Single Largest Investment Research Articles

Communicating overpopulation to a global audience: Disney’s Family Planning (1968)

Abstract Family Planning (1968), a short, animated film featuring Donald Duck, was translated into at least twenty-four languages and viewed in the span of two years by nearly 1.4 million people around the world. Commissioned by the Rockefeller’s Population Council and expensively produced by Disney, the movie represents the international family planning industry’s single largest investment in a media object. It has since been perceived as largely effective in achieving its goal of promoting contraception to culturally diverse audiences. Using an unusually rich collection of archival records and other previously neglected sources, we demonstrate how Family Planning failed to connect with local viewerships. Our historical analysis recovers the Population Council’s homogenizing and infantilizing view of the global poor and critiques of this view that emanated from the Global South – not just with the benefit of hindsight but at the time. We conclude that the Rockefeller–Disney collaboration was ill-suited for communicating to a heterogeneous, global audience, and that a misplaced optimism in animation as a universal language all but guaranteed failure.

RADx-UP Testing Core: Access to COVID-19 Diagnostics in Community-Engaged Research with Underserved Populations.

Research on the COVID-19 pandemic revealed a disproportionate burden of COVID-19 infection and death among underserved populations and exposed low rates of SARS-CoV-2 testing in these communities. A landmark National Institutes of Health (NIH) funding initiative, the Rapid Acceleration of Diagnostics-Underserved Populations (RADx-UP) program, was developed to address the research gap in understanding the adoption of COVID-19 testing in underserved populations. This program is the single largest investment in health disparities and community-engaged research in the history of the NIH. The RADx-UP Testing Core (TC) provides community-based investigators with essential scientific expertise and guidance on COVID-19 diagnostics. This commentary describes the first 2 years of the TC's experience, highlighting the challenges faced and insights gained to safely and effectively deploy large-scale diagnostics for community-initiated research in underserved populations during a pandemic. The success of RADx-UP shows that community-based research to increase access and uptake of testing among underserved populations can be accomplished during a pandemic with tools, resources, and multidisciplinary expertise provided by a centralized testing-specific coordinating center. We developed adaptive tools to support individual testing strategies and frameworks for these diverse studies and ensured continuous monitoring of testing strategies and use of study data. In a rapidly evolving setting of tremendous uncertainty, the TC provided essential and real-time technical expertise to support safe, effective, and adaptive testing. The lessons learned go beyond this pandemic and can serve as a framework for rapid deployment of testing in response to future crises, especially when populations are affected inequitably.

For Most People their House is Their Single Largest Investment

For Most People their House is Their Single Largest Investment

Canada recommits to basic science

Canada is on track for a significant investment in science and research, according to the federal budget proposal announced Feb. 27. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government plans to commit an additional 4 billion Canadian dollars (3.1 billion U.S. dollars) for research programs over the next five years. Of that $4 billion, $925 million is earmarked for the country’s three main research-granting councils in what the government says is “the single largest investment in fundamental research in Canadian history.” The Natural Sciences & Engineering Research Council, Canadian Institutes of Health Research, and Social Sciences & Humanities Research Council will each get a 25% boost in funding phased in over three years, after which their funding will stabilize. The budget also calls for stable funding for the Canada Foundation for Innovation (CFI), which pays for equipment and facilities at institutions across the country. CFI funding has fluctuated since it was established in

Critical Success Factors for Integrated Library System Implementation in Academic Libraries: A Qualitative Study

Integrated library system (ILS) supports the entire business operations of an academic library from acquiring and processing library resources to making them available to user communities and preserving them for future use. As libraries’ needs evolve, there is a pressing demand for libraries to migrate from one generation of ILS to the next. This complex migration process is often the single largest investment in both budget and personnel involvement, but its success is by no means guaranteed. We draw upon enterprise resource planning (ERP) and critical success factors (CSFs) literature to identify the most salient CSFs for ILS migration success through a qualitative study with four cases. We identified that top management involvement, vendor support, user involvement, selection process, project team competence, project management and tracking, interdepartmental communication, data analysis and conversion, user education and training, and user emotion management are the CSFs that determine a migration project success. 
 Keywords: Integrated library systems, information systems, library automation, critical success factors, and academic libraries.

Factors Influencing Real Estate Agents Selection: A Survey of Real Estate Customers in Kumasi Metropolis, Ghana

Real estate is a special type of asset that almost everyone desire to own. It is a complex and highly differentiated asset, with no two units precisely identical in all respects. Real estate investment involves huge sum of money often beyond the reach of a single individual. For most estate owners, real estate is probably their single largest channel investment. It is therefore necessary that one makes the right choice on whom to handle ones single largest financial investment. This study attempt to investigate into factors that real estate customers consider in selecting their estate agents in Kumasi Metropolis, Ghana for the purpose of creating better customer satisfaction in real estate agency market. The data collection instrument adopted for this study was self-administered questionnaires. The study sample consisted of two hundred and three (203) real estate consumers in Kumasi metropolis. A survey of 203 real estate consumers revealed the factors influencing the selection of real estate agents in the study area. The study found out that real estate consumers are mostly concern about agent’s reputation when deciding on the choice of whom to handle their probably single largest investment. The study also found that 75 representing 37% of the study population employs the services of real estate agents in order to maximize returns on their investment