Issues Touch Research Articles

Introduction. Imagining Bangladesh: Contested Narratives

Bangladesh is a country that appears only on the margins of western news and academic interest. When it does, it is usually in the context of catastrophes. In this Introduction to the special issue, we agree with Lewis (2011) that this large, complex and dynamic country merits more attention. Looking at it through the lens of ‘contested narratives’ centring on identities, notions of home and belonging in transnational Bangladeshi communities and the development, economy and politics of the country, we identify areas in which these contested narratives are particularly pertinent to current events in Bangladesh and which the papers in this special issue touch upon.

Introduction to cultural research approaches: applications to culture and labour analysis

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to provide a brief introduction to the topic of cultural research approaches that are applicable for investigating the interdependence of culture and labour. The “Introduction” notes two main constraints and four main research approaches that refer to this field of scientific exploration. The authors then outline and summarize the ten studies included in the International Journal of Manpower Special Issue, as well as acknowledge the main value added provided by each of them. Design/methodology/approach – The Special Issue used a double-blind review process, employing one external referee and one cross-referee for each of the ten selected papers. The papers themselves represent a wide variety of designs, methodologies, and analytical strategies used to study culture and labour. Findings – The findings of the studies included in this Special Issue touch on culture and diversity and cultural impact on migration, as well as on culture in the workplace and willingness to ...

H. A. Marujo and L. M. Neto (Eds): Positive Nations and Communities: Collective, Qualitative, and Cultural-Sensitive Processes in Positive Psychology

Positive nations and communities should foster well-being and justice at the individual and collective levels. This ideal state of affairs implies that well-being must be present in the people that inhabit the nation, as well as in the very structures that constitute the community or state. Thus we can talk about the well-being of people and the well-being of institutions. When it comes to justice, we expect positive nations to promote fairness for all members of society through ethical, principled, and just institutions. In this framework, individuals and collectives are beneficiaries as well as agents of wellness and fairness. Using this lens, we can organize the contributions to the book edited by Marujo and Neto. Feelings of interpersonal well-being and sense of community are insightfully explored, for example, through the constructs of altruism, friendship, forgiveness, and the practice of Satsang, which are women’s singing groups in India. Occupational wellbeing is explored in the professional development of psychologists and students through the use of co-curricular activities. The chapters dealing with these issues touch also on psychological well-being, and how it might be enhanced by participating in chanting groups or extra-curricular activities. People acquire self-efficacy by practicing a skill or studying a trade in groups. Psychological well-being is also enhanced through the practice of forgiveness, altruism, and friendship. The economic well-being of nations is also discussed in the first chapter dealing with various paradigms of ontology and epistemology and in the chapter dealing with the nation of Bhutan, which is focused on promoting happiness, and not just economic growth. Not much is said in the book about the promotion of physical health and wellness, which in my view complements interpersonal, communal, occupational, psychological, and economic well-being. Applied Research Quality Life (2014) 9:449–451 DOI 10.1007/s11482-014-9313-7

New public service performance management tools and public water governance: the main lessons drawn from action research conducted in an urban environment

At a time when, in France, the central government is placing new hope in the principle of governance of its utilities by means of performance indicators, this article argues that governance through performance measurement and management tools alone, however sophisticated, is not enough to meet the current challenges facing public water governance. However, the debate triggered on the objectives of the performance measurement tools raises substantive issues relating to public water governance. These substantive issues touch as much on the (strategic and organizational) components of the model of governance as on its control system. This is demonstrated by the action research experiment conducted in conjunction with the water utility of Nantes Métropole (Urban Community of Nantes), where the introduction of a new performance measurement tool leads the actors within the system to focus on the question of the values ​​that the public water governance model must carry. These values, which relate to the very ‘public’ and multidimensional component of water, appear in the local governance system under construction as a cornerstone of the model of governance.Points for practitionersIn the case of the water utilities where the legitimization of the systems of governance is based on a rationale of technical justification, managerial instrumentation and performance evaluation must contend with the strategic and political vacuum resulting from the weakness of expression of political choices. How, then, to take up the challenge of a dynamic and participatory governance? Putting the objectives of the new evaluation tools into the centre of the debate is a relevant approach to question the ultimate meaning of the action, whose content is inevitably associated with the values that should govern water governance.

Phenomenological model of carbon-sequestering forest management

The key aspects of a new “carbon-sequestering forest” management practice have been discussed. Carbon-sequestering forest management is a cross-disciplinary issue touching on both ecology and economics. A qualitative scheme has been proposed for the dynamics of economic and ecological components of this type of management.

Security and Privacy in Health IT [Guest editors' introduction

To address health IT's unique security and privacy issues, researchers study validation methods to improve the accuracy of records, encryption techniques to conceal information in transit, anonymization to permit distribution of health data without revealing identities, access control policies to enforce who sees what, and so on. The articles in this special issue touch on many of these topics.

Overcoming the Difficulties of Cohort Studies

A cohort study is a longitudinal observational study of exposure and outcome status. Cohort studies are associated with well-known disadvantages. Some studies are able to easily recruit subjects and can be finished within 2 hours, eg, asking whether students who skipped breakfast are more likely than those who ate breakfast to fall asleep during a lecture. However, many cohort studies require a large sample size and long follow-up period because of the low incidence and long latency periods for outcomes, as is the case with malignant neoplasms, atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease, and dementia. Consequently, the study becomes complex and costly. Researchers must also contend with the harsh realities of cohort study management. Although many articles have described cohort study designs, few have explained how to manage this type of investigation. In an article on the Japan Collaborative Cohort Study published in this issue, Tamakoshi and colleagues touch on some of the serious obstacles they encountered in conducting that study: retirement of major researchers, city mergers in the year 2000, and reduced funding.1 In a community-based, large-scale cohort study, a significant resource investment is required for the baseline examination and consequent follow-up surveys, which take more than 10 years in many studies. The cohort study design requires a multidisciplinary team, including physicians, public health nurses, public officials, and representatives of community residents. The many stakeholders belong to different organizations and have diverse areas of responsibility. Therefore, a well-organized network is necessary to ensure effective collaboration among team members. These requirements demand research leaders who are knowledgeable about the administration of complex systems. One scheme for facilitating collaboration between disciplines is interprofessional work,2 and the importance of this type of education in undergraduate and continuing medical education has been widely recognized.3 In Japan, payment for full-time workers is not usually covered by government research grants. Resources and aid for a study largely depend on support from the various organizations involved in the study, such as local governments, private companies, and nonprofit organizations. Researchers must produce study results each year, although the final outcome of a cohort study will not be available for many years. This can result in conflicting expectations between the researchers and executive officers of supporting foundations or organizations. Uncertainty regarding financing creates doubt among researchers as to whether they will be able to finish a study project. Epidemiology associations should continue to appeal to governmental and private organizations for understanding of the characteristics of a cohort study and for long-term support. The number of municipalities in Japan has decreased by 47%, from 3229 in 1999 to 1719 in 2012, according to a report by the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications. Many community-based cohort studies are based on health-promotion activities sponsored by Japanese local governments. Thus, these mergers could dramatically change study communities, and major restructuring of local government offices could interfere with the conduct of studies. Not all merging municipalities share an enthusiasm for cohort studies. In addition, mergers force researchers to reconstruct research teams, and may result in duplication of effort. Because long-term cohort studies need to continue for more than a decade, retirement of senior researchers is an unavoidable issue. Even though new researchers may have confidence in the scientific validity of the study hypotheses, they might feel that participation in a cohort study is likely to cause an academic career crisis because it is uncertain if the final outcome will be important. Tamakoshi and colleagues raise awareness of the difficult issues involved in the conduct of long-term, large-scale, community-based, multi-site cohort studies. Unfortunately, these issues appear to be far from resolved. However, a large community-based cohort study can yield strong evidence for a causal relationship between an exposure and an outcome, and may even allow for estimation of effect size.4 One well-known cohort study succeeded in establishing excellent relationships with a targeted community and recruited young investigators to become involved in long-term projects.5 To overcome the difficulties of conducting cohort studies, epidemiologists must continue to speak and write about the scientific importance of cohort studies and the public health significance of the outcomes revealed by such investigations.

The changing role of the Conseil d'Etat in the construction of social rights: 1950-2012

The Conseil d’Etat (Council of State), until recently the highest public law court of France, has a long history of dealing with social rights. However, as a court of public law, it was given limited opportunities to develop social rights for citizens, being in charge of actions against the state. The two decisions hereinafter exemplify the evolution of the way the Conseil addressed social rights in its case law. While in the post World War II setting, fundamental rights issues touch to politically oriented labour questions, more recent decisions illustrate the growing complexity of the human rights debate in courts. Out of two points in time, the major shift in the Conseil’s role is revealed: from a role of confirmation and explanation of constitutional rights found in fundamental texts, the Conseil finds itself in the position of supplementing the legislator and the executive’s failure. Potentially, while the Conseil d’Etat loses its status as the highest public law court in the land, could redefine the Conseil’s role in the legal and institutional landscape.

Editorial

Climate change, sustainability, diversity, financial probity, gender and governance are profound and complex challenges facing local government today, and are all topics raised by the researchers and practitioners contributing to CJLG Issue 10. Cash-strapped local governments are required to deliver core services (‘roads, rates and rubbish’ as Heather Zeppel’s interviewee said), yet are increasingly required to embrace broad social inclusion and environmental concerns, as our contributors show.The five research papers in this issue touch at the heart of equity and democratic governance. The role of critical theory in delivering good practice is explored by Eris Schoburgh in her reflection on local government and local development, and her comparison of Trinidad & Tobago’s structured decentralisation and Jamaica’s communitarian approach. She dismisses the ‘leading laggard’ model where linked settlement economies sink or swim together, and the ‘learning region’ which maximise local synergies to promote economic growth, to propose a new ‘hybrid model’ of local growth that tackles on-going issues such as gender equality, the informal economy and the local commons.

The Scylla and Charybdis of Neuroeconomic Approaches to Psychopathology

As neuroeconomics enters its second decade, it is fair to ask whether it represents a useful confluence of two disciplines or simply a compound word with aspirations to be much more. Neuroeconomics rests upon two important assumptions, the first is the ideal rational agent model, which guides the definition of optimal decision-making and the valuations that should underlie it. The second is that neuroimaging is capable of providing insights into the neurobiology of the decision-making process. This special issue attempts to stretch the methods and metaphors of neuroeconomics toward the characterization and understanding of psychiatric disorders. Neuroeconomics gains extra strength from three features that may help it reach beyond it beginnings – (1) its capacity to connect decision-making variables to details of neural circuits including details extracted from model animal systems, (2) its natural connection to computational theory with the best example being reinforcement learning (1,2), and (3) its connection to game theory (3). All three areas provide support for the current effort to use neuroeconomics to forge a new understanding of certain psychopathologies (e.g. 4). One hope is that computational modeling and game theoretic structuring of behavioral probes will help leverage this effort. To be successful, these early efforts must meet at least five important criteria. Does the approach produce pointers to consistent neural circuits underlying functions perturbed by mental disease? Do ideas about mental disease gain extra richness from mappings on to computational models, neural structures, or functional activations in brain imaging experiments? Will useful and new endophenotypes emerge from this work? Is the metaphor of the rational agent helpful or limiting? Is the neural data in humans still to crude to reach up to disease or down to basic neurobiological mechanisms? The contributions to this special issue touch on all these issues, but these are still early days and the jury is out. However, some of the most fruitful first steps appear to be in the area of neural circuits and their connection to clearly identified derangements in mental function.

Analytical Geospatial Web Services

Analysis other than simple access and visualization is the emerging trend within the web community [Berners-Lee 2007]. With the rapid development of the Internet and web technologies, “the traditional approach to publishing maps on the Internet ‘by GIS experts, for GIS experts’ is outdated, ineffective and unusable as Web mapping becomes more and more mainstream” [van der Vlugt and Stanley 2005]. Over the last few years, we have seen more and more traditional GIS functions being integrated into web mapping/GIS applications in a way transparent to users, using distributed analytical and geoprocessing services coordinated by well-defined workflows [Yang and Raskin 2009]. Web service technology has played one of the key roles in this transition. As the service-driven paradigm continues to dominate web mapping and GIS development, web-based geospatial analytical services have drawn the attention of many in the field, hoping to build such services on top of more mature basic data services. Given the complex nature of analytical services, including modelling, simulation, function and visualization services, the orchestration of web mapping and geoprocessing services from different sources becomes increasingly important. The trend towards analytical geospatial web services continues with intelligent analytical capability, which involves indepth study on dynamic geospatial service composition, for example. It is also expected that intelligent analytical services will be enhanced with further developments in Geographic Knowledge Discovery (GKD), spatial data mining techniques and tools, web-based modelling and simulation, augmented reality applications, agent-based systems and paradigms [Hutchinson and Veenendaal 2011], etc. The articles included in this special issue contribute to the capacity building towards analytical geospatial web. The three feature articles selected for this special issue touch on web geoprocessing, visualization and thematic mapping tools. The issue begins with the article authored by Eberle and Strobl, Web-based

The Geneva Risk and Insurance Review 2010: We Have Learned Much Since Willett and Knight

The purpose of this paper is to review and summarise the papers published in The Geneva Risk and Insurance Review in 2010. Historical reference to Willet and Knight is emphasised to illustrate the importance of risk and uncertainty in our modern economies and how it is still the starting point of economic research not only in public finance as proposed by Agnar Sandmo, but also in other papers published in this volume. Many issues touch upon anomalies like adverse selection, asymmetric information, moral hazard and rating restrictions that can influence the performance of insurance markets. These issues are of particular relevance for insurers and the proper functioning of insurance markets.

Artists and Athletes

Several articles in this issue touch on some of the more athletic components of the performing arts. The article by Twitchett et al. describes fitness aspects of ballet, Gabrilo et al. discuss lung function in synchronized swimmers, and we also learn about how one flutist prepared for a very difficult piece by exercising (and practicing) in the letter by Borkowski. Of course, these are not the first articles in MPPA that look at performers as individuals who call on a variety of physical skills to create an artistic performance; examples of studies looking at both dancers and musicians dating back nearly a decade or more are easy to find.

Locality in minimalist syntax (review)

Reviewed by: Locality in minimalist syntax Winfried Lechner Locality in minimalist syntax. By Thomas S. Stroik. (Linguistic inquiry monograph 51.) Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2009. Pp. x, 149. ISBN 9780262512763. $34. Some books are easy to form an opinion about, while others resist a simple judgment. Locality in minimalist syntax (LMS) by Thomas Stroik is a thought-provoking and refreshingly unorthodox study that definitely falls into the second category. And, as I try to show below, this is a good thing, since what S does is nothing less than offer an invitation to reconsider a number of fundamental, widely adopted assumptions about the architecture of the syntactic component by delineating parts of a theory of syntactic locality phenomena that represents an intriguing alternative to the standard minimalist model (Chomsky 1995, 2005). While various facets of this theory provide interesting new angles on long-standing problems, including case freezing effects, superraising, the boundedness of wh-movement, and that-trace phenomena, it is not unlikely that some of S’s suggestions, such as his particular view of features, will also be met with a certain amount of resistance. But as some of these more contentious issues touch upon significant theoretical decisions that are far from settled, LMS forces one to sharpen one’s position toward many standard assumptions, turning the reading experience into a challenging yet rewarding intellectual enterprise. In this sense, S’s book also succeeds in demonstrating that controversy is the single most effective stimulant for scientific progress. The theory outlined in LMS divides into three discrete subcomponents: (i) a theory of displacement, framed in terms of the survive principle, (ii) a theory of features, feature compatibility, and feature checking, and (iii) a particular view of the architecture of the syntactic component of the grammar. It is important to note that these three parts, which are presented in a heavily crosscutting fashion, are by and large independent of each other, even though they are sold as a package. One might, for instance, adopt S’s movement analysis without committing oneself to the specific featural implementation advocated in LMS. In itself, this modular interaction poses neither an advantage nor a disadvantage, unless one would hope for a deeper grounding of the subcomponents in a unified theory. Before discussing the content, it is necessary to get out of the way the only real, serious criticism of LMS that no reader will be able to evade—its form. To begin with, the book does not bear any visible sign of proofreading, as witnessed by an astounding number of typos (a random sample from the first half of the book: pp. 17, 48, and 53 contain three errors each and there are two on p. 54). Furthermore, it is hard to avoid the conclusion that the material in the book could have been presented in a more reader-friendly way. Discussion of many central topics is not bundled in a single chapter, but distributed over various places, making it extremely difficult to obtain a comprehensive picture of S’s many complex proposals. Information about the feature composition of wh-phrases, for example, needs to be picked up from three different places (pp. 53, 75, and 87). The problem is compounded by poor proofreading: for instance, the same feature is referred to as [REF/] and [REF/WH] on the same page (85). These oversights will certainly be overcome by the author and MIT Press in future editions of LMS. LMS is structured into four chapters that quite extensively overlap and cross-cut in content. An introductory chapter on the architecture of the grammar (twenty-eight pages) is followed by two main chapters, Chs. 2 and 3, which condense the central theses in eighty-eight pages. The book [End Page 234] ends with a conclusion (twelve pages). In this review, I briefly outline what I take to be the main contributions of LMS, followed by some general remarks and comments. Unfortunately, the wealth of information conveyed in LMS makes it impossible to respond to all but a few of the many important issues addressed in this book. Questions pertaining to the architecture of the grammar (e.g. economy, the ontology of derivations, features, and movement) are...

The Top Ten Hottest Topics in Communication Sciences and Disorders

You have accessThe ASHA LeaderFeature1 Mar 2011The Top Ten Hottest Topics in Communication Sciences and Disorders Marat Moore Marat Moore Google Scholar More articles by this author https://doi.org/10.1044/leader.FTR6.16032011.np SectionsAbout ToolsAdd to favorites ShareFacebookTwitterLinked In http://www.asha.org/Publications/leader/2011/110315/The-Top-Ten-Hottest-Topics-in-Communication-Sciences-and-Disorders.htm Last August ASHA tried something new—surveying a group of you in speech-language pathology practice, audiology practice, research and academic settings, and the National Student Speech Language Hearing Association (NSSLHA) about what you consider the most important or “hottest” topics in the discipline. ASHA fielded traditional surveys and asked the same questions on ASHA’s Facebook site. What did you say? First, some issues touch members across professions and work settings, particularly issues related to reimbursement. Cochlear implants also crossed boundaries, capturing the interest of students and researchers and of course audiologists. Ethics made the top 10 in audiology and speech-language pathology. See “ Hot Topics” [PDF] for full results. Unfortunately, the response rates were less than robust. Was August a bad time to field a survey? Are you not interested in these questions? Whatever the reason, the invitation is again open to weigh in on what issues you consider important (add your comments below). It’s one way to find out what topics you might like to read about in future issues of The ASHA Leader. The results from the survey and Facebook are reported separately because not all of ASHA’s Facebook “friends” are members. Author Notes is the managing editor of The ASHA Leader and can be reached at [email protected]. Advertising Disclaimer | Advertise With Us Advertising Disclaimer | Advertise With Us Additional Resources FiguresSourcesRelatedDetails Volume 16Issue 3March 2011 Get Permissions Add to your Mendeley library History Published in print: Mar 1, 2011 Metrics Current downloads: 1,607 Topicsasha-topicsleader_do_tagasha-article-typesleader-topicsCopyright & Permissions© 2011 American Speech-Language-Hearing AssociationLoading ...

Introduction to the changing nature of retirement: an international perspective

PurposeThe purpose of this overview is to provide a brief introduction to the topic of retirement, noting five key issues and directions for future research which are addressed collectively in the compilation of papers that follow: the changing nature of retirement; the need for an interdisciplinary perspective on retirement; the need to look at both individual and organizational perspectives; international variations in contexts and processes; and the need for a broad methodological perspective. The authors then outline and summarize the seven studies included in this special issue, as well as acknowledge those who were instrumental in bringing this special issue to fruition.Design/methodology/approachThe International Journal of Manpower's usual double blind review process was used to select the seven papers included in this special issue. The papers themselves represent a wide variety of designs, methodologies, and analytic strategies used to study retirement. In addition, a wide variety of disciplinary approaches and levels of analyses and perspectives are employed across the seven studies.FindingsThe findings of the studies included in this special issue touch on retirement planning and decision making, as well as employer perspectives on the global aging workforce.Practical implicationsEach article includes practical implications with regard to retirement for the country and/or constituents examined in the study.Originality/valueTaken as a collective, the papers in this special issue help to propel forward in significant ways the study of retirement from an international and interdisciplinary perspective.

From boutique to basic: a call for standardised medical education in global health

From boutique to basic: a call for standardised medical education in global health

Infotransformation of Markets

Information and communication technologies (ICTs) are a driving force behind major economic, social, and cultural shifts from the modern to the postmodern, from local to global markets, from production to consumption, and from industrial to informational economies. While much has been written about the relationship between marketing and technology, most of the work regards marketing as an a priori category onto which new technologies are simply overlaid as they come along. These instrumentalist—functionalist views of ICTs in marketing are not particularly well suited when—as in macromarketing— the focus is on marketing systems and consumption systems. The present collection of articles provides one of the most insightful one-stop learning shops of the changing character of markets in the information age. From the fractal views of the ethical economy and its emergent collaborative production-provisioning-consumption system to the realities of the persistent digital divide in the age of the mobile phone, articles in this issue touch on important elements of marketing in the age of information. We invite you to enter and enrich these discussions.

Decoding southern culture and hospitality

Purpose – The purpose of this editorial is to introduce the special issue of the International Journal of Culture, Tourism and Hospitality Research (IJCTHR) on “Decoding southern culture and hospitality”.Design/methodology/approach – The editorial outlines the primary objective of the IJCTHR special issue and introduces a southern tourism schema.Findings – The special issue serves as a valuable platform for new theory and research that integrates multidisciplinary perspectives in describing, explaining, predicting, and influencing culture, tourism, and hospitality in the US Southern States. This region of the USA is distinguishable from other regions by its cultural values and practices. Tourism in the US South is multi‐faceted and includes destination‐, ritual‐, heritage‐, and experiential‐based attractions. The articles in the special issue touch on these various aspects of southern‐based tourism and reveal its unique attributes as it relates to culture and southern hospitality.Originality/value – This ...

Regulation - it's getting better all the time

Regulation doesn't tend to set many people's pulses racing. However, its importance in healthcare has certainly come under the spotlight of late. We are not surprised. After all, the issues that we deal with are the same as those that regularly occupy the front pages of the newspapers. These issues touch the lives of every family.