Search results

Explores the evolution of a participative, interdepartmental staff “green team” approach to the solving of environmental problems and a move towards a culture change within one of the largest UK local authorities. Reveals how Kent County Council (KCC), over a period of several years, used the largely voluntary effort of a group of dedicated individuals to help with a corporate move towards sustainability. Explores the management of these people in the process of cultural change and acknowledges that grass‐roots participative environmental change can be slow to break through organisational inertia and can be susceptible to collapse. Shows how efforts can be undermined both by a lack of a clear corporate direction and by events beyond their own control. Also focuses on the role of external trainers, as change agents, and their contribution to the environmental management programme, in supporting the emergence, motivation and maturation of these green teams. Finally, in an attempt to measure the success of green teams, some of the major team outputs are mentioned, and concludes with comments on the future of the teams. The use of green teams is an approach now adopted by a number of organisations but “the connection between environmental teams and the management of change is often overlooked”.

At a recent meeting of the Manchester section of the Society of Chemical Industry, Professor F. Gowland Hopkins, in an interesting paper entitled “Some Chemical Qualities of the Living Cell,” referred to the important part which vitamins play in foods, and to the dangers arising from the continual ingestion of chemical preservatives in foods. Professor Gowland Hopkins observed that the conception of a vitamin had certain encrustations about it which prevented everybody accepting what were really said to be very important scientific facts. He had not attempted to define a vitamin. In an adult community, under good economic conditions, the need for something other than a supply of energy did not seem to assert itself, because the vitamins were always present in all natural foods. Special circumstances were required to make their importance obvious, or they would have been discovered many years ago instead of in the past ten years or so. Being connected with the subject of diet they naturally attracted the attention of quacks, and therefore a good deal of nonsense had been written about them; while, on the other hand, it was equally true what was written about vitamins gave a great opportunity for trade stunts. Vitamins had not yet been isolated, so that their chemical composition was unknown. What he wished to urge was that the facts known about vitamins were important. You may feed an animal upon a diet consisting of the most excellent protein and really superior fat and best carbohydrate in the market, and supply it with the necessary salts in the right ratio. So long as those materials were pure and not mixed with traces of any other ingredients the dietary would be eaten, enjoyed, fully digested, thoroughly broken down in the body and its energy extracted, and yet any animal continuing to eat it would inevitably die. In order to convert that dietary into a perfect one for the maintenance of life materials must be added which acted in almost infinitesimal concentration within the cellular structure of the living organism. The only present definition of a vitamin of a definite constitution was that it was a substance of extreme nutritive importance which acted in infinitesimal concentration. In the case of Fat Soluble Vitamin A. 0·004 mgms added to a synthetic dietary made just the dilference between certain death and excellent life in the case of a rat weighing 100 grms. They must not despise the rat; it was, in all essentials, of the same physical constitution as human beings. In the case of a 70 kgm man 2½ mgs would be required to bridge the difference between health and death. Only under exceptional circumstances, such as a state of war, did the lack of vitamins intrude itself in respect of adults, but the feeding of infants must be placed in a different category.

The study purpose was to assess the evidence on the effects of hospital restructuring that included layoffs, on nurses who remained employed, using a systematic review of the research literature to contribute to policy formation. Papers addressing research, hospital restructuring resulting in layoffs, effects on nurses, and a stated relationship between the independent and dependent variables were included. Data were extracted and the quality of each study was assessed. The final group of included studies had 22 empirical papers. The main effects were significant decreases in job satisfaction, professional efficacy, ability to provide quality care, physical and emotional health, and increases in turnover, and disruption to healthcare team relationships. Nurses with fewer years of experience or who experienced multiple episodes of restructuring experienced greater effects. Other findings remain inconclusive. Further research is required to determine if these effects are temporal or can be mitigated by individual or organizational strategies.

JOHANN FROBEN, the famous printer of Basle, was born at Hammelburg, in Franconia, about the year 1460. The exact year of his birth is not definitely known, but 1460 is probably not far wrong, as we find him established at Basle as a printer in 1491. He was educated at Basle University, where he distinguished himself as a scholar, particularly in the Latin, Greek, and Hebrew languages. After finishing his studies at Basle, he turned his attention to the then new art of printing, and he showed such aptitude that Johann Amerbach, another well‐known printer of Basle, who had set up a press in that city in 1481, induced him to devote his energies to the art, and appointed him to a position in his own printing establishment. Froben thus had the advantage of learning the art of printing under one of the best known printers of the period. In 1491, Froben set up a press of his own in Basle, having become a naturalized citizen of that city the previous year. He had been used in Amerbach's establishment to print with gothic types, and it was, therefore, but natural that his first production should also be printed in that type. This was an octavo Latin Bible, with two columns to a page, printed in a very small gothic type. He afterwards introduced the type invented by Aldus, that known as italic, the first book to be printed with this type being the Adagia of Erasmus, issued in 1513, of which mention is made later. Froben was also instrumental in making the roman type more popular in Germany, as although roman type had been used by German printers for about 20 years, having been introduced by Mentelin at Strassburg, about the year 1470, it was not so much in favour as the gothic type.

Attentive to task-related information is the prerequisite for task completion. Comparing the cognition between attentive readers (AR) and inattentive readers (IAR) is of great value for improving reading services which has seldom been studied. To explore their cognitive differences, this study investigates the effectiveness, efficiency and cognitive resource allocation strategy by eye-tracking technology.

A controlled user study of two types of task, fact-finding (FF) and content understanding (CU) tasks was conducted to collect data including answer for task, fixation duration (FD), fixation count (FC), fixation duration proportion (FDP), and fixation count proportion (FCP). 24 participants were placed into AR or IAR group according to their fixation duration on paragraphs related to task.

Two types of cognitive resource allocation strategies, question-oriented (QO) and navigation-assistant (NA) were identified according to the differences in FDP and FCP. In FF task, although QO strategy was applied by the two groups, AR group was significantly more effective and efficient. In CU task, although the two groups were similar in effectiveness and efficiency, AR group promoted their strategies to NA while IAR group sticked to applying QO strategy. Furthermore, an interesting phenomenon “win by uncertainty”, which implies IAR group may get correct answer through uncertain means, such as clue, domain knowledge or guess, rather than task-related information, was observed.

This study takes a deep insight into cognition from the prospect of attentive and inattentive to task-related information. Identifying indicators about cognition helps to distinguish attentive and inattentive readers in various tasks automatically. The cognitive resource allocation strategy applied by readers sheds new light on reading skill training. A typical reading phenomenon “win by uncertainty” was found and defined. Understanding the phenomenon is of great value for satisfying reader information need and enhancing their deep learning.

Integrated care presents health workforce planners with significant uncertainty. This results from: (1) these workforces are likely in the future to be different from the present, (2) integrated care's variable definitions and (3) workforce policy and planning is not familiar with addressing such challenges. One means to deal with uncertainty is scenario analysis. In this study we reveal some integration-supportive workforce governance and planning policies that were derived from the application of scenario analysis.

Through a mixed methods design that applies content analysis, scenario construction and the policy Delphi method, we analysed a set of New Zealand's older persons health sector workforce scenarios. Developed from data gathered from workforce documents and studies, the scenarios were evaluated by a suitably qualified panel, and derived policy statements were assessed for desirability and feasibility.

One scenario was found to be most favourable, based on its broad focus, inclusion of prevention and references to patient dignity, although funding changes were indicated as necessary for its realisation. The integration-supportive policies are based on promoting network-based care models, patient-centric funding that promotes collaboration and the enhancement of interprofessional education and educator involvement.

Scenario analysis for policy production is rare in health workforce planning. We show how it is possible to identify policies to address an integrated care workforce's development using this method. The article provides value for planners and decision-makers by identifying the pros and cons of future situations and offers guidance on how to reduce uncertainty through policy rehearsal and reflection.

Immigration reform, anti-immigrant fervor and pro-immigrant protests in 2006 make the causes of Mexican migration an important political issue. In this chapter, survey data and interviews with Zapotec- and Spanish-speaking female household heads from Oaxaca, Mexico examine the relation between migrant destinations and labor demand in Mexico and the US. The goal of this piece is to assert the importance of structural and world economic processes (e.g., demand for labor) in the configuration of historically specific migration patterns.

Challenges facing researcher development are explored in relation to three UK case study initiatives of building research capacity in Education. Drawing evidence from evaluations of these initiatives, we argue that expansive research workplaces build research capacity particularly effectively. The nature of expansiveness is dependent upon the range of learning opportunities, engagement with research communities and interpersonal support. The importance of inter‐institutional collaboration to promote capacity across the academic discipline is also highlighted. We conclude that the development of, engagement with, and investment in inter‐institutional, interproject communities is imperative to the effective building of research capacity.

This paper provides a detailed survey of the greatest dangers facing humanity this century. It argues that there are three broad classes of risks – the “Great Challenges” – that deserve our immediate attention, namely, environmental degradation, which includes climate change and global biodiversity loss; the distribution of unprecedented destructive capabilities across society by dual-use emerging technologies; and value-misaligned algorithms that exceed human-level intelligence in every cognitive domain. After examining each of these challenges, the paper then outlines a handful of additional issues that are relevant to understanding our existential predicament and could complicate attempts to overcome the Great Challenges. The central aim of this paper is to constitute an authoritative resource, insofar as this is possible in a scholarly journal, for scholars who are working on or interested in existential risks. In the author’s view, this is precisely the sort of big-picture analysis that humanity needs more of, if we wish to navigate the obstacle course of existential dangers before us.

Comprehensive literature survey that culminates in a novel theoretical framework for thinking about global-scale risks.

If humanity wishes to survive and prosper in the coming centuries, then we must overcome three Great Challenges, each of which is sufficient to cause a significant loss of expected value in the future.

The Great Challenges framework offers a novel scheme that highlights the most pressing global-scale risks to human survival and prosperity. The author argues that the “big-picture” approach of this paper exemplifies the sort of scholarship that humanity needs more of to properly understand the various existential hazards that are unique to the twenty-first century.