Foreseeable Threats Research Articles

Комплексність правової політики захисту бізнесу: окремі аспекти судової практики

Abstract. The author of the article carried out a comprehensive understanding of the legal policy in the field of business protection as a key task of the development of statehood in the conditions of war, crisis factors, economic shocks, environmental challenges, administrative barriers and corruption risks. Fragmentation of legal, social and economic approaches cause additional problems and gaps in the field of business protection. It was established that the interaction between the state and business largely depends on fiscal policy, in particular tax regulation, subsidies, grants and tax benefits. Clear, predictable and fair taxation rules are necessary to stimulate economic activity. An inconsistent or excessively burdensome tax system can slow down business development and contribute to its shadowing. It is reasoned that in democratic states market regulation is necessary to prevent monopolization, protect consumer rights and ensure environmental standards. At the same time, excessive regulation can create barriers to the development of entrepreneurship, so the balance between regulations and freedom of entrepreneurial activity is an important constant. It was emphasized that the investment sphere is of significant importance for business development, as it provides the necessary financial resources for expanding production, introducing innovations and modernizing infrastructure. A complex of factors that have the potential to form a paradigm of business protection is proposed: formation of a normative and legal framework for the regulation of entrepreneurial activity; balanced financial policy of the state; guarantees of ensuring legal regulation based on the autonomy of entrepreneurial activity, including the proper functioning of judicial institutions; creation of trusting relations between the state and business. The article summarizes that the problem of business development should be treated comprehensively, with a thorough analysis of foreseeable threats and possible positives. The requested change is an ideological approach to the complexity of legal policy, which takes into account normative, ideological, institutional, economic, law-enforcement criteria and should provide for a long-term vector of the development of statehood. Keywords: business protection; entrepreneurial freedom; tinization; legal policy; investment courts; commercial secrecy.

Building organizational adaptive capacity in the face of crisis: Lessons from a public sector case study

While organizations providing critical services to society must have the ability to anticipate and prepare for foreseeable threats, they also need to develop a capacity to adapt in the face of unforeseen challenges and crises. While adaptive capacity becomes manifested in a specific situation through the concrete adaptations carried out by an organization, the preconditions to adapt exist already before a crisis occurs. However, previous research indicates significant knowledge gaps regarding how these preconditions are established and maintained within an organization. Against this backdrop, this paper aims to enhance our understanding of the preconditions necessary to adapt to an unfolding crisis. This is achieved by exploring how adaptations were manifested during the COVID-19 pandemic in a Swedish public sector organization and the factors that contributed to this adaptive capacity. A range of enabling factors for such adaptive capacity are identified, including a high level of trust between roles and organizational levels, a polycentric organizational structure where departments work autonomously while still allowing some degree of central coordination, clear overall objectives, capitalization on previous experience from both minor and major crises, and asset literacy among employees. The paper concludes by discussing some idiosyncrasies of the COVID-19 pandemic that facilitated adaptations. This includes the fact that virtually everyone was both impacted by and actively contributing to responding to the crisis. Finally, the discussion elaborates on the parallels and distinctions when compared to a creeping crisis.

A new species of Liparis (Orchidaceae, Epidendroideae, Malaxidinae) from the Bosque de Protección Alto Mayo, San Martín, Peru.

Liparisaltomayoënsissp. nov. is described, illustrated, and tentatively assigned to the Neotropical section Decumbentes on the basis of its branching, prostrate rhizomes and upright stems bearing several leaves. Vegetatively, the new species is distinguished by its short, upward stems bearing 3-6 leaves, these with undulate, translucent margins and reticulate, prominent veining on the upper surface. Florally, it is distinctive in the labellum with fleshy basal one-half provided with a central, rounded cavity limited on each side by a prominent, bilobulate ridge and apically by a lunate ridge, and membranaceous, trilobulate apical one-half deflexed ca. 90°. In contrast with other species of section Decumbentes, in which fruit formation is infrequent, in L.altomayoënsis a high proportion (⁓50-100%) of flowers develop into a fruit; in some flowers the pollinaria rotate and contact the stigma, apparently resulting in at least facultative self-pollination. The main differences among the six species of L.sectionDecumbentes hitherto known are contrasted in a dichotomous key. The new species is known only from three populations located in the Bosque de Protección Alto Mayo, on the Amazonian slope of the Andes in northeastern Peru but appears to be under no foreseeable threats.

Rationing scarce healthcare capacity: A study of the ventilator allocation guidelines during the COVID-19 pandemic.

In the United States, even though national guidelines for allocating scarce healthcare resources are lacking, 26 states have specific ventilator allocation guidelines to be invoked in case of a shortage. While several states developed their guidelines in response to the recent COVID-19 pandemic, New York State developed these guidelines in 2015 as "pandemic influenza is a foreseeable threat, one that we cannot ignore." The primary objective of this study is to assess the existing procedures and priority rules in place for allocating/rationing scarce ventilator capacity and propose alternative (and improved) priority schemes. We first build machine learning models using inpatient records of COVID-19 patients admitted to New York-Presbyterian/Columbia University Irving Medical Center and an affiliated community health center to predict survival probabilities as well as ventilator length-of-use. Then, we use the resulting point estimators and their uncertainties as inputs for a multiclass priority queueing model with abandonments to assess three priority schemes: (i) SOFA-P (Sequential Organ Failure Assessment based prioritization), which most closely mimics the existing practice by prioritizing patients with sufficiently low SOFA scores; (ii) ISP (incremental survival probability), which assigns priority based on patient-level survival predictions; and (iii) ISP-LU (incremental survival probability per length-of-use), which takes into account survival predictions and resource use duration. Our findings highlight that our proposed priority scheme, ISP-LU, achieves a demonstrable improvement over the other two alternatives. Specifically, the expected number of survivals increases and death risk while waiting for ventilator use decreases. We also show that ISP-LU is a robust priority scheme whose implementation yields a Pareto-improvement over both SOFA-P and ISP in terms of maximizing saved lives after mechanical ventilation while limiting racial disparity in access to the priorityqueue.

Different fosA genes were found on mobile genetic elements in Escherichia coli from wastewaters of hospitals and municipals in Turkey

AimsThe increasing number of globally established fosfomycin-resistant (FosR) Gram-negative bacteria inspired us to investigate the occurrence of FosREnterobacterales populations (esp. E. coli) in samples of city wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) and hospital sewage in Hatay, Turkey. FosR target bacteria were further characterized for their clonal relatedness, resistomes and mobile genetic elements (MGEs) to evaluate their impact on fosfomycin resistance dissemination. MethodsA total of 44 samples from raw and treated waters of WWTPs as well as of two hospitals in the Hatay province were subjected to selective cultivation for recovering FosREnterobacterales. The presence of fosA was verified by PCR and Sanger amplicon sequencing. Detected E. coli were further evaluated against antimicrobial susceptibility-testing, macrorestriction profiling (PFGE) and whole-genome sequencing (WGS). Bioinformatics analysis was performed for genome subtyping (i.e., MLST, serotype), resistome/virulome determination and dissection of the genetic determinants of plasmidic fosA3/4 resistances. ResultsBesides ten non-E. coli Enterobacterales, 29 E. coli were collected within this study. In silico-based subtyping revealed that E. coli isolates were assigned to six different serovars and 14 sequence types (ST), while O8:H21 and ST410 represented the major prevalent types, respectively. Fosfomycin resistance in the isolates was found to be mediated by the fosA4 (n = 18), fosA3 (n = 10) and fosA (n = 1), which are frequently associated with transmissible MGEs. Reconstruction of plasmid-associated fosA gene context revealed a linkage between the resistance cassette and IS6 (IS26 family) transposases, which might represent a major driver for the distribution of the genes and the generation of novel fosA-carrying plasmids. ConclusionsThe occurrence of plasmid-mediated, transmissible FosR in E. coli from wastewater pose a foreseeable threat to “One-Health”. To minimize further spread of the resistances in bacterial populations associated with environmental, animal and human health further resistance monitoring and management strategies must be developed.

Rationing Scarce Healthcare Capacity: A Study Of The Ventilator Allocation Guidelines During The COVID-19 Pandemic In The United States

In the United States, even though national guidelines for allocating scarce healthcare resources are lacking, 26 states have specific ventilator allocation guidelines to be invoked in case of a shortage. While several states developed their guidelines in response to the recent Covid-19 pandemic, NYS developed these guidelines in 2015 as "pandemic influenza is a foreseeable threat, one that we cannot ignore." The primary objective of this study is to assess the existing procedures and priority rules in place for allocating/rationing scarce ventilator capacity and propose alternative (and improved) priority schemes. We first build machine learning models using inpatient records of COVID-19 patients admitted to New York-Presbyterian/Columbia University Irving Medical Center and an affiliated community health center to predict survival probabilities as well as ventilator length-of-use. Then, we use the resulting point estimators and their uncertainties as inputs for a multi-class priority queueing model with abandonments to assess three priority schemes: (i) SOFA-P, which most closely mimics the existing practice by prioritizing patients with sufficiently low Sequential Organ Failure Assessment (SOFA) scores, (ii) ISP, which assigns priority based on patient-level survival predictions, and (iii) ISP-LU, which takes into account survival predictions and resource use duration. Our findings highlight that our proposed priority scheme, ISP-LU, achieves a demonstrable improvement over the other two alternatives. Specifically, the expected number of survivals increases and death risk while waiting for ventilator use decreases. We also show that ISP-LU is a robust priority scheme whose implementation yields a Pareto-improvement over both ISP and SOFA-P in terms of maximizing saved lives after mechanical ventilation while limiting racial disparity in access to the priority queue.

Strategic ignorance and crises of trust: Un-anticipating futures and governing food supply chains in the shadow of Horsegate

This paper explores how transnational food supply chains are governed and secured through examining the 2013 horsemeat scandal, during which processed beef products were adulterated with horseflesh. Drawing on theories of governmentality and ignorance studies, it argues that the apparent ignorance among food businesses about their supply chains which this event exposed arises in response to a regulatory apparatus which renders businesses responsible for taking precautions only against foreseeable threats to food safety and authenticity. Limiting their knowledge of their supply chains therefore enables food businesses to control their ability to anticipate (and their liability for) crises. This paper highlights the role of strategic ignorance in rendering future events unforeseeable and ungovernable, and in mediating the politics of accountability and responsibility within anticipatory governmental apparatuses.

Integrated Assessment of the Air Quality around the Environs of Dr. Abubakar Sola Saraki Memorial Abattoir, Ilorin, Kwara State, Nigeria

Environmental media of Dr. Abubakar Sola Saraki memorial abattoir, Akerebiata, Ilorin.The quality of air around the abattoir was assessed for PM2.5, PM10, HCHO and Volatile Organic Compounds. Result revealed that analyzed data were above WHO standards, the increase in the values could be due to burning of animal and pollution from animal waste which has deleterious effect of living organisms and system. It was revealed some these pollutants has relative high and low readings in the day and at dawn respectively which is also applicable to the temperature readings. High temperature is favorable to thermophiles biological activities eveidently shown by the outpour of gases. There could be consideration towards re-siting of the abattoir to a different location. Recommendations were proffered which includes: Reduction of pollutants emitted from the abattoir through sensitization of butchers and meat sellers in the abattoir, Government agencies should swing into action to regulate the level of pollutants released into the environment on routine basis while also empower the EHOs to step up routine inspection of Abattoirs to eliminate foreseeable threats to public health.

Brexit anticipated economic shock on Ireland’s planning for hospitality and tourism: resilience, volatility and exposure

La crisis económica anticipada por el Brexit en la planificación hotelera y el turismo en Irlanda: resiliencia, volatilidad y riesgoObjetivoEl estudio explora la planificación de escenarios turísticos ante una crisis anticipada por el Brexit, desde la perspectiva de los gerentes hoteleros irlandeses que se preparan para ella. La investigación utiliza el marco de la ciencia climática para estructurar el estudio, confrontando los preparativos, o la falta de ellos, con la volatilidad, el riesgo y la resiliencia.Diseño/metodología/enfoqueLa investigación utilizó un enfoque cualitativo y pragmático para determinar cómo se están preparando los altos directivos hoteleros irlandeses para la salida de Gran Bretaña de la Unión Europea, un evento con un gran impacto potencial en el turismo irlandés. Los datos fueron recogidos a través de entrevistas semiestructuradas realizadas a los gerentes hoteleros, las federaciones sectoriales y los responsables políticos.Implicaciones prácticasLos resultados sugieren que, aunque el turismo ha resistido las crisis económicas en el pasado, las lecciones aprendidas en la planificación no se han aplicado para prevenir el próximo impacto previsto en el horizonte. Es necesario un compromiso más proactivo y una mejor preparación estratégica para mitigar los efectos de las crisis futuras. La industria debe reconocer su papel en el desarrollo de la resiliencia y la reducción de la volatilidad y el riesgo. El gobierno necesita coordinar iniciativas con el sector para estimular su solidez.Originialidad/interésEn el documento se ponen de manifiesto las áreas de actividad del sector hotelero que podrían mejorarse para reducir la volatilidad y el riesgo, aumentar la resiliencia y fomentar la capacidad de adaptación rápida después de una crisis.

Artificial Intelligence Crime: An Interdisciplinary Analysis of Foreseeable Threats and Solutions

Artificial intelligence (AI) research and regulation seek to balance the benefits of innovation against any potential harms and disruption. However, one unintended consequence of the recent surge in AI research is the potential re-orientation of AI technologies to facilitate criminal acts, term in this article AI-Crime (AIC). AIC is theoretically feasible thanks to published experiments in automating fraud targeted at social media users, as well as demonstrations of AI-driven manipulation of simulated markets. However, because AIC is still a relatively young and inherently interdisciplinary area—spanning socio-legal studies to formal science—there is little certainty of what an AIC future might look like. This article offers the first systematic, interdisciplinary literature analysis of the foreseeable threats of AIC, providing ethicists, policy-makers, and law enforcement organisations with a synthesis of the current problems, and a possible solution space.

Environmental issues resulting from scientific and technical progress

The article explores the environmental issues of mankind being a negative consequence of unrestrained scientific and technological progress. Environmental issues have become global because they have reached a level that threatens the possibility of life on Earth. More and more scientists are becoming aware of the need to find new moral and ethical regulations that can change the consumer attitude to nature, help them to realize their responsibility towards it. It suggests the idea of the emergence and formation of a new ethics – the ethics of responsibility. That is, modern moral and ethical principles should not only allow humanity to enjoy all the benefits of scientific and technological civilization, but also to warn against the foreseeable possible threats.

PKC Laundries: a start-up business at the crossroads

Subject area Strategy Study level/applicability Strategic Management course in an undergraduate programme. Case overview PKC Laundries started a technology-driven laundry service that would be just a click away for their customers and would provide a quick and satisfying cost-effective solution to the customers’ laundry needs. The business, conceived as a start-up, was based on the asset-light aggregation model which used existing vendors to provide the service. The business has been running for almost two years now but has encountered certain operational challenges of vendor management and in generating sufficient operating profits. At this juncture, the question that is bothering the owners is would it be right if PKC went in for backward integration by investing in an automatic laundry plant to manage the risk of dependency on their vendors or should they strengthen and scale-up the present business model? The owners seem to be in a muddle about their strengths and weaknesses and the foreseeable opportunities and threats and going forward what sort of challenges should they prepare themselves for? This case requires the reader to understand the scenario in which a small and medium enterprise (SME) operates within its micro and macro environment. It then makes the reader think and critically analyse the dilemma the young entrepreneurs are facing and identify the problems and possible strategies to overcome these problems. The case highlights the challenges faced by PKC as an aggregator business and the scope of what PKC can do in the future to strengthen its position. It also explores various marketing management issues such as segmenting, targeting and positioning. The case also helps in understanding strategic management issues such as analysis and formulation and implementation of the strategy. Expected learning outcomes The expected learning outcomes are as follows: To understand the micro and macro environmental factors affecting a firm; to understand the issues involved in formulating and implementing a strategy; to understand the challenges faced by a start-up (both operational and for scaling up); and to understand the strategies adopted by the company to develop their business. Supplementary materials Teaching Notes are available for educators only. Please contact your library to gain login details or email support@emeraldinsight.com to request teaching notes. Subject code CSS 11: Strategy.

Artificial Intelligence Crime: An Interdisciplinary Analysis of Foreseeable Threats and Solutions

Artificial Intelligence (AI) research and regulation seek to balance the benefits of innovation against any potential harms and disruption. However, one unintended consequence of the recent surge in AI research is the potential re-orientation of AI technologies to facilitate criminal acts, which we term AI-Crime (AIC). We already know that AIC is theoretically feasible thanks to published experiments in automating fraud targeted at social media users, as well as demonstrations of AI-driven manipulation of simulated markets. However, because AIC is still a relatively young and inherently interdisciplinary area—spanning socio-legal studies to formal science—there is little certainty of what an AIC future might look like. This article offers the first systematic, interdisciplinary literature analysis of the foreseeable threats of AIC, providing law enforcement and policy-makers with a synthesis of the current problems, and a possible solution space.

A decrease in the abundance and strategic sophistication of cleaner fish after environmental perturbations.

Coral reef ecosystems are declining worldwide and under foreseeable threat due to climate change, resulting in significant changes in reef communities. It is unknown, however, how such community changes impact interspecific interactions. Recent extreme weather events affecting the Great Barrier Reef, that is, consecutive cyclones and the 2016 El Niño event, allowed us to explore potential consequences in the mutualistic interactions involving cleaner fish Labroides dimidiatus (hereafter "cleaner"). After the perturbations, cleaner densities were reduced by 80%, disproportionally compared to the variety of reef fish clients from which cleaners remove ectoparasites. Consequently, shifts in supply and demand yielded an increase in the clients' demand for cleaning. Therefore, clients became less selective toward cleaners, whereas cleaners were able to choose from a multitude of partners. In parallel, we found a significant decline in the ability of cleaners to manage their reputation and to learn to prioritize ephemeral food sources to maximize food intake in laboratory experiments. In other words, cleaners failed to display the previously documented strategic sophistication that made this species a prime example for fish intelligence. In conclusion, low population densities may cause various effects on individual behavior, and as a consequence, interspecific interactions. At the same time, our data suggest that a recovery of population densities would cause a recovery of previously described interaction patterns and cleaner strategic sophistication within the lifetime of individuals.

A Method for Catchment Scale Mapping of Groundwater-Dependent Ecosystems to Support Natural Resource Management (Queensland, Australia).

Immediate and foreseeable threats to groundwater-dependent ecosystems (GDEs) are widely acknowledged, many linked to altered groundwater regimes including changes in groundwater flow, flux, pressure, level and/or quality (Eamus et al. in Aust J Bot 54:97-114, 2006a). Natural resource managers and other decision-makers often lack sufficient information at an appropriate scale to understand the groundwater dependency of ecosystems and ensure that GDEs are adequately considered in decision-making processes. This paper describes a new catchment scale mapping method for GDEs based on the integration of local expert knowledge with detailed spatial datasets to delineate GDEs at a scale compatible with management and planning activities. This overcomes one of the key criticisms often levelled at broader scale mapping methods-that information from local and regional experts, with significant understanding of landscape processes and ecosystems, is not incorporated into the datasets used by decision-makers. Expert knowledge is conveyed in the form of pictorial conceptual models representing the components, processes and interrelationships of groundwater within a catchment and the ecosystems dependent on it. Each mapped GDE is linked to a pictorial conceptual model and a mapping rule-set to provide decision-makers with valuable information about where, how and why GDEs exist in a landscape.

The Human Factors of Home Health Care

Increases in longevity, a growing elderly population, variation of skill and knowledge among home providers, and a steady migration of medical devices and technologies into the home are placing new demands on home heath care. The paper examines the human factors challenges associated with these converging trends. A growing literature base relevant to home health care is examined, and with the aid of a socio-technical systems model, the paper explores safety and quality concerns to which the converging trends are likely to give rise. The sensory, physical, and cognitive limitations of patients and their caregivers play a key role in the ability of patients to manage home health care needs. Other major components affecting successful home health care management are the nature of health care tasks undertaken, the design features of the physical environment, the medical devices and technologies used, the social and community environments, and distal but relevant external factors that shape the context of care. Home health care stakeholders can avoid foreseeable threats to safety and quality by recognizing that components need to be designed in a way that takes into account their interactions with one another and with the capabilities and limitations of patients and their providers. By examining the major components and interdependencies of the home health care delivery system, a human factors perspective offers insights into ways that safety and quality can be compromised and can help pave the way for new modes of thinking in home health care policy.

Exploring Development Futures in a Changing Climate: Frontiers for Development Policy and Practice

Climate change poses the most significant foreseeable threat to the development of humankind. Among the parts of the globe liable to be affected, the developing world is the most vulnerable to climate risks. Introducing a DPR theme issue on how development policy is responding to the increasingly pressured global climate agenda, this article reviews what is being done and still needs to be done, paying particular attention to action on three policy frontiers: (i) adaptation actions and finance, (ii) mitigation policies and their governance, and (iii) the implications for development planning. It addresses what will be needed for the development community to rise to the challenge in the run‐up to the Copenhagen conference in 2009 and beyond.

Minimizing security risks in ubicomp systems

In the Internet's early days, few people foresaw the emergence of spam, phishing schemes, and malware such as viruses, worms, Trojan horses, spyware, and key loggers that plague users today. It's safe to assume that ubicomp technologies will suffer from the same sorts of unforeseen vulnerabilities that have plagued the Internet. We can't account for every possible security and privacy risk in ubiquitous computing systems. We can, however, design such systems to reduce the burden on users as well as develop better security models and interaction techniques to prevent and minimize foreseeable threats.

Hotel Reform in China

The hotel industry in China is currently going through fundamental reform in ownership structure and development. A SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats) analysis as reforms go forward reveals development opportunities as well as vulnerabilities to internal organizational and external environmental changes. Notable strengths include a growing market and the government’s push to upgrade all hotel standards. Weaknesses include an overleveraged industry that has long been operated inefficiently by government entities. New and reinvigorate operators have great opportunities in this situation, as do those who offer ancillary services and management education. The greatest foreseeable threat is an economic slowdown or other event that interferes with tourist growth. With the 2008 Olympiad to be held in Beijing and a World Expo slated for Shanghai in 2010, such a downturn would most likely be temporary—meaning that the Chinese hotel industry has excellent prospects overall.