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Tabletop interfaces are a novel class of technologies that are particularly suited to support co‐located collaboration. The Collaborative Puzzle Game (CPG) is a tabletop interactive activity developed for fostering collaboration skills in children with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD). The CPG features an interaction rule called Enforced Collaboration (EC); in order to be moved, puzzle pieces must be touched and dragged simultaneously by the two players. Two studies were conducted to test the effect of EC on collaboration. In Study I, 70 typically developing boys were tested in pairs to characterise the way they respond to EC; in Study II, 16 boys with ASD were tested in pairs. Results suggest that EC has a generally positive effect on collaboration and is associated with more complex interactions. For children with ASD, the EC interaction rule was effective in triggering behaviours associated with co‐ordination of the task and negotiation.

Both the military and non-military organizations (NMO) bring assets, skills, and capabilities to a humanitarian crisis, however, their capabilities and competencies are very diverse. Identification of the specific competencies and capabilities that are core to these types of organizations can enable better planning by both military and NMOs, allowing them to achieve greater effectiveness and efficiency in the humanitarian response. The purpose of this paper is to explore the core capabilities of the military and NMOs engaged in humanitarian operations.

The work builds on existing literature on the core competency of the corporation. The authors extend the concept of the ability to identify, cultivate, and exploit the core capabilities in the private sector to the organizations that want to respond efficiently and effectively to disasters. The authors develop a core competencies test for such organizations.

The research identifies the competencies and capabilities that are core to the US military and NMOs for humanitarian assistance and disaster relief. By identifying such abilities the authors establish a vein of research for exploring the role of such organizations to facilitate greater understanding among academics, policy makers, and decision makers in public administration, public health, and international aid.

Existing literature in humanitarian logistics does not adequately address identification of those competencies and capabilities that are core to the military organizations and NMOs and are most needed during the operational life cycle of a humanitarian crisis. In addition to identifying them, the authors compare the core capabilities of the military and NMO.

The purpose of this paper is to explore packaging in developing countries by means of identifying and describing supply chain needs regarding packaging.

The research approach is qualitative and includes an embedded single case study of ambient milk supply chains in developing countries. Data collection is based on the review of internal company documents, semi‐structured interviews with industrial experts and field observations.

The paper shows that secondary packaging is a vital supply chain component in these countries and that there are extensive interactions between packaging and the supply chain. The findings constitute a list of supply chain needs regarding secondary packaging broken down into categories. Moreover, propositions for managing the supply chain needs and challenges of packaging in developing countries are presented.

In the supply chains investigated, the focus is on the actors from the filling point at the manufacturer to the point of sale at retail stores in the ambient milk sector. To understand general aspects, the authors suggest further studies to test propositions developed in other contexts.

The proposed list of packaging supply chain needs and suggested propositions provides insights into the issues and challenges of packaging as a part of designing and planning supply chains in developing countries and, by implication, in humanitarian supply chains that often (but not always) operate in such environments.

This research complements previous research in the areas of packaging and supply chain management by exploring supply chain needs regarding packaging in developing countries. It extends the traditional perspective of humanitarian logistics by linking supply chain thinking in developing countries to long‐term development and disaster relief logistics.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the humanitarian service management categories that influence long-term transformation within complex community-based service ecosystems.

This study utilizes mixed methods to present a dynamic model that provides insight into the complexities of supplying, distributing and transporting charitable resources to underserved communities. The interdisciplinary study draws on the theory of service-dominant logic and service science, presents critical elements of transformative service research and uses system dynamics approach to propose a visual causal loop model.

This study develops a dynamic model for studying humanitarian service and value propositions in underserved communities. This paper combines the extant literature to emphasize key humanitarian service categories that influence, and are influenced by, service exchanges within community-based contexts.

This paper is limited in providing quantitative methods in analyzing the case study data. However, the research is still helpful in providing acumen via the causal loop diagram to specifically look into each variable and see their cause and effect relationships in the community-based ecosystem. The research represents an opportunity to model the humanitarian aid and relief scenarios to help make more effective decision-making interventions.

The model serves as a managerial tool to determine critical services that optimize resource utilization within the community-based service ecosystems. Insights from this research are broadly applicable to the contexts of humanitarian logistics and supply chain management (HLSCM) solutions for community-based ventures.

This paper conceptualizes how the management of service-for-service exchanges, logistics services and charitable donation management provides transformational humanitarian services and value propositions within underserved communities. This study further provides fundamental contributions by addressing research gaps in the HLSCM domain by supporting service research and the community-based context.

Proactive planning strategies for “slow-onset” disruptions that affect humanitarian supply chains (SC) developed to address chronic pressing societal problems, can have a significant impact on boosting the operational and financial performance of these chains. The purpose of this paper is to develop a methodology that quantifies the impact of a risk mitigation strategy widely employed in commercial SCs, namely emergency sourcing (ES), on the performance of humanitarian SCs taking into account backorders’ clearance time, unsatisfied demand, and cost.

Discrete event simulation is employed in order to evaluate alternative ES strategies based on a total cost criterion, which incorporates inventory-related costs, as well as premium contract costs paid for emergency replenishment. Backorders’ clearance time and time-to-recovery are also employed as a design parameters.

The results document the significant impact of disruptions on expected total cost, and the beneficial role of ES in hedging against disruptions. To that end, the proposed methodology determines the optimal emergency contracted capacity for a given premium, or alternatively the maximum premium cost value that ensures the feasibility of the implemented ES strategy in the long-run, along with the associated cost and time savings, and reduction of the unsatisfied demand.

The fundamental objective is to provide a decision-making support methodology for deciding on whether to implement an ES strategy or not in humanitarian SCs, and the level of the optimal contracted reserved capacity. The results could be of great value to aid providers, policy-makers, and regulators.

This study analyzes the rise of genome instability in the life sciences and traces the problematic of instability as it relates to the sociology of health. Genome instability is the study of how genomes change and become variable between generations and within organisms over the life span. Genome instability reflects a significant departure from the Platonic genome imagined during the Human Genome Project. The aim of this chapter is to explain and analyze research on copy number variation and somatic mosaicism to consider the implications of these sciences for sociologists interested in genomics.

This chapter draws on two multi-sited ethnographies of contemporary biomedical science and literature in the sociology of health, science, and biomedicine to document a shift in thinking about the genome from fixed and universal to highly variable and influenced by time and context.

Genomic instability has become a framework for addressing how genomes change and become variable between generations and within organisms over the life span. Instability is a useful framework for analyzing changes in the life sciences in the post-genomic era.

Genome instability requires life scientists to address how differences both within and between individuals articulate with shifting disease categories and classifications. For sociologists, these findings have implications for studies of identity, sociality, and clinical experience.

This is the first sociological analysis of genomic instability. It identifies practical and conceptual implications of genomic instability for life scientists and helps sociologists delineate new approaches to the study of genomics in the post-genomic era.