Working Definition Research Articles

The evolving value of older biomarkers in the clinical diagnosis of pediatric sepsis.

Sepsis remains the leading cause of childhood mortality worldwide. The evolving definition of pediatric sepsis is extrapolated from adult studies. Although lacking formal validation in the pediatric population, this working definition has historically proven its clinical utility. Prompt identification of pediatric sepsis is challenging as clinical picture is often variable. Timely intervention is crucial for optimal outcome, thus biomarkers are utilized to aid in immediate, yet judicious, diagnosis of sepsis. Over time, their use in sepsis has expanded with discovery of newer biomarkers that include genomic bio-signatures. Despite recent scientific advances, there is no biomarker that can accurately diagnose sepsis. Furthermore, older biomarkers are readily available in most institutions while newer biomarkers are not. Hence, the latter's clinical value in pediatric sepsis remains theoretical. Albeit promising, scarce data on newer biomarkers have been extracted from research settings making their clinical value unclear. As interest in newer biomarkers continue to proliferate despite their ambiguous clinical use, the literature on older biomarkers in clinical settings continue to diminish. Thus, revisiting the evolving value of these earliest biomarkers in optimizing pediatric sepsis diagnosis is warranted. This review focuses on the four most readily available biomarkers to bedside clinicians in diagnosing pediatric sepsis. IMPACT: The definition of pediatric sepsis remains an extrapolation from adult studies. Older biomarkers that include C-reactive protein, procalcitonin, ferritin, and lactate are the most readily available biomarkers in most pediatric institutions to aid in the diagnosis of pediatric sepsis. Older biomarkers, although in varying levels of reliability, remain to be useful clinical adjuncts in the diagnosis of pediatric sepsis if used in the appropriate clinical context. C-reactive protein and procalcitonin are more sensitive and specific among these older biomarkers in diagnosing pediatric sepsis although evidence varies in different age groups and clinical scenarios.

Meaningful Work: A Review, Synthesis and Research Agenda

Changes in work and workplaces in a pandemic-stricken world, has increased the importance of finding meaningfulness in work and changed the understanding of what is meaningful. Although prior literature has focused on conceptual and empirical foundations of meaningful work, they did not seem to have given adequate effort towards a cohesive understanding of meaningful work. This paper consolidates the literature on meaningful work by providing a comprehensive review of its definitions, antecedents, and consequences. We review more than sixty definitions of meaningful work and offer ten specific approaches, that is further categorized under three broad operationalization of the concept. Next, we review the antecedents and outcomes that have been widely studied in the literature. We conclude by proposing an agenda for future research by offering five specific potential areas followed by theoretical contribution, that is likely to extend our understanding of meaningful work to create a better world together.

The Meaning of Meaningful Work: Advancing the Normative Thesis

Albeit that meaningful work is conceptually ambiguous (Both-Nwabuwe et al. 2017), scholars do not usually attempt to answer questions such as “what is the meaning of meaningful work?” However, Michaelson (2020) recently advanced a normative conception and added to the literature that meaningfulness should include i.e., “the good” that is independently, or objectively valued. In this paper we question the normative thesis and point to four ambiguous elements. First, due to an overly broad definition of work, the theory is more related to meaning in life compared to the organizational context. Second, the normative thesis presupposes a restrictive social-liberal moral account on objective value. Third, the distinction between meaning of work, and meaningfulness is not clear enough. Fourth, the difference between first-person and independent (third-person) accounts on meaning is not addressed. Subsequently we present our theoretical framework that advances the normative thesis and solves the four ambiguous elements. We bridge meaningful work with justification theory and argue that the bearer of meaning is the employee whose job activities and experiences are justified in orders of worth. As such, meaningfulness is a measure of the richness of an employee’s’ job, multiplied by its objective value. We extend the latter as we include market, industrial, inspired, fame, civic, and domestic worth. With our theory we provide better understanding on what counts as a meaningful contribution for the employee, and for society.

Writing the History of Postwar European Democracy

In 1998, Mark Mazower concluded his Dark Continent: Europe's Twentieth Century with the thought that Europeans rest content to be no longer at the centre of history and politics. They should enjoy the economic and political stability they had gained instead. ‘If Europeans can give up their desperate desire to find a single workable definition of themselves and if they can accept a more modest place in the world, they may come to terms more easily with the diversity and dissension which will be as much their future as their past’.1 As the title of Mazower's book suggested, this scholar of southeastern Europe writing in the wake of the Yugoslav civil war was not sanguine about the history of democracy on the continent. Contested and weak in the first half of the twentieth century, its liberal parliamentary kind continued to find a strong challenger in the people's democracy of the Eastern Bloc, which at least gave it a mission. Post 1990, Mazower saw disorientation about the continent's future political direction, and predicted instead the victory of capitalism. Indeed, to him the European Union was more a concession by its constituent states in order to maintain or regain prosperous national economies than a bold democratic endeavour.2

The Nature of Social Work: An Ecocentered Analysis of Key Social Work Statements.

This article addresses references to people's natural environments in some of the central declarative statements that shape social work worldwide. Four types of documents were analyzed, including statements associated with the Global Definition of Social Work, the Global Standards for Social Work Education and Training, the Global Social Work Statement of Ethical Principles, and the Grand Challenges for Social Work initiative. The analysis was driven by a critical-interpretive approach, seeking explicit and possibly implied references to nature and the environment across documents, with special attention to themes concerning the relationship between micro and macro perspectives, disciplinarity and inter- or transdisciplinarity, and relations between humankind and nature. In general, direct references to social work's possible intersections with issues related to nature and the natural environment were scarce in the materials examined. That having been said, our analysis did find that ecocentered interpretations enable locating prospective "bridges" for the incorporation of deeper ecological perceptions of social work into statements. Such findings constitute a call to action, and the possible implications of continuing to broadly disregard ecological aspects of social work in core materials published by influential professional institutions are discussed.

Revisiting the security–development nexus: Human security and the effects of IMF adjustment programmes

The concept of ‘human security’ holds promise of capturing the strong connections between economic development and personal security that has ushered in the debate about the ‘security−development nexus’ in policy circles. Human security is understood as the ability of states to protect the security of their citizens and to cater to their basic socioeconomic needs. However, the literature on human security is fragmented, leaving applied researchers without a workable definition and a convincing measurement strategy. Part of this problem is due to the fuzziness of the concept and the ambition to associate an ever-increasing set of dimensions with the concept, which renders empirical analysis moot. Following a review of the related literature, we collect measures aligning with ‘freedom from fear’ and ‘freedom from want’, representing the varied discourse on the human security concept. Employing confirmatory factor analysis on 11 indicators, we demonstrate the existence of a single latent factor and extract their common variation to generate a new Human Security Index. We validate the index by comparison against known proxies and related measures. We then present a first empirical application examining the human security implications of IMF programmes, finding that IMF programmes undermine human security, accounting for non-random selection into IMF programmes.

Race and America's Long War

This collection of essays examines the centrality of racial violence in US domestic and foreign policy. With impressive historical breadth, Singh shows that the United States’ political identity relies on declaring war against an imagined racial other. Ample evidence, starting with the Indian wars and enslavement of Africans and continuing into the global war on terror, shatters all images of the United States as a post-racial, international peacekeeper.US politicians have consciously generated such images since World War II, argues Singh in the book's substantial introduction. Laying the groundwork for the five essays that follow, “The Long War” provides numerous examples of US domestic politics informing its foreign wars and vice versa, continually invoking the language of racial inferiority used during the violent subjugation of Native Americans and enslaved Africans. Emphasizing race as the powerful, ideological link between the United States’ national and global exploits—even as its leaders eschew racist terminology and deny the existence of a US empire—is this book's greatest contribution to scholarship on race, ethnicity, and US political history.The five subsequent essays elaborate the ways US politicians have used racial language and ideology to perpetuate their belief in the country's manifest destiny. In “Race, War, Police,” Singh deftly explains that the war at home takes the form of policing black and brown bodies with the paternalistic rationalization that people of color are incapable of governing themselves and warrant protection from one another. This rationalization then extends to foreign others, leading to long wars ostensibly necessary to save less developed nations from themselves. One war reinforces another, while shoring up white American privilege without explicitly naming race.Capitalism depends on these wars, Singh argues in “From War Capitalism to Race War,” where he critiques Marxist thought for ignoring racialized slave labor as essential to the rise of global capitalism while enslaved Black people were still, as Marx was writing, violently forced to toil for US prosperity. Singh calls for expanding Marxist analysis to recognize those excluded, often racially, from traditional wage labor—“the slave, the migrant worker, the household worker, and the unemployed” (p. 92)—as they are the very reason wage labor can exist for those deemed employable by white American capitalism.Singh continues analyzing the ironies of US empire in “The Afterlife of Fascism,” explaining that through emphasizing American democratic liberalism as the opposite of Nazi fascism, the post–World War II United States actually advances its own fascism in the name of democratization. Such is the twisted logic of the global war on terror, which draws on the Orientalist language used to justify previous US wars in Asia, both to legitimate the war and to defend the torture of those imprisoned from Arab-Muslim countries. Singh is clear: imperial expansionism, not neoliberal exceptionalism, defines the United StatesSingh illuminates still another paradox of the neoliberal United States in “Racial Formation and Permanent War”—that is, the more it preaches racial inclusion, the more it practices racial exclusion through its ostensibly color-blind economic and criminal justice policies. Social analysis has not kept pace with this political manipulation of race, Singh maintains, while presenting Michael Omi and Howard Winant's Racial Formation in the United States from the 1960s to the 1980s (Routledge, 1986) as the last definitive theoretical work on race. Extrapolating this work to the twenty-first century, Singh posits that race never exists before the political impetus to create socio-economic hierarchies, but, rather, race results from these hierarchies, changing its meaning and membership to accommodate new groups’ violent assertions of power.By the time Singh turns to the question of how President Trump rose to power, in “The Present Crisis,” readers already have the answer: Trump's victory was the culmination of centuries of racial violence made blatant. Singh is as concerned with how President Obama paved the way for Trump as he is with the political machinations of Trump's administration. For Singh, Obama proves that racial violence is so embedded in US neoliberalism that it can be operationalized regardless of the race of those in power. Rather than wondering at Trump's ascent, Singh advises, the Left should dismantle Trump's appeals to a “white working class” (p. 176) as today's working class are, in truth, multi-racial victims of US neoliberalism.Singh's brief epilogue ends with an appeal to terminate US race wars at home and abroad. Unfortunately, this appeal is unlikely to reach those politicians, activists, and policymakers most equipped to comply. Singh's dense, academic prose, coupled with his abstract analysis, renders this book inaccessible to many, including those new to the study of race, ethnicity, and US political history. Nevertheless, both the book's format and Singh's compelling rhetoric allow readers to limit themselves to any one essay and still walk away with a deep and lasting understanding of racial violence as the bedrock of US empire.

Application of the diagnostic criteria for Common Variable Immunodeficiency in resource-limited settings.

Common variable immunodeficiency (CVID) is the most prevalent symptomatic humoral deficiency; however, its heterogeneous presentation makes the diagnosis difficult. The present study is aimed to verify the CVID diagnostic criteria as established by the European Society for Immunodeficiencies in 42 CVID patients from our outpatient clinic. Information was collected from their medical records and when needed, lymphocyte subpopulations in peripheral blood (PB) were performed by flow cytometry. All the patients fulfilled the clinical working definition for CVID and showed decreased serum IgG and IgA at diagnosis. Over two-thirds of the patients had decreased memory B cell percentages. However, the remaining patients exhibited other quantitative B cell defects in PB. Evaluation of vaccination responses was only found in 13 records and 69% were not responsive. None of the patients were subjected to vaccination studies to both, T-cell dependent and independent antigens. The two required tests to evaluate T cell responses were performed in 84.2% of the patients and reported normal. Without the support of third-party payers, only 34.2% of our patients would have completed the required evaluations. Further efforts are needed to speed up CVID diagnosis in low-resourced settings, increasing the availability of the required resources and optimizing the healthcare supply chain.

Cultural Responsiveness in Child Protection: Stakeholders and Parental Perceptions of Working Children and Culture-appropriate Assessment in Ghana

AbstractThere is a need to understand cultural responsiveness in the field of child protection and accommodate best interests of the child to local contexts. This research addresses cultural responsiveness in social work interventions as part of child protection services in cases of ‘child labour’ in rural and urban Ghana. The sample size of this study is sixty participants (thirty men and thirty women), and it is made up of social workers and other child welfare practitioners in government agencies; non-governmental organisations; and parents whose children were involved in child labour as well as parents whose children were not. Using semi-structured interviews, focus group discussions and participant observation as methods of data collection, participants included parents (ten), stakeholders (ten), focus groups (thirty people); and parental interviews in participant observation (ten) were conducted to gather the needed data with purposive sampling across rural and urban communities in Ghana. Applying a framework approach as the main qualitative data analysis approach, interviews were recorded and transcribed. Overall, the research finds that professionals need to immerse themselves in different cultural practices and communication whilst considering different working definitions for parenting and creating a mission and vision statement that embraces different cultures.

“How Does Nature Deify Us”

“How Does Nature Deify Us”

ФОТОГРАФІЧНИЙ ТВІР ЯК ОБ’ЄКТ ПРАВОВОЇ ОХОРОНИ

The article analyzes a photographic work as an object of legal protection. The author researches the peculiarities of legal protection of photographs, characterizes their legal nature, analyzes the peculiarities of the exercise of copyright in photographs. It is established that a photographic work can exist in various forms, but as of today photography is created and exists mainly in digital form, which determines the peculiarities of the exercise and protection of rights to it. It is highlighted that the national copyright law does not contain a definition of a photographic work, a photograph as well as a work made by means similar to a photograph, which is a shortcoming of legal regulation. It is proved that the object of legal protection is a photographic work, not a photograph, which may have all the features of the object of copyright. In addition, it is substantiated that the legal regime of a photographic work is also not defined in the legislation of Ukraine, which is a shortcoming of legal regulation. It is established that the Law of Ukraine «On Copyright and Related Rights» practically does not pay attention to the characteristics of a photographic work, only mentioning it among the objects of copyright. Moreover, it is proved that the features of a photographic work as an object of copyright are its creative character (as a result of creative activity), original character (expressed in a creative way of expressing the author’s idea – framing, lighting, focus, camera settings, etc.) and objective form of expression as a result of transferring the work from the author’s consciousness in the form of a creative idea to an independent material object, mainly in digital form). It is established that the creative and original nature of photography are often identified as features of the object of copyright. In turn, it is justified that a photograph and other works of art depicting an individual may be publicly shown, reproduced, distributed only with the consent of this person, and in case of his death – with the consent of persons specified by the law. It is proved that such an institution as the freedom of panorama, which characterizes the ability to photograph architectural objects that are in public places, is practically not regulated at the level of law. Consequently, it is established that the right to photograph the relevant architectural object as an object of copyright belongs to the personal non-property rights of the architect, but this approach of the legislator seems questionable, as the photography is a way to capture and reproduce the object of architectural activity as an object of copyright, which is a way to use property rights as a copyright. The imperfection of the application of the so-called «take down notice» procedure, provided for in Art. 52-1 of the Law of Ukraine «On Copyright and Related Rights», is stated, as this out-of-court procedure for protection of copyright in the digital environment does not apply to photographic works, which is a shortcoming of legal regulation.

Legal regulation and specifics of remote work appliance in conditions of martial law

The article reveals the legal regulation and specifics of the use of remote work in martial law. Defining the role of remote work in these emergency conditions, its special meaning for the preservation of labor relations and the organization of relative work safety.
 The proper legal regulation of the institute of remote work at the level of the Labor Code and other legislative acts of Ukraine, which ensures the legal definition of remote work, the procedure and conditions of its application, requirements for the form and content of the employment contract and more. It is noted that the presence of a standard form of employment contract for remote work indicates that the parties have no right to deviate from the content of the employment contract, but may specify its terms.
 Peculiarities of remote work are determined according to the following criteria: procedure of application, workplace, restrictions in application, mode of operation, provision of means of production, equipment, software and hardware, working hours, guarantee of rest time.
 The influence of the legal regime of martial law on the introduction of temporary changes in the organization of labor relations, which affected the order of introduction of remote work, is substantiated. First of all, it concerns the possibility of its application by order (order) of the employer, without concluding a written employment contract and without notifying the employee of changes in significant working conditions, as required by law in peacetime.
 The transformation of the legal regulation of working hours and rest time of the employee is indicated: the procedure for setting the start and end time of work has been changed, now this right belongs to the employer; increased normal and reduced working hours of employees; the duration of annual paid leave is limited to 24 calendar days and the provision of certain types of leave to employees involved in critical infrastructure; the application of the norms of certain articles of the Labor Code, which regulate working hours and rest time, has been stopped.

Non-Timber Forest Products: Small Matters, Big Significance, and the Complexity of Reaching a Workable Definition for Sustainability

Non-Timber Forest Products: Small Matters, Big Significance, and the Complexity of Reaching a Workable Definition for Sustainability

التنظيم القانوني للحق في العمل النقابي في العراق

Human rights and fundamental freedoms have been recognized for all individuals through divine religions, stipulated international agreements and rules, with the efforts of international and regional international organizations to establish these rights for all individuals. As well as the direction of national legislation that has had a major role in ensuring these rights, especially after regarding the progress of countries a measure of their respect for human rights. One of these rights is the right to union action. After the increasing importance of the role of civil society institutions, including unions, in public life, this right has become an important requirement for unions to defend the rights of their members and represent the professions and interests of the working class, as it is a link between individuals and public authorities, especially after the political changes that most countries have witnessed. With regard to the topic of the research “the legal regulation of the right to union work in Iraq,” this study was divided into three sections. The first section included a statement of the concept of union and union work. The study dealt with the definition of union and union work and types of unions and the difference between them, while the second topic included the objective provisions. The procedures necessary for the establishment of trade unions, membership in them, and cases of their termination were referred to the conditions, objectivity and formality of establishing unions and the conditions related to the persons wishing to establish them. The study reached a set of results, including that the Iraqi legislator has guaranteed the right of individuals to establish unions and join them under the constitution (Article 22 / Third). Each union has its own law that establishes and organizes its business and management, the method of electing its board of directors and its financial resources. The study also concluded that professional unions are considered as persons of public law, while labor unions are considered persons of private law.

Heat and lost work in irreversible cycles: the two sides of the same coin

We discussed the criterion for usefully comparing an irreversible cycle with a reversible one. Grounded on entropy generation, a new definition of lost work is proposed, which cannot be determined by the usual cycle diagrams, contrary to what has been found in the literature. To better understand the lost work concept and its role in entropy generation, we presented two irreversible cycles, which also instructively reveal that heat and lost work are the two sides of the same coin, this coin being the entropy generation. This study, addressing issues that are virtually absent from the literature, is expected to be not only relevant from a scientific standpoint but also useful for physics teachers and students with a solid background in thermodynamics.

Who Is a Social Worker?

Defining social workers for the purposes of research is not as straightforward as it sounds. To date, researchers who have examined social workers as a group have used a variety of sampling methods. Multiple methods speak to the variety of options for defining social workers. Understanding membership within the profession is a precondition to understanding research about the behavior of those within the profession. This research note explores these sampling methods in detail. Each has its advantages, but none are without their own disadvantages, some of which bias their view of the profession. As researchers who have considered the political behavior of social workers, we consider six methods for sampling social workers that have been used to understand their behavior in this specific domain. Importantly, the sampling methods examined here can be applied to research about social workers outside of politics. These include sampling (1) members of professional organizations, (2) licensed social workers, (3) social work students, (4) graduates of social work programs, (5) social work faculty, and (6) members of social work-related occupations. After reviewing the advantages and disadvantages of each, we provide scholars a table for reference. The authors recommend that the Council on Social Work Education, National Association of Social Workers, and several other professional associations pull together members to explore a unified definition of social work through integrated practice and refrain from focusing on what makes us different.

Between the Job Creation Act and Labor Act: What’s Specific Time Employee Agreement (PKWT)?

President Jokowi signed the Law of the Republic of Indonesia No. 11 of 2020 on Job Creation (UU Cipta Kerja), but the Constitutional Court (MK) decided to conduct a judicial review. According to the Constitutional Court, the government must revise the Job Creation Law within two years. Two of the five petitioners for judicial review express concern about the Job Creation Law's inclusion of Specific Time Employee Agreements (PKWT). A Specific Time Employee Agreement is a contract between a business/employer and its employees for a specified period. The purpose of this study is to examine Specific Time Employee Agreements. This study employs a normative judicial methodology. The research is unique in discussing Specific Time Employee Agreements from two perspectives: the worker and the employer. Additionally, this research examines how Specific Time Employee Agreements have been implemented in practice thus far. The research concludes that workers lack understanding of Specific Time Employee Agreements, raising concerns about the Job Creation Law. The absence of a formulation regarding precarious work creates legal uncertainty for workers. Ineffective communication between the employer and employees has raised suspicions regarding the Specific Time Employee Agreement between the two parties. The Job Creation Law's socialization of labor cluster legislation requires improvement. To avoid misinterpretation, the definition of non-permanent work must be clarified

Representation Uncertainty in the Earth Sciences

AbstractThe first Joint Workshop on Representation Uncertainty in the Earth Sciences was held in March 2021. This brought together the Earth observation, data assimilation and forecast verification and post‐processing communities, alongside metrologists to discuss the definition and quantification of representation uncertainty within the Earth sciences. The aim of the workshop was to facilitate cross‐disciplinary discussion, establishing where existing methodologies could be shared and to foster future collaboration. A key outcome of the workshop was a working definition of representation uncertainty applicable across all the Earth science communities, which is presented in this white paper. The cross‐disciplinary discussions at the workshop highlighted the need for scientists to work with metrologists to establish a common vocabulary for uncertainties, accessible to Earth science applications. Further recommendations included regular workshops to discuss progress in defining and quantifying representation uncertainty and awareness of cross‐disciplinary funding opportunities to further address representation uncertainty issues.

What we talk about when we talk about hope: A prototype analysis.

Although hope is a well-studied topic, there is no consensus on its definition. Using a prototype analysis (a bottom-up approach collecting laypeople's views on hope), the present research defines hope and provides insights into its associations with other related constructs. Study 1 identified a list of features of hope derived from characteristics generated by laypeople in the Netherlands and the United States when asked to think about hope. Study 2 determined the centrality of each of these features of hope, where the most frequently mentioned features were classified as "central features," whereas the less frequently as "peripheral features." Studies 3-5 then tested the validity of this classification and showed that central features (compared with peripheral ones) were more often recalled and recognized (Study 3), were classified as a feature of hope more quickly (Study 4), and were more representative in autobiographical situations involving hope (Study 5). Our findings are in part consistent with the definitions of hope reported in previous literature, and suggest in addition that some features deserve more attention than before. Based on our findings and previous literature, we propose the following core elements of hope: belief, positive, future, desire, and possibility. Accordingly, we propose the working definition that hope is a belief that a positive future outcome is possible combined with a desire for that outcome. As our research provides a more nuanced understanding of hope and its associations with other related constructs, we hope the current findings will contribute to future research on this important topic. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Quantum work statistics in regular and classical-chaotic dynamical billiard systems.

In the thermodynamics of nanoscopic systems the relation between classical and quantum mechanical description is of particular importance. To scrutinize this correspondence we have chosen two two-dimensional billiard systems. Both systems are studied in the classical and the quantum mechanical settings. The classical conditional probability density p(E,L|E_{0},L_{0}) as well as the quantum mechanical transition probability P(n,l|n_{0},l_{0}) are calculated, which build the basis for the statistical analysis. We calculate the work distribution for one particle. The results in the quantum case in particular are of special interest since a suitable definition of mechanical work in small quantum systems is already controversial. Furthermore, we analyze the probability of both zero work and zero angular momentum difference. Using connections to an exactly solvable system analytical formulas are given for both systems. In the quantum case we get numerical results with some interesting relations to the classical case.