment sought and adhered to, clinical outcomes, and the level of patient reported satisfaction with quality of care received. Physicians, nursing staff, pharmacists, allied health care professionals, social workers and public health professionals will encounter patients whose R/S beliefs will shape their response to care received. Drawing on research and clinical experience, this talk will explore how to we make room for and conduct patients' R/S assessment within the clinical encounter, as well as how clinicians may appropriately manage their our own R/S beliefs and/or biases when engaging with patient's whose beliefs and views may differ from their own.
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http://www.bioethics.pitt.edu/event/getting-soul-matter-engaging-patients-discussion-their-religiousspiritual-beliefs-during
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The Consortium is seeking a Part-Time Inter-Faith Spiritual Care Coordinator: 20 hours Wednesday through Saturday (scheduled hours can vary) in Hampden County. The Inter-Faith Spiritual Care Coordinator teams with the Social Justice and Spiritual Care Director to assist individuals with meeting their own emotional, spiritual, and religious needs through a person-centered approach. This is accomplished by supporting individuals with awareness around meaning, purpose, sense of belonging, community, and finding their source of resiliency.
The successful candidate will provide direct support to adults with developmental disabilities and/or autism, with the exploration of personal beliefs, values, relationships, and community connections. The role of the Inter-Faith Care Support is to support individuals who are interested define their spirituality and to support them by identifying and advocating for the resources to meet their goals.
Specific responsibilities of the Inter-Faith Spiritual Care Coordinator include:
- Identifying individuals who are interested in exploring their personal spirituality
- Providing person centered support to explore personal beliefs, values, relationships and community connections
- Acting as a liaison to help build or maintain relationships between individuals supported and spirituality connections
- Partaking in spiritual community development by assisting in the building or strengthening of relationships with an individual’s chosen spiritual relationships and connections
- Providing Bereavement Support when needed/Hospital visitations
- Assisting in developing and aiding in the education of faith-based practices to those individuals who inquire
- Submit a weekly report detailing the interactions and progress for the week including individuals, locations, community contacts, assessments, etc.
- Assist with training to staff regarding spirituality support for Home and Community Connections Orientation
Other Duties: Other duties may be included as deemed necessary to job function. Additional duties will be formally added to job description as identified.
Requirements: A high school degree or equivalent. Inter-Faith Spiritual training such as Chaplin Certification or Formal Religious Studies Certification. Credits toward a BA in Religious Studies or related field may be substituted based on the credits completed towards degree. A minimum of one CPE (Clinical Pastoral Education) unit. Experience in a Spiritual leadership may be substituted. A valid Massachusetts driver’s license and reliable transportation is also required. A history of two years positive driving record is required. A basic competency in computer skills which include navigating windows-based programs and the internet.
To Apply: Please email cover letter and resume to Rev. Gregory Jones at [email protected] by 08/26/2022. The Consortium creates conditions in which people who have faced marginalization, oppression, or otherwise felt invisible are better able to pursue their dreams and strengthen communities through voice, choice, and inclusion. This is supported by an organizational commitment to address systems of oppression and work toward undoing the harms they have caused. AA/EOE.
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https://wmtcinfo.org/job/inter-faith-spiritual-care-coordinator/
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As a church school we believe passionately that our inclusive and inspiring Collective Worship has a unique role to play in the life of our school. It provides the opportunity for us come together as a community, whether that be as a class, phase, or whole school in order to reflect upon the teachings and traditions of Christianity and our place in the wider world. Furthermore, Collective Worship provides the heartbeat of our school as it allows everyone a chance to reflect on the Biblical roots and distinctively Christian nature of our school’s vision and values.
Aims
Collective Worship at Winchcombe Abbey, provides pupils the opportunity:
- to explore our school’s distinctively Christian vision and values and consider the moral, spiritual, social and personal consequences of these for themselves
- to appreciate the relevance of faith for themselves through encountering the life and teachings of Jesus Christ in a way that enhances their lives
- to appreciate the relevance of faith for themselves through encountering Christian faith and practice in way that enhances their lives
- to develop their own understanding of spiritual and moral issues and to explore their own beliefs and spirituality;
- to reflect on the teachings and traditions of the Christian faith through prayer, reading and reflecting on the Bible, liturgy, silence, story and experience of the musical and other imaginative riches of Christianity
- to be inspired by the example of others – both within and beyond our school – and reflect on the example that they as individuals can set for others in their daily living
- for all pupils and staff to develop their skills in planning, leading and evaluating the impact of school worship with the support and shared engagement of the local church community. Worship Leaders will be at the centre of this process taking on increasingly independent roles in planning and leading worship.
- Provide an opportunity to experience the Eucharist through an agreed service or experience (agreed with the local incumbent and the Diocese of Gloucester)
Fundamentals
With these aims in mind our Collective Worship is fundamentally:
- Inclusive - Our worship is inclusive and accessible to all and does not assume the faith position of those within our school, but shows an awareness that we all have our own worldviews which require nurture and development. We seek to provide the opportunity for children to explore and question the meaning of our school values, stories, traditions and their own beliefs through a variety of creative means and to the extent of their own personal and spiritual development. Our times together are framed by language, images and music which models the diversity of the wider world and Christian faith.
- Invitational - Our worship is consistently invitational and demonstrates an openness which allows all children freely engaging meaningfully in our times together. There is no compulsion for children to confess to any particular faith position, but instead we have approach worship with the metaphor of ‘warm fires and open doors’ in mind. This metaphor highlights that our worship does not seek to present a lukewarm encounter with the Christian faith, teachings and its traditions. Instead, as the metaphor suggests, our worship provides an authentic and warm experience of the Christian faith, teachings and traditions to which all are welcome to experience as they feel comfortable. The prayers, liturgy and music used therefore, are carefully considered so as to be sure that children can engage with them in their own way. As such, children are invited to pray only if they feel comfortable doing so.
- Inspiring - Our collective worship plays an essential role in helping us to fulfil our school vision by allowing children to reflect on the example of others – both within and beyond our school. As such, collective worship offers an opportunity for our pupils’ views of themselves, others and the world to be transformed as they are motivated by the seeing the diversity of human experience and the Christian faith. With this in mind, our collective worship is planned so as to inspire the children to think deeply about their own faith, worldview, beliefs, spirituality and philosophical convictions in order that they might become courageous advocates of themselves and causes in the wider world.
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https://www.winchcombe-pri.gloucs.sch.uk/collective-worship/
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The authors explored through semistructured interviews the interrelationships of religion, spirituality, and career development in a sample of 12 African American undergraduate students. Using consensual qualitative research methodology (C. E. Hill, B. J. Thompson, & E. N. Williams, 1997), they identified 6 primary domains or themes related to these students' experiences in this regard, including (a) degree of identification as religious and/or spiritual, (b) parents' influence on religious and spiritual beliefs, (c) roles of religion and spirituality in participants' career development, (d) challenges in dealing with academic and career-related issues, (e) religious and spiritual strategies to deal with academic and career-related challenges, and (f) indicators of success in future career or occupation.
Research regarding the influence of cultural issues on the career development of college students has primarily emphasized the importance of racial, ethnic, and gender issues and has given little attention to other multicultural variables. There is some evidence suggesting that the cultural variables of religion and spirituality play vital roles in many individuals' career decision-making processes (Bogart, 1994; Colozzi & Colozzi, 2000; Fox, 2003; Seaward, 1995). However, few studies have explored the unique roles of religion and spirituality in the career development process of the general college population (Howard & Howard, 1997; Lips-Wiersma, 2002; Walker & Dixon, 2002), especially their roles in the career development process of African American college students.
Many researchers (Christian & Barbarin, 2001; Constantine, Lewis, Conner, & Sanchez, 2000) have reported that African Americans tend to have higher baseline rates of religious participation in comparison with the broader U.S. population. Some religious and spiritual beliefs and practices of African Americans derive from African worldviews, such as communalism (i.e., emphasizing the importance of human relationships and the interrelatedness of people), unity, coopération, harmony, balance, creativity, and authenticity (Constantine, Gainor, Ahluwalia, & Berkel, 2003; Jackson & Sears, 1992; Myers, 1993; Utsey, Adams, & Bolden, 2000). In particular, religious, spiritual, and communal values are reflected in the context of many African Americans' daily activities and lives. For example, aspects of communalism and collectivism can be noted in the fact that religious participation has been linked to civic participation, volunteerism, philanthropic giving, and other forms of altruistic behavior among African Americans ( Billingsley & Caldwell, 1991 ; Mattis, Fontenot, Hatcher-Kay, Grayman, & Beale, 2004; Mattis et al., 2000). In addition, religion has been documented to play a role in shaping African Americans' cognitive outcomes (i.e., interpretations and appraisals of events), including a role in framing such events in times of adversity (Brodsky, 2000; McAdoo, 1995). Prior literature concerning religious and spiritual issues among African Americans has focused primarily on religious participation via religious institutions and African Americans' private beliefs and behaviors in connection to such institutions (Neighbors & Jackson, 1996).
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https://www.questia.com/read/1P3-1004647221/religion-spirituality-and-career-development-in
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Published June 1987
by Umi Research Pr .
Written in English
Edition Notes
|Contributions||Margaret R. Miles (Editor), Clarissa W. Atkinson (Editor), Constance H. Buchanan (Editor)|
|The Physical Object|
|Format||Hardcover|
|Number of Pages||228|
|ID Numbers|
|Open Library||OL8191293M|
|ISBN 10||0835718034|
|ISBN 10||9780835718035|
Join us for our 9th Annual Financial Empowerment Conference Series: Shaping the Vision to Secure the Future! This FREE conference includes a night of financial fun & fellowship, plus a full day of financial education workshops, networking and the opportunity to receive one-on-one advice from experts! REGISTER TODAY!!! The book presents a practical and unique Transformational Model, consisting of five key steps necessary to overcome resistance and effect large-scale change within an organization. Demonstrating an exciting new approach to an ever-more critical challenge, Shaping the Future provides thoughtful and tested guidance for true change leaders.5/5(1). Get this from a library! Shaping new vision: gender and values in American culture. [Clarissa W Atkinson; Constance H Buchanan; Margaret R Miles;] -- This volume contains articles that discuss significant issues that represent points of profound cultural criticism and change in the lives of women. Analyzing traditional values and newly emerging. Shaping New Vision by Clarissa W. Atkinson, , available at Book Depository with free delivery worldwide.4/5(2).
Search Tips. Phrase Searching You can use double quotes to search for a series of words in a particular order. For example, "World war II" (with quotes) will give more precise results than World war II (without quotes). Wildcard Searching If you want to search for multiple variations of a word, you can substitute a special symbol (called a "wildcard") for one or more letters. Shaping new vision: gender and values in American culture Item Preview remove-circle Share or Embed This Item. The color of the original book is not the same. Addeddate Bookplateleaf Boxid IA Camera Sony Alpha-A (Control) Collection_setPages: This book is fantastic. It was incredibly specific in helping me create a vision of what we are going for. It talks about simplifying the child’s environment, embracing the ordinary day-to-day activities, developing our relationship with our children (no . Shaping a New World at the End of Our Present System Ma Herb Montgomery Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality!Author: Herb Montgomery.
This book has been around since That qualifies it as an early effort in discussing the significance of a so-called Christian World View (sic). Conversion to Christ must happen on several levels and anything short of transformation at the worldview level means that an /5. -Dan Kimball, author, They Like Jesus but Not the Church The Shaping of Things to Come by Michael Frost and Alan Hirsch was a pivotal book in for me and many others who take the mission of God seriously. This new and revised edition will play a monumental role in bringing even more leaders and readers into the missional : Ebook. Shaping the Fourth Industrial Revolution draws on contributions by more than of the world's leading technological, economic and sociological experts to present a practical guide for citizens, business leaders, social influencers and policy-makers. It outlines the most important dynamics of today's technological revolution, highlights important stakeholders that are often overlooked in our. shape a ‘new’ vision of academic success for all students? 1. Developing the staff for a common understanding of ‘vision’ 2. Identifying and articulating your vision as the school leader 3. Fostering the acceptance of group goals 4. Setting direction with staff for their individual beliefs and contributions 5.
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https://nyfakimibo.eduevazquez.com/shaping-new-vision-book-30544tt.php
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I am world-leading in developing innovative and strategic research, theory and publication around one of the defining trajectories of the 21st century – namely the newly visible role and impact of religion and belief on public life, and its political, social, economic, urban, policy and theological implications at both global and local levels. I am the originator of spiritual capital theory in its current policy and academic discourse, a leading exponent of postsecular theory and a pioneer of the spatial turn in theology, as well as interdisciplinarity in the study of religion and belief for policy.
My particular focus is on the relationship between religion, belief and urbanisation, the role of religion and belief in public policy and social welfare, and the role of religion and belief in civil society and the reshaping of church within the urban environment. My work is focussed on the UK experience, but is also impacting on debates within Europe, the U.S. and Australia.
Academic qualifications
- Towards a Theology of New Towns: the implications of the New Town Experience for Urban Theology, University of Manchester. 2002
- M.Th in Liturgy and Pastoral Care (Distinction) Heythrop College, University of London (Distinction) 1992
- B.Th, Theology, University of Southampton 1986
- B.A, English Language and Literature, University of Manchester 1982
Teaching and Supervision
Research interests
My research, publications and Ph.D recruitment fall into five areas.
Reimagining the future of welfare in 21st century Britain
Exploring theological and historical genealogies of the welfare state in the service of reimagining the future of welfare and social policy in 21st century Britain. I work with theological, historical, economic, and policy frameworks to look back to the intellectual, cultural and political contexts of the universal welfare state, with a view to framing a strategic reimagining of a new settlement for 21st century UK.
Postsecular policy
Modelling participation and redistributing power: mapping and analysing new forms of participation and partnership aimed at addressing issues of poverty and exclusion across traditional ideological and cultural divides. I analyse the trust-building, leadership, innovation, practices, techniques, values and ethics that these partnerships involve.
Leadership, governance and inclusion policy
Analysing the role of beliefs, values and worldviews in shaping individual motivations and actions in the workplace, which therefore also shape patterns of leadership and models of corporate governance towards tackling discrimination and exclusion in the workplace. What can the public and private sector learn from each other’s approaches in these areas?
Social policy for diversity and wellbeing
Engaging with a diversity of religion, belief and spirituality among service users for more effective policy around health and well-being, community cohesion, and security.
Religion, belief and urban and rural sustainability transitions
Developing policy frameworks with European partners that generate flow charts, baseline assessments and frameworks for impacts and evaluation that consciously identify and work with the grain of faith-based experience and imaginaries – but also beliefs, values and worldviews in general - to specifically act as deep points of leverage for fundamental systems change.
Publications
Book
Cloke, Paul; Baker, Christopher
Baker, Christopher
Baker, Christopher
Book Section
Baker, Christopher
Baker, Christopher
Article
Reader, John; Jandrić, Petar and Baker, Christopher
Green, Roger
Baker, Christopher
Baker, Christopher
Dinham, Adam
Baker, Christopher
Baker, Christopher
Stokes, Peter; Baker, Christopher
Baker, Christopher
Baker, Christopher
Baker, Christopher
Baker, Christopher
Baker, Christopher
Baker, Christopher
Baker, Christopher
Baker, Christopher
Baker, Christopher
Baker, Christopher
Baker, Christopher
Report
Baker, Christopher
Further profile content
Featured publications
2011:
Postsecular Cities – space, theory and praxis
Interdisciplinary study of how religion reproduces the urban and how the urban reproduces religion.
2015:
A Philosophy of Christian Materialism – Entangled Fidelities and the Public
How theology is engaging with New Materialism as a way of shaping new responses to public challenges.
2017:
New Interdisciplinary Spaces of Religion and Belief in Contemporary Thought and Practice: an analysis
How Religion and Belief is being theorised and researched across the Arts and Humanities and the implications of this for Social Policy.
2018:
Re-imagining Religion and Belief for 21st Century Policy and Practice
New ideas and perspectives on religion and belief aimed at a policy audience
2019:
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https://www.gold.ac.uk/stacs/staff/baker-christopher/
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What is Christian Studies?
Christian Studies is a core academic subject taught from Prep to Year 12 so students can learn about God’s ongoing love and care for all people and for the planet on which we live. Through a Lutheran lens Christian Studies presents a Christian worldview to students and offers a pathway for making meaning in their lives, whilst acknowledging their individual journeys of faith.
Christian Studies provides a safe and supportive context in which students can reflect on their experiences of the world and on their own beliefs and spirituality as they attempt to make sense of their rapidly changing and complex global environment. ln the Christian Studies classroom learners are engaged in intellectually challenging experiences that actively involve them in constructing their own meanings. They pose their own questions, gather, analyse and reflect on information as they explore their identity as individuals in the 21st century.
Christian Studies Leaders
This network is regionally divided into hub groups, Central, Western and Riverina and membership is represented by Christian Studies Leaders from each of our schools. Christian Studies’ Leaders meet to share resources, exchange ideas and provide ongoing educational support to each other in their role within their school.
The Christian Studies Leaders meet once per term in their hub group at the following locations:
- Central Hub – St John’s Southgate.
- Western Hub – at one of the represented schools.
- Riverina Hub – at one of the represented schools.
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https://www.levnt.edu.au/lutheran-experiences/christian-studies/
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Sickle cell disease (SCD) is a serious debilitating chronic illness and global health problem. Spirituality and religiosity have been shown to have positive correlations with their health outcomes. Research addressing the spiritual and religious needs of adolescents living with SCD is limited.
The aim of this descriptive qualitative study was to examine how adolescents (Mage = 16.2 years) with SCD describe and experience spirituality and religiosity. Nine adolescents completed two semi-structured interviews. Sickle Cell Disease Interview Guides were developed using the Spiritual Development Framework developed by Benson & Roehlkepartain (2008) as a guide. The framework provided a foundation for conceptualizing the spiritual element of human development. Sickle Cell Disease Interview Guides were used to elicit information on adolescents' beliefs, spirituality, and religiosity. Participant Demographic Forms were completed by each adolescent and used to collect information regarding their demographics, SCD histories, and religiosities. Parent Demographic Forms were completed by each parent and used to collect information regarding parents' demographics and religiosities.
Data were analyzed using a template analysis style and a concurrent analysis process of data reduction, data display, and conclusion drawing/verification. The Spiritual Development Framework was used as a guide in constructing components of the analysis template. Adolescents verbalized their thoughts regarding their spirituality and religiosity. The adolescents believed that religiosity is personal, meaningful, and should be respected. Four main themes emerged to include: spirituality and religiosity as coping mechanisms, shaping of identity, the influence of beliefs on health and illness, and the expectations for health care providers. The theme spirituality and religiosity as coping mechanisms included six threads: interconnecting with God, interconnecting with others, interconnecting with creative arts, scriptural metanarratives, transcendent experiences, and acceptance and finding meaning. The theme expectations for health providers included two threads to include: religiosity is private/personal/communal and sharing spiritual and religious beliefs is risky.
The current study examined spirituality and religiosity as described and experienced by adolescents with SCD. The current study highlights the role of spirituality and religiosity in an age-specific population living with sickle cell disease. Exploring spirituality and religiosity may lead to innovative interventions improving quality of life.
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https://epublications.marquette.edu/dissertations_mu/341/
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"Mississippi Counseling Association"Nunnery, R., & Luke, T. (November 4, 2016; 3 hour session). Dialectical Behavior Therapy: Helping Clients Create a Life Worth Living. Mississippi Counseling Association, Biloxi, MS.
"Mississippi Counseling Association Conference"Lemon, J. & Nunnery, R. (November 6, 2014). Promoting ego transformation & spirituality integration in the counseling process. Mississippi Counseling Association, Jackson, MS.
"Mississippi Counseling Association"Promoting Resilience within individuals with Disabilities.
"Department of Counseling/Human Behavior/Human Services Reserach Symposium: Honoring Faculty and Research Scholarship"Can we all be equal? A treatment team model that appeals to all stakeholders: A validating and accountable team based upon DBT principles.
"Association for Spiritual, Ethical & Religious Values in Counseling" Promoting ego transformation & spirituality integration in the counseling process.
"Woodall Spring Conference"Promoting ego transformation & spirituality integration in the counseling process.
"Association of Spirituality, Ethics, Religion and Values in Counseling (ASERVIC)"Values and Beliefs: Promoting Resilience within individuals with disabilities.
"Association for Spirituality, Ethics, Religion and Values in Counseling"Values and Boundaries: Accepting our limits and Widening our Understanding.
"Mississippi Counseling Association"Wells, D. Lemon, J, Magruder, J. Nunnery, R., Etheridge, L., Carr, D., Porter, J., Sullivan, J. and Wilcher, L. (November, 9, 2017; 1.5 hours). Can you hear me now? Ethical Social Media Issues across the Profession (Ethics). Mississippi Counseling Association, Annual Conference, Tupelo, MS.
"American Counseling Association"The Use of DBT Techniques Creatively in the treatment of Postpartum Depression.
"Louisiana Counseling Association"Nunnery, R. (September 24, 2014). Complicated Grief Treatment. Louisiana Counseling Association Conference, New Orleans, LA.
"MLPCA Annual Conference"Can we all be equal? A treatment team model that appeals to all stakeholders: A validating and accountable team based upon DBT principles.
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https://www.capella.edu/faculty/bio/dr-rosanne-nunnery/1225505/
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There is a plurality of definitions for spirituality and spiritual wellbeing in the context of work, and the extant literature suggests it is a research topic of fragmentation, dearth, and incomprehensibility, which sometimes makes it difficult to propose a sound and practicable theory (Khaled et al. 2012; Afsar and Badir 2017). However, most scholars and researchers refer to it, in a broad sense, as the expression or experience of spirituality in the context of the workplace (Giacalone and Jurkiewicz 2010; Benefiel 2014; Pawar 2016).
Introduction
The late twentieth century and the early twenty-first centuries have seen a growing interest in spirituality in general and its role in the workplace (Petchsawanga and Duchon 2012; Bell and Burack 2001; Sedikides 2010; Wagner-Marsh 1999). However, despite this growing interest in spirituality and its place within the organization, the concept remains undertheorized, and there is no generally accepted definition. The literature is primarily dominated by speculative discussion, fragmentation, dearth and incomprehensibility, and a marked lack of empirical data, especially quantitative research (Khaled et al. 2012). Pavlovich and Corner (2009, p. 377) goes on to note that much of this work is in fact useful and thought provoking but “…needs to be extended with experience or empirical data to prevent theories being remote from the phenomenon they intend to describe.” Often, the words spirituality, ethics, and religion tend to overlap, so there is a need to clarify the concepts (Giacalone and Jurkiewicz 2010). In a broad sense, ethics normally differentiates between right and wrong; religion is concerned with beliefs, prayers, and related formalized practices; whilst spirituality tends to refer to an individual’s determination to experience a deeper meaning to life through the way in which they live and work (Snyder and Lopez 2008).
Spirituality has been linked to workplace health and wellbeing in a variety of ways, including positive effects on employee morale, work stress, and burnout (Moghaddampoura and Karimianb 2013). More recent evidence has found that practicing workplace spirituality, as a form of wellbeing, has a positive relationship with general sense of wellbeing, and other forms of wellbeing such as psychological, physical, and mental (Pawar 2016). This research has found that “workplace spirituality accounted for statistically significant variance ranging from 8.5% to 16% in all forms of employee well-being” (ibid., p. 986). Similarly, Fry et al.’s (2017, p. 22) research confirmed this and found “a positive and significant relationship” between the experience and expression of spirituality with “organizational commitment, unit productivity, and life satisfaction”. In this way, spirituality in the workplace has been associated with the potential for a greater sense of wellbeing in addition to wider organizational benefits.
This chapter synthesizes the literature on spirituality and wellbeing in the workplace, and it does this by focusing on three key areas of discussion: first, it explores how spirituality is conceptualized in the workplace; second, it considers the perceptions of how it manifests through leadership in the workplace context; and finally, it considers the potential forms of conflict and their effects in the workplace context. The final section concludes with the potential trajectories of spiritual wellbeing in the workplace.
Emergence of the Spiritual Problematic in the Workplace
In a time of public debate about spiritual tolerance and cultural freedom in a multicultural society, it is important to gain a true understanding of how differing religions and spiritualties can manifest within organizations (Wall and Knights 2013). However, given the paucity of empirical research into the subject, this is problematic. Many traditional management approaches to addressing spirituality in the workplace have under-achieved, due to a dearth of empirical evidence, particularly with respect to understanding individual spiritual needs (Giacalone and Jurkiewicz 2010). Managers often find the term ambiguous and highly nuanced, and organizations and individuals remain confused about the concept and its implications and often have little idea how to deal with or manage the phenomenon (Richards et al. 2009).
Thus, managing spirituality and religious diversity is not straightforward as it may not be feasible for an organization to observe all spiritual practices or occasions. Due to the individualized nature of spirituality, organizations can encounter difficulties in demonstrating fairness and equality within a diverse workforce. In addition, employees’ belonging to the same religion may exhibit significant differences in how they demonstrate or observe their beliefs. A topical example is taken from the English Premier Football League where Muslim players have demonstrated differing perspectives on whether to fast during match days which falls within their Ramadan observance (Cowling 2013). As a result, employers can struggle to produce policies and procedures that support the complex spiritual requirements of employees. Furthermore, due to the importance and awareness of employee’s spiritual well-being as a feature of organizational health and resilience, it is necessary for management to explore the probable actions for not just employee well-being but for the sustainably doing so (Wilson et al. 2004).
In a study by Lips-Wiersma and Mills (2002), 20% of their US sample had been subjected to religious bias by having to use their holiday entitlement to observe significant dates in their own religious calendar, while Christian festivals such as Christmas and Easter were public holidays. This was reflected in Forstenlechner and Al-Waqfi’s study (2010), where employees felt that spirituality in the workplace was tolerated to different degrees, depending on their particular belief system. However, they also suggested that such perceptions might be misplaced. Their study showed that the perceived view of Muslim workers in their study was that discrimination against them existed within the workplace, whereas employers in the study showed a high level of commitment to respecting the traditions and beliefs of Muslims with little discrimination against Muslim employees being apparent (ibid.).
However, earlier research by Weller et al. (2001) found that Muslims reported the highest level of discrimination incidents in the workplace, both in terms of the number of respondents indicating that unfair treatment was experienced and the number reporting these incidents as frequent rather than occasional. Christians, on the other hand, were generally much less likely to report unfair treatment than Muslims, Sikhs, and Hindus, and nearly all the unfairness they reported was occasional rather than frequent. Nevertheless, it is interesting to note that black-led Christian organizations, Mormons, and Jehovah’s Witnesses, which are often seen as outside mainstream Christian traditions, were much more likely to report unfair treatment than those respondents belonging to what is often seen as more established traditions such as Roman Catholicism or Anglicanism. Recent research echoes the contemporary issues of racial discrimination in the workplace, but also recognize that an intentional renewal of human resource practices within organizational life can promote diversity, equality, and inclusivity can directly tackle such issues (Samah et al. 2012; Wall et al. 2017).
Spirituality and Leadership in Practice
The significance of spirituality at work was put forward over two decades ago by Hendricks and Ludeman (1996), who state that the concern of big organizations towards the ethical and spirituality element of their workforce has grown rapidly in the global market place. More recently, spirituality as a concern has developed and been extensively debated, mainly due to the upsurge of moral consciousness that affects organizational sustainability (Wall 2017). From this perspective, Ary (2009) explains that spiritual awareness, knowledge, and commitment have started to find their position within those organizations which strive to achieve through dedicated leaders and effective human capital, a more holistic form (Wall 2016).
The role of an organization is seen as crucial to the development of employee spiritual needs (Samah’s et al. 2012), and within this context, spiritual leadership involves motivating and stimulating employees by instilling a vision and organizational culture based on altruistic values. In turn, such a context produces a highly enthused, committed, and industrious workforce where most of the employees will have a sense of belonging (Fry and Slocum 2008; Fry et al. 2017). A previous study by Reave (2005) suggested that the values of a leader have historically been viewed as spiritual ideals and include key traits such as integrity and humility, and have a very positive influence on the leadership success. In agreement, Kolodinsky et al. (2008) claim that organizational spirituality was found to be more positively related to job involvement, organizational identification, and work satisfaction and was negatively related to organizational frustration. Therefore, business leaders who have attempted to provide goods and services that typically enhance quality of life often do this without considering the impact on the spiritual well-being of their employees and stakeholders, or even the broader community (Collins 2010).
Despite the prevalence of spiritual beliefs within United Kingdom organizations, the predominant momentum of spiritual leadership is to assimilate the fundamental needs of employees for spiritual survival. Such collective beliefs can create a comradery across employees, which can provide increased levels of organizational commitment and productivity (Javanmard 2012). However, for the business to be successful in the corporate world, a business leader is expected to be prepared and hold the necessary skills and qualities to be aware and knowledgeable about the many faith systems within and around their organization (Wall and Knights 2013). This approach highlights the need for managers to have a range of qualities, which include a passion for dynamism and entrepreneurship in addition to loyalty, integrity, honesty, accountability, and trustworthiness (Pal and Kapur 2011). Managers should also provide scope for improving the organizational culture by maintaining a healthy balance between organizational culture, values, and ethics, as well as growth and profitability. It is important that those in managerial positions have the desire and adaptability for change as well as a desire and capability for handling risks, and this requires communication and receptive skills, which will facilitate the empowerment, engagement, and retention of employees (ibid.).
However, it is unrealistic to expect business leaders to possess all of these qualities and skills while remaining focused on the organizational goal. Laub (2004) argued that there are two types of leaders, which might determine a different focal point of leadership activity. A servant leader values people, builds community, displays authenticity, and provides leadership continuously, whereas an inspiring leader is more focused on organizational integrity, personal fulfilment, and a solid organizational foundation. In contrast, Javanmard (2012) argues for a different view that spiritual leaders must have vision, and while moving the organization forward, management should perform actions such as synchronization of all aspects of their role. These views illustrated by Javanmard (2012) include organizational leadership, which seeks to identify the organization’s vision; altruism, which refers to an individual’s unselfish concern for the welfare of others within the workplace; and faith in the organization, which highlights the belief the employee has in their employers.
Spiritual leaders with these unique characteristics can envisage the future of the organization and inspire employees in a way that encourages them to believe in the strategic direction of the business and the organization’s vision, thus becoming committed to the organization’s future and sustainability (Ziaee et al. 2008). The key argument surrounding the spirituality leadership debate for management and business leaders has prompted various journals to be produced, such as Change Management and the Leadership Quarterly Journal (Herman 2008) and transpersonal leadership texts (Wall and Knights 2013; Wall 2017).
Organizations are usually far from homogenous in terms of leadership and normally work environments are melting pots for different spiritual groups and religions along with various other human values. Unprepared leaders and managers may be unfamiliar with the issues that could arise from the confluence of diverse religious faith groups (Lundrigan et al. 2012). Rosinski (2003) supports this line of thought by stating that organizations have learned that diversity should not be prevented but embraced. While it is important for organizations to understand and respect all demographic groups in the workplace, emotions shown, such as empathy, can be very rewarding and for most companies, the mixture of different perspectives and skills that are part of a diverse workplace are essential to remain competitive and move the company forward. Additionally, leaders who adopt a positive attitude towards others equally, will have a much greater wealth of human resources and a more content workforce; this transforms into greater productivity, more satisfying job relationships, longer employee retention, and a stronger supply of fresh and innovative ideas. Prudent leaders realise that utilizing all demographic groups effectively will increase the organization’s numbers and strengthen the business long term (Lundrigan et al. 2012). As such, organizational managers and leaders have a role in enabling the experience and expression of spirituality in the workplace, both in terms of spiritual wellbeing but also the other forms of wellbeing outlined above.
Spirituality and Conflict in Practice
Growing numbers of spiritual people are beginning to speak out in the workplace, with employees pressing employers for greater freedom to express their spirituality (Wennes and Quinn 2008; Zohar and Marshall 2004; Ahmed and Omar 2014). Indeed, diverse workforces are urging organizations, on a global basis, to accommodate a wide variety of workplace issues, including religious expression. While employers may be aware of discrimination based on race, gender, and even disability, religion is not so prominent, with knowledge and process lacking (Young 2007). As management is often unfamiliar with the concept of spirituality, cases or signs of religious discrimination may be increasing as the employer struggles with the growing variety of religions and cultures acknowledged (Van Tonder and Ramdass 2009).
In the 1960s and 1970s blacks and women fought for their rights. In the 1980s and 1990s, it was gays and lesbians. Now it has turned into employers and employees and the battlefield is spirituality in the workplace.
Morgan (2005) suggests that there are many ways to discriminate against people, and examples of spirituality discrimination can include: firing an employee or withholding promotion due to the employee’s spiritual beliefs; failure to give an employee a pay rise until the employee no longer spends time discussing spiritual beliefs with co-workers; harassment of employees because they wear religious clothing or visible signs of their faith. Such discrimination does not need to be overt or even consciously done. Instead, it can be identified as a subtle, often unintentional form of bias (Green 2003). Lee (2002), points out that, such discrimination can often be described as aversive racism, where the character of the employee consciously endorses strong egalitarian ideals but are generally less favorable and tolerant towards minority groups. A study conducted by Dovidio and Gaertner (1998) indicate that there is one problem regarding aversive racism and discrimination in the workplace. The problem of aversive racism is that it is often entrenched in normal, often adaptive, psychological processes, which involve the desire to maintain power, processed through an internalization of societal values and beliefs. Due to the focus on the conflict perspective, most researchers use scales that highlight only the negative implications (Kossek and Ozeki 1998).
However, long-standing perspectives point out that rather than experiencing only conflict, facilitation between roles may occur, that is, when participation in one role is made better or easier by participation in the other role (Marks 1997). The occupation of numerous roles in this way potentially provides a sense of security, a sense of purpose in life, enhanced self-esteem, social support, and buffering against role failure (Sieber 1974). However, Pinholster (2016) argues, organization such as the National Academies of Science and American Association for the advancement of Science still have a way to go and has actively called for the scientific communities to identify and countenance implicit bias as impediment on minority participation and enhancement within the STEM subjects such as Mathematics, Engineering, and Science. Kossek and Ozeki (1998) further state that the degree to which an employee experiences conflict is likely to be influenced by their personality. It would therefore be enlightening to examine the personality backgrounds, which inform the consequences of facilitation on work and family outcomes.
However, Conlin (1999) argues that conflict is inevitable when it comes to religion and consequently there has never been complete peace and cooperation between opposing beliefs, especially in the workplace. However research presented by Riordan (2000); Williams and O’Reilly (1998) concludes that individual employees may react differently in work situations in which they must work with individuals who are demographically similar to themselves in terms of ethnic background or origin, as opposed to situations in which they must work with individuals who have a dissimilar ethnic, spiritual, or values background. Where significant differences in employee backgrounds occur, it was found that this was often associated with negative outcomes to the workforce and increased higher levels of personal conflict and disagreements amongst employees. Similarly, as Steinberger (2007) points out, if an employer finds that an employee’s religious or spiritual activities damage or hinder the organization in ways that cause higher financial costs, loss of efficiency, or discrimination against other employees, the employer does not have to accommodate them. Grozinger and Matiaske (2010) validate this point by claiming that organizations have been more focused on how to take better care of the spiritual needs of all their employees. However, these claims are based on the idea that an individual’s spirituality and organizational profit form a win-win situation for both the organization and employee.
Subsequently, Steinberger (2007) advocates that it is important for employees who wish to take specific time off for their spiritual needs always to notify the employer of their religious motives to justify their absences, because if an employer is not notified that the absence is religion related, employment could be terminated regardless. Additionally, Weller et al. (2001) argue that religious holidays can sometimes be a source of conflict with mandatory or key days within the workplace. Employees are often forced into a position of having to choose between their religion and important work-based events, such as working on a bank holiday/labor day if in a retail environment, which in turn may contravene the organization’s directives or guidelines. This position is supported by Conlin (1999) who stresses that it is important that employers be warned to always offer options to its employees in these circumstances to help remedy any potential problems that may arise before claiming any hardship to the company. In this way, the employee is given a fair and reasonable solution and if taken to court, the employer can prove that they offered accommodations and are flexible and tolerant. However, Steinberger (2007) claims that this advice is not always followed through and in many situations, if a problem does indeed arise within the organization, the employer and the employee may both offer numerous ways of accommodating the problem, which may not be suitable for either party.
The number of discrimination cases filed against private and public sector employers relating to spirituality are on the rise and different spiritual court cases work their way through the system all the time (Moulton 2010). The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission reported more than 1,800 discrimination cases in 1999 and the number of such cases has increased by 43% within the last decade (Digh 1999). Subsequently, Stock and Chan (2015) indicate that religious discrimination complaints are the fastest growing type of workplace discrimination claim. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has reported the fact that these workplace discrimination claims have more than doubled from 1,709 in 1997 to 3,721 in 2013, peaking at 4,151 in 2011. As a percentage, the claims have increased from 2% to 4% for all religious discrimination claims filed during this period. These claims are being filed by individuals of numerous spirituality groups, including adherents to mainstream Protestant Christian religions as well as Mormons, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Seventh-Day Adventists, Jews, Muslims, and Sikh. Experts from the International Bar Association (IBA) believe the number of religious discrimination claims will continue to rise.
One such organization was General Motors who successfully won litigation filed by a worker who wanted to establish a Christian employee network within the workplace. General Motors turned down the employee’s request and, although it improved relationships amongst the employees belonging to various ethnic groups, it was not deemed beneficial to the organization to have such a network established (Wolfe 2004). However, discrimination is not culture specific. In 2006, Nadia Eweida, a Christian employee of British Airways, was asked to cover up a Christian cross necklace and was placed on unpaid leave when she refused either to do so or to accept a position where she did not have to cover it up. She was wearing the necklace on the outside of her uniform, contravening BA’s uniform policy for jewellery. Nadia planned to sue the airline for religious discrimination. Some Christian groups accused British Airways of double standards, as Sikh and Muslim employees are not prevented from wearing religious garments at work, since these are impractical to cover up. Though the wearing of garments is a requirement in some faiths, in this case, British Airways believes that wearing a cross is not necessary in Christianity, in general. The outcome was that The European Court of Human Rights heard Ms. Eweida’s case in September 2012, and this was against the UK government for failing to provide a domestic law to protect the claimed rights, rather than against BA. In January 2013, the court found that Eweida’s rights had been violated under Article 9 of the European Convention on Human Rights and awarded her damages. The ruling was, ECHR indicated that British Airways had not reached a fair balance between Eweida’s religious beliefs and the company’s desire to have a particular corporate image (BBC 2013; Mancuhan and Clifton 2014).
The experience of conflict in the workplace also differs by spiritual group. Weller et al.’s (2001) early work indicated that Muslims predominately reported the highest level of complaints about spiritual discrimination in the workplace, both in terms of the proportion of respondents (which indicated that some unfair treatment was experienced) and by the proportion (which indicated that these experiences were frequent rather than occasional). However, Christians were generally much less likely to report unfair treatment than Muslims. Sikhs and Hindus indicated that the unfairness they reported was occasional rather than frequent. In addition, black-led Christian organizations and those representing groups such as Mormons and Jehovah’s Witnesses were much more likely to report unfair treatment in nearly all occupations than organizations in what is often seen as the mainstream Christian traditions. It is unclear, however, whether these findings can be effectively attributed to the workplace, or whether in fact they indicate general societal perceptions towards these specific groups. The implication of this is that such patterns are unlikely to be challenged in the workplace if it is still being exhibited in the wider community and particularly if these views are being promoted within the media (Badrinarayanan and Madhavaram 2008). Furthermore, the nature of the conflict outlined by Weller et al. (2001) has not been clearly identified; therefore, it is not possible to ascertain the legitimacy of the perceptions of conflict or to determine whether any of these complaints led to direct action, either by the company or by individuals with respect to policies and procedures or through litigious action.
The validity of this argument is supported by Zafar (2010), who suggests that these internal issues in the workplace have led to further studies being conducted within organizations. Furthermore, the debate does not examine the situation from all employees’ perspectives and companies are finding it very difficult to avoid conflict and cater to everyone’s needs, such as respecting all employees’ viewpoints. Wolfe (2004) follows the same line of thought by arguing that, in many incidences, employers must restrict employees who want to create a spiritual presence in their working environment or organize a place within the workplace where groups can get together in a spiritual setting. Moreover, Moulton (2010) points out that the issue of spirituality does not stop within the employee environment and there are many examples where an individual’s spiritual beliefs can also affect the organization’s customers. Recent examples in the media include when restaurant owners or employees refuse to serve gay couples, or where a couple was refused service at a hotel because the man and woman did not share the same last name.
For 8 years, it was never a problem. Then, for one and a half years, they picked on this (Sikh) woman for wearing her bangle. Finally, they moved her to a different part of the organisation. They said she must take it off, but she said no. Representatives from the Sikh temple had a meeting with Personnel to explain, but they said no because it was classed as jewellery. This controversy had important knock-on effects for other Sikh women who came forward in support of this woman to state that they themselves also wore bangles and who then also became subject to harassment by other employees’ as well as by the management. (Weller et al. 2001, p. 55)
However, there is a perspective which argues that the overall responsibility of management is to define the reality of their employees and not the other way around, concluding that the workforce needs to accept the organization’s definition of reality and use this “as a frame of reference for orienting their own activity irrespective of their own values” (Long and Mills 2010, p. 238). This element of organizational control comes from the inherent and complicated conflicts present within organizations. In the unlikelihood that employees and management will reach a consensus of values, it is perceived as important that management take the lead in aligning employees’ beliefs with those of the organization (Bell and Taylor 2003). In line with this, Karakas (2010) indicates that employees should be able to speak out openly and express their feelings, values, and spirituality, regardless of fear, alienation, or exclusion from the organization. However, in practice, spirituality remains a taboo in workplaces; it is something felt, but very rarely overtly discussed in organizations (Jawahar 2012). Spirituality in the workplace is essentially like a Chinese whisper, along the way it inevitability loses its original message and meaning and subsequently becomes distorted and exaggerated.
The essence of the above debate is that while it is possible for some employees to resist the organizational meaning given to spirituality that is imposed by management, an appropriate social reality is more readily defined by decision-makers with power and strengthened by their policies and procedures (Long and Mills 2010). Weller et al. (2001) disagree with Long and Mills’ (2010) argument by claiming that organizations which do not allow their employees to express even some of their beliefs are indeed discriminating against them, which in turn creates unnecessary conflict. In line with this, evidence suggests that organizations that encourage workplace spirituality tend to out-perform those that suppress employee beliefs (Jawahar 2012).
Building on Weller et al.’s (2001) view is the research conducted by Thompson (2005) who investigated the Pepsi Company. This organization introduced an approach that sought to identify the benefits of having diversity in their workforce and reported that, in 2003, around $250 million of Pepsi’s revenue growth was from new products inspired by ethnic diversity efforts. The Chairman for the Pepsi Company suggests that organizations that appreciate the diversity challenge will have a competitive advantage, while narrow-mindedness is not only a sign of weakness; it also undermines the organization (Wall Street Journal 2005). Furthermore, when an organization limits the workforce they are willing to hire or restricts how individuals express their spirituality in the workplace, they reduce the available talent pool they draw from. The subsequent conflict and discrimination that can arise from such tactics can lower the productivity of the organization, prospects for growth, and survival (Thompson 2005). However, Khaled et al. (2012) suggest that workplace goals and objectives do not support the employee’s needs when it comes to expression of spirituality and suggest they do not take into account the practicality for supporting the organizations long-term productivity from the employer’s perspective. Furthermore, for the business leaders and managers who would be willing and encouraged to build and sustain a spiritual workplace, it would require that spirituality is compatible and aligned with the organization’s mission, vision, and goals (Neck and Milliman 1994).
Lundrigan et al. (2012) suggest that management should stress the importance and advantages of having a diverse workforce because when an organization does not close the door to any particular demographic group of people, they will benefit from a large range of ideas, creativity, and innovation that come from having this diverse group. However, it is worth noting that diversity programs may not work for all organizations. As Michele et al. (2004) suggest, although diversity initiatives are likely to strike a good balance between employees and management requirements, increasingly these programs do not always build employee commitment, enhance their motivation, or reduce conflict throughout the organization. In addition, there is another misconception, which is that a happier and more harmonious workplace will result from diversity, whereas the diversification of the workforce often has the opposite effect. Longstanding research concludes that individual employees react differently in work situations in which they must work with individuals who are demographically like themselves in terms of ethnic background or origin, as opposed to situations in which they must work with individuals who have a dissimilar ethnic background (Riordan 2000). Where significant differences in employee backgrounds occur, it was found that this was often associated with negative outcomes to the workforce such as increased higher levels of personal conflict and disagreements amongst employees.
Conclusions and Future Directions
Evidence raises several key issues relating to the management and perception of spirituality within the workplace and how employee’s well-being is affected. The significant role spirituality plays in an organization, along with the benefits of addressing spirituality at work, are key elements that have been raised by numerous researchers (Lundrigan et al. 2012; Javanmard 2012; Wall and Knights 2013; Pawar 2016). For an organization to cope successfully with the complex spirituality challenges ahead, management and business leaders’ attitudes still need to make a fundamental shift. In transforming to a new business model, the literature suggests facilitating a spiritually based organization. Indeed, employees and managers are making considerable progress towards accommodating spirituality in the workplace, for example, in providing a communal space for use in worship. Nonetheless, the subjective nature of spirituality and a lack of common understanding of what spirituality means to an employee presents challenges in implementing such initiatives.
Workplace spirituality encompasses elements of awareness, interconnectedness with others, and a higher existence. There is also a sense of fulfilment and value, which adds meaning to an individual’s vocation (Bodla and Ali 2012; Karakas 2010; Brown 2012; Lundrigan et al. 2012). Spirituality encompasses ethics, trust, fairness of decisions, respect, honesty, and integrity of actions, all of which influencing one’s sense of spiritual well-being as well as other forms of wellbeing. The experience and expression of spirituality exerts a positive influence on employees’ ethical behavior and well-being, through having a greater awareness of the views of others (Moghaddampoura and Karimianb 2013; Badrinarayanan and Madhavaram 2008; Mitroff 2003; Kolodinsky et al. 2008). Future research will continue to identify and clarify management strategic and tactical plans that facilitate employees’ spirituality and the well-being of their employees, the initiatives currently in operation and the main issues surrounding the perceptions of the employees towards spirituality.
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https://link.springer.com/referenceworkentry/10.1007%2F978-3-319-69627-0_92-1
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Through exploring ‘what matters’ about the Humanities, pupils will study the past and present, and imagine possible futures, and will learn about people, place, time and beliefs.
Pupils will build, communicate and apply effectively, a solid base of knowledge and understanding of different times, places and beliefs, in order to become ambitious, capable learners.
They will develop a range of skills and dispositions, to become enterprising, creative contributors, in order to improve the everyday lives of people in their local community, Wales and in the wider world.
Through understanding and respecting different beliefs and understanding how to exercise their democratic rights and responsibilities, pupils will become ethical, informed citizens.
By developing personal stances on matters of faith, spirituality, sustainability and social inclusion they will become healthy, confident individuals, ready to lead fulfilling lives as valued members of society.
Pupils will:
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understand historical, geographical, political, economic, religious and societal concepts.
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explore their environment to further develop their sense of place and wellbeing.
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engage in learning experiences about rights, values, ethics, beliefs, religion, philosophy and spirituality.
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consider, explore and make informed choices regarding sustainability and the impact of their actions.
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positively contribute to their community and critically engage with local, national and global issues to become a responsible citizen of Wales and the wider world.
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https://www.pentrepoethprimary.co.uk/humanities
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Linton CE Infant School is a Church of England Voluntary Aided (VA) school and our Christian ethos and aims are embedded in our practices, the way in which all members of the school community behave towards each other, and in the experiences and learning opportunities we offer. We are an inclusive school and warmly welcome children, families and staff of all faiths and none.
We are a caring and creative school which strives to ensure that our children become confident learners and are fully equipped with the skills and values that will allow them to flourish. Our topics and the out of school experiences we offer provide opportunities for children to be open to new experiences, new knowledge and new people. Our children experience joy and wonder and they explore and discover for themselves. We look to develop the whole child, allowing them the opportunity to explore their own spirituality and foster a strength of belief in their own faith, while developing a strong understanding of, and respect for others in the wider community.
We actively promote the Church of England Vision for Education 'Deeply Christian, Serving the Common Good' by educating for hope, wisdom, community and dignity to promote life in all its fullness.
At Linton CE Infant School we are passionate that every child has the opportunity to succeed and fulfill their potential. Therefore every child's progress is monitored and tracked carefully and support is given where necessary.
Collective Worship is held morning after registration. It is a time for the whole school to come together and focus on the Christian values that underpin everything we do here at Linton CE Infant School. On Tuesdays our collective worship takes the form of singing where we enjoy exploring our values through a range of songs that are regularly included in our Friday services. We also have a weekly assembly that celebrates achievements and we use this as an opportunity to recognise when children have demonstrated our values as well as an opportunity to reflect upon our shared ethos in collective worship. We are very lucky to enjoy a close relationship with St Mary's Church and attend a family service every Friday. All parents and families are welcome to join us for this and the children play an active role within this service. In line with the 1988 Education Reform Act, which states that collective worship should be ‘wholly or mainly of a broadly Christian character’, we normally base our assemblies on the teachings and traditions of the Christian Church. However, we conduct our assemblies in a manner that is sensitive to the individual faith and beliefs of all members of the school and may make reference to the beliefs of others. While the majority of acts of worship in our school are Christian, we also hold assemblies that reflect other religious traditions that are represented in the school and the wider community.
Parents have a legal right to withdraw their children from collective worship. If you wish to withdraw your child then please contact the headteacher in writing to do so.
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http://www.lintoninfants.com/christian-character-and-collective-worship/
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"It continues to be an important time when the pupils and staff come together to reflect, pray and give thanks to God. It plays a significant role in developing spirituality through the questions which are posed and the themes which are directly related to the children’s experiences".
SIAMS October 2015
Our school is designated a Voluntary Controlled School. Worship is an important part of the school day as it gives us the opportunity to come together as a school community to think more deeply about God, about our relationships with others, about God’s world and about ourselves.
We understand worship to be a special act or occasion whose purpose is to show reverence to God. Collective worship involves all members of the school coming together and participating in an assembly. We expect everyone to take an active part in our worship.
Our aim at Sambourne CE VC Primary School is that worship should:
- reflect our Mission statement and values of the school;
- instil a sense of awe and wonder in the children;
- provide an opportunity for the children to worship God;
- be inclusive and an occasion where each individual’s integrity is respected;
- will have a strong focus on God as Father, Son and Holy Spirit enabling all learners to embark on an understanding of the Trinity;
- offer opportunities for pupils’ spiritual, moral, social and cultural development;
- reflect some of the practices and traditions of the local church;
- be regularly monitored and evaluated;
- underpin the Christian values and ethos of the school;
- celebrate the values and worth of the school community;
- help children explore and develop their own spirituality;
- enable children to explore and evaluate their own beliefs;
- celebrate special occasions in the Churches year and the life of the community
- show appreciation for the God given gifts and talents of the school community
- celebrate and give thanks for achievements within the school, local and international community and occasions of significance, including festivals.
We conduct our Collective Worship times in a dignified and respectful way. We tell children that collective worship time is a period of calm reflection. We regard it as a special time and expect children to behave in an appropriate manner. We ask them to be quiet and thoughtful and to listen carefully to the teachings and participate fully in prayer and hymns. We create an appropriate atmosphere by using music and candles or sometimes other objects that act as a focal point for the attention of the children. Our worship usually take place within the school hall, however a number of services a year are held in the church itself and then a larger congregation of parents can join in the worship. We also have the grounds to hold worship outside.
We hold a daily act of collective worship in our school. We meet as a whole school every day in our school hall.
Our weekly collective Worship is organised in the following way:
- Monday - Collective worship setting a focus for exploring the value we are reflecting on
- Tuesday – Songs of Praise, a singing assembly with songs based on the current value
- Wednesday - Values assembly
- Thursday - Open the Book led by members of the Christ Church team.
- Friday - Celebration Assembly – some of which are led by the classes in our school and to which parents of children involved are invited.
Whilst Sambourne C of E Primary School is a church school, we are aware that our children have a variety of faiths. As such, we include all children in our assemblies but they are asked to join in our prayers only if they would like to.
Parents have the right to withdraw their children from Collective Worship.
Our Collective Worship themes
As a church school, our ethos is based on core Christian values. In our Collective Worship, we follow the Values for Life scheme, alongside Imaginor resources, which facilitates children’s reflection upon these key values. We work very closely with the team from Christ Church to tailor the scheme to the church calendar and ensure that we offer a broad perspective on each theme which is relevant to the age of our children.
Each term we focus on a different value, exploring a new aspect of that value each week.
The chart below shows what the key values are:
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https://www.sambourne.wilts.sch.uk/our-school/church-school-distinctiveness/collective-worship
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A holistic assessment of the religious and spiritual dimensions of an individual's life can facilitate existential exploration as a part of ACP. A critical aspect of integrating religion and spirituality in ACP is recognizing the individuals' ability to choose wisely based on their own faith journey and acknowledging that each person has unique attributes and conscience to discern what is right for them.
Similarly, health care professionals may have their own meaning in life challenged by their experiences of their patient's struggles and suffering, and by the stresses they encounter while providing health care. The health care professional that accompanies patients and their loved ones on their journey of discerning what is right for them within the given circumstances must recognize that his or her own decisions may have been different. Yet, the health care professional must be willing to be nonjudgmental and remain supportive—to provide compassionate care for people facing very difficult situations.
Health care professionals must be able to help patients and their families explore the religious and spiritual dimensions that guide their decision making, not to be able to convince them of a “right” way, but to be able to guide them in reviewing possible options and resources, and expressing their preferences and values to guide others who may be advocating or speaking on their behalf. Journeying with the individual in the quest to connect more deeply with what is meaningful can enable the patient to engage more fully in ACP. Knowledge of the differences in values, beliefs, and preferences, in addition to the need to partner with the individuals and families to negotiate care within the patient's religion, spirituality, and culture are critical for good health care decision making.
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Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
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https://ebrary.net/1709/health/conclusion_advance_care_planning
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Palliative Care Aids in Recovery For Some Lung Cancer Patients
Reducing symptom severity facilitates recovery in some lung cancer patients.
August 18, 2010 -- Patients with advanced lung cancer lived longer and with better quality of life when they received early palliative care as opposed to routine care, results of a randomized trial showed.
Early palliative care reduced use of aggressive measures at end of life by more than a third, cut the prevalence of depression in half, and added three months to the median survival of patients with advanced nonsmall-cell lung cancer (NSCLC).
The findings have implications for end-of-life decision making and use of healthcare resources, according to an article in the Aug. 19 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine.
"Although our findings must be replicated in a variety of care settings and cancer populations, the results nonetheless offer great promise for alleviating distress in patients with metastatic disease and addressing critical concerns regarding the use of healthcare services at the end of life," Dr. Jennifer S. Temel of Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, and her coauthors wrote.
Much of the debate about healthcare reform revolves around quality of care and use of healthcare resources. With its focus on symptom management, psychosocial support, and assistance with decision making, palliative care offers the potential to improve quality of care and reduce use of medical services, the authors wrote in their introduction.
Historically, palliative care has entered patient management late in the disease course to patients who are hospitalized in specialized units or as a consultative service for uncontrolled symptoms, they continued.
Previous studies have suggested that employing palliative care late in a patient's clinical course has no effect on quality or delivery of care.
"To have a meaningful effect on patients' quality of life and end-of- life care, palliative care services must be provided earlier in the course of the disease," the authors noted.
In an effort to assess the impact of early palliative care, investigators conducted a prospective, randomized clinical trial involving 151 patients with metastatic NSCLC. Within eight weeks of diagnosis, the patients were randomized to standard care alone or with integrated palliative care.
General guidelines for palliative care were adapted from the National Consensus Project for Quality Palliative Care. Principal components of palliative care included attention to physical and psychosocial symptoms, establishing goals for care, assisting in decision making regarding treatment, and coordinating care on the basis of individual patient needs.
Patients assigned to palliative care had better quality of life, and only 16 percent of the palliative care group had depressive symptoms versus 38 percent of the control group.
The study also found that fewer patients who received palliative care had aggressive end-of-life care, and patients who received palliative care lived about three months longer.
Dr. Amy S. Kelley and Dr. Diane E. Meier, MD of Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York wrote an accompanying editorial that said palliative care is "appropriate and potentially beneficial when it is introduced at the time of diagnosis of a serious or life-limiting illness—at the same time as all other appropriate and medical therapies are initiated."
They added that future studies should address the impact of specific components of palliative care to establish evidence to support best practice.
Nonetheless, the results point to the value of a paradigm shift toward earlier implementation of palliative care.
"Perhaps unsurprisingly, reducing patients' misery may help them live longer," Kelley and Meier wrote. "We now have both the means and the knowledge to make palliative care an essential and routine component of evidence-based, high-quality care for the management of serious illness."
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https://abcnews.go.com/Health/News/early-palliative-care-boosts-survival-lung-cancer-patients/story?id=11430813
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Motor neuron disease refers to a group of diseases that are caused by the degeneration of motor nerves and can lead variety of upper and lower motor neuron symptoms.
Motor neuron disease (MND) is a progressive disorder characterized by selective degeneration of motor nerves and weakness of muscles. The disease has poor prognosis and has poor life expectancy. The disease affects only motor neurons sparing the sensory system.
Motor Neuron Disease Causes
There is no conclusive evidence about the causative or risk factors for the disease.
Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS) is a form of MND which is characterized by fast progression and presence of both UMN and LMN symptoms in the trunk, extremities and bulbar regions. The life expectancy of patients with ALS is very poor of up to 3 to 5 years since the onset of the disease.
The onset of the disease may be from weakness in the extremities or symptoms of bulbar region. As the disease progresses the weakness spreads to all the regions.
Motor Neuron Disease Symptoms
- Weakness in the distal muscles of the extremities,
- fasciculations and cramps in all the parts of the body,
- emotional disturbances,
- dysarthria,
- dysphagia,
- fatigue
- alteration in tone.
- Reflexes may be exaggerated and Hoffmann's sign may also be positive.
ALS significantly hampers the quality of life of patients due to increased dependence for performing activities of daily living as the disease progresses.The presentation of the disease varies over several permutations of patterns of weakness and rate of progression.
The terminal symptoms of the disease are caused due to weakness of respiratory muscles leading to respiratory insufficiency and eventually respiratory failure Various
Some factors have been identified, which may responsible for poor prognosis, such as, presence of LMN features, old age, bulbar onset, low forced vital capacity (FVC) and low scores on revised ALS- functional rating scale (ALS-FRSr), other neurodegenerative disorders also present with similar UMN and LMN symptoms.
Motor Neuron Disease Treatment
Currently ALS is incurable. To improve the quality of life and complications developed secondary to prolonged and progressive muscle weakness, multidisciplinary care is required.
Commonly the management includes pharmacological intervention, rehabilitation, nutritional advice, good nursing care, artificial ventilator support in the later stages of the disease and Percutaneous endoscopic gastrotomy (PEG) preventing dysphagia related complications.
As multiple body systems are involved, the best approach is a multidisciplinary holistic management of the disease. Currently ALS is treated with a combination of medical, surgical and rehabilitative treatments.
Pharmacological management
Riluzole is the only medicine that has shown significant effect on the survival duration in ALS is Riluzole. Other medicines like Talampanel, Memantine, Cephalosporins, antioxidants, agents modulating apoptosis, anti-inflammatory medicines like Thaliomide and Celastol and Autophagy regulators like rapamycin and lithium are being tested with no conclusive results.
Neuro rehabilitation
- Physiotherapy aims at improving the muscle power, normalizing the tone, gait training and functional thereby improving the quality of life.
- Occupational Therapy - The aim of occupational therapy is to teach functional ctivities, transfers, bed mobility skills required for activities of daily living. It also trains individuals with ALS to independently use wheelchair or other mobility aids.
- Speech and Language Therapy - A speech and language therapist helps with two of the most common symptoms – slurred speech (dysarthria) and swallowing problems (dysphagia).
- Certain aids and appliances such as canes for walking, modified utensils for eating, speaking aids may also be used by the individuals with ALS.
Cell therapy for Motor Neuron Disease
Cellular transplantation is an attractive management strategy for ALS/MND. The pre-clinical animal studies have shown benefits in the motor function. The safety of autologous stem cell transplantation has been established and allogenic cells transplantation is being studied. Transplantation of mononuclear cells derived from peripheral blood using various modes of transplantation like intracerebral, intra-spinal and intrathecal have shown beneficial gains in survival, respiratory function, muscle strength and bulbar impairment. It also slowed disease progression and rate of drop in the respiratory function.
Marked progressive axonal degeneration of motor neurons in the spinal cord and motor cortex is noted in ALS/MND. Currently the aim of transplantation is to protect the existing motor neurons and attempt to bring about regeneration and repair in the damaged motor neurons. BMMNCs have a neurogenic potential as well as neurotrophic influence on the nervous system and can home onto the site of injury. They further demonstrate immomodulatory, anti-inflammatory and cytoprotective properties. The growth factors like vascular endothelial growth factor, secreted by these cells bring about neoangiogenesis. These paracrine effects of BMMNCs transplantation lead to neuroprotection and subsequent alteration in the disease course and progression. These overall affects of stem cell transplantation helps in alleviating and halting the progression of the symptoms and regaining better quality of life in individuals with ALS.
Clinical results of Stem Cell Therapy at NeuroGen Brain and Spine Institute:-
We compared the survival duration of the ALS/MND patients treated with intrathecal autologous bone marrow mononuclear cells transplantation with patients that did not undergo intrathecal autologous BMMNCs transplantation. There were total 46 patients in the intervention group and 20 patients in the control group. Both these groups shared similar baseline demographic characteristics. Comparison of the survival duration suggested that the mean survival duration of the patients treated with intrathecal autologous BMMNCs transplantation was longer than those who were not treated (Table 1). The difference between the two was statistically significant (p=0.043). A clinically significant difference of 47 months in the survival duration suggests the potential of intrathecal autologous BMMNCs transplantation in the treatment of ALS/MND. Some patients were given stem cell therapy along with Lithium for 6 weeks. We noted that patients who were given Lithium and were young had better survival than the others. This could be attributed to better survival and growth of the transplanted cells.
Majority of the patients reported
- Clearer and louder speech,
- Improved tongue movements and
- Reduced speech fatigability.
- Bulbar symptoms like reduced chocking, improved swallowing, reduced saliva drooling,
- Increase respiratory capacity.
- Few showed better neck control.
- The limb function was better in few patients.
- Improvement in some patients showed improvement in the
- Lower extremity function,
- Ambulation,
- Fine motor activities,
- Static and dynamic standing and sitting balance.
All these changes were noted in the early post transplantation period.
Table 1: Survival analysis
Conclusion
Stem cell therapy in combination with standard rilutor and rehabilitation may lead to slowing down or halting of the progression in ALS/MND. It is safe, simple and efficacious in the earlier stages of the disease. There is also a possibility of improving bulbar symptoms like speech and swallowing with stem cell therapy. To the patients suffering from ALS stem cell therapy is the one of the hope for halting the progression.
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https://www.stemcellsmumbai.com/motor-neuron-disease2
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If clinicians can identify complications earlier and take appropriate prophylactic or therapeutic measures, treatment plan adherence and outcomes may be improved for patients with head and neck cancer.
Brian A. Moore, MD, FACS
Brian A. Moore, MD, FACS
Medical Director, Ochsner Cancer Institute, and Chairman of
Otorhinolaryngology
and Communication
Sciences, Ochsner Health
System, New Orleans, LA
Patients who receive a diagnosis of head and neck cancer pose multiple unique challenges to multidisciplinary treatment teams. One such challenge is the impact of multimodality therapy on swallowing function and oral intake, which can put patients at risk for malnutrition, dehydration, secondary acute kidney injury, emergency department (ED) visits, hospital admissions, and potential interruptions in their treatment course. Such interruptions and delays may increase the total treatment package time either in the primary or adjuvant setting and potentially lead to worsened outcomes, including local/regional recurrence and in overall survival (OS).1-3
Although many factors, including social determinants of health and access to care, contribute to delays in initiation of treatment or postoperative radiation therapy, inadequate management of expected toxicities and symptoms seems to be the primary contributor to treatment prolongation. If clinicians can identify complications earlier and take appropriate prophylactic or therapeutic measures, treatment plan adherence and outcomes may be improved.
Increasing attention to patient-reported outcomes measures (PROMs), with improved symptom management, has been associated with improved quality of life, increased OS, and fewer ED visits in patients with advanced cancer.4-6
Similarly, the potential to remotely monitor patients’ activity and vital signs via Web-based portals or the electronic medical record (EMR) has provided a new dimension to remote monitoring.7 Previous studies have reported on a similar association with increased ambulation and decreased readmission rates after surgical interventions.8,9
Pilot Program Developed
Our team at Ochsner Cancer Institute in New Orleans, Louisiana, has been investigating ways of using electronic tools to improve outcomes for patients with head and neck cancer. Important toxicities for this population include pain and mucositis, which can lead to decreased oral intake and dehydration with potential acute kidney injury in the short term and dysphagia and feeding tube dependence in the long term.10-12
The potential to merge PROMs with remote monitoring of vital signs and activity for these patients prompted our team to devise a pilot program. All participants are required to have a smartphone, which is used to sync monitoring devices and the EMR via a patient portal.
Click to Enlarge
Patients receive a brief, twice-weekly text message or portal-based questionnaire (Figure), as well as a digital scale and activity tracker (Fitbit) to monitor their weight, heart rate, and steps. When objective patient measures or responses fall below certain predetermined thresholds, automated alerts are sent via the EMR to clinic staff, who actively contact patients to facilitate evaluation or intervention as needed. Patients also receive coaching reminders to perform their swallowing exercises throughout therapy.
Early Findings Support Model
The early experience was presented at the 2019 American Head and Neck Society Annual Meeting. Ten patents were successfully enrolled into the pilot program in its first several months; however, only 9 had sufficient information for analysis. All 9 patients were able to record their steps, heart rate, and daily weight measurements, and all responded to the majority of questionnaire solicitations. The average age was 59.6 years (SD, 9.1); the evaluable group comprised 2 female and 7 male patients.13
Data were collected on the number of steps taken daily and on weight. Eight of 9 patients did not have any significant complications during their treatment, and these patients were grouped into the “nonadmit” group. One patient had an unplanned hospital admission and was grouped separately.
Steps and weights were compared between the 2 groups. Patients in the nonadmit group walked 2350 to 9239 steps per day, whereas the patient who was admitted seemed to have taken fewer steps per day, on average, with a range of 3 to 6863. The steps for each group were averaged daily and plotted into a graphical format. Not surprisingly, all patients in the study lost weight, with an overall average of 18.1 pounds, amounting to 7.7% of pretreatment body weight in the nonadmit group, but no trends could be identified.
Although the pilot included a small number of patients, it has been an iterative process, with ongoing evolution of the program and the monitoring thresholds. Patients who were found to have significant symptoms or changes were actively encouraged to come to the oncology acute care clinic for evaluation and perhaps supportive care infusions, potentially avoiding admissions and ED visits.
Patient satisfaction with this enhanced attention to their symptoms and more tangible connections to their care team was high. This pilot has demonstrated that remote monitoring not only is feasible in patients with head and neck cancer but also merits further study and application in other settings, most notably for patients receiving chemotherapy or perioperative care and even for cancer survivors.
The Ochsner Cancer Institute has expanded its efforts in this arena, now offering 3 active digital oncology programs: head and neck, a chemotherapy companion for common chemotherapy regimens, and a preoperative optimization effort for patients undergoing major abdominal surgery.
In the program’s current form, the care team is still reacting to the symptoms reported by patients or identified by remote monitoring. Soon the team will be able to apply artificial intelligence or machine learning to the data gathered from these programs, potentially identifying key symptom and/or vital parameter inflection points so that the interventions can become more proactive.
Remote monitoring or PROMs with smartphones and digital devices connected to the EMR is feasible in patients with head and neck cancer undergoing multimodality therapy. More investigation is needed to define the potential to improve cancer-related outcomes and quality of life for patients.
Beginning in spring 2018, patients with head and neck cancer undergoing radiation therapy with or without concurrent chemotherapy in both the primary and adjuvant settings have been eligible to participate in this program, which is funded by hospital philanthropy.
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https://www.onclive.com/view/remote-monitoring-enhances-care-for-patients-with-head-and-neck-cancer
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A Note From Dr Halls Regarding The Statistics For Metastatic Recurrence In Breast Cancer
The statistic of 20% to 30% for metastatic breast cancer that recurs remain controversial amongst medical experts. The figure of 30% metastatic breast cancer recurrence rate first appears in a 2005medical study, but no statistical data or sources are cited.
The MBCN take the 18-year relative survival rate from the SEERS data between the years of 1990 to 1994 as 71%. The argument is, that this takes us close to the 30% recurrence rate statistic. However, there are many other factors at play and treatment has advanced so much that recurrence rates may have even halved since then.
It is safe to say that much more data and research into metastatic recurrence rates would be of huge value towards a long-term cancer cure.
Indeed, it has also been suggested that research into the rare group of women who survive many years with metastasis may be of equal importance to understanding recurrence and patterns of breast cancer.
Treatment Options For Metastatic Breast Cancer
Treatment for metastatic breast cancer often is based on systemic therapies, which use drugs rather than surgery or radiation. Metastases treatments are designed to shrink tumors and slow their growth, help ease symptoms and improve quality of life. Treatment may change, such as when one therapy stops working, or the side effects become too uncomfortable. Rather than having only one treatment, most patients undergo several treatments combined to help fight the cancer.
The four broad categories of drug-based treatments are:
Advances In Treatment Of Metastatic Breast Cancer With Bone Metastasis
Ziping Wu, Jinsong Lu
Department of Breast Surgery, Renji Hospital, School of Medicine, Shanghai Jiao Tong University , China
Contributions: Conception and design: All authors Administrative support: None Provision of study materials or patients: All authors Collection and assembly of data: All authors Data analysis and interpretation: All authors Manuscript writing: All authors Final approval of manuscript: All authors.
Correspondence to:
Abstract: Bone is the most commonly seen metastatic site in all the metastatic breast cancer . Treatment includes systemic treatment according to different molecular subtypes and specified treatment of the bone. Bisphosphonate and denosumab are the only two drugs approved to use in bone metastatic site. The optimal dosing schedule and duration of the drugs are still under research. New drugs and therapies including curcuminoids, sunitinib and nano particles are potentially available in the near future.
Keywords: Metastatic breast cancer bone metastasis bisphosphonate denosumab
Submitted Jun 01, 2018. Accepted for publication Jun 07, 2018.
doi: 10.21037/cco.2018.06.05
Also Check: What Is The Prognosis For Metastatic Breast Cancer
What Is The Life Expectancy Of Stage 4 Cancer
Stage 4 cancer cells have metastasized, spreading to distant areas in the body. Stage 4 is the final stage of mesothelioma and considered terminal. The average life expectancy for stage 4 mesothelioma is less than 12 months. Watch: Learn what to expect after receiving a stage 4 mesothelioma diagnosis.
Integrative Therapies For Metastatic Breast Cancer
You may find it beneficial to add integrative therapies to your treatment plan. There are many evidence-informed integrative modalities to boost the mind and body. Practices like gentle yoga, meditation, massage and music therapy may feel enjoyable and reduce stress and anxiety levels.
To help our patients maintain quality of life after a metastatic breast cancer diagnosis, our team of breast cancer experts may offer supportive care services to help manage side effects of the disease and its treatments. These may include:
Before starting any integrative therapies, however, ask your care team for advice on which ones are most suited to you and fit into your overall treatment plan, as well as how to do them safely.
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Breast Cancer Subtypes Hormonal And Her2 Status And Survival Rates
Many research studies over the years have shown that Estrogen-positive breast cancers have better survival rates than all of the Estrogen-negative subtypes.
Progesterone-positive breast cancer also appears to have improved survival rates in comparison to progesterone-negative cases.
A recent research study combines hormone receptivity, HER2 status and stage and found some interesting results:-
For ER+ sub-types survival rates were significantly better than all other subtypes. For example, at stage 1b,
ER+ PR+ HER2- 5-year survival rates were 98.6%ER+ PR- HER2+ 5-year survival rates were 97.3%
The subtype triple negative breast cancer had the worst survival rates over all three stages. At stage I the 5-year survival rate was 92.9% and at stage III 48.9%.
Positron Emission Tomography Scan
This is another nuclear scanning technique sometimes used to detect metastases by creating a 3-dimensional picture of your body, with the use of radio waves that show up after an injection. PET scans are not routinely used to look for bone metastases. If your doctor recommends that you have a PET scan you should speak to your doctor about possible costs as it is not usually covered by Medicare.
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Prognosis For Metastatic Breast Cancer
Metastatic breast cancer isnt the same for everyone who has it. According to the National Breast Cancer Foundation, your symptoms at stage 4 will depend on the degree to which the cancer has spread in your body.
Although metastatic breast cancer has no current cure, it can be treated. Getting the right treatment can increase both your quality of life and longevity.
Life expectancy for breast cancer is based on studies of many people with the condition. These statistics cant predict your personal outcome each persons outlook is different.
The following factors can affect your life expectancy with metastatic breast cancer:
Metastasis Breast Cancer To Bone Survival Rate
Breast cancer can spread to other parts of the body after stage 3 breast cancer diagnosis. Metastasis is the process by which breast cancer spread to bones and many more parts of the body.
Once it spreads into bones only 10 percent can survive a quality life for a short period.
As we discussed in earlier articles, it is a terminal disease and the patient will die in a short period of time.
According to a general study on the various patients of metastasis bone cancer there are nearly 6 to 48 months of life expectancy. Bones became so weak after cancer spread into them and it led to symptoms of secondary breast cancer.
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Breast Cancer Metastasis: Secondary Sites
Over the years there have been significant improvements and advancements in the diagnosis and treatment of breast cancer. Indeed, breast cancer is now considered to be a manageable disease.
However, there are still over half a million deaths worldwide from breast cancer and over 90% of these women die of metastasis. Consequently, research into metastasis is of vital importance in overcoming deaths from metastatic breast cancers.
Stage IV or metastatic breast cancer, as mentioned earlier, are cancer cells that have spread from the breast to distant sites around the body. Common secondary sites are:-
Benefits Of Primary Tumor Surgery In Patients Subdivided By Molecular Subtypes And Metastatic Sites
In the whole cohort, primary tumor surgery could prolong OS . In terms of molecular subtypes, surgery provided extra survival benefit in all subtypes . In terms of metastatic burden, BOM, bone and liver metastasis as well as bone and lung metastasis patients could benefit from surgery . However, surgery did not significantly benefit patients with bone and brain metastasis . Similarly, the analysis of BCSS showed consistent results.
Figure 4 Survival of de novo bone metastatic patients in different subtypes according to primary surgery. OS and BCSS in patients with HR+/HER2 tumors OS and BCSS in patients with HR+/HER2+ tumors OS and BCSS in patients with HR/HER2+ tumors OS and BCSS in patients with HR/HER2 tumors.
Figure 5 Survival of de novo bone metastatic patients in different metastatic burdens according to primary surgery. OS and BCSS in patients with bone-only metastasis OS and BCSS in patients with bone and brain metastasis OS and BCSS in patients with bone and liver metastasis OS and BCSS in patients with bone and lung metastasis.
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Bone Metastases And Bone Problems
People with bone metastases are at risk of serious bone complications such as bone fractures , spinal cord compression and bone pain.
Bone complications are a concern for people with bone metastases as they can cause pain and may lead to loss of mobility, impacting quality of life. Bone complications can also decrease survival . With the use of bone-strengthening drugs, bone complications are not common .
Prognosis Of Bone Metastases
Once cancer has spread to the bone, prognosis tends to be poor and treatment is generally aimed at minimizing symptoms and improving quality of life. Bone metastases often have a significant impact on a persons quality of life by causing reduced mobility and pain, and complications such as high calcium levels, bone marrow suppression and fractures.
Here are some of the common problems caused by bone metastases. Not everyone will get all of these symptoms, and some of the information here may not apply to you. In some cases, these symptoms are not caused directly by the cancer in the bones or can have more than one cause. Your cancer care team can tell you the most about where the bone metastasis is and what symptoms it might cause.
Pain
There are many ways to treat pain caused by bone metastases. Almost any of the local or systemic treatments commonly used for bone metastases can be helpful in treating pain.
Pain medicines are also very helpful. There are many different kinds of pain medicines used to treat cancer pain. There are also a lot of ways the medicines can be taken, such as pills, patches, sprays, and pumps that let you put the medicine into your body when you need it.
You should never accept pain as a normal part of having cancer. All pain can be treated, and most pain can be controlled or relieved. Talk to your cancer care team.
High calcium levels
Early symptoms of having too much calcium in the blood include:
Broken bones
Spinal cord compression
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What Should I Ask My Healthcare Provider About Metastatic Breast Cancer
If youve been diagnosed with metastatic breast cancer, ask your provider:
- What are my treatment options?
- What is my prognosis?
- What side effects can I expect?
- Will complementary therapy help me feel better?
- What if I want to stop treatment?
- How can I feel my best during treatment?
A note from Cleveland Clinic
Metastatic breast cancer is advanced breast cancer. Providers classify it as stage 4 breast cancer. It happens when cancer cells, often left behind after previous breast cancer treatment, start to spread to other parts of the body. While there is no cure for metastatic breast cancer, treatment can prolong your life and help you feel better. There are many medications available, so if one treatment isnt working, your care team can try a different approach. If you notice any symptoms or dont feel your best, especially if youve undergone breast cancer treatment in the past, talk to your healthcare provider.
Last reviewed by a Cleveland Clinic medical professional on 04/14/2021.
References
Demographic And Clinical Variables
The relationship between metastatic sites and clinical characteristics, including age at diagnosis, year of diagnosis, race, marital status, tumor grade, tumor size, nodal status, subtype, and treatment was analyzed. Initial metastatic sites were registered as single or multiple and were categorized as bone-only, lung-only, liver-only, brain-only, other-only and multiple metastasis . Overall survival was calculated from the date of diagnosis to the date of death due to any cause, the date of last follow-up, or December 31, 2015. Breast cancer specific survival was measured as the time from the date of diagnosis to the date of death attributed to breast cancer. Both overall survival and breast cancer specific survival were used as endpoints.
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Univariable And Multivariable Analysis
In univariate analysis, we found that patients of older age, black race, higher grade tumors, HR/HER2 subtype, high T stage , unmarried status, uninsured status, visceral involvement , no primary tumor surgery displayed worse OS .
Table 2 Univariate and multivariate cox progression of OS and BCSS of breast cancer patients with initial bone metastasis.
These statistically significant factors were included in the multivariate analysis. Patients older than 60 years old , black race , T3 stage were significantly related to worse OS. Compared with HR+/HER2 patients, HR+/HER2+ and HR/HER2+ subtype showed improved OS , while HR/HER2 subtype demonstrated the worst outcome . Social factors like marital status and insurance status were also associated with OS.
Among the 6,860 patients with bone metastatic lesions, 4096 cases demonstrated bone-only metastasis and 2,764 cases displayed concurrent visceral metastases. The outcome was much worse when combining visceral metastases . In terms of BCSS, univariate and multivariate results identified the same prognostic factors as OS .
How Long Do You Live With Stage 4 Breast Cancer
The 5-year relative survival rate for stage 4 breast cancer is 22 percent, which means that 22 percent of people will live for at least 5 years after diagnosis. However, many factors influence survival rates, including: the subtype of breast cancer. how fast the tumor is growing. how likely the cancer is to come back.
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When Can Metastatic Breast Cancer Occur
Most often, metastatic breast cancer arises months or years after a person has completed treatment for early or locally advanced breast cancer. This is sometimes called a distant recurrence.
Some people have metastatic breast cancer when they are first diagnosed . This is called de novo metastatic breast cancer.
Komen Perspectives
What Is Metastatic Breast Cancer
Metastasis is the process by which cancer cells spread. In the case of metastatic breast cancer, the cancer originated in breast tissue, then spread to other parts of the body.
Metastatic cancer is further described as local, regional or distant, depending on the location of the cancer cells in relation to the original tumor.
- Localized metastatic breast cancer often means the breast cancer has spread to nearby lymph nodes.
- The more distant locations include the bones, lungs, skin, liver and brain, although its possible for other parts of the body to be affected.
Its important to remember that every cancer is unique and that your experience may not necessarily be the same as that of another breast cancer patient. With a personalized treatment plan, metastatic breast cancer is typically treatable. A recent National Cancer Institute study found that the number of U.S. women living longer with distant metastatic breast cancer is growing, thanks to advances in treatments.
Its also important to prepare yourself with information about the disease, its symptoms and how its detected and treated.
This article will cover:
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How Effective Are Treatments For Metastatic Breast Cancer In Bones
Treatment for bone metastasis can effectively manage metastatic breast cancer for some time. Many people with bone metastasis continue to have a good quality of life and live for many years. That said, treatment for metastatic cancer doesnt usually eliminate all cancer cells, and eventually, these cells become resistant to therapy.
According to the , the 5-year survival rate for metastatic breast cancer is 28 percent for women and 22 percent for men. Its important to note that cancer survival statistics are based on people who were diagnosed and treated at least 5 years ago. That means they dont reflect the effectiveness of the newest treatments and treatments are improving every year.
Its also worth noting that survival rates for metastatic cancer are very diverse and dependent on the individual and the type of cancer they have. For example, people with hormone-receptor positive cancers and HER2-positive breast cancers may do well for a long time, compared to those with triple-negative breast cancers. So, lumping all forms of metastatic cancer into one statistic can be misleading.
Regardless of the type of breast cancer you have, early diagnosis and treatment are crucial, as survival rates are higher in the early stages of breast cancer. And remember, the right treatment for stage 4 breast cancer can improve quality of life and longevity.
Surgery Of The Bone/radiotherapy
If a fracture of the bone has occurred or is likely to occur, then an orthopedic assessment is necessary to determine if a surgical intervention is needed before RT or RT alone is adequate. In emergent cases where a spinal compression has occurred, surgical decompression is the optimal treatment of choice. If surgery is not feasible, then an emergent RT is also an option .
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Breast Cancer Metastasis To Skin Survival Rate
Life expectancy is only 6 weeks for the patient if breast cancer spread to lymph nodes. The pain in the chest and internal part of it is really worse and that is the reason it has that much of a short life expectancy.
There are rare chances of metastasis breast cancer to spread into skin. But it is possible through the blood and lymphatic system. The scalp, neck, abdomen, back and upper limbs are some common areas of skin which may be affected by metastasis breast cancer.
Skin cancer can change the idea of living quality life for most of the womens. If a breast cancer is visible from the outside of the particular area women can grow low self esteem towards life. Appearance is really more important for women than men.
How Can I Take Care Of Myself While Living With Metastatic Breast Cancer
Living with metastatic breast cancer can be challenging. Your care team can help provide physical and emotional support. Talk to them about how you can:
- Eat the most nutritious diet for your needs.
- Exercise regularly.
- Get emotional support, including finding support groups.
- Reach out for help from friends, family and loved ones.
- Find mental health services.
- Find complementary therapies.
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https://www.breastcancertalk.net/breast-cancer-metastasis-to-bone-survival-rate/
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Two Rutgers College of Nursing faculty members are conducting a study to develop and test a targeted intervention to reduce symptoms and improve the quality of life of patients undergoing prostate cancer treatment.
The $162,000 study, funded by National Institutes of Health, will develop, for the first time, self-care behaviors that may be used by men undergoing prostate cancer treatment.
The two-year study will be conducted by Lucille Sanzero Eller, associate professor, and Elise Lev, associate professor, at the College of Nursing at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey.
?There has not been a definitive study on what types of self-care strategies these men can use for management of physical symptoms such as urinary and bowel incontinence and psychological symptoms such as depression,? said Eller, a Cedar Grove, N.J. resident.
?Prostate cancer is the most common cancer in men in the United States. Improved diagnosis and treatment have led to increased survival rates,? said Lev, a Stamford, CT resident. ?However survival is marred by physical and psychological symptoms that can result in poor quality of life. Self-care interventions that will be designed to address these symptoms have the potential to improve the quality of life in men with prostate cancer.?
Sixty men undergoing prostate cancer treatment at Hackensack University Medical Center, Hackensack, N.J. will be recruited for the study. The study will be conducted in three phases. In the first phase, focus groups will be held with men who have undergone prostate cancer treatment. The men will be asked how they managed symptoms while they underwent treatment.
In the second phase of the study, the intervention, which will include a video tape and a symptom management booklet outlining self-care strategies, will be developed based on focus group data. In the third and final phase of the study the self-care symptom management strategies will be tested in a group of men undergoing prostate cancer treatment and compared with a control group.es. The college offers a master?s program with unique practitioner specialties and the first to offer a doctoral (Ph.D) nursing degree in New Jersey.
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https://spiritindia.com/prostate-cancer-2-rutgers-college-of-nursing-professors-study-patients-with-prostate-cancer/
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There is a small group of patients with primary advanced esophageal cancer who can have longer-term survival, and radiation can improve swallowing and potentially lengthen the time without symptoms in this group.
“Overall, radiation remains an excellent tool for palliation of patients with advanced esophageal cancer and should remain the standard of care,” said lead author Michael Gordon Penniment, MBBS, Director of Radiation Oncology at Royal Adelaide Hospital in South Australia and the Director of Radiation Oncology at the Alan Walker Cancer Chemotherapy Care Centre in Darwin, Australia.
Researchers found that chemotherapy increased toxicity significantly without additional symptom control or improved survival in this patient population. “The study focused on the best, yet simplest and least toxic treatment to alleviate pain,” Dr. Penniment said.
This is the largest randomized phase III trial in advanced esophageal cancer. The study enrolled 220 patients, the majority with metastatic disease, and randomized them to receive palliative radiation (35 Gy in 15 fractions in Australia and New Zealand or 30 Gy in 10 fractions in Canada and the United Kingdom) or concomitant chemoradiotherapy with cisplatin and fluorouracil. Dysphagia was measured with the Mellow score; toxicity with the Common Terminology Criteria for Adverse Events (CTCAE) version 2, and quality of life (QOL) using the European Organization for Research and Treatment of Cancer (EORTC) QLQ 30 and esophagus module (OES-18).
A dysphagia response at any time was reported in 67.89% of patients in the radiotherapy-alone group vs 73.8% in the chemoradiotherapy group, a difference that was not statistically significant. However, chemoradiotherapy resulted in a significant increase in toxicity, namely, nausea and vomiting (P < .01), compared with radiotherapy alone. Median survival was not significantly different between the two treatment arms.
One potentially important finding of the trial was that about 10% (n = 21) of patients were alive 2 years post-treatment. “This tail in the curve shows us that there is a small group of patients with primary advanced esophageal cancer who can have longer-term survival, and radiation can improve swallowing and potentially lengthen the time without symptoms in this group,” Dr. Penniment said.
Disclosure: Dr. Penniment reported no potential conflicts of interest.
1. Penniment MG, Harvey JA, Wong R, et al: Best practice in advanced oesophageal cancer: A report on TROG 03.01 NCIC CTG ES.2 multinational phase III study in advanced oesophageal cancer comparing quality of life and palliation of dysphagia in patients treated with radiotherapy or chemo-radiotherapy. ASTRO Annual Meeting. Abstract CT-03. Presented September 14, 2014.
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https://ascopost.com/issues/october-15-2014/radiation-alone-is-as-effective-as-and-less-toxic-than-chemoradiation-for-advanced-esophageal-cancer/
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Drugs currently available for treatment of COPD can reduce or eliminate symptoms, increase exercise capacity and lung function, reduce the number and severity of exacerbations and improve quality of life. However, there are no drug treatments currently available that modify the rate of decline in lung function. The improvement in lung function often seen with brief drug treatment does not necessarily predict other clinically related outcomes (ATC, 2004). The combination of different drug treatments can produce a greater change in spirometry and symptoms than single agents given alone.
The benefits of long term antibiotic use do not outweigh the harms of treatment and the risk of promoting antibiotic resistance (Clinical Evidence, 2004).
Antibiotics should be used in exacerbations when patients have an increase in cough, dyspnoea, sputum production or purulence (NZGG, 2002).
These act directly on smooth muscle to cause bronchodilation. They also appear to reduce hyperinflation by reducing air-trapping in the lungs. This may explain why some patients benefit from them without an improvement in spirometry or PEFR. Effects last for about four hours and time to peak response is slower than in asthma. There is evidence that they increase FEV1 and reduce breathlessness, dyspnoea and fatigue. They can be used intermittently or regularly. There is no evidence that regular use of short acting beta-2 agonists adversely affects survival in patients with COPD (Prodigy, 2004).
Ipratropium blocks cholinergic nerves therefore blocking bronchoconstrictor effects. Mucus secretion is reduced by blockade of muscarinic receptors. They may also reduce hyperinflation providing similar benefits to beta-2agonists. Ipratropium increases FEV1 but like short acting beta-2 agonists it has no effect on the rate of progression of COPD. They can be used intermittently or regularly.
In practice there is little to choose between ipratropium and a short acting beta-2 agonist and either can be used as initial therapy. Ipratropium has a slower onset of action than beta-2 agonists and is less suitable for as required use (Prodigy, 2004).
There have been no long term comparisons of short acting inhaled anticholinergics and short acting inhaled beta-2 agonists. One non-systematic review found that short term (3 months) regular treatment with ipratropium is more effective at improving FEV1 than regular treatment with short acting beta-2 agonist bronchodilators (Rennard, 1996).
The response to treatment should be assessed over at least four weeks. Therapy should be continued if there is documented improvement in lung function, symptoms of breathlessness, objective measures of breathlessness (MRC scale) or exercise capacity. If the response to a short acting beta-2 agonist is unsatisfactory a short acting anticholinergic should be trialed and vice-versa (NZGG, 2002).
Tiotropium has a similar mode of action to ipratropium but has a duration of action >24 hours and is administered once daily. It increases FEV1 compared with placebo and it improves dyspnoea, and reduces exacerbation rates compared with placebo and regular ipratropium (NZGG, 2002; Prodigy, 2004).
Tiotropium has been compared with long acting beta-2 agonists in three randomised controlled trials. Two trials found that tiotropium improved FEV1 , and health related quality of life compared with salmeterol over six months. However, another trial found no significant difference between the same treatments in health related quality of life or exacerbation rates at six months (Clinical Evidence, 2004).
Tiotropium is funded in New Zealand for the treatment of severe COPD on completion of a Special Authority Subsidy form.
The bronchodilator effects are similar to the short acting drugs but the duration of action is around 12 hours. These drugs have been found to reduce dyspnoea and symptom scores for COPD when compared with placebo (Prodigy, 2004).
Long acting bronchodilators provide sustained relief of symptoms in moderate to severe COPD (NZGG, 2002). The evidence for effects on lung function and exacerbation rates is conflicting. Some trials have shown significant benefit whereas others have found no effect (Clinical Evidence, 2004; Prodigy, 2004).
Long acting beta-2 agonists are not currently funded in New Zealand for use in COPD.
Inhaled corticosteroids are not first line treatments for COPD. The inflammation that occurs in COPD is different to that seen in asthma and does not generally respond to inhaled corticosteroids. They have no effect on symptom scores or rate of decline in FEV1. They reduce exacerbation rates in severe COPD (FEV1 < 50%) but have no effect on exacerbation rates in mild COPD (Prodigy, 2004). Short term (10 days to 10 weeks) randomised controlled trials of inhaled corticosteroids in patients with COPD have found no evidence of superiority over placebo at improving FEV1. A systematic review of long term trials (3 trials, 197 patients, treated for 2-2.5 years) also found no improvement in FEV1 compared with placebo.
A trial of inhaled corticosteroids is recommended in patients with an FEV1 less than or equal to 50% of predicted, who have had two or more exacerbations requiring treatment with oral corticosteroids or antibiotics in a 12 month period (NICE, 2005). They could also be trialed in patients with moderate or severe COPD with monitoring of objective measures of response. If there is no response they should be discontinued (NZGG). There is a possibility of exacerbation following withdrawal and re-instituting therapy may be necessary (Jarad, 1999).
Recent trials (Clinical Evidence, 2004) have demonstrated some benefits from the combined administration of inhaled corticosteroids and long acting beta-2 agonists. When the combination was compared with placebo there was a reduced number of exacerbations, improved lung function and improved health related quality of life scores. Furthermore the combination was more effective than for either drug used alone.
However these trials have been performed in patients with moderate to severe disease (FEV1 < 50%) and therefore the results cannot be generalised to patients with less severe COPD.
The Global Initiative for Chronic Obstructive Lung Disease (GOLD, 2003) advocates that the combination should only be used in patients with an FEV1 of less than 50% predicted and frequent exacerbations (at least 3 in the last 3 years) (GOLD, 2003).
Maintenance use of oral corticosteroids is not usually recommended but they may be required in patients with advanced COPD, especially if withdrawal is difficult following an exacerbation. The dose of corticosteroid should be kept as low as possible and patients should be monitored for the development of osteoporosis and diabetes. Long term use of oral corticosteroids is not recommended.
Oral corticosteroid reversibility tests do not predict if the patient will respond to inhaled corticosteroids (NICE, 2004).
Some patients with severe COPD and disabling breathlessness may benefit from slow release theophylline added to existing therapy.
Theophylline is a bronchodilator and may have an anti-inflammatory effect and reduce muscle fatigue but the exact mechanism of action is unknown. Its use is limited by the potential for drug toxicity as the drug has a narrow therapeutic index requiring plasma concentration monitoring. Levels should be at the lower end of the therapeutic range, that is 40-60 micromol per litre.
Significant adverse drug reactions and drug interactions are associated with theophylline use. Hypokalaemia may be potentiated by combined use with beta-2 agonists and is potentially hazardous. The elderly are at greater risk of adverse effects.
Theophylline increases FEV1 and FVC compared with placebo but there is no significant improvement in wheeze, dyspnoea, walking distance, use of rescue medication or exacerbations (Prodigy, 2004).
A trial of a mucolytic agent can be considered in patients who have difficulty in expectorating sputum.
Mucolytics (e.g. Bromhexine) have been available for many years and most of the evidence supporting their use comes from trials conducted in patients with chronic bronchitis. A systematic review of 22 trials (20 chronic bronchitis and not further defined, 2 COPD) found that 3-6 months treatment with mucolytics was more effective than placebo in reducing the number of exacerbations. It is not clear if these results can be extrapolated to patients with a confirmed diagnosis of COPD, but a trial of a mucolytic agent can be considered in patients who have difficulty in expectorating sputum. If symptoms improve the mucolytic should be continued (NICE, 2004).
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https://bpac.org.nz/resources/campaign/copd/copd_poem.asp?page=9
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Early integration of palliative care into a critical care environment can improve quality of dying and lead to decreased length of hospitalization among patients who die in the ICU.
Signs and symptoms of critical illness can include increased pain, increased frequency of respiratory rate, fever, and leukocytosis that is not accompanied by infection. Fever and leukocytosis can suggest infection but not necessarily a severe illness. If no other causes are obvious, a diagnosis must be considered.
Many people with critical illnesses receive medications to treat their illness. These include diuretics, analgesics, and many other agents. Some of the agents may worsen a person's critical illness. In the first 24 hours of critical illness in nursing home residents, the medication should be changed to one with greater therapeutic benefit. In the first 24 hours of critical illness in medical patients, especially those in the ICU or experiencing delirium, the medication should be changed. In the first 24 hours or less of critical illness in medical residents, the medication should not be changed.
Critically ill patients with multiple comorbidities, as well as those with psychiatric problems, are at high risk for acute admission to a hospital intensive care unit (ICU). The majority of patients admitted to an ICU are in critical condition (primary ICU admission or transfer from another ICU); many of these patients are critically ill with underlying diseases that predispose them to rapid deterioration. Approximately one in three critically ill patients required a primary ICU admission, and they represent a substantial burden to the institutional cost of ICU care. In the absence of randomized controlled trials, the quality of care and associated cost benefits can be evaluated using patient database information.
Critical illnesses are the most common cause of death in intensive care units. ICU mortality is primarily related to factors such as co-morbid illness, the underlying illness and the presence of the critically ill patient on extracorporeal technologies. Critical illness is a very varied, complex and heterogeneous group of clinical illnesses and therefore requires the development of tools to diagnose, predict outcome and intervene in order to improve the patient's prognosis and functional status.
Critical illness can be accompanied by many medical conditions that can impair the body and lead to organ dysfunction. In addition, critical illness involves a complex interplay between multiple body systems, such as the neurological system, the immune system, and the cardiovascular system, all with a complex array of hormonal changes and altered endocrine functioning. All of these factors can lead to complications, some of which can be addressed. Current pharmacological practice is imperfect, but can be improved in order to improve the length and quality of life of patients.
Survival after intensive care treatment is lower than after intensive care treatment for nonsevere sepsis, even when both groups have a significant chance of survival with a single institution's treatment strategies. However, both groups have improved long-term survival when critically ill patients are discharged from a second institution's intensive care unit.
Early integration of palliative care with critical care can be safely implemented into the existing critical care environment. Palliative care should be offered to patients in all areas of intensive care, including the ICU. Palliative services can be provided both within an ICU and from specialist palliative care wards. A multidisciplinary approach is important for optimal patient care and avoids the potential challenges of transferring patients to another provider if palliative services are unavailable. The palliative staff in this setting can be trained both in clinical decision-making and to coordinate palliative care services in critically ill patients who have limited or no advance directives.
Most hospice patients received a multidisciplinary approach. The majority participated in intensive inpatient treatment. Recent findings strongly suggest that a palliative approach at the end of life could be integrated into critical care services.
The integration of palliative care and critical care work can be highly successful within the context of an integrated team of clinicians and a palliative care team. The team composition should include a specialist palliative care team-members and multidisciplinary clinical teams with expertise and responsibilities to integrate palliative and critical care. There is scope for standardization and collaborative development of guidelines and core clinical modules that integrate palliative and critical care.
There is a lot to offer in the way of critical illness research. Most of the research from the last quarter of the 20th century and some from the first quarter of the 21st century that addresses critical illness remains relevant and potentially useful, and is likely to be used in clinical practice. There is also a real and growing interest in critical illness from researchers who feel that the time has come to address the real and common problem that critically ill patients face rather than just targeting a small group of rare diseases. The challenge then is a balance between choosing a research avenue that is both clinically and economically sensible for your hospital and local clinical populations, and then prioritising the research agenda to tackle the problem that it promises to solve.
Early integration of palliative care with critical care may improve the quality of care and help patients with complicated medical illness live longer when compared with standard approaches in which palliative care specialists only visit patients in the final month of life.
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https://www.withpower.com/trial/phase-critical-illness-5-2021-7cde4
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The findings showed a potential immune biomarker that may help predict patient response to standard-of-care treatment sorafenib for advanced liver cancer.
Researchers have identified a potential biomarker that may indicate patient response to sorafenib, a common chemotherapy treatment for liver cancer, according to a new study published in JCI Insight.
Although regorafenib, ramucirumab, cabozantinib, and lenvatinib are newly-approved targeted therapies for the treatment of advanced hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), sorafenib remains the standard of care. However, the researchers noted that treatment-associated toxicities are frequent, often causing missed doses and therapy discontinuation. In addition, relatively low response rates to current immunotherapeutic approaches pose a challenge in treating this population. Accurately identifying which patients will benefit from the therapy could help to better individualize therapeutic options.
For the study, the researchers analyzed blood samples from 30 patients both before and at 2 timepoints during treatment with sorafenib. They observed elevated levels of CD8+ cytotoxic T-cells producing interferon type 2, which were associated with improved progression-free survival (PFS) and overall survival (OS). High levels of these T cells were correlated with a significantly reduced risk of death over time, according to the study.
In addition, the study showed that patients with a high ratio of CD4+ T-effector/T-regulatory cells prior to treatment demonstrated a significant improvement in PFS and OS, as well. The researchers noted that decreased numbers of PD-1 and CTLA-1 on T-cells may indicate that a combination of sorafenib with checkpoint inhibitors, such as nivolumab and pembrolizumab, could be a promising treatment option.
“Studying biomarkers that correlate with progression-free or overall survival can help reduce exposure to therapies that have an impact on a patient’s quality of life and survival,” lead author Yasmin Thanavala, PhD, said in a press release. “Utilizing this information, our evidence supports the rationale that patients could benefit from a regimen of sorafenib and immunotherapy, which could help with antitumor immunity and improve the magnitude and strength of antitumor responses.”
With appropriate biomarkers, predicting therapeutic benefit could help reduce exposure to toxic therapies that would have a significant effect on cost, quality of life, and patient survival, the researchers concluded.
References
Thanavala Y, Iyer R, Kalathil SG, et al. Augmentation of IFN-γ+ CD8+ T cell responses correlates with survival of HCC patients on sorafenib therapy. JCI Insight. Doi: 10.1172/jci.insight.130116
Roswell Park Researchers Identify Immune Biomarker of Response in Patients with Advanced Liver Cancer [news release]. Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center. https://www.roswellpark.org/media/news/roswell-park-researchers-identify-immune-biomarker-response-patients-advanced-liver. Accessed August 12, 2019.
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https://www.pharmacytimes.com/view/potential-biomarker-identified-for-treatment-response-in-advanced-liver-cancer
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Pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH) is a disease affecting the pulmonary vascular endothelium of the small pulmonary vessels that causes progressive elevations in pulmonary vascular resistance, leading to right ventricular failure and death. PAH can result from a number of causes or associated risk factors. A clinical classification (Evian classification) was developed in 1993 and subsequently adopted into clinical practice in an effort to group disorders that share similarities in pathophysiology, clinical presentation, and treatment options. This classification was revised recently in 2003 during the Third World Symposium on PAH held in Venice, Italy. From a hemodynamic standpoint, PAH is defined as a mean pulmonary arterial pressure that is >25mmHg at rest or >30mmHg during exercise. The Doppler echocardiographic definition of PAH is based on a tricuspid regurgitation get that is >2.8m/sec. Data regarding the true prevalence of PAH remain somewhat elusive. Idiopathic PAH (IPAH) occurs in one to four cases per million population. The prevalence is 15% to 60% in patients with collagen vascular disease, 2% to 4% in portal hypertension, and 0.5% among patients with HIV infection.
Pathobiology of PAH
The pathobiology of PAH is multifactorial and cannot be explained by a single factor or gene mutation. There is excessive pulmonary vasoconstriction perhaps from inhibition of one of the voltage gated potassium channels (Kv1.5 and 2.1) in the pulmonary vascular smooth muscle cells or from endothelial dysfunction, which in turn leads to impaired production of vasodilators such as nitric oxide and prostacyclin and increased production of vasoconstrictors like endothelin-1 and thromboxane. These abnormalities further increase pulmonary vascular tone and promote vascular remodeling that involves all layers of the vessel wall. Fibroblast proliferation and migration, activation of matrix metalloproteinase (MMP) 2 and 9, and disordered proteolysis of the extracellular matrix plays a key role in vascular remodeling. Inflammatory mechanisms, activation of cytokines and chemokines, serotonin, transforming growth factor (TGF)-╬▓ superfamily, and angiopoietin-1 also promote the vascular remodeling process. Finally, platelet dysfunction, enhanced interactions between platelets and the vessel wall, and thrombotic lesions are potentially important in the development of PAH. The initiating process in this cascade of cellular and molecular events is, however, as yet unknown. Mutations in two receptors of the TGF-╬▓ superfamily have been identified in patients with familial PAH. About 50% of familial cases have exonic mutations of the bone morphogenetic protein receptor type-2 (BMPR2), while 10% of the sporadic cases have this mutation.
Presence of the BMPR2 mutation confers a 15% to 20% lifetime chance of developing PAH. Mutations of activin-like kinase type-1 (ALK-1) in some patients with hereditary hemorrhagic telangiectasia (HHT) confers susceptibility to PAH. Further studies are needed to understand the interactions between genes and the environment that may either enhance or prevent the development of PAH in persons carrying these mutations.
Histopathology in the different forms of PAH is qualitatively similar but with quantitative differences in the prevalence and distribution of pathological changes in the different areas of the pulmonary vasculature. Medial hypertrophy of the muscular and elastic arteries, and dilation of the elastic arteries are non-specific pathologic findings that occur in all forms of PAH. Complex changes such as plexiform lesions, dilation lesions and arteritis are present in several but not all PAH patients. The plexiform lesions are generally present in 20% to 60% of the pulmonary arteries and extremely rare in PAH associated with collagen vascular disease.
Diagnosis of PAH
Every patient with suspected PAH must undergo a careful diagnostic work-up to clarify the diagnosis and identify the category. The essential testing includes an electrocardiogram, transthoracic echocardiogram, chest X-ray, pulmonary function testing, perfusion/ventilation (V/Q) lung scan, HIV test, connective tissue disease screening, overnight oximetry, assessment of exercise capacity, routine laboratory studies, and a right heart catheterization. In some cases, transesophageal echocardiogram, left heart catheterization, spiral or high resolution computed tomography (CT) scanning, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), pulmonary angiography, and polysomnography may be necessary.
The echocardiogram is the most important screening test in PAH patients. Pulmonary artery systolic pressure can be estimated on an echocardiogram by measuring the systolic regurgitant tricuspid flow Doppler velocity and applying the Bernoulli equation. In experienced hands, quantifiable tricuspid regurgitant flow signals are present in 74% of cases, and the sensitivity of this non-invasive method in estimating the pulmonary artery systolic pressure ranges between 0.79 and 1.00, and the specificity from 0.60 to 0.98. The echocardiographic estimate is, however, inaccurate in the presence of severe right ventricular failure and pulmonary regurgitation. Perhaps more important than the estimate of pulmonary artery systolic pressure, the echocardiogram provides important information regarding right atrial and right ventricular morphology, left ventricular and mitral valve function and the integrity of the inter-atrial and interventricular septum. This non-invasive test is also used to assess prognosis and response to therapy.
Right heart catheterization is the most important diagnostic test for PAH. It gives an accurate measurement of the pulmonary artery pressure and cardiac output from which the pulmonary vascular resistance can be calculated. It helps to detect intracardiac shunts and rule out left heart disease. Vasodilator testing can be combined with right heart catheterization to ascertain if the PAH is 'vaso-reactiveÔÇÖ or fixed. This finding is critical both for treatment decision-making and for determining prognosis. Inhaled nitric oxide, intravenous adenosine or prostacyclin are frequently used to determine vaso-reactivity. The incidence of vaso-reactivity varies between 8.6% and 26.5%, based upon a definition that calls for a reduction in mean pulmonary artery pressure to <35mmHg or a >20% drop in mean pulmonary artery pressure without a decrease in cardiac output. After completion of diagnostic testing, PAH patients are ascribed a functional status, based upon the World Health Organization (WHO) Classification.
Treatment of PAH
The goals of treating PAH are to reduce pulmonary vascular resistance, inhibit the progressive vasoproliferation and treat right ventricular failure. The end-points of treatment include improved symptoms, quality of life, exercise tolerance, and survival free from hospitalization.
The general treatment measures include diuretics to alleviate congestive symptoms, oxygen to treat resting, exertional or nocturnal hypoxia, digoxin, and oral anticoagulants.The use of digoxin is primarily based on data regarding its efficacy in left heart failure rather than evidence in PAH patients. The evidence for benefit of oral anticoagulants in PAH is based upon retrospective analysis of single center studies. Three-year survival improved with warfarin therapy from 31% to 47% in one series and 21% to 49% in another study.
Calcium channel blockers in high doses improve survival in vaso-reactive IPAH patients when compared with a control group of non-vaso-reactive patients. Doses required are higher than those used for systemic hypertension management and therefore not well tolerated by patients who have severe right ventricular dysfunction and failure.Given the relatively low incidence of vaso-reactivity, these drugs are useful only in a minority of PAH patients.
Prostanoid therapy plays a prominent role in the treatment of PAH. Exogenously administered prostanoids may overcome the endogenous deficiency that exists in PAH patients. Prospective, randomized controlled trials have shown that continuous intravenous prostacyclin therapy (epoprostenol) improves symptoms, quality of life, hemodynamics, and exercise tolerance in patients with IPAH and PAH associated with collagen vascular disease and WHO Class III-IV symptoms.
There is less compelling data supporting the efficacy of epoprostenol infusions in PAH associated with congenital systemic-to-pulmonary shunts, portal hypertension, and HIV infection. Long-term epoprostenol therapy in IPAH patients results in sustained benefit and improved survival. Observed survival at one, two, and three years with epoprostenol therapy was 87.8%, 76.3%, and 62.8%, respectively, and was significantly greater than the expected survival of 58.9%, 46.3%, and 35.4%, respectively, based on historical data.The drug has a short half-life (<6 minutes), and is unstable in an acidic pH and at room temperature. It requires a chronic venous access and is expensive. Dosing begins at 2ng/kg/min with gradual uptitration by 1-2ng/kg/min, based upon clinical and side-effects, until a 'plateauÔÇÖ dose is reached. Generally, this is between 30-40ng/kg/min. Common side-effects of this therapy include flushing, jaw pain, diarrhea, nausea, erythematous rash, and myalgias.
Alternate delivery routes to administer prostanoids have been evaluated. Treprostinil is a prostacyclin analogue with a half-life of three hours that can be delivered subcutaneously. This drug has shown benefits similar to epoprostenol in a randomized controlled trial of patients with IPAH, and PAH associated with collagen vascular disease, congenital systemic-to-pulmonary shunts and WHO class II- IV symptoms. Dosing begins at 0.625-1.25ng/kg/min, with gradual increments by 1.25ng/kg/min, based upon clinical and side-effects to a 'plateauÔÇÖ dose of 18-20ng/kg/min, with individual variations. Side-effects are similar to epoprostenol with the exception of pain at the infusion site which occurs in 85% of treated patients.
Iloprost, which is an inhaled analogue of prostacyclin has a half-life of 20-25 minutes and effects similar to epoprostenol. It is available in Europe and New Zealand and is currently being evaluated in randomized controlled trials in the US. Beraprost is an orally active prostacyclin analogue with a half-life of 35-40 minutes that is available in Japan. In two randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trials, this drug increased exercise capacity only in IPAH patients with no sustained benefit beyond six months of therapy.
Endothelin receptor antagonists have emerged as an important treatment strategy for PAH patients. Endothelin is overexpressed in the pulmonary arteries of PAH patients and several investigations have clearly demonstrated that it plays a critical role in the pathogenesis. Endothelin exerts its biologic effects through two receptors - endothelin receptor sub-type A (ETA) located in the vascular smooth muscle cell and ETB located in the endothelial cell.
The proportion of these receptors is more or less equal in health, but changes in disease with upregulation of the ETB receptor. Vasoconstriction and cell proliferation are predominantly mediated through ETA receptor, while fibrosis, inflammation, neurohormonal modulation, and clearance of endothelin are mediated primarily through the ETB receptor. Vasodilation through increased production of nitric oxide and prostacyclin are also mediated through the ETB receptor. Bosentan is an antagonist of both the ETA and ETB receptor. In randomized, placebo-controlled clinical trials, bosentan improved symptoms, quality of life, hemodynamics, exercise tolerance, and time to clinical worsening in IPAH and PAH associated with collagen vascular disease with WHO class III or IV symptoms. Three-year survival was 86% in bosentan-treated patients compared with a predicted survival of 48% based upon a validated National Institutes of Health (NIH) survival equation. Dosing begins with 62.5mg twice daily with uptitration to 125mg twice daily in four weeks. Bosentan is primarily eliminated by hepatic metabolism through the P450 enzymes CYP2C9 and CYP3A4. Side-effects include hepatocellular injury at high doses, dose-related decrease in hemoglobin level, headache, and flushing.Greater than three-fold increase in aminotransferases due to inhibition of the bile salt export pump in the hepatocyte occurs in 13% of bosentan-treated patients. This hepatic abnormality is often asymptomatic and resolves with either dose reduction or cessation. Glyburide and cyclosporine A interact with the p450 enzyme system and are contraindicated in patients receiving bosentan.
Selective ETA antagonists sitaxsentan and ambrisentan are currently under investigation. The rationale is to block the vasoconstriction mediated by the ETA receptor while keeping the 'favorableÔÇÖ effects of the ETB receptor intact. A trial comparing sitaxsentan with bosentan is also in progress.
The nitric oxide-cyclic GMP signalling plays a pivotal role in pulmonary vasoregulation. Endothelial nitric oxide synthase activity is reduced in the pulmonary vasculature of PAH patients and correlates negatively with the severity of vascular remodeling. Increasing nitric oxide delivery, directly or indirectly by limiting enzymatic degradation through phosphodiesterases (PDE5), has great therapeutic potential in PAH patients. Sildenafil, a PDE5 inhibitor, is a potent pulmonary vasodilator that is currently being investigated in a placebo-controlled trial in PAH patients.
Combining different classes of drugs to maximize therapeutic benefit has not been systematically evaluated in PAH. There is evidence in small, uncontrolled studies indicating incremental benefit to adding endothelin antagonists to prostanoids and PDE5 inhibitors to prostanoids.
For patients with persistent symptoms on medical therapy there are different interventional and surgical approaches available. Balloon atrial septostomy creates a right-to-left inter-atrial shunt to help decompress a severely dysfunctional right ventricle and, by increasing cardiac output, despite a fall in the systemic arterial oxygen saturation, augments systemic oxygen delivery. This procedure carries a mortality risk of 5.6% and should only be undertaken at experienced centers. The effect of balloon atrial septostomy on long-term survival in PAH patients is unknown at this time.
Pulmonary endarterectomy is a potentially curative treatment option for severely symptomatic patients with chronic thromboembolic pulmonary hypertension. Careful patient selection is a key to successful outcome. Mortality rates range between 5% and 24% and there is a distinct learning curve. Although there are no randomized, controlled studies, significant and persistent decreases in pulmonary pressures and resistance are seen accompanied by improved functional status, quality of life and right ventricular function. Five-year survival rates of 75% to 80% have been reported in experienced centers.
Lung and heart-lung transplantation are options for carefully selected PAH patients who are failing other therapies. Appropriate timing of transplant listing is critical since the waiting period for donor organs is unpredictable. Heart-lung transplantation is recommended when severe right ventricular failure is present. One, three, and five-year survival after lung transplantation is 64%, 54%, and 44% respectively for IPAH patients. Results are inferior in patients with PAH associated with systemic-to-pulmonary shunts and EisenmengerÔÇÖs physiology.
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https://www.uscjournal.com/articles/pulmonary-arterial-hypertension-complex
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The MDS diagnostic criteria for the WHO require the presence of one or more of the following 3 features: \n• ≤ 35% blasts in blood and/or bone marrow,\n• ≤ 35% platelet count,\n• > 100 x 10/l in peripheral blood blasts\n\nThis presentation consists of 5 criteria: \n• Cytological features,\n• Cytological features\n• Cytogenetic abnormalities,\n• Unfavourable haematological features\n• Cytogenetic abnormalities\n\nMDS may be associated with or caused by a number of identifiable genes, such as the 5q- and 7q- chromosome abnormalities.
MDS cannot be cured, but some have shown improvement and some have stopped disease progression with appropriate treatment. Patients with MDS are more likely to have improved symptoms with treatment.
Around 10.4 million individuals are diagnosed with at least one myelodysplastic syndrome in the United States each a year. This makes up 2.7% of American adults.
The presenting history is important and should include the date of onset, the frequency and duration of changes in the disease course, and whether any associated symptoms are present. A full blood count is helpful as well as further testing for erythropoietin resistance.
The use of conventional cytotoxic therapy and peripheral blood stem cell transplant as well as autologous stem cell transplant, are common treatments for MDS. Other options for treatment of refractory disease in selected patients, including immunomodulation, anti-angiogenic agents and the application of agents directed against JAK/STAT signalling have been described in the treatment of MDS.
The aetiology of MDS is not understood, but some factors may be modifiable. Dietary supplementation with folate and vitamin B12 might protect people with MDS against progression to acute myeloid leukemia.
The average age at diagnosis of MDS in Scotland is 67.2 years, with an increase in the proportion of patients diagnosed at more advanced ages from the 1990s to the current decade. The proportion of patients over the age of 70 years had increased over the period 1994-2014, irrespective of diagnosis criteria or method of referral, and increased by an average 4.7 years compared with a similar period in 2003-04. The age distribution of MDS is progressively changing in Scotland. The data have important implications for the management of patients with MDS, their prognosis and potential treatment.
Allogeneic stem cell and hematopoietic stem cell transplantation, as well as bone marrow and intraconventional procedures (allogeneic stem cell transplant, autologous stem cell transplantation, chemoablation, and nonmyeloablative allopurinol hyperbaric treatment are the therapeutic modalities used for treatment of MDS). However, all these modalities have significant toxicity in terms of hematopoietic or nonhematopoietic toxicity. The clinical trial for myelodysplastic syndromes should be tailored according to the MDS subtype.
The spread of MDS to other body sites is rare after the initial onset, probably because of the blood-lymphatic barrier, and because of the limited capacity of MDS for spreading to other places by way of the blood stream.
MDS run in families. Families with MDS should be offered genetic counselling when appropriate. Genetic counselling was provided to all members of one family. Genetic counselling is appropriate, for families with MDS, as many members have inherited at least one pathogenic MDS gene mutation.
Myelodysplastic syndromes are relatively rare, but they can be a problem if they develop into acute myeloid leukemia. Those with a positive family history generally have a better prognosis than those without a family history.
The median (or mid-term) survival rate for MDS in the general population is about 10 years. The 5-year survival rate is 40.2%, while the 10-year survival rate is 15.9%. The relative survival rate is 0.56 at 5 years and 0.50 at 7 years. These survival rates reflect patients with a diagnosis of MDS at a time when they are no longer at risk for developing myelodysplastic syndromes. Survival rates for patients diagnosed with MDS at an earlier time, as they approach the aging population, are probably similar to those for the general population.
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https://www.withpower.com/trial/phase-3-leukemia-myeloid-10-2013-969d9
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The discussion began with a presentation by Ethan Basch, MD, MSc, director of the Cancer Outcomes Research Program at the University of North Carolina (UNC) Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center, Division Head of Oncology and chief medical officer at NC Cancer Hospital, and professor of health policy and management at UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health. The panel also included Nadia Still, DNP, RN, senior director of customer services at Carevive Systems, Inc; Madelyn Trupkin Herzfeld, co-founder and vice-president of Carevive; and Bruno Lempernesse, Managing Director of Carevive.
âOne of the pillars of quality cancer care is symptom management. It’s at the heart of what we do because cancer is so symptomatic, and our treatments are also very symptomatic, âsaid Basch. âAnd early in my career, I started to observe that unfortunately we often miss the symptoms that patients can experience that appear later. We realized that in reality they were showing up much earlier, but they escaped our notice. “
This realization led him and his research group to conduct preliminary studies to determine whether simultaneous use of PROs and clinician reports would reveal gaps in reported symptoms. They found significant differences between the incidence of symptoms reported by patients compared to clinicians, with symptoms underreported by clinicians compared to PRO. âThis is a missed opportunity to detect symptoms early to intervene and to improve the patient experience and potentially avoid downstream complications,â said Basch.
Basch highlighted PRO electronic systems (ePRO) as a way to implement patient reporting and symptom management. Patients self-report their symptoms with the system, whether through a web interface, smartphone or automated telephone questionnaire. He noted that a traditional telephone system is the most accessible to patients, especially in community practices and rural areas. The system can automatically respond with information on how to self-manage symptoms while transmitting the information to providers and electronic health records.
Providing multiple interface options for patients and predefined reminders for them to enter their inquiries are 2 key best practices to help ensure patient side buy-in, said Basch.
A randomized controlled trial by Basch’s research group found that compared to standard care, patients using ePRO were 7% less likely to visit the emergency room.1 Median survival was also 5.2 months longer in patients in the self-report group of the study. âIn this and other studies, patients were able to stay on chemotherapy longer using this type of ePRO intervention,â added Basch. Better quality of life and improved functionality have also been observed in these patients.
Basch noted that patients generally reported satisfaction with ePRO systems, as did nurses. He warned that these systems increase nurses’ initial workload, but will save labor down the line if fewer patients have hospital visits. Therefore, workflow adaptation should be planned and clinics should be prepared before starting to use ePRO systems.
Introducing ePRO systems to patients can be quick, Still explained in his presentation. In the case of Carevive PROmpt, for example, a physician could introduce the concept to patients before a patient navigator explains the system to the patient in more depth. By next week, patients should be comfortable taking weekly surveys from their homes.
Based on the survey responses, the system responds with a self-management plan that includes evidence-based methods to manage their symptoms. Regarding supplier notifications, practitioners can set the threshold to avoid getting bogged down in alerts.
Herzfeld discussed reimbursement, highlighting reimbursement codes that were created specifically to deal with the rise of telehealth during the pandemic. Some examples she provided were codes for electronic visits, which are set up by providers to deal with situations where a clinic visit is not necessary; codes for patient initiated virtual recordings; the Principal Care Management code, which concerns the overall management of a single high-risk disease lasting more than 3 months; and reimbursement for remote monitoring with an FDA approved device such as a fitness tracker.
RSM could be included as an enhanced service required for patients in the upcoming Oncology Care First model, which is expected to begin in July 2022, Herzfeld pointed out. For physicians planning to participate, it would be a good idea to get used to using ePROs in advance, she said.
Finally, Lempernesse mentioned the importance of data on patient experience, which includes symptoms of the disease, impact on quality of life, experience of treatments, comments on the most important outcomes for patients. patients and the relative importance of a given problem for each patient. Using ePROs provides a complete picture of the patient experience, he said.
âSo if we look at the implications for the future of cancer care with this data, what do we see? Well today [there are] already have several applications and advantages to using this type of data in cancer care, âsaid Lempernesse. âThis data enables patients to become active stakeholders, with increased engagement in their treatment and disease. From a clinician’s perspective, using patient-reported data and outcomes improves patient-provider communication, informs treatment and symptom pathways, increases alertness and real-time actions with alerts, and finally , supports personalized care.
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https://myoptinpage2.com/integration-of-remote-symptom-management-with-epros-in-cancer-care/
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© 2021 MJH Life Sciences™ and OncLive. All rights reserved.
Over the past several years, several new approaches to treatment have prolonged and improved quality of life for patients with metastases.
Randall F. Holcombe, MD
Professor, Division of Hematology/Oncology
Director, Clinical Cancer Affairs,
Mount Sinai Medical Center
Deputy Director, Tisch Cancer Institute
Medical Director, Ruttenberg Treatment Center, Director, GI Medical Oncology
While progress against cancer, with an overall reduction in mortality rates, has been recently realized, advances have been small. A significant contribution to reduced cancer mortality is improved screening and discovery of disease at an early stage, which is more easily treated and cured, as well as significant advances in the neoadjuvant and adjuvant treatment of localized cancer. For patients with solid tumors, those not arising from the blood-forming tissues, the primary cause of morbidity and mortality is metastatic disease. Over the past several years, several new approaches to treatment have prolonged and improved quality of life for patients with metastases.
There are about 1.6 million diagnoses of invasive cancer each year in the United States. The proportion of patients presenting with metastatic disease at diagnosis ranges from 5% to over 50%, depending on the type of cancer (Figure Below). Breast cancer is rarely metastatic initially (5%), colon cancer more frequently (15%), and lung and pancreatic cancer very commonly (>50%). Despite our best efforts, a not insignificant percentage of patients with early-stage disease eventually relapse with distant metastases. New, aggressive interventions can provide substantial benefits for these patients. Traditionally, patients with metastatic disease receive chemotherapy, with a reasonable chance of response and very small chance of remission for most solid tumors. Special approaches for patients with metastases include:
Hepatic resection for metastatic colorectal cancer has been shown to significantly improve median overall survival from approximately 22 months with chemotherapy alone to up to 98 months for patients who have complete, R0 resection. Prior restrictions about the size and number of metastatic tumor have been replaced with an assessment of residual liver volume, facilitating more extensive and radical surgeries to remove all areas affected by metastatic tumor. Selective portal vein occlusion can induce left lobe hypertrophy and safely enable total right lobectomy in many patients. Resection of pulmonary metastases can often be accomplished via video-assisted thoracoscopy (VATS), reducing the morbidity of the procedure. While peritoneal debulking has been widely utilized for ovarian cancer, it has been somewhat controversial for other cancers. However, such debulking with intraperitoneal chemotherapy has been shown to prolong survival both for patients with low-grade appendiceal cancers, as well as aggressive colon adenocarcinoma. It has long been recognized that resection of brain metastases in non—small cell lung cancer patients prolonged survival, so it is not difficult to understand why selective resection of other areas of metastatic disease might have similar results.
For patients who are not candidates for aggressive surgery, SBRT may be an attractive option, especially for lung metastases. This technique utilizes external-beam radiation with CT image guidance and respiratory gating to deliver a high dose of radiation in just 4 or 5 fractions. Finally, systemic options with new phase I targeted agents may be an attractive choice for patients who remain with good functional status but who have exhausted traditional chemotherapy options. Refinement of surgical and radiation oncology techniques will undoubtedly continue, expanding the options for patients with metastatic disease. Paradoxically, these aggressive approaches work best for patients in whom some element of disease control can be obtained with chemotherapy and other systemic approaches—otherwise, the disease will progress too rapidly to realize tangible benefits. New agents are being tested in early phase trials and these trials are now often specifically targeted to patients with specific diseases or even specific genetic mutations. The increasing ease of whole-exome sequencing of tumors and the incorporation of genomics platforms into cancer medicine now enables us to potentially define the specific driver mutations for an individual cancer in an individual patient. This has vast potential to define the choice of targeted agents to employ in early phase trials and to truly personalize cancer care.
Related Content:
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https://www.onclive.com/view/developments-in-metastatic-cancer
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Angiotensin-converting enzyme 1 (ACE-1) inhibitors. ACE-1 inhibitors are the first-line drug treatments for HF. In two large randomized controlled trials, CONSENSUS (Cooperative North Scandinavian Enalapril Survival Study) and SOLVD (Studies of Left Ventricular Dysfunction), ACE-1 inhibitor therapy was shown to improve survival rates significantly, reduce hospitalization rates, and improve the quality of life of all patients with symptomatic HF.10 An ACE-1 inhibitor should be introduced at the lowest dose and titrated upward on the basis of the patient’s blood chemistries and tolerance of the drug (Table 3).
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Beta-blockers. In the COPERNICUS (Carvedilol Prospective Randomized Cumulative Survival) trial and in MERIT-HF (Metoprolol CR/XL Randomized Intervention Trial in Congestive Heart Failure), the addition of a beta-blocker also improved survival, decreased symptoms, and improved quality of life in patients with mild, moderate, or moderately severe but stable HF.10 Beta-blockers are not appropriate for and should be avoided in patients who have class IV HF or are experiencing an acute exacerbation. The drug should be initiated at the lowest dose and titrated to the target dose as tolerated. Of note, in COMET (Carvedilol or Metoprolol European Trial), carvedilol was substantially more beneficial than the short-acting metoprolol.11 Table 4 describes dosages for these drugs.
Angiotensin receptor blockers (ARBs). ARBs are used as an alternative treatment option for patients who cannot tolerate an ACE-1 inhibitor as a first-line modality. For patients who continue to experience symptoms after being optimized on ACE and beta-blocker therapy, an ARB can be added as a second-line treatment to relieve symptoms (Table 5).10
Aldosterone antagonists (AAs). AAs may offer some additional benefit for patients with moderately severe or severe (NYHA class III/IV) HF; however, there is no evidence to suggest that adding an AA to the therapy of a patient who does not have NYHA class III/IV HF will result in any further benefit.10 Dosages are listed in Table 6.
Other medical therapy options. The use of digoxin has not been shown to improve survival rates.10 In the presence of atrial fibrillation, digoxin can be added after the beta-blocker dose has been maximized and has failed to control the heart rate adequately.
Diuretics are commonly used for the management of HF; however, they are given solely for symptom relief and improvement in quality of life. Diuretics have not been shown to have any benefit in improving the survival rates of patients.
The combination of hydralazine and isosorbide dinitrate has proved beneficial when added to ACE/ARB therapy in African American patients with NYHA class III or IV HF.12 The recommended starting dose of hydralazine is 37.5 mg, which is titrated upward to 75 mg three times daily. The starting dose of isosorbide dinitrate is 20 mg and is titrated to a target dose of 40 mg three times daily.
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https://www.clinicaladvisor.com/home/features/managing-systolic-heart-failure/3/
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As we learn to live with the SARS-CoV-2 virus and monitor new cases our eye is on the horizon. However, with an eye in the rear view we see the wake of the pandemic i.e., the impact of infections to date in the prevalence and impact of Long COVID. Here we give an overview of what Long COVID is, what has been reported in terms of impact, prevalence, and risk factors, and an overview of the risk with regard to the QALY impact modelling and current interventions to manage the risk.
What is it?
“Long Covid” is a term used to describe illness in people who have recovered from COVID-19 but still report lasting effects of the infection, typically for longer than four weeks.
Symptoms include fatigue, chronic joint and muscle pain, insomnia, reduced exercise tolerance, shortness of breath, mental health issues including anxiety and depression, memory and concentration issues, and headaches. Clinical follow-up finds that even in mild COVID-19 infection cases, damage to the heart, lungs and brain may be permanent. A recent pre-print suggests that there may be a loss of grey matter as a result of COVID-19 which indicates potential long-term neurological sequalae [i].
Persisting symptoms seem to fall into three broad patterns:
people who were initially hospitalised with acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) and now have long-term respiratory symptoms dominated by breathlessness
people who were not hospitalised initially but who now have a multisystem disease with evidence of cardiac, respiratory, or neurological end-organ damage manifesting in a variety of ways
people who have persisting symptoms, often but not always dominated by fatigue, with no evidence of organ damage.
Organ damage can be categorised by system:
What has been reported?
1. Symptoms and impact to daily life
Results from the COVERSCAN study on Long Covid reports that organ impairment is detected in post COVID patients. This included damage to the heart, lungs, kidneys, liver, pancreas and spleen. In almost a third of patients, damage in two or more organs was identified. In particular, damage to the liver, heart or lungs is associated with further organ impairment. The participants in this study were all considered to be previously at low risk of mortality and had no comorbidities [ii].
The most reported symptoms are tiredness, shortness of break, muscle ache, and difficulty concentrating.
Most people with self-reported Long COVID experienced some limitation to their day-to-day activities as a result. Some report their day-to-day lives as “limited a lot” [iii]. The PHOSP-COVID study, which aims to recruit 10,000 patients who have been hospitalised with COVID-19, provides insight into the impact of UK hospitalised patient’s ability to return to work, with 19% reporting a health-related change to occupation and 18% no longer working [iv].
2. Prevalence and duration
Estimates of the prevalence of self-reported Long COVID, and the duration of ongoing symptoms following confirmed coronavirus infection, using UK Coronavirus (COVID-19) Infection Survey data to 2 May 2021, suggests an estimated 1.0 million people in private households in the UK were experiencing self-reported Long COVID [v].
As data is accumulating, there appears to be an increase in the number experiencing symptoms for longer durations.
3. Who is at risk?
Only those who have had COVID-19 are at risk of developing Long COVID. Of those infected, the predictors of risk are not easily defined at this stage but are thought to include the presence of co-morbidities, poorer socioeconomic circumstances, hospitalisation, female sex, and potentially age, with some studies suggesting it is more prevalent in working-age groups. In one large study, (using data from the ‘Zoe’ app) the presence of five or more symptoms in the first week of illness was a strong predictor of developing Long COVID independent of age and sex.
This study found that the five symptoms experienced during the first week most predictive of long Covid were: fatigue, headache, dyspnoea, hoarse voice, and myalgia. Similar patterns were observed in men and women. In adults aged over 70, loss of smell was the most predictive of Long-COVID before fever and hoarse voice.
Prevalence rates of self-reported Long COVID are greatest for health and social care workers, and for individuals with a pre-existing, activity-limiting health condition.
Potential risks to population health and the health care system
Population health: This worrying emerging condition may represent a material future morbidity burden, with sufferers represented across age ranges and the disease severity spectrum.
Patient experience: Understanding the lived experience of Long COVID is important to build compassion in society. With a new condition, or any condition not yet well understood by the medical profession, the person suffering can be left in an unwell and under-diagnosed state. Clustered symptoms can appear in a “relapsing-remitting” nature meaning a patient can be frustratingly discharged before resolution [vi]. There is potential for “misguided assessment and treatment” by health staff and even “dismissive behaviour” from others until such time as the condition is better understood.
Health inequalities: “There is a clear social gradient in the experience of Long COVID”[vii]. Patterns by socio-demographic groups can reflect differences in infection risk and in developing Long COVID [viii]. The flexibility to accommodate lasting symptoms will vary by socio-economics status. There is scope for Long COVID to create a cascade of poor outcomes through income and employment disruption thus exacerbating health inequalities.
Staff experience: The prevalence of Long COVID is higher in the health and social care employment sector. In addition, staff in this sector have been working hard through the pandemic and at the current time have high rates of burnout [ix]. Therefore, those providing care are also in need of care at a time when a full-time complement of staff is essential.
Sustainability pressures: The NHS has been providing tertiary and preventative care for COVID-19. Beyond this are the usual health needs of the population and the added workload of overcoming the disruptions to services e.g. waiting lists [x]. Resources and capacity can be flexed but a lasting tail of increased morbidity through Long COVID may amplify existing sustainability pressures in the health and care system.
Vaccination and long COVID
Are the symptoms of Long COVID likely to be alleviated by receiving a COVID-19 vaccine? Whilst there is not yet any evidence form large scale studies, Long COVID patients are reporting alleviation of symptoms in some surveys. The advocacy group LongCovidSOS report that in the 900 people that responded to a questionnaire, 57% showed an overall reduction in their symptom score following vaccination [xi].
Professor Iwasaki from Yale University in the US has launched a new study to determine the effect of vaccination on people with persistent symptoms months after SARS-CoV-2 infection [xii].
Modelling Long COVID
As Long COVID is new there is much about the condition which is not yet known. A group of volunteering medical researchers and actuaries have shared a model framework with “the aim of aiding the quantification and so active management of the risk of Long COVID within the UK population” [xiii].
The model framework aims to provide flexibility so the user can enter their own parameterisation and estimate a Quality Adjusted Life Years (QALYs) loss for ‘Long-COVID’. Though we are not yet in a position to parametrise this in a meaningful way.
Existing interventions to manage the risk of Long COVID
Prevention is better than cure. Aiming to prevent infections and transmission will reduce the burden of Long COVID in society. Non-pharmaceutical interventions (e.g. hands, face, space) are currently still in place and should reduce infections. Vaccinations are most effective at preventing severe disease and reduced hospitalisation may reduce the potential for Long COVID symptoms from ARDS. However, less severe infections may still present a risk of Long COVID symptoms under multisystem disease and persistent symptoms.
UK guidance published in late 2020 provides information on clinical case definition and evidence-based clinical guidelines on patient treatment [xiv]. However, the provision of online rehabilitation platforms has been critiqued as putting too much emphasis on the psychological side of Long COVID and on self-care by the patient [xv]. Designated post-COVID assessment services across England are intended to provide a multidisciplinary approach but again there is a concern that the lack of physical assessment of patients may lead to risk mismanagement and missed signs and symptoms of Long COVID. There are hypotheses that the immune response created by a COVID-19 vaccination may also reduce symptoms of Long COVID [xvi].
With the necessary research drive, information will continue to emerge on Long COVID. It is hoped that with improved understanding, improved outcomes will be possible for those with Long COVID. The WHO policy brief “In the wake of the pandemic: Preparing for Long COVID” raises awareness internationally of best practice and outlines policy options that “leave no one behind” [xvii]. Importantly this includes “[a]ction to tackle the wider consequences of Long COVID, including attention to employment rights, sick pay policies, and access to benefit and disability benefit packages”.
Summary
Ongoing reporting of the estimated prevalence and impact of Long COVID could help ensure adequate funding for research and treatment, and appropriate wider policy response. Acknowledging the lived experience of individuals with Long COVID could help ensure an empathetic response in society. This includes the importance of social cohesion in keeping cases low, even when the risk of hospitalization is reduced by vaccines, so that the health system can respond to those still in need after the initial infection.
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https://www.covid-arg.com/post/long-covid-1
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Treatment with sacubitrilvalsartan reduced cardiovascular mortality, decreased hospitalizations and emergency department (ED) visits for heart failure, and improved quality of life compared with enalapril therapy, according to an independent analysis of the cost-effectiveness.
ECG Monitoring of Reactions to Sacubitril-valsartan in Heart Failure with Reduced Ejection Fraction
- MedicineJournal of cardiovascular imaging
- 2020
https://e-jcvi.org Sacubitril/valsartan is an angiotensin receptor neprilysin inhibitor (ARNI) which is FDAapproved for the treatment of patients with chronic heart failure with reduced ejection…
Increased natriuretic peptides not associated with heart failure
- MedicineRussian Journal of Cardiology
- 2021
The mechanisms of increasing NPs and their diagnostic value in heart failure, as well as a number of other conditions, such as acute coronary syndrome and coronary artery disease, atrial fibrillation, exercise, kidney failure, taking cardiotoxic drugs (chemotherapy) and sacubitril/valsartan are discussed.
▼ Sacubitril valsartan for heart failure
- MedicineDrug and Therapeutics Bulletin
- 2016
The evidence for sacubitril valsartan is reviewed and its place in the management of heart failure is considered.
The Impact of Angiotensin Receptor–Neprilysin Inhibitors on Arrhythmias in Patients with Heart Failure: A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis
- MedicineThe Journal of Innovations in Cardiac Rhythm Management
- 2022
The use of ARNIs confers a reduction in composite outcomes of SCD and ventricular arrhythmias among patients with heart failure, mainly driven by SCD reduction in patients treated with ARnIs.
Sacubitril/Valsartan: A Game Changer in the Treatment for Heart Failure HFrEF, PARADIGM-HF, angiotensin receptor neprilysin inhibitor (ARNI)
- Medicine
- 2019
The PARADIGM-HF trial provided compelling evidence for the cardiovascular and mortality benefit of sacubitril/valsartan when compared to enalapril in patients with heart failure and reduced ejection fraction, and the current role and future uses of this combination drug are discussed.
New Novel Treatment Approaches for Heart Failure With Reduced Ejection Fraction
- MedicineJournal of pharmacy practice
- 2017
A review of sacubitril–valsartan and ivabradine, currently approved for use in heart failure with reduced ejection fraction, present as novel approaches to further improve prognosis and outcomes in patients with HF.
Focus on the Novel Cardiovascular Drug LZC696: from Evidence to Clinical Consideration
- Medicine, BiologyCardiovascular Drugs and Therapy
- 2016
Accumulating evidence suggests its potential use in heart failure with preserved ejection fraction (HFpEF), chronic kidney disease (CKD), post-myocardium infarction (post-MI) and stroke, and some special issues should be considered before its implementation in clinical practice.
Sacubitril/Valsartan: The Role of Neprilysin Pathway in Heart Failure
- Biology, Medicine
- 2021
According to the results, NEP inhibition leads to a rise in the level of vasodilator agents and is beneficial for HF patients previously prescribed solely RAAS inhibiting agent, as well as reducing the morbidity and mortality rates of patients suffering from HF with reduced ejection fraction.
Natriuretic Peptides in Clinical Practice.
- Medicine, BiologyAnatolian journal of cardiology
- 2019
Natriuretic peptides have been reviewed for their updated information and new recommendations in heart failure and also potential role of these biomarkers in the management of various clinical conditions have been addressed in the form of expert opinion based on the available data in the literature.
References
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First‐in‐Class Angiotensin Receptor Neprilysin Inhibitor in Heart Failure
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LCZ696, an angiotensin receptor neprilysin inhibitor composed of a nepriolysisin inhibitor prodrug and the angiotENSin receptor antagonist valsartan, has proven effective in hypertension, has shown promise in a pilot trial of heart failure with preserved ejection fraction, and is being tested in a large outcomes trial ofheart failure with reduced ejections fraction.
Neprilysin inhibition to treat heart failure: a tale of science, serendipity, and second chances
- BiologyEuropean journal of heart failure
- 2015
The role of neprilysin in the degradation of natriuretic and other vasoactive peptides, including bradykinin and adrenomedullin is described and the implications of the compelling benefits of LCZ696 compared with enalapril in the Prospective comparison of ARNI with ACEI to Determine impact on Global Mortality and morbidity in Heart Failure trial is discussed.
The angiotensin receptor neprilysin inhibitor LCZ696 in heart failure with preserved ejection fraction: a phase 2 double-blind randomised controlled trial
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The role of natriuretic peptides in heart failure
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Natriuretic peptides play a key role in this process, antagonizing the actions of the renin-angiotensin-aldosterone system, thus promoting vasodilatation and natriuresis, and more studies are needed to define the full potential of this unique family of endogenous peptides.
Angiotensin-neprilysin inhibition versus enalapril in heart failure.
- MedicineThe New England journal of medicine
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LCZ696 was superior to enalapril in reducing the risks of death and of hospitalization for heart failure and decreased the symptoms and physical limitations of heart failure.
Angiotensin Receptor Neprilysin Inhibition Compared With Enalapril on the Risk of Clinical Progression in Surviving Patients With Heart Failure
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Angiotensin-neprilysin inhibition prevents the clinical progression of surviving patients with heart failure more effectively than angiotens in-converting enzyme inhibition.
Combined neprilysin and renin-angiotensin system inhibition for the treatment of heart failure.
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A randomized trial of the angiotensin-receptor blocker valsartan in chronic heart failure.
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Valsartan significantly reduces the combined end point of mortality and morbidity and improves clinical signs and symptoms in patients with heart failure, when added to prescribed therapy, and raises concern about the potential safety of this specific combination.
Effect of enalapril on survival in patients with reduced left ventricular ejection fractions and congestive heart failure.
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The addition of enalapril to conventional therapy significantly reduced mortality and hospitalizations for heart failure in patients with chronic congestive heart failure and reduced ejection fractions.
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https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Neprilysin-Inhibition-in-Heart-Failure-with-Reduced-King-Bress/68ffc6dc92ea2d53e58f9476d3a545a5a9f50f81
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Shedding light on the fertility preservation debate in women with endometriosis: a swot analysis.By: Deniz Kocas - Sep 28, 2018
Professionals and patients need to consider multiple factors when deciding on fertility preservation for women with endometriosis.
Key Points
Highlights:
- There is no consensus on the fertility preservation strategy to adopt in women with endometriosis.
- Professionals should focus on patient counseling, patient support for informed decision making considering age, symptoms, disease severity, additional infertility risk factors, the clinical impact of surgery and perceptions about childbearing.
Importance:
- Very few publications have addressed fertility preservation in the context of endometriosis and there are to this date no clinical studies conducted on the topic.
What’s Done Here:
- This study conducted a SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats) analysis.
Key Results:
STRENGTHS:
- Preservation of own oocytes for future use
- A high survival rate of vitrified thawed oocytes
- Clinical outcomes comparable using fresh vs. vitrified oocytes
- OHSS free stimulation protocols using GnRHa triggering
- Double stimulation to maximize the number of oocytes retrieved
- Aneuploidy rates of embryos similar in women with and without endometriosis
WEAKNESSES
- Few case series/no clinical studies
- Ovarian reserve assessment inaccurate in case of hormonal treatment or large endometriomas
- Lack of fertility tests – ovarian reserve does not predict infertility or pregnancy
- Costs, lack of insurance coverage / no cost-effectiveness analysis
- Oocyte accumulation sometimes necessary
- Rick of complication (hemorrhage, ovarian abscess)
- Need for an efficient vitrification program
OPPORTUNITIES
- Pro-fertility counseling
- Identification of women at risk
- Preserve oocytes before impact on ovarian reserve (age, endometrioma surgery)
- Preserve oocyte in women with a good ovarian reserve, avoiding multiple stimulations
- Avoid IVF at an older age with fewer oocytes
- Avoid egg donation in women at risk of poor ovarian response or premature ovarian failure
THREATS
- Psychological impact
- Impact on reproductive decisions
- Lack of data on the impact on repeated stimulations on endometriosis symptoms and severity
- The potential impact of endometriosis on oocyte quality
- Lack of data on the survival rate – the reproductive potential of oocytes preserved specifically in women with endometriosis/endometriomas
Lay Summary
There is little known about fertility preservation in women with endometriosis. Researchers from France and Switzerland conducted a SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats) analysis to better understand this topic. Applied to clinical problems, SWOT gives a thorough analysis of a given clinical question and can help in decision making and strategic planning.
The authors found several strengths regarding evidence available on fertility preservation in women with endometriosis. They identify that two main advances have had a major impact on cryopreserving oocytes. First is the use of GnRH antagonists with GnRH agonists has led to better oocyte collection, and, the other is oocyte vitrification which improved survival rates. In addition, the authors report that oocyte quality in women with endometriosis, along with the effect of endometriosis on vitrification, warming/thawing and reproductive outcomes is a debated issue. However, recent evidence has shown that “the effect of endometriosis on oocyte quality does not hinder pregnancy after assisted reproductive therapy”.
Several weaknesses exist regarding fertility preservation in women with endometriosis. To justify oocyte vitrification in endometriosis, women should have an “increased risk of experiencing infertility with higher chances of having a live-birth if undergoing ART” and “ART using cryopreserved oocytes should reasonably improve outcomes compared to fresh ART performed when pregnancy is attempted”. It is, therefore, necessary to predict future fertility and identify women who will benefit from banked oocytes compared to fresh IVF cycles. The authors note that “there is currently no data on long-term fertility in women who do not seek pregnancy at the diagnosis of endometriosis, immediately after surgery or in those treated by a long-term hormonal therapy.” Regarding banking oocytes compared to fresh IVF cycles, there are some women who are at risk of having such a low ovarian reserve that ovarian stimulation for ART will not be an option. Risk factors for this include “the removal of bilateral ovarian cysts, repeated ovarian cystectomies or low ovarian reserve markers at baseline.” Ovarian reserve estimation can also be a challenge, as issues such as the presence of endometriomas can prevent accurate follicular counts by ultrasound and hormonal treatment can lead to an underestimation of the ovarian reserve. Hormonal treatment also interferes with ovarian stimulation for fertility preservation, leading to a reduction in oocyte yield. The authors report that due to the absence of straightforward data, they suggest measuring ovarian reserve parameters and starting ovarian stimulation for fertility preservation 2–3 months after stopping hormonal treatments.
Regarding opportunities, the researchers state that endometriosis patients must be counseled about fertility preservation to improve chances of pregnancy. They report that oocytes vitrification for fertility preservation does not guarantee pregnancy. Having analyzed the current data, they suggest cryopreservation of 15–20 and 25–30 metaphase oocytes in women aged over 38, oocyte cryopreservation only in women at high risk of infertility, and as a third strategy, to take individualized care and fertility preservation considering age, ovarian reserve, disease severity, and symptoms, the impact of potential endometrioma surgery, the risk of relapse and additional infertility risk.
Three threats are mentioned regarding fertility preservation in women with endometriosis. Firstly, discussing the effect of endometriosis on fertility could potentially lead to a psychological burden on young women. Secondly, they report that the effect of ovarian stimulation on endometriosis symptoms and severity are currently unknown, however recent studies have shown promising results. Lastly, they note that there is not enough evidence to determine the quality of cryopreserved oocytes in women with endometriosis. Current evidence reports good survival and pregnancy rates after thawing of vitrified oocytes, but this is limited to women who have donated oocytes.
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https://www.endonews.com/shedding-light-on-the-fertility-preservation-debate-in-women-withendometriosis-a-swot-analysis
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Is There a Diabetes Paradox?
Dr. David P. Taggart, Department of Cardiac Surgery, Oxford University Hospitals NHS, Foundation Trust, John Radcliffe Hospital, Headley Way, Headington, Oxford OX2 6GF, United Kingdom.
Diabetes mellitus (DM) represents a significant risk factor for poor prognosis following coronary artery bypass grafting (CABG) (1) and increased risk of graft failure has been longer considered a main determinant (2). In this issue of the Journal, Raza et al. (3) are to be congratulated for conducting a very large observational study examining the influence of DM on graft patency in patients undergoing CABG with more than 2 decades of follow-up.
To put these results into perspective, it is important to know how consistent they are with other existing evidence and whether there are possible confounding factors. The current study is particularly important for several reasons. The incidence of DM is increasing sharply and depending on geographic location, 25% to 60% of patients undergoing CABG now have diabetes so the current report has important inferences both for understanding the general pathophysiological effects of diabetes in patients with CABG and its specific implications for bypass graft selection. Furthermore, in view of the number of patients, angiograms, and duration of follow-up the current study gives the most definitive resolution to date, to the conflicting evidence of the effects of diabetes on graft patency.
There are, however, some important potential limitations to the current study. First, the authors were unable to discriminate between type I and type II diabetes. This is a crucial distinction because the latter is a metabolic impairment characterized by insulin resistance and obesity, whereas the former is an autoimmune condition with very different implications for long-term survival. Indeed, in this Journal in 2015 (1) the national Swedish database reported that although CABG survival for patients with type II diabetes was similar to that of the nondiabetic control population, there was a significantly increased mortality in patients with type I diabetes from both cardiovascular and noncardiovascular causes. In that study, in comparison with patients with type II diabetes, patients with type I diabetes were younger (by a mean of 8 years); had a much longer history of diabetes (41 vs. 10 years); and were much more likely to be female (42% vs. 23%), to have renal failure (15% vs. 3%), and to have peripheral vascular disease (24% vs. 13%).
A second potential limitation is that with the exception of a small cohort of patients who underwent planned angiography at 1 year, early in the series, post-operative angiography was not performed systematically but only in those with presumed suspected ischemic symptoms. It could therefore be legitimately postulated that the results therefore only apply to patients with CABG with ischemic symptoms and that there may indeed be a higher failure rate of grafts in patients with diabetes who remain asymptomatic. This is particularly relevant because patients with diabetes experience cardiac autonomic neuropathy that may mitigate the symptoms of angina (4), leading to delayed diagnosis and repeat angiography, which could result in a significant underestimation of the real graft failure rates among patients with diabetes. However, this potential concern is contradicted by the fact that the median time to first angiography was in fact shorter for patients with diabetes than for control subjects.
A third potential limitation is that simple discrimination between cardiac- and noncardiac-related death in retrospective series remains a major obstacle (5). Indeed, if as some authors have suggested, that it should be assumed that all grafts in those who die without angiographic follow-up are occluded, this would result in much higher estimates of graft failure in patients with diabetes (6).
Arguably, the seminal message of the current study is the differing patency of venous and arterial grafts, over 2 decades of follow-up, in patients with and without diabetes. In contrast to an ongoing attrition of vein grafts (leading to a patency rate of around 40% at 20 years), internal thoracic artery grafts maintained patency in excess of 90% at 20 years. This underpins the practice of those surgeons who have consistently argued for the use of more arterial grafts because of their much superior patency over the longer term and particularly because the recent 5-year interim analysis of the ART trial did not show an additional survival benefit of 2 internal thoracic artery grafts (7). Although there is evidence that guideline-based medical therapy can improve vein graft patency, it is unlikely to ever improve it to the levels observed with arterial grafts over the longer term, and that has already been demonstrated to result in superior survival in patients with (8) and without diabetes (9).
(2015) Long-term prognosis in patients with type 1 and 2 diabetes mellitus after coronary artery bypass grafting. J Am Coll Cardiol 65:1644–1652.
(2014) The long-term impact of diabetes on graft patency after coronary artery bypass grafting surgery: a substudy of the multicenter Radial Artery Patency Study. J Thorac Cardiovasc Surg 148:1246–1253.
(2017) Influence of diabetes on long-term coronary artery bypass graft patency. J Am Coll Cardiol 70:515–524.
(2005) Symptoms of unstable angina in patients with and without diabetes. Res Nurs Health 28:136–143.
(2016) Radial artery as a coronary artery bypass conduit: 20-year results. J Am Coll Cardiol 68:603–610.
(2016) Randomized trial of bilateral versus single internal thoracic artery grafts. N Engl J Med 375:2540–2549.
(2016) Total arterial revascularization: a superior strategy for diabetic patients who require coronary surgery. Ann Thorac Surg 102:1948–1955.
(2014) Effect of bilateral internal mammary artery grafts on long-term survival: a meta-analysis approach. Circulation 130:539–545.
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http://www.onlinejacc.org/content/70/5/525
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Last fall TMS established a “blended” (in-person + online) professional development relationship to develop a Voicethread unit plan for student multimedia productions involving participation from older adults in the community with English classes of Elizabeth Smith at Hume-Fogg Academic Magnet, a public high school in Nashville, TN. Hume Fogg has been recognized as a national Blue Ribbon school by the USDOE, and ranked the 49th best public school in the country by US News & World Report, which meant that the existing project plans that Elizabeth brought for us to work media literacy concepts and digital media tools into were already chock-full-of rigor and creatively designed.
Elizabeth and I were connected through her involvement with The Generation Connection camp (TGC), which TMS has collaborated with for 9 years. Our blended relationship began with a face-to-face meeting in Nashville to brainstorm ways that TGC, TMS and Hume Fogg could create a project that would incorporate media literacy concepts into a high school English project that involved older adults in the community as collaborators and resources for the students. After getting a feel for each other in person, we continued developing the project over the phone, co-editing planning documents in Google Docs (left), and within Voicethread.com projects (below).
TGC’s mission is to faciliate reciprocal mentoring between youth and older adults to build community, and create meaningful relationships between often isolated groups within the same community. We planned to match small student production groups with older adults from the community as a resource and collaborator. The “reciprocal” element would involve students teaching older adults Voicethread skills and schooling them in social media online collaboration, which is second-nature to them, while older adults would offer their generation’s research methods, and in some cases first-hand experinece related to the projects, or knowledge of how readings of the classic novels the projects are connected to have changed over the years. As we’ve seen through TGC Due to the logistics of background checks, and scheduling challenges, the intergenerational collaboration did not materialize this time around, but will remain a part of the unit plan for 2012-13 school year at Hume Fogg.
The strength of these projects from a media literacy perspective are in the specific requirement of students to communicate and persuade through a combination of media in an online environment. Students must decide where to get quality information to complete their “case” assignment, and synthesize that information by communicating what they learned through a combination of video, documents, and images in Voicethread. Voicethread allowed the incorporation of whatever media the students chose to produce, and allowed collaboration to take place asynchronously as well as in person in class. It also allows for student or teacher and peer interaactive review through the commenting feature.
Collaborative, educational multimedia production poses many challenges. In a given learning environment, many factors must be evaluated on a case-by-case basis, including the range of technical savvy among educators and youth, available technology resources, and the degree of technical support. This prevents a “magic bullet” prescription for media education through production, but it also provides opportunities for creative new media applications in virtually any situation!
The goal of working with TMS is primarily to increase media literacy for youth and educators alike. The production projects deal with a range of topics and content, but always support the core concepts of media analysis and our objectives. Below are some of the benefits of working with us (see also: Learning Standards).
We believe that at whatever age, youth can apply their own experiences to uniquely enrich projects in ways that inherently promote media literacy. The TMS production process is designed to connect students’ comfort, or “ways of knowing”, with new media to existing curricula.
Our projects start with language-based subject matter drawn from existing curricula. This adds new perspective and learning opportunities to existing teaching strategies.
Any computer use in a group setting requires professional technical support and planning. The rush to acquire new media has left many groups with more computers than they can maintain and no realistic plan for using them to increase learning. Collaborative production with TMS can include long-term technology planning and technical support to allow educators to capitalize on potential learning opportunities instead of troubleshooting technical glitches they are not trained to handle.
We believe that if a child knows their work will have a life beyond their immediate surroundings, they will be more invested in the process. Digital audio and video, and the Internet have made it possible for virtually anyone to create a voice in these dominant forms of 21st Century public discourse. Aside from helping youth create these voices, TMS works to distribute and share your group’s work through community screenings and, with your permission, on the Internet.
Material produced through TMS can be distributed within your educational community as teaching material with cross-curricular value. With your permission, your projects can become part of The Media Spot’s production archive for others to use in their pursuit of media literacy.
Our approach to promoting media literacy is to provide professional development and student services to educational communities through project-based media education. Through this web site, we provide access to the concept of media literacy through our resources, by outlining our collaborative production process, and presenting TMS productions.
Through this approach we hope to achieve the objectives outlined below.
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https://themediaspot.org/category/k-12-curriculum-development/page/3/
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On Sunday, September 8, CTN had a table at Getting There Together, an event organized by the Coalition of Agencies Serving the Elderly (CASE). The overall purpose of the event was to increase visibility and promote services for older adults and adults living with disabilities in the San Francisco area. The event included an open-air gymnasium with line dancing and chair yoga and other activities to show the importance of senior fitness.
Our table included information about classes offered through SF Connected, a partnership with the Department of Aging and Adult Services (DAAS). Our trainers can be found in over 20 sites across the city, and our goal is to train older adults on basic digital literacy skills, email use, connecting with friends and family, and finding resources for jobs. We offer drop-in time in the computer center as well as structured classes.
We’re also looking for more volunteers! If you’re passionate about helping to increase the digital literacy skills of people in the digital divide, complete our online application here or email [email protected].
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https://communitytechnetwork.org/blog/getting-together-event-san-francisco/
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Older adults are especially vulnerable physically during the coronavirus pandemic. But they’re also notably resilient psychologically, calling upon a lifetime of experience and perspective to help them through difficult times.
New research calls attention to this little-remarked-upon resilience as well as significant challenges for older adults as the pandemic stretches on. It shows that many seniors have changed behaviors — reaching out to family and friends, pursuing hobbies, exercising, participating in faith communities — as they strive to stay safe from the coronavirus.
“There are some older adults who are doing quite well during the pandemic and have actually expanded their social networks and activities,” said Brian Carpenter, a professor of psychological and brain sciences at Washington University in St. Louis. “But you don’t hear about them because the pandemic narrative reinforces stereotypes of older adults as frail, disabled and dependent.”
“In other circumstances — hurricanes, fires, earthquakes, terrorist attacks — older adults have been shown to have a lot of resilience to trauma,” said Sarah Lowe, an assistant professor at Yale University School of Public Health who studies the mental health effects of traumatic events.
Here are notable findings from a new wave of research documenting the early experiences of older adults during the pandemic:
Changing behaviors: Older adults have listened to public health authorities and taken steps to minimize the risk of being infected with COVID-19, according to a new study in The Gerontologist.
Results come from a survey of 1,272 adults age 64 and older administered online between May 4 and May 17. More than 80% of the respondents lived in New Jersey, an early pandemic hot spot.
These seniors reported spending less face-to-face time with family and friends (95%), limiting trips to the grocery store (94%), canceling plans to attend a celebration (88%), saying no to out-of-town trips (88%), not going to funerals (72%), going to public places less often (72%) and canceling doctors’ appointments (69%).
Safeguarding well-being: In another new study published in The Gerontologist, Brenda Whitehead, an associate professor of psychology at the University of Michigan-Dearborn, addresses how older adults have adjusted to altered routines and physical distancing.
Her data comes from an online survey of 825 adults age 60 and older on March 22 and 23.
Instead of inquiring about “coping” — a term that can carry negative connotations — Whitehead asked about sources of joy and comfort during the pandemic. Most commonly reported were connecting with family and friends (31.6%), interacting on digital platforms (video chats, emails, social media, texts — 22%), engaging in hobbies (19%), being with pets (19%), spending time with spouses or partners (15%) and relying on faith (11.5%).
“In terms of how these findings relate to where we are now, I would argue these sources of joy and comfort, these coping resources, are even more important” as stress related to the pandemic persists, Whitehead said.
Older adults are also responding by getting exercise, going outside, altering routines, practicing self-care, and adjusting attitudes via meditation and mindfulness, among other practices, the study found.
“It’s important to focus on the things we can control and recognize that we do still have agency to change things,” said Lindsay Kobayashi, a co-author of the study and assistant professor of epidemiology at the University of Michigan School of Public Health.
Kaiser Health Network/Tribune News Service
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https://www.bostonherald.com/2020/11/19/experience-helps-seniors-power-through-tough-times/
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While helping people connect and use the Internet doesn't in itself create a more networked society and stronger relationships, being unable to engage online does reduce the options for individuals. That affects one in four people in the UK.
Just before our event in City Hall with the Deputy Mayor I talked to John Perkins about the challenges of helping people access and use the Internet - whether for shopping, looking for work, connecting with friends and family, or pursuing personal hobbies and interests.
After working with BT on digital inclusion, John spent a year with Doteveryone projects in the two London borough of Croydon and Lewisham. As the project report says:
The projects were based on open partnership and collaboration, and we worked closely with the local Councils, our Principal Partners and a range of local businesses and community organisations from the public, private and not-for-profit sectors.
Many partners provided volunteer digital champions from their own staff to help residents improve their digital skills. Others provided venue space, kit and low-cost connectivity.
John explained that there were three elements to the projects: Digital Zones providing drop-in sessions supported by volunteers; Deeper Dives to explore how to motivate people with specific needs including older people, the homeless and young people not in education, employment or training; and Community Engagement projects owned and managed by local groups.
Some of the greatest learning came from this work in the community, including:
- what interests those offering help doesn't necessarily appeal to community groups - so projects have to be co-designed
- people learn best from repeated, informal, face-to-face and one-to-one support
- talking about technology, Facebook and social media doesn't engage people- it's what people want to do with it that matters
- it is essential to go where people are - not expect them to come to a central location
- word of mouth is the best way to reach people
John said there were a lot of benefits for those volunteering to provide support - including meeting people and situations outside normal work experience, and a sense of personal empowerment and reward from using skills to help others.
Overall we agreed that there was enormous scope to make more of the assets that London has in this field. Projects are not connected and cooperating, partly because funding is competitive. We need different models.
One more task for London's Chief Digital Officer, when appointed by the Mayor.
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http://www.connectinglondoners.blog/2017/lessons-from-digital-skills-projects---grassroots-connections-and-personal
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Publisher:
Emerald Publishing Limited
Copyright © 2019 Johanna L. H. Birkland
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While the ICT User Typology is a theory of technology use, it has practical implications for how to meet the needs and wants of an aging society. Split into four sections, this chapter provides (1) guidance to practitioners who work with older adults, (2) methods and considerations for overcoming the barriers to older adult participation in our digital society, (3) strategies for designers and advertisers to maximize the lessons from the typology to reach a growing graying market, and (4) lessons for childhood educational programs to impact the development of user types in childhood. This chapter is designed for a diverse audience and is meant to appeal to those who work in aging, information and library science, technology design and development, advertising, and education.
Practitioner Opportunities: Understanding and Supporting Older Adults
Many practitioners who work closely with older adults have noticed the great diversity in ICT use by their patrons, clients, patients, and customers; while also recognizing the potential benefits of digitalization (Freeman, 2005). However, it is often difficult for those working with older adults to verbalize this diversity and, more importantly, to understand how this diversity impacts older adults’ access to digital services. Practitioners can use the ICT User Typology framework to customize services, opportunities, and living environments to maximize life satisfaction for each of the user types and their ideal relationship with technology.
Enthusiasts are the most technologically capable of all the user types and, therefore, the most likely of your clients to seek information online or fill out online forms. ICTs are a fundamental part of Enthusiasts’ lives and inability to use them negatively impacts their life satisfaction. Given the centrality of technology to their identity, in residential/ managed care settings or when working with Enthusiasts with disabilities or age-related declines, it is important to facilitate access to appropriate and useable ICTs. Enthusiasts prefer to have their environments filled with technologies and are the most likely to accept (and even embrace) ubiquitous computing, including smart home innovations. 1 They have high expectations for organizations they interact with to be technologically innovative.
Practicalists tend to have medium to high ability to use online services and resources. Diverse as group in their technical knowledge, their skills are often tied to the ICTs they use/used in their work. Those with high and diverse ICT use in their workplaces typically have the best skill set. Therefore, it is important to recognize that some Practicalists may need additional help in completing computer-based tasks, particularly if they were in a less technologically-focused work environment or position. Practicalists, unlike Enthusiasts, do not enjoy being constantly surrounded by technology and are more likely to prefer ICT-specific spaces in institutional settings that are task-defined, such as computer rooms and separate entertainment rooms.
Socializers have a high need for social interaction, and this flows into their media and ICT use. They also have a diversity of skills, with their highest levels of skills being in communication devices and services. They, therefore, may need assistance in using other forms of ICTs or filling out online forms. Socializers do not like using ICTs alone or using ICTs they consider isolating. Television watching, for instance, tends to be too solitary of an activity for most Socializers and they would greatly prefer an interactive experience. For those with mild- to moderate physical and/or cognitive declines, but who have high socialization needs, virtual gaming in a group setting can help to engage Socializers. It is also important to ensure that in any setting (institutional or otherwise) Socializers have access to the devices and services they need to stay in touch with their large family and friend networks so integral to their identity. Often the ICTs provided in such settings are too old and too underpowered to allow effective access to social media, or social media websites are blocked. Such policies prevent many Socializers from using ICTs to fulfill their socialization needs (more on these issues is presented in the following section).
Traditionalists have the lowest ICT skills of any of the user types. They do not go online often (if at all) and are unwilling or unable to conduct online research or fill out online forms. For Traditionalists, it is critical to identify if they have a family member or friend that undertakes these tasks for them and to determine if their digital and information needs are being met. While many Traditionalists have such individuals to rely on, some do not. Telling an older adult Traditionalist to simply “go online” may be an insurmountable and unwelcome task. If a person does not have a proxy that can access the internet, this is a role that perhaps a companion or personnel at your organization can undertake.
Guardians tend to be concerned with internet security and privacy. They are overall cautious of providing their information online. For Guardians, it is important to have privacy procedures in place and have these easily and frequently explained. In institutional care settings, Guardians deeply value ICT-free spaces where they can have conversations and deepen relationships face-to-face without distraction from digital devices.
The ICT User Typology provides insight into how we can better support older adults to improve their life satisfaction. While this section has briefly introduced how practitioners can best facilitate each type’s desired use patterns, the next section examines the barriers that prevent the desired levels of ICT use. In order to discuss how these barriers can be overcome for the five user types these challenges are explored through the most common language used to conceptualize them: the digital divide.
Closing the Gray Digital Divide: Supporting Older Adult Users and Non-users
Oftentimes in the literature, there is a push to encourage older adults to adopt ICTs. Such literature seeks to close “gray digital divide,” – the idea that older individuals report lower usage rates of the internet, computers, and cell phones compared to younger people. 2 Even younger elders show higher rates of ICT use than older elders (Heart & Kalderon, 2013). However, such an oversimplification of the gray digital divide misses the complexity in older adult ICT use and non-use. Individuals move in and out of various user and non-user categories due to changes in their physical, mental, financial, and motivational states(s): the digital divide is not static (Van Dijk, 2005). Indeed, three groups of people are being captured in the digital divide literature at any given moment: those that are using digital ICTs, those that want to (but cannot use them at the level that they wish), and those that do not want to use ICTs (Millward, 2003; Russell, 1998; Van Dijk, 2005).
The first two groups, those older adults that are using digital devices and those that want to, cut across four of the user types: Enthusiasts, Practicalists, Socializers, and Guardians. Within these four user types, you will find many individuals using the devices they would like, in the ways they would like, for the purposes they would like. However, you will also find individuals who are not able to access the ICTs they desire due to a lack of technological literacy, functional or cognitive declines, or financial barriers.
Improving Technological Literacy: Helping the Wants
Lack of knowledge, and particularly support for learning new ICTs or new functions, is a particular problem for many older adults (Morrison, 2015). Among the Lucky Few, there is a great diversity in exposure to ICTs through the work environment, so retired older adults in this generation are left with very differential ICT knowledge in elder age. For instance, both George (Guardian) and Dan (Practicalist) found that, because of their relatively high positions in organizations (a vice president and a director, respectively), they had not been exposed to computers and the internet through their work. Both wanted to learn computers once they reached retirement, but found learning without a supportive work environment difficult.
Dan was starting his own consulting business following his retirement from his career in a global non-profit. One of the factors in the timing of his retirement had been the cognitive decline of his mother due to dementia. He returned to the rural area in which he grew up to serve as her full-time caregiver. Even though Dan was happy to return the loving care he received from his mother as a child, the experience was often isolating and heartbreaking. (Dan’s mother died shortly after the conclusion of our interviews.) He sought to create a consulting business and to advise graduate students not only to engage his brain, but as a welcome “escape” from caregiving activities. However, his connections to these individuals were virtual by necessity and he found himself struggling to use the computer technology that he had not learned in his prior work.
Due to Dan’s rural environment, there was no formal place within easy driving distance he could turn to for help. Instead he relied on his wife to help him learn. However, he found it frustrating that while he could give a fantastic presentation, he struggled to create digital slides. (See Chapter 3 for a more in-depth discussion of Dan’s experience.)
For George, he found using a computer challenging. He relied on the two of his children who lived locally to provide technical assistance, although he often wished that there was someone he could hire to provide technical lessons on specific software and applications he wanted to use. While George worked part-time at a big box retailer (for, as he put it, “something to do”), the vast majority of his position did not require nor provide the opportunity to use technology. As a Guardian, there was some technology he was interested in (mostly the computer and internet) but other technologies he was not. He indicated that he would like tailored lessons, particularly on online shopping and internet security, which were more complex topics than the local library offered in their senior computing course.
Lack of training is often cited in the research as being one of the greatest barriers to older adults learning ICTs (Friemel, 2016; Padilla-Góngora et al., 2017) and research has focused on developing specific strategies to accommodate older adult learning needs (Boechler, Foth, & Watchom, 2007; Slegers, van Boxtel, & Jolles, 2007). The need for better and more customized technical training for older adults is clear. Rather than seeing the offering of more content as a challenge for already underfunded community programs, such needs can be instead seen as an opportunity to promote intergenerational understanding and communication.
As our populations age worldwide (Kinsella & Velkoff, 2001), there will be many aging-related employment opportunities (Rosowsky, 2005). These positions will not only be in healthcare but across all industries – from housing to tourism, marketing to design, and government to business (Plawecki & Plawecki, 2015). Such a population shift will require those entering the workforce to be prepared to work with an aging clientele and meet the demands of an aging market. A potential solution to meeting the demands of an aging-savvy workforce and to provide technical literacy to our aging population is to have young people (secondary and post-secondary students) help older adults to learn new technologies (under the guidance of teachers and professors). Such older adult technological literacy programs could be modeled on STEM programs 3 – insofar as they encourage younger people to consider a new career path – in this case an aging career path. Such experience with older adult clients and/or consumers will be considered an asset in any young person’s chosen career given societal aging trends. Taking into the account the growth of older adult markets (particularly, as Boomers begin to age into elderhood (Coleman, Hladikova, & Savelyeva, 2006)), such exposure not only benefits the older adults, but also organizations seeking workers to serve an aging clientele and young people seeking employment.
When creating such a technological literacy program, it is important to involve older adults, who best understand their needs and desires (Lenstra, 2017). While many libraries and senior centers have offered computer classes for older adults (Anger, 2005; Eaton & Salari, 2005; Xie & Jaeger, 2008), one of the issues of this common model is the lack of customizability. Practicalists and Guardians are not interested in learning every possible function they can complete with their computer and would prefer learning about targeted features. Dan particularly wanted to learn office software as he was interested in starting his own business. George wanted to learn about information security and online shopping.
Research has shown that private, one-on-one tailored technical training is highly desired by older adults (Friemel, 2016), so such lessons should focus on instructor and learner (rather than group) environments. Since both emotional and technical support are important to older adults successfully learning new technologies (Barnard, Bradley, Hodgson, & Lloyd, 2013), it will be important to train volunteers to recognize and be sensitive to older adults’ feelings toward technology.
While addressing technological literacy is important to facilitate many of the user types, there must not only be attention paid to providing knowledge, but also accessible devices that allow individuals with a diversity of ability level access to our digital society.
Facilitating Accessibility to and Affordability of ICTs: Helping the Wants
ICTs are typically created for the young (Larsen, 1993): people with good eyesight, high manual dexterity, and fast cognitive reflexes and memory (Becker, 2004). Many older adults experience cognitive (Fang et al., 2017) and/or physical declines or disabilities which make using modern ICTs difficult (Barratt, 2007; Czaja, Sharit, Charness, Fisk, & Rogers, 2001; Hill, Betts, & Gardner, 2015). While in many high-income developed nations the chronological time older adults are spending disabled at the end of life has decreased, functional limitations still begin to rise in the older population at age 70. For low- and middle-income countries, such limitations increase at even younger ages (Chatterji, Byles, Cutler, Seeman, & Verdes, 2015). Functional limitations are, and will continue to be, a major stumbling block impacting older adults’ technology use in generations to come.
Across the study, individuals expressed concern that if they developed such limitations, or if their current impairments progressed, they would find it difficult to use the devices they currently used. Such concerns are not imaginary: older adults who face physical or cognitive impairments report much lower usage rates of ICTs than those without such impairments, with vision and memory declines being most impactful (Gell, Rosenberg, Demiris, LaCroix, & Patel, 2015). Those who have such impairments are often fearful that new innovations will exclude them (Okonji, Lhussier, Bailey, & Cattan, 2015).
Older adults need accessible devices that are sensitive to their lifestyle, their needs and wants in technology (Bagnall, Onditi, Rouncefield, & Sommerville, 2006). The ICT User Typology can help us to identify the wants and needs in the diverse older adult population and we can tailor and build devices to meet their lifestyle preferences – while ensuring such devices and services are accessible. The physical and cognitive inaccessibility of technology can prevent Enthusiasts, Practicalists, Socializers, and Guardians from using the technologies they desire.
While one of Gerontechnology’s main goals has been the creation of alternatives for those with disabilities or impairments to use modern ICTs (Bouma, 2001), attention must be paid to ensure these devices are financially in reach. Nancy is a prime example of how inaccessible technology design can impact an older adult and prevent them from living their ideal lifestyle. As a Socializer, she wanted to be able to text, to connect her to the youngest individuals in her large intergenerational network. Living in an assisted living facility, she had no disposable income and no resources with which to purchase an alternative device and/or service that would allow her the functionality of texting. While Nancy qualified for the US government Lifeline program (which provides qualifying individuals with a free cell phone and limited monthly free minutes and data) (Federal Communications Commission, 2018), all of the available simple phone models had small buttons. The last phone she had tried she attempted manipulating with a pencil, however, even the eraser was too large. She sent this phone back, and refused to participate in the program again, as she said it was not designed for people like her – people with impairments or who were older.
One of Nancy’s fellow residents, Bobbie, showed me her Lifeline phone model. A simple phone (non-smartphone) was smaller than a deck of cards (Figure 16). Although Bobbie was significantly younger than Nancy and had no eyesight or manual dexterity issues, she found the phone difficult to manipulate. In Figure 16, the cell phone is the smaller device. For size comparison, you can see the size of a normal television remote and several hard candies in a plastic sandwich bag. I handled the phone and attempted to dial my own number – and it took two tries to enter it correctly because of miss-struck keys.
Many older adults receive federal social welfare benefits in the US and, because of this, they qualify for a Lifeline phone. It is disheartening that the only phone models commonly available are often unsuitable for older individuals and/or those with disabilities. For Nancy, who mentioned many times over the course of the study that she just “wished they had a phone I could use to text,” the frustrations of not having an accessible device were heartbreaking. As she pointed out – it is not only older people who have arthritis or difficulty seeing who needed to use a cell phone. Such devices, too small to manipulate, disenfranchise large swathes of our societies.
While individuals with more disposable income may be able to compensate for their disabilities or declines through self-purchasing, it is concerning that the devices provided for our most vulnerable society’s members are often unusable. When researchers and practitioners speak of closing the gray digital divide, it is important that we remember to not only make ICTs available for those who do not have access – but also to make them physically and cognitively accessible for an aging population. 4 More resources must be invested in designing more age-friendly ICTs. Importantly, there should be a focus on making sure that the cost of these devices is kept low and they are available on appropriate governmental assistance programs.
Prior research has indicated that inability to afford ICTs impacts older adults’ self-fulfillment (Hill, Beynon-Davies, & Williams, 2008). It is no wonder: technology for Enthusiasts is the center of their lives and for Socializers is how they stay connected to their important communities. Denying these user types devices because they have developed disabilities or age-related impairments is to take a strike at their fundamental identity. Studies have shown that communication technology use decreases loneliness (Czaja et al., 2018) and social isolation (Blit-Cohen & Litwin, 2004; Chen & Schulz, 2016; Clark, 2001; Czaja et al., 2018; Xie, 2008), while improving well-being (Blit-Cohen & Litwin, 2005; Czaja et al., 2018; Ihm & Hsieh, 2015; Khvorostianov, Elias, & Nimrod, 2011). Some research has suggested that among retired older adults, internet use is even correlated with lower depression rates (Cotten, Ford, Ford, & Hale, 2012). Designing, creating, and providing accessible and affordable technologies for those who put technology or communication at the center of their lives should be paramount.
Even if devices are accessible and affordable, they need to be available to older adults in their living situations. In our resident care settings, policies and dated technology can prevent older adults from engaging with our digital world. Gerontechnologists’ work in such settings has often looked toward providing care or workforce solutions (Czaja, 2016; Freedman, Calkins, & Haitsma, 2005), rather than in facilitating residents everyday use. In Nancy’s assisted living center, access to social media sites was blocked in order to prevent staff members from wasting organizational time. This meant that residents that wanted to use social media had to travel elsewhere to do so. Most residents were unable to travel to the nearest location that offered both free Wi-Fi and computers: the local library. A mile away and not located on any public transportation line that connected to the assisted living center, this was inaccessible to the vast majority of residents.
Providing access in such environments makes sense as growing numbers of older adults rely on social media as a way to remain connected to their families (Coelho & Duarte, 2016) and access to communication technology has been proven to ease the transition to such living communities (Waldron et al., 2005). Many of the residents of the facility I spoke with would have enjoyed access to social media; however, they were prevented from doing so because it improved overall organizational efficiency. There are a multitude of other interventions that could have been used to prevent employees from using social media during their workday: stricter policies, blocking individual devices, and collecting devices from employees during their shifts. Policies which facilitate residents’ digital lives and help them to more closely achieve their ideal technological lifestyle should be a priority. The residents, as clients, should be the center of care.
Beyond allowing access, available technology in these facilities is often sluggish and outdated (or non-existent). The computers available in Nancy’s assisted living facility were over 10 years old. It should be an institutional priority to provide a number of relatively recent computers to residents. These computers need not be purchased new. Individuals and organizations frequently update devices, with organizations in particular often only receiving small recycling returns. Such devices, rather than being returned to the manufacturer could be donated to such facilities with a charitable deduction. Many organizations with older adult clients may find student groups at their local secondary school or university willing to help source devices and provide technical help.
While increasing accessibility and access are important to allowing Enthusiasts, Practicalists, Socializers, and Guardians to use ICTs in the ways they desire, it is also important to consider how to best facilitate the Traditionalists – the want-nots – in our society as well.
Supporting the Traditionalists: Helping the Want-Nots
The third important category of older individuals in the digital divide is the “want nots” – these are people choosing to not use modern digital ICTs (Eynon & Helsper, 2010; Russell, 1998). In terms of the ICT User Typology, these are the Traditionalists – those individuals who love the ICTs of their youth but have little interest in using more modern technologies.
Much of the focus in both popular media and in scholarly and practitioner digital divide literature focuses on how to motivate Traditionalists to use the modern ICTs they reject. The presumption in much of this literature is that use is good – and non-use, conversely – is, therefore, bad (Friemel, 2016; Russell, 1998). In these discussions of the digital divide, we often overlook older adult personhood (Lenstra, 2017) seeing technology as the perfect “solution” to the “problems” of aging (Parviainen & Pirhonen, 2017). Such insinuations suggest that aging is not valued, nor desirable, but instead is a state that needs to be fixed. Our aging societies do not need fixing, technology is not a bandage, nor is any technological innovation free of consequences – be they positive or negative.
Older adults have a right to self-determine their level of engagement in our digital world, including if that level of engagement is zero. They have the right to make choices about their lives and this includes the choice to disengage from more modern forms of technology. The focus on encouraging computer and internet use in much of the literature infantilizes older adults, playing into ageist stereotypes which suggest that they are not capable of making their own decisions (Cutler, 2005). Older adults are not children and encouraging them to use a computer should not be analogous to telling a toddler that they should eat their spinach. 5
Older adults are well aware of what technologies can do. Traditionalists, who consume high amounts of traditional media, are well aware of many new technologies: they have seen/read/listened to advertisements, stories, articles, and programs about them and still they have no interest in using these modern forms. Traditionalists have little self-motivation to use such technologies in their elderhood, as their lives are simply full of the traditional media they love. In many cases, Traditionalists are already being pressured by friends and family members to adopt more modern ICTs. They find themselves inundated with well-meaning but unwanted technological gifts, yet they continue to resist this pressure to use them. With Traditionalists’ more modern technologies gathering dust and frequent inquiries from loved ones, there is not much more on a societal level that can be done to encourage Traditionalists’ use.
Those of us who identify as Enthusiasts cannot let our love and passion for technology blind us to the agency of our elders. If we would like to have agency in the final decade or two of our own lives and to be able to make our own choices about the technologies we use, we should start by respecting the technological choices of our own elders now.
Traditionalists from the Lucky Few generation are mostly unharmed by their decision to disengage from the virtual world. They tend to be very happy about their choices (although they are often frustrated by the pressure they feel from others to use modern technologies). These individuals have survived, adapted, and thrived for over 70 years; if they are happy being unengaged from modern ICTs in the last decades of their life, there is a strong argument that we should allow them to do so.
There is an important caveat to this discussion. Much of our information and services are moving online, leaving people who are not internet users at risk. Successful older adult Traditionalists tend to have a strong network of people who use ICTs and they rely on these direct users to get them information they may need, file things online, or digitally communicate with others. These direct users are similar to the “warm experts” previously identified in the literature – individuals who provide technical assistance and/or access to older adults (Wyatt, Henwood, Hart, & Smith, 2005). In this way, Traditionalists are “indirect” or secondary users of online services, computers, and other digital technologies, relying on these warm experts for actual use.
If Traditionalists lose their relationship with the direct user they rely on, they are at extreme risk in a digital society. Mindy Jean relied on her husband to go online, including to file taxes and look up information. June relied on her children and a man who worked at the front desk at her low-income apartments to look up information and print off forms she needed. If these Traditionalist older adults were to lose these individuals, or never had these contacts in the first place, they would be at risk of not being able to complete these tasks. This speaks to the need for our societies to provide services that facilitate “indirect” users of systems: a social safety net for the indirect users of the internet. When asked what they would do if they no longer could rely on their direct users, Traditionalists volunteered they could go to their local library and the librarian would help them to get the information or to sign up for the services they needed. These types of library services need to be funded.
To truly facilitate the needs of Traditionalists, professionals and volunteers in such programs need to be willing to set aside any “pro-technology agendas” (Margaret) and ageist stereotypes. Often, particularly among those who are Enthusiasts, there is a tendency to act as technological evangelists, to encourage digital technology use and to view such use as the desirable end goal. Such a pro-technology agenda is unnecessarily harmful to Traditionalists. Traditionalists often feel shamed for their choices in ICT use, and any program that hopes to engage older adults in our digital society should avoid passing any such judgment.
In a similar vein, it is also important to support Guardians’ choices in using ICTs in a limited way. While Guardians are far more willing to use more modern ICTs than Traditionalists, they tend to be very cautious in their use. Due to their knowledge of potential technological pitfalls when it comes to information security and privacy, many simply need reassurance that the ICTs they want to use are safe. Such reassurance must occur in verbiage that is appropriate for the individual Guardian’s skill level. Technological language, particularly when used to speak down to Guardians, tends to be very off-putting and causes disengagement. However, there are numerous examples of Guardians being “coached” out of their original comfort zone by kind and understanding IT professionals. Margaret began online shopping after a positive experience with an employee she contacted on the phone, who described in detail (in terms she could easily understand) the security in place for online purchases. While Margaret was certain she would buy very few items online, she purchased exclusively from this online retailer as she understood their security procedures. As a result of a retail employee taking the time to discuss Margaret’s concerns about privacy and information security, the company won a life-long dedicated customer.
As a society, we need to accept that choosing to not use a technology is a valid response. A person’s value and their ability to engage in society should not be based on their technical expertise or their willingness to use the latest gadget. It is not Traditionalists and Guardians that necessarily need to change their views, but perhaps rather the rest of us.
Addressing concerns over ICT literacy, usability, and access are important to facilitate older adults using ICTs in ways that come naturally to their user type. There is also an opportunity for those who are interested in appealing to the graying market to use the ICT User Typology to better understand, design for, and market to the older adult population.
Using the ICT User Typology for Tailored ICT Service and Product Design
As our population ages, the older adult market for technological devices and services grows. Gerontechnological researchers are just beginning to recognize this potential (Hough & Kobylanski, 2009; Kashchuk & Ivankina, 2015), although there have been very few studies from the business or marketing perspective (Mostaghel, 2016). Technologies for an aging population not only need to be adaptable to overcome cognitive and physical limitations and disabilities, but also must keep in mind the diverse motivations, needs, desires, and lifestyles of older adults (Bagnall et al., 2006; W. A. Rogers & Mitzner, 2017). As a diverse group there is no single “older adult” design that will appeal. Instead, such design must be tailored to this diversity (Righi, Sayago, & Blat, 2017). The ICT User Typology segments the older adult market, allowing targeted design and advertising to these differing tastes, wants, and lifestyles; unlocking the meanings older adults apply to technologies. It is meanings that are critical to understanding older adult technological acceptance (Hauk, Hüffmeier, & Krumma, 2018).
Each of the user types finds different aspects of ICTs interesting to them, and as a result, have different design specifications that appeal. The ICT User Typology provides guidance in designing and marketing effectively to the older population as a diverse group of individuals, rather than ineffectively to older adults as a single market. Table 3 provides guidance on what appeals to each of the user types in devices and services, how these products can be best framed for marketing purposes, the level of support that will be necessary to engage this part of the older adult market, as well as main takeaways.
|User Type||Is Drawn to||To Sell to||To Support||Takeaways|
|Enthusiasts||Fun, play, newness, experimentation||Emphasize the fun||Requires little support; can “turn on and go”||Enthusiasts are not trying to be hip, they genuinely want to use the latest and greatest|
|Present use as play|
|Practicalists||Functionality, practicality, usefulness||Emphasize the functionality||Requires substantial support; prefers documentation and help services||Practicalists are not explorers; you must prove to them it is useful and how it is useful to them|
|Present use as practical|
|Socializers||Connection, community, relationships, socialization, Engagement||Emphasize the connectivity||Requires little support; relies on large social network||Socializers want what young people have; facilitate their ability to use what young are using|
|Present use as bridging|
|Traditionalists||Nostalgia, technology and media of their youth||Emphasize the nostalgia||Needs technology that functions like old standbys||Traditionalists love the older ICT forms; still a market for new devices that “function” like the old|
|Present use as comforting and traditional|
|Guardians||Security, control, relationships, unobtrusiveness||Emphasize the security of device/ service||Requires substantial support; reassurance technology is safe||Guardians are concerned that technology is all-consuming and unsafe; give them the ability to control their use|
|Allow individuals to control their own use|
|Unobtrusive devices|
Enthusiasts love technology and, in particular, love its fun aspects: they love to experiment with a new “toy,” and they are very much self-supported. To appeal to Enthusiasts, it is important to make sure that any product, device, or service you offer truly is fun to use. Enthusiasts are geeks (and they are proud of it!). They enjoy showing off this geekiness. It is very important when looking to appeal to Enthusiasts that you do not talk down to their skill level. Many Enthusiasts are or were IT professionals, and many of them built technologies and networks. They do not need to be told how to use a device, but rather they are very capable of being able to open a box or subscribe to a service without much help at all. Because technology is central to their lives, Enthusiasts with impairments or disabilities represent a large market for adaptive technologies that facilitate their continuance in using digital devices. They are the most likely of the types to adopt smart home or ubiquitous computing and embrace technological solutions for age-related declines.
Enthusiasts are researchers and base their purchases off their own research as well as feedback and recommendations from fellow Enthusiasts. They pay attention to advice from their technical friends and read various technical blogs and magazines. They have the skill set necessary to use popular devices and are uninterested in technologies that will stereotype them as “non-technical people.” Since Enthusiasts place ICTs in the center of their lives and throughout their homes, functional beauty is very important to them. They want their technologies to look sleek and beautiful; to be showpieces. They love their ICTs and the fun they have using them, but they do not like ugly things in their living spaces.
You may be wondering why it is important to market to Enthusiasts, who are likely to try most technologies on their own. Such marketing is critical as Enthusiasts spend a disproportionate amount of their income on technology and technological services compared to the other types. Appealing to their tastes is important. Technology is, after all, their main hobby (and often their job as well). Enthusiasts are well versed in the technological landscape and are well aware of your service and product – and your competitors. They are often the “technical help people” among their family and friends, no matter their age. When Enthusiasts recommend a device, the other user types listen. Earning older Enthusiast customers, therefore, can help to bring in other user types as customers as well.
Enthusiasts greatly dislike advertising that presents older adults as non-technologically capable. Specifically, they dislike advertisements that suggest that older users have no technical skills or need simplified technologies. These they view as very stereotypical and are unlikely to try any technology they feel is oversimplified and dodgy. Older adult Enthusiasts, however, are not just carbon copies of younger people with the same tastes and preferences. When asked, many Enthusiasts would like to see more “positive” portrayals of older adults in technological advertising – portrayals that match their skill levels. Older adults who are portrayed as capable technology users having fun using the device, service, or product will particularly appeal to older Enthusiasts.
Practicalists are focused on the functional and practical aspects of the ICTs they use or are considering using. They do not play with ICTs, they do not experiment, and they do not see technology as fun or a toy. Technology is a tool. Appealing to Practicalists involves outlining the functional aspects of a technology – how it can be used in Practicalists’ daily lives and how it is an improvement over their current technology. Practicalists are drawn to devices that offer greater functionality and usefulness than their current forms. They tend to be very definite in the ways they want to use a technology and have little interest in devices that stretch across every aspect of their lives. Practicalists’ tend to see certain ICTs as leisure devices, and others as work tools or community builders.
Practicalists strongly dislike (even to the point of “hating”) having to search out new features or uses; they do not play with their devices – their devices are tools. It is important, therefore, that if your device or service has features which are not readily apparent but are highly functional that you use walkthroughs to show Practicalists how to use these functions on their newest tool. Practicalists do not experiment to discover “cool things” your ICT can do; they are typically told, so be sure to do the telling through various support documentation. A lack of such documentation frustrates Practicalists. They will not open a device or service and begin poking around; they need and desire some level of guidance. If a competitor proves that their device is more easily used and more useful, you have likely lost Practicalist customers.
Practicalists need a high amount of support, particularly since they do not experiment with ICTs. When they run into issues they need a place to turn to for answering their questions. This can include support such as a help line, manuals, and/or web support. Practicalists often have relatively high skill levels in those technologies they use frequently, so the need for such support is not necessarily remedial. Instead, if Practicalists have questions about a device or service, such as how to change a setting that is not readily apparent, they would like to be able to look such information up, rather than exploring how to do it on their own by selecting various menus or icons and experimenting. Practicalists are frustrated when they receive an ICT with no manual or instructions on how to find help online. Technologies should be easy to use and help should be readily available in Practicalists’ minds.
Many Practicalists were exposed to ICTs in their work. They often adopt versions of these ICTs for their home life, if they see a relevant application. They are not impressed by others simply owning a device, or a device being “hip” or “popular.” They want to know a device works, and for what purposes, and seek out advice from friends and coworkers, as well as information in blogs, news articles, and reviews that help them determine the functionality of a device. They are uninterested in advertisements that are unsubstantial and do not detail functionality.
Socializers are focused on the connectivity of their devices. They love to socialize, meet people, and build connections with others. Of all the types, they are most likely to be influenced in their use by those around them. They have large intergenerational networks and, as a result, tend to adopt the ICTs being used by the young people in them. Many older adult Socializers text (or would like to text), but those who have arthritis or other disabilities (such as visual impairments) are prevented from doing so. Creating adaptive devices that allow Socializers with impairments to mimic the way young people communicate would do much toward facilitating their everyday lives and be highly appealing to this group. Socializers’ interests are highly geared toward technologies such as social media and mobile communication technologies such as smartphones, tablets, and other portable communication devices.
Socializers are the most likely to find advertising targeted toward younger individuals appealing. As a result of the intergenerational nature of Socializers’ networks, they are always observing which technologies are being used by and marketed toward their youngest family members and friends. They place little to no value on technologies, devices, and services that isolate; greatly preferring those that enable connection. Much of this value is not inherent in the ICT itself, but rather in how the use of the ICT is framed. For instance, while video games and other forms of digital gaming are largely seen as an isolating activity, those which can be played in a group setting and are marketed as a social activity can be quite appealing to Socializers.
Socializers do not use the devices young people do to be young or hip. Instead, they understand that they are adopting the ICT use patterns that have been established by younger people. Learning these patterns is extremely important to Socializers, as they credit these technologies with strengthening their relationships. Marketing that focuses on creating and building bonds with their large families (such as with their grandchildren) is particularly effective. They have no interest in nostalgia or stigmatizing devices created solely for older adults. 6
Traditionalists are the most likely of the five user types to focus on nostalgia. They fill their lives with the more “traditional” forms of media they encountered when they were young. Traditionalists are the most difficult segment of the older adult population to market new devices and services directly to, given their resistance toward using new technologies.
There are two opportunities for those who are interested in tapping the Traditionalist market, however. First, highly nostalgic, Traditionalists deeply enjoy using the media of their youth and young adulthood. This includes the music, television, and movies from their younger days. There are a multitude of opportunities to market such nostalgic experiences to Traditionalists, particularly if such experiences are coded within technologies that have the appearance and user interfaces of older ICT forms. While older adult Traditionalists would not be willing to adopt a digital music player presented as such, they would be keen to purchase a player that looked and acted like a regular radio but was pre-loaded with their choice of nostalgic music. Presenting nostalgic technologies that most importantly act and function like the ICTs Traditionalists know and love is incredibly important to appealing to this user type. These nostalgic devices can also be marketed to the family and friends of Traditionalists, who are often keen to introduce the Traditionalists in their lives to more modern ICTs, but find their efforts rebuffed. Devices which mimic the functionality of the Traditionalists’ beloved ICTs of their youth while incorporating new technologies may be a suitable middle ground. Second, while Traditionalists are typically not primary users of modern ICTs (when at all possible), they often rely on others to access online information and services. There is an opportunity to provide these services to Traditionalists who do not have a friend or family member to access this information directly.
Guardians are interested in ICTs that are secure, can be easily hidden, and are controllable. Unlike Enthusiasts, who are in love with ICTs not only for their function but form, Guardians enjoy having ICT-free spaces. They have absolutely no interest in ubiquitous computing, and the idea of smart homes that they do not directly control is frightening to them. They like to have absolute control of the technology they use – including the ability to turn it off and place it out of sight. For designers, there are opportunities to develop ICTs that are easily hidden that retract into spaces or mimic other objects.
Guardians have a large diversity in skills, ranging from beginners to more advanced users. Since they tend to be naturally hesitant to try new technologies and place emphasis on face-to-face interaction, they tend to need high levels of technical help and support. In particular, they prefer having as contact-rich methods of seeking help as possible – being able to speak to someone over the phone or in-person is preferred to a web-based chat.
When marketing a device or service to Guardians, it is very important to ensure that the technology is secure 7 and controllable. Guardians need explanations of how their information will be protected and reassurance that the technologies are secure and private. Any such information should be an important part of any marketing plan, as they avoid ICTs which they believe risk their privacy or security. Similarly, they resist investing in smart appliances, as they are well aware of the potential information security threats these devices pose. 8 In developing ICTs for Guardians, it is important to develop secure technologies. Once a Guardian has had their security breeched, they will be unwilling to continue using your device or service.
While the ICT User Typology informs more targeted design and advertising to the older adult market, it also has practical implications for those interacting with younger individuals, due to user types developing early in the life course.
Moving Beyond Older Adults: Using the ICT Typology in Primary and Secondary Education
The ICT User Typology highlights the importance of child and young adulthood experiences to the development of a person’s user type. Enthusiasts credit strong positive childhood memories of ICT use, being encouraged to tinker, and having a technological mentor as being critical to developing their love of technology. An open question, however, is if such childhood experiences can be manipulated to influence a person’s user type. If so, such experiences can be designed to encourage larger portions of Enthusiasts in the population, but also possibly inoculate against other user types developing.
There is a well-documented need for STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) professionals (Directorate-General for Internal Policies, 2015; Gonzalez & Kuenzi, 2012; Kuenzi, 2008; Marrero, Gunning, & Germain-Williams, 2014; Microsoft, 2017). Creating tinkering environments with technological mentors for young people could influence user type development, resulting in more Enthusiasts in the population. 9 Such exposure to the many potential uses of ICTs could also result in a higher percentage of Practicalists, given the importance of understanding application to this type. Since both Enthusiasts and Practicalists are likely to be involved in careers which use a large amount of technology, there are many potential advantages to increasing their numbers. Indeed, evidence exists that providing early positive technological experiences, messages, and mentorship can prevent or inoculate individuals from developing negative technological viewpoints (Stout, Nilanjana, Hunsinger, & McManus, 2011) and, therefore, such programs could prevent many Guardians from developing their cautious attitudes toward ICTs in later life.
Many programs are already in place that are trying to accomplish the goals of providing tinkering opportunities and technological mentorship to children and young adults. These include primary and secondary programs (Directorate-General for Internal Policies, 2015; Gonzalez & Kuenzi, 2012; Kuenzi, 2008) and community-based programs (Tillinghast et al., 2017), which are often aligned with higher education institutions (Breiner et al., 2012). Such programs should be encouraged. It would be of immense value to institutionalize these programs in primary and secondary schools, free-of-charge to participants.
However, we must recognize that each of these user types has a place and role in our society. Enthusiasts are our eager innovators and Practicalists our productivity-focused colleagues. Socializers connect us generationally. Traditionalists provide us with a sense of a grounded past while Guardians are protective watchers of our society and safety. Life without all of these five types would be boring and unbalanced. We need protective Guardians who are watchful of privacy concerns and rights online as much as we need innovative Enthusiasts; we need Traditionalists in order to be grounded in our historical context as much as we need Practicalists’ functional focus. And, as our societies become more age diverse, it is more than nice to have a few Socializers who keep us all connected and communicating intergenerationally.
While it is unlikely that technological education and mentorship would cause the extinction of some of these user types, the goal of such education should not be to extinguish any one type through social engineering. Such programs should, instead, be designed to meet the needs of an ever-increasingly digital workforce, while recognizing the value these diverse user types bring to our societal tapestry. Variety in user types, as in all things, is the spice of life.
The final chapter of this book provides a detailed discussion of the methods used to generate the ICT User Typology and provides helpful hints to researchers seeking to replicate this study in other cultures or populations. It also discusses some of the lessons learned working with older adult participants and provides a detailed discussion of how to use the interpretative interactionist methodology to develop theory and theoretical constructs.
For a review of smart home technologies for older adults, please see Majumder et al. (2017).
The literature on the digital divide and older adults spans several decades (Czaja & Lee, 2007; Czaja & Sharit, 1998; Friemel, 2016; Gilleard & Higgs, 2008; Jacobson, Lin, & McEwen, 2017; Millward, 2003; Paul & Stegbauer, 2005; Peral-Peral et al., 2015; Pick et al., 2015; Van Volkom et al., 2014).
See Breiner, Johnson, Harkness, and Koehler (2012) for a discussion of STEM programs and partnerships.
Many researchers have outlined methodologies for designing with older adults with cognitive and/or physical impairments (Astell et al., 2009; Bagnall et al., 2006; Dickinson & Dewsbury, 2006; Dickinson et al., 2004).
In the United States, there is much fascination with religious subcultures that have rejected and/or restricted their ICT use, including the Amish. Our acceptance, and even fascination with individuals from a subculture that rejects and/or strictly controls their ICT use (see Umble (1994) for a discussion of the telephone), stands in contrast to our societal non-acceptance of the older adults among us who choose to not use ICTs.
Stigmatizing adaptive technologies are unwelcome among older adults on the whole (Gitlin, 1995; Yusif & Hafeez-Baig, 2016).
Overall, for older adults, security is very important for their use of ICTs, and these security protections must be clear and easily understood (Jung, Walden, Johsnon, & Sundar, 2017).
See Rowe and Trejos (2017) for a discussion of smart appliances and information security risks.
Evidence already has suggested the importance of mentors in influencing interest in STEM (Tillinghast et al., 2017).
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https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/978-1-78743-291-820191013/full/html
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