Major Buzzword Research Articles

For all seasons? Exploring the policy-context for co-creation

IMPACT ‘Co-creation’ is a major buzzword in contemporary governance. A range of public sector organizations nowadays declare co-creation as an overall strategy for their policies and actions. However, what co-creation should mean in operational terms often remains less clear. This article explores what co-creation could look like within three significantly different policy contexts: the exercise of authority, service delivery and regulation. To illustrate the argument, the article also explores the extent to which co-creation as a practice already exists in three Norwegian policy fields which resemble the three policy contexts. These three policy fields are child welfare and protection (authority), elderly care (service delivery) and climate policy (regulation). Although the illustrative examples are derived from a single country, they will be relevant to other countries as well.

Artificial Intelligence in Analytical Spectroscopy, Part I: Basic Concepts and Discussion

Artificial intelligence (AI), and its subfield machine learning (ML), are major buzzwords in today’s technology world. In a two-part series, let’s begin to take a look under the hood and behind the scenes to see what AI is and its applicability to analytical chemistry and spectroscopy for future discussion and elaboration. What are the benefits and limitations, as well as the praises and detractions, of AI? How does AI relate to chemometrics?

Quest of Transitioning towards Socialism: Concept Here-so-forth & Course That Nepal Should Command Ahead

Socialism is one of the key phrases on political landscape across the world, at current time. Among few major buzzwords in global politics of this century, i.e., Nation Building, State Re-structuring, Advanced Democracy, Welfare State, Public Sovereignty, and so on, currently, socialism also has been sufficiently dragging the attention of the politicians, political scientists, scholars and/or researchers in domain of Political/Social Science. All the pro-progressive scholars and politicians urge in adopting socialism orientated advancement in each sector or domain of the society including education, health, economy, governance, judiciary, bureaucracy and so on. But, there is an evident lacuna in exploring the commencement and progress track-record of socialism in terms of both practice and acknowledgement. A clearly comprehensible and communicative blueprint of-long waited and highly touted-socialism prone society is still an absolute missing. Nepal is no longer an exception with the situation of being at this sheer crossroad. Thus, this paper digs out the origin of socialism along with its base concept and gradual development of practice across the world. Further, major features that Nepal ought to embody for pro-socialism transformation as well as political activities and societal reflection prone to socialism will be minutely unearthed here on.

LUXURY LIFESTYLE SEGMENTATION TOWARD AN INTEGRATIVE CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK

LUXURY LIFESTYLE SEGMENTATION TOWARD AN INTEGRATIVE CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK

Re-Contextualizing Unemployment and National Security in Nigeria

Unemployment is largely blamed for the intractable security challenges in Nigeria. More worrisome is that population growth adds 4.5 million youths into the labour market every year that largely begs for the public sector attention as presently conceptualized. Previous studies have focused on national job creation to manage employment challenges. This study argues on the contrary and sues for re-conceptualization of the concept of unemployment. The problem is that unemployment is major buzzword for assessing government in Nigeria. Unless re-conceptualized, unemployment will continue to pose serious challenges to national security. A number of strategies are highlighted to contain the challenges.

Personalisation and self-determination: the same difference?

Personalisation has become one of the major buzz words within service delivery in a short space of time. It is said to have its roots/routes within the disabled people’s movement because of its association with concepts such as ‘self-determination’, ‘independent living’, ‘choice’ and ‘control’. Rather than explore what personalisation is, this article considers the central ideas that have informed disability politics within the United Kingdom over the last 30 years to see to what extent they have indeed informed the personalisation agenda. It will be argued that the tensions between dominant ideologies and practices associated with disability and the alternative social oppression approach have not been resolved, but hidden by the process of transforming radical ideas into ones that can be absorbed into the status quo. The chameleon characteristics of the personalisation agenda have allowed it to appear attractive to the more politically accommodating sections of the disabled community.

From aardvark to z-values: A decade of biodiversity monitoring in Africa’s arid and semi-arid southwest

2monitoring plots (the BIOTA observatories) spread over a transect from the woodland savannas of northern Namibia, through the thornbush savanna, Nama Karoo and desert biomes in Namibia, to Namaqualand and the western lowland fynbos in South Africa. As such, the title is somewhat misleading, as the geographical area covered encompasses Namibia and western South Africa. Also, while no doubt a major buzzword in the decade covered by the research, ‘biodiversity’ does little to capture the scope of the research presented, which covers climate, remote sensing, soils, fauna, flora and microorganisms, as well as ecological, legal and socio-economic aspects of land use and their implications for management. Volume 1, ‘Patterns at local scale – the BIOTA observatories’, presents some background to the BIOTA project and the sampling methods employed at each of the observatories. This is followed by summaries for each observatory, including climate, topography, soils, biological soil crusts, lichens, vascular plants, some arthropod taxa, vertebrates, people and land use, and a summary of site-specific studies. The chapters in this volume are largely aimed at local land users and researchers working in the areas where the observatories are located. As such, some of the data could have been presented in a more user-friendly fashion: for example, the life-form composition of vascular plants would have been easier to interpret if terms like ‘trees’ and ‘shrubs’ had been used rather than abbreviated Raunkiaer categories. The presentation of the data, although standardised, varies between the different aspects measured and between observatories. Vascular plants, for example, were sampled annually at different scales and the species lists are extensive, detailed and consistent across all observatories. In contrast, the lists of vertebrates are very limited and at some locations comprise nothing more than a handful of bird species. Volume 2, ‘Patterns and processes at regional scale’, is a collection of articles dealing with various aspects of the research, summarised for particular regions or across the entire transect. Articles range from reconstructions of past climate and vegetation change, through summaries of experimental and modelling work, to reflections on transdisciplinarity and stakeholder involvement. The scope, depth, originality and quality vary, with some articles reading a little like executive summaries listing achievements and outputs, while others present detailed and insightful syntheses of research findings. Clearly the (commendable) intention in publishing this book was to report the research findings as comprehensively as possible. The resultant variability was probably unavoidable, given that contributors ranged from coursework master’s students to teams of senior researchers reporting on their core research over the last decade or more. Volume 3, ‘Implications for land use and management’, presents syntheses of interdisciplinary research around land use impacts, each representing a different biome. The work in the woodland savannas of Namibia, for example, focuses on expanding cultivation but also touches on illegal logging (with an interesting video included in the electronic appendix). Research in the thornbush savannas centres around land degradation, in particular bush encroachment, while the chapter on fynbos focuses on the extent and consequences of fragmentation of lowland fynbos. These syntheses are generally interesting, and each ends with recommendations and thoughts on future research. Overall, the book succeeds in giving a detailed overview of the research done, and is a valuable source of data and references. The objectives of the BIOTA project were to assess and monitor biodiversity, and to understand the drivers – especially climate and land use – that affect biodiversity patterns and processes in the study region. While valuable baseline data have been generated (which are available either in the electronic appendices included on CD or via the BIOTA website), the ultimate success of the project will be determined by the ability to continue monitoring over longer time scales. The data so far show quite clearly the difficulty in detecting long-term change in these arid and climatically variable ecosystems. The book provides relatively little analysis of temporal change, including the effects of climate change on biodiversity, despite the project’s overriding focus on monitoring. The three volumes are attractively presented, with many colour photographs giving readers a good impression of the study areas. The language editing, however, is quite poor and the quality of the figures variable. A subject index would have done much to make such a hefty book more user friendly, as would listing the authors of articles in the table of contents. As the book currently is available only from the publishers, it would be useful to have the table of contents listed on the publisher’s website.

Acoustical considerations in future building design processes.

“Sustainability” is the major buzzword in the building design and construction arena today. The context often talks about products that will result in a smaller initial and ongoing carbon footprint. This paper will look at the idea of sustainability as a process, covering the end‐to‐end design and construction process as well as the process of generating and managing building data during its life cycle. The advent of lean construction and building information modeling is an opportunity to make acoustics more inherent to the conceptual design and prevent it from being a casualty of the “value engineering”. Significant questions do arise, however, with regard to the acoustical information needed for such processes. These questions include, but are not limited to, what information is needed, who will need it, and how will it be exchanged. The answers to these questions differ when considering the above‐mentioned processes and efforts to be holistically efficient and sustainable. The answers to these questions will be integrated into how building design is taught with regard to acoustics other specialties.

What do users associate with ‘interactivity’?

‘Interactivity’ was one of the major buzzwords of the 1990s. Although the academic discourse has produced a large number of different concepts of ‘interactivity’, in everyday life it still remains a label put on all kinds of aspects of online communication and digital media. Drawing on schema theory this article explores the concepts of ‘ordinary’ users (i.e. people who are not professional experts). The results indicate that users associate the foremost social and individual issues with the term ‘interactivity’, i.e. what they can accomplish by using media in terms of self-development, social influence and social relationships.

The resurgence of the ‘Region’ and ‘Regional Identity’: theoretical perspectives and empirical observations on regional dynamics in Europe

Abstract‘New regionalism’, ‘region’, ‘city-region’, ‘cross-border region’, ‘border’ and ‘identity’ have become important catchphrases on the global geo-economic and geopolitical scene. The resurgence of these terms has been part of the transformation of both political economy and governance at supra-state, state and sub-state scales. Regions have been particularly significant in the EU where both the making of the Union itself and the ‘Europe of regions’ are concrete manifestations of the re-scaling of state spaces and the assignment of new meanings to territory. Such re-scaling has also led to increased competition between regions; a tendency that results from both the neo-liberalisation of the global economy and from a regionalist response. Regional identity, an idea at least implicitly indicating some cohesiveness or social integration in a region, has become a major buzzword. It has been particularly identified in the EU’s cohesion policy as an important element for regional development. In spite of their increasing importance in social life and academic debates, regions, borders and identities are often studied separately, but this paper aims at theorising and illustrating their meanings in an integrated conceptual framework and uses the sub-state regions in Europe, and particularly in Finland, as concrete examples. Regions are conceptualised here as processes that gain their boundaries, symbolisms and institutions in the process of institutionalisation. Through this process a region becomes established, gains its status in the broader regional structure and may become a significant unit for regional identification or for a purported regional identity. This process is based on a division of labour, which accentuates the power of regional elites in the institutionalisation processes.

The United States and Multilateral Security Cooperation in Northeast Asia

Recently, multilateralism has become a major buzz word in Asian international relations. Nations in region are hopeful that multilateral negotiations will serve as a basis for managing region's problems. The argument here is that hopes that United States will commit such arrangements are misplaced. Given both America's history and current U.S. national interests, United States is likely make only a partial commitment multilateralism. Key words: U.S. foreign policy in East Asia, Multilateral Security - East Asia, Northeast Asia Introduction In recent years, East Asian political leaders and scholars have increasingly turned their attention possibilities for multilateral security cooperation in region. Most frequently, they have pointed Six-Party Talks joined by United States, China, South Korea, North Korea, Japan, and Russia as evidence that major powers with interests in Pacific can work together resolve differences while promoting stability and peace. Despite genuine success that these talks have achieved, however, there is not as much cause for optimism about long-term prospects for multilateral security cooperation in region. There are many problems that efforts establish such cooperation in East Asia are likely confront. But in this article I will focus most specifically on United States and likely course of American foreign policy. I argue that U.S. participation in future multilateral arrangements is by no means guaranteed. Moreover, when America's history and interests in region are considered, such participation appears rather unlikely. America's use of Six-Party Talks for dismantling Democratic People's Republic of Korea's (DPRK) nuclear program does not represent an enduring commitment multilateral security so much as it deploys rubric of multilateralism in pursuit of a specific American objective. Before examining why multilateral security cooperation seems so unlikely for United States, it is necessary understand exactly what term entails. At its most basic level, according John Ruggie, multilateralism coordinates behavior among three or more states on basis of generalized principles of conduct. He adds that multilateral security regimes would also include the norm of non-aggression, uniform rules for use of sanctions deter or permit aggression, and collectively sanctioned procedures for implementing them.1 In such regimes, even if there are disparities in economic, political, or military power among participating states, all members still generally expect have roughly equal measures of influence in them and share equally in their benefits. Robert Keohane, for instance, has explained that multilateral arrangements are expected by their members to yield a rough equivalent of benefits in aggregate over time.2 Participation in arrangements that fully meet these criteria has not historically been norm of U.S. foreign policy, especially in East Asia. Moreover, although all of important players in East Asia share certain common security objectives, United States has many priorities that do not match those of other states. Multilateralism and American Foreign Policy: A Historical Perspective Origins of Unilateralism Because of powerful role that United States played in forging new multilateral institutions during final years of World War II and early years of cold war, many people wrongly assume that there is a broad affinity for multilateralism in America's general approach world. In reality, however, American diplomacy during cold war was a relatively brief, limited departure from more longstanding trends. Isolation and unilateralism have historically been just as significant components of U.S. foreign policy as multilateralism has. Moreover, it is important recognize that America's eagerness form multilateral security and economic arrangements during years after World War II took place in an international context in which United States enjoyed what historian Melvyn Leffler has called a preponderance of power. …

Diagnosis or drug?

Pharmacogenomics and personalized medicine have become major buzzwords in public health and healthcare. They relate to technologies such as genomics, proteomics, microarrays and sophisticated immunoassays, which have the potential to deliver medicine tailored to an individual's biology or the specific pathology of their disease. The first products to help physicians base a treatment on the molecular profile of a patient are already on the market and, in addition to the potential improvements in healthcare, the possibility of a growing diagnostics industry in the wake of personalized medicine has captured the imagination of the biotechnology industry, investors and industry observers. An increasing number of companies are offering molecular diagnostic tests to help tailor medicine to an individual's biology. In 1998, the anti‐cancer drug Herceptin®, developed by Genentech (San Francisco, CA, USA), was the first personalized treatment of breast cancer to reach the market. It is highly effective, but only in patients whose cancer cells express the HER2 receptor, for which molecular diagnostic tests are available. In 2003, Roche (Basel, Switzerland) introduced its AmpliChip® CYP450 product, which analyses variations in the CYP2D6 and CYP2C19 genes that are members of the cytochrome P450 oxidase system involved in metabolizing approximately 25% of all prescription drugs. On the basis of the test, which requires a PCR amplifier, a microfluidics station and scanning equipment, physicians can classify a patient as a poor, intermediate, extensive or ultrarapid metabolizer, and thus prescribe the correct drug and dosage. In 2004, Genomic Health (Redwood City, CA, USA) introduced its Oncotype DX™ assay, which analyses the expression levels of 21 genes in an effort to predict the probability of recurrence in early‐stage invasive breast cancer. The information helps physicians to decide whether or not to prescribe chemotherapy. Similarly, the AlloMap® test, developed by XDx (Brisbane, CA, USA), analyses the expression levels …

Implementation of a low‐cost Interim 21CFR11 compliance solution for laboratory environments

In the recent past, compliance with 21CFR11 has become a major buzzword within the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries. While commercial solutions exist, implementation and validation are expensive and cumbersome. Frequent implementation of new features via point releases further complicates purchasing decisions by making it difficult to weigh the risk of non-compliance against the costs of too frequent upgrades. This presentation discusses a low-cost interim solution to the problem. While this solution does not address 100% of the issues raised by 21CFR11, it does implement and validate: (1) computer system security; (2) backup and restore ability on the electronic records store; and (3) an automated audit trail mechanism that captures the date, time and user identification whenever electronic records are created, modified or deleted. When coupled with enhanced procedural controls, this solution provides an acceptable level of compliance at extremely low cost.

MP3: The Beat Bytes Back

MP3 has become the first major buzzword of the 21st Century. Love it or hate it, MP3 is here to stay, but will it lead to the death of the popular music as we know it, or will it revitalise an industry that many believed was already in a state of decline. The early evidence suggests that it is unlikely that MP3 will cause the demise of either the record industry or of copyright law, but it is certainly the case that MP3 and its associated technologies will have a transformative effect upon both. This article explores the debates that MP3 has given rise to and evaluates the role that law is playing in shaping the future of contemporary popular music.

Retail Insights ‐ Summer 1998

It seems that one of the major buzzwords of the late 1990s is “virtual”we have heard of virtual bookshops, virtual universities, virtual shopping malls, virtual offices and, of course, virtual reality. So is the virtual world simply a passing fad or is it something which is truly changing the way we live our lives and the way we work and communicate? Despite the proliferation of virtuality it is difficult to find a common definition of “virtual” which is applicable in all of its uses. We do believe, however, that the concept has real value when addressing the subject of organizational development; and as a concept it is not so much about managing in the sense of planning, controlling, directing and organizing, but more concerned with the notion of continuous or institutionalized change. This implies not management but a process which is both self‐regulatory and selfperpetuating.

The role of corridors in conservation: Solution or bandwagon?

Corridors are currently a major buzzword in conservation biology and landscape ecology. These linear landscape features may perform numerous functions, but it is their role in facilitating movement of fauna that has attracted much recent debate. The database supporting the idea of corridors acting as faunal conduits is remarkably small, and few studies have actually demonstrated that movement along corridors is important for any given species. Such data are very difficult to obtain, and conservation biologists are thus faced with the problem of whether to recommend the allocation of resources to corridors on the assumption that they may be important.