Stepping Back Research Articles

Stepping back from Data and AI for Good – current trends and ways forward

Various ‘Data for Good’ and ‘AI for Good’ initiatives have emerged in recent years to promote and organise efforts to use new computational techniques to solve societal problems. The initiatives exercise ongoing influence on how the capabilities of computational techniques are understood as vehicles of social and political change. This paper analyses the development of the initiatives from a rhetorical slogan into a research program that understands itself as a ‘field’ of applications. It discusses recent academic literature on the topic to show a problematic entanglement between the promotion of initiatives and prescriptions of what ‘good’ ought to be. In contrast, we call researchers to take a practical and analytical step back. The paper provides a framework for future research by calling for descriptive research on the composition of the initiatives and critical research that draws from broader social science debates on computational techniques. The empirical part of the paper provides first steps towards this direction by positioning Data and AI for Good initiatives as part of a single continuum and situating it within a historical trajectory that has its immediate precursor in ICT for Development initiatives.

Supervising the senior medical resident: Entrusting the role, supporting the tasks.

Postgraduate competency-based medical education has been implemented with programmatic assessment that relies on entrustment-based ratings. Yet, in less procedurally oriented specialties such as internal medicine, the relationship between entrustment and supervision remains unclear. We undertook the current study to address how internal medicine supervisors conceptualise entrusting senior medical residents while supervising them on the acute care wards. Guided by constructivist grounded theory, we interviewed 19 physicians who regularly supervised senior internal medicine residents on inpatient wards at three Canadian universities. We developed a theoretical model through iterative cycles of data collection and analysis using a constant comparative process. On the internal medicine ward, the senior resident role is viewed as a fundamentally managerial and rudimentary version of the supervisor's role. Supervisors come to trust their residents in the senior role through an early 'hands-on' period of assessment followed by a gradual withdrawal of support to promote independence. When considering entrustment, supervisors focused on entrusting a particular scope of the senior resident role as opposed to entrustment of individual tasks. Irrespective of the scope of the role that was entrusted, supervisors at times stepped in and stepped back to support specific tasks. Supervisors' stepping in and stepping back to support individual tasks on the acute care ward has an inconsistent relationship to their entrustment of the resident with a particular scope of the senior resident role. In this context, entrustment-based assessment would need to capture more of the holistic perspective of the supervisor's entrustment of the senior resident role. Understanding the dance of supervision, from relatively static overall support of the resident in their role, to fluidly stepping in and out for specific patient care tasks, allows us insight into the affordances of the supervisory relationship and how it may be leveraged for assessment.

Sort and Sift, Think and Shift: Let the Data Be Your Guide An Applied Approach to Working With, Learning From, and Privileging Qualitative Data

The Sort and Sift, Think and Shift qualitative data analysis approach is an iterative process where analysts dive into data to understand its content, dimensions, and properties, and then step back to assess what they have learned and to determine next steps. Researchers move from establishing an understanding of what is in the data (“Diving In”) to exploring their relationship to the data (“Stepping Back”). This process of “Diving In” and “Stepping Back” is repeated throughout analysis. To conclude, researchers arrive at an evidence-based meeting point that is a hybrid story of data content and researcher knowledge. To illustrate core tenets of Sort and Sift, Think and Shift, we analyzed three focus group transcripts from a study of postnatal care referral behavior by traditional birth attendants in Nigeria; these transcripts came from Syracuse University’s Qualitative Data Repository and were unfamiliar to the analytic team prior to this exercise. We focused on letting the data be our guide into not only the explicit purpose of the interviews, but also into the unexpected discoveries that arise when inquiring about people’s lived experiences. Situating our efforts within an Initial Learning Period, each member of the team closely read each transcript, and then identified powerful quotations that made us pause and take note. We documented what we learned from each transcript in an episode profile which contained diagrams and memos. Episode profiles were shared and discussed across the team to identify key points of interest, such as the role of faith in women’s decision-making processes related to their pregnancy and delivery preferences, and concepts of who bears what knowledge about reproductive health. Our engagement in this analytic exercise demonstrates the applicability of qualitative inquiry and Sort and Sift as flexible approaches for applied research.

Lean in, don’t step back: The views and experiences of patients and carers with severe mental illness and incurable physical conditions on palliative and end of life care

Background and Aim: People with severe mental illness (SMI) have a life expectancy of up to twenty years less than the general population and many live with incurable physical health conditions. Yet, they continue to experience barriers when trying to access palliative and end of life care (PEOLC). Little research has been carried out which includes the views and experiences of people with SMI, and this study presents first findings which include people with both SMI and an incurable condition and their carers. It aimed to seek their views, and those of their carers, on their experiences and expectations of accessing PEOLC and to understand how PEOLC for people with SMI could be improved. Methods: Semi-structured interviews were carried out with 8 participants (5 patient participants and 3 carer participants). Thematic analysis of the interview transcripts was undertaken. Findings: Four over-arching themes were developed. (1) Stigma and Prejudice – See Me, Not My Diagnosis (2) Hesitancy and Avoidance – Treading on Eggshells (3) Collaborators in Care – The Ignored Experts and (4) Connections – Leaning in, Not Stepping Back. Significance of Findings: This study presents the first accounts from the UK concerning experiences of PEOLC, barriers to access and how care can be improved, from the perspectives of patients with both a SMI and an incurable physical condition and their carers. The findings illuminate an under-researched area of clinical practice and contribute rich understandings to future service developments and innovations.

How men step back - and recover - from suicide attempts: A relational and gendered account.

Men account for three-quarters of suicide deaths in the UK, yet we know little about how at-risk men construct their experiences of moving towards - and then subsequently stepping back from - suicide, nor the part played by relational factors therein. An inductive thematic analysis was used to examine narrative interviews with eleven UK men who self-reported serious thoughts, plans and up-to and including suicide attempts in progress, but who consciously decided against carrying out an attempt. Their accounts suggest a highly social process of movements towards and away from suicide (e.g. frustrated help-seeking). Stepping back from suicide represents not a discrete issue, but a linked process in suicidality and wider recovery. Here, the use of military metaphors in particular (e.g. waging war, fighting back) highlights the gendered nature of the issue. Additionally, our article illuminates a range of social relations and forces that circulate in and around suicidality, which itself is embedded in varying forms of relationality, normativity and gendered practices.

Stepping up and stepping back as scholars of color: taking care of students and ourselves in troubling times

In this article, the authors explore what it means to be critical qualitative researchers before, during, and after the 2016 US presidential campaign and election. They reflect on their positionality as scholars of color and second-generation immigrants with commitments to marginalized communities, but also with concerns for their own everyday lives, as well as those of their families, friends, and communities. Drawing from two critical ethnographic studies, they discuss ways they had to step up to support students and ways they had to step back to take care of themselves. They suggest that during these troubling times, educational institutions and scholars have a greater responsibility to acknowledge the daily pain and fear felt by marginalized communities, and also to work with those communities in their struggles for justice and liberation.

Step back from the forest and step up to the Bonn Challenge: how a broad ecological perspective can promote successful landscape restoration

We currently face both an extinction and a biome crisis embedded in a changing climate. Many biodiverse ecosystems are being lost at far higher rates than they are being protected or ecologically restored. At the same time, natural climate solutions offer opportunities to restore biodiversity while mitigating climate change. The Bonn Challenge is a U.N. programme to restore biodiversity and mitigate climate change through restoration of the world's degraded landscapes. It provides an unprecedented chance for ecological restoration to become a linchpin tool for addressing many environmental issues. Unfortunately, the Forest and Landscape Restoration programme that underpins the Bonn Challenge, as its name suggests, remains focused on trees and forests, despite rising evidence that many non‐forest ecosystems also offer strong restoration potential for biodiversity and climate mitigation. We see a need for restoration to step back to be more inclusive of different ecosystem types and to step up to provide integrated scientific knowledge to inform large‐scale restoration. Stepping back and up will require assessments of where to restore what species, with recognition that in many landscapes multiple habitat types should be restored. In the process, trade‐offs in the delivery of different ecosystem services (e.g. carbon, biodiversity, water, albedo, livestock forage) should be clearly addressed. We recommend that biodiversity safeguards be included in policy and implemented in practice, to avoid undermining the biophysical relationships that provide ecosystem resilience to climate change. For ecological restoration to contribute to international policy goals will require integrated large‐scale science that works across biome boundaries.

Dynamics of Policymaking: Stepping Back to Leap Forward, Stepping Forward to Keep Back

AbstractWe study dynamic policymaking when today's policy agreement becomes tomorrow's status quo, agents account for the consequences of today's policies for future policy outcomes, and there is uncertainty about who will hold future political power to propose and veto future policy changes. Today's agenda setter holds back from fully exploiting present opportunities to move policy toward her ideal point whenever future proposer and veto players are likely to be alignedeitherin favor of reform or against it. Otherwise, agenda setters advance their short‐run interests. Optimal proposals can vary discontinuously and nonmonotonically with political fundamentals.

New development: Fundraising in UK charities—stepping back from the abyss

Fundraising techniques used by charities can enhance or diminish public trust. The dangers of questionable and over-aggressive fundraising practices are very real. In particular, in the UK, the ‘Olive Cooke affair’ in 2015 triggered a highlevel examination of fairly widespread dubious practices. In this article, the reflections of a key actor on the events surrounding the affair, and subsequent fallout, are examined. It is argued that this whole saga has the potential to encourage the development of a charity sector that is more trusted by the public; a sector that has stepped back from the abyss.

Why Have Improved Cook-Stove Initiatives in India Failed?

Summary An estimated 2.7 billion people cook meals on biomass-fueled brick, stone, and clay stoves. Scarcity of wood and negative impacts on health and environment have motivated efforts to design and distribute “improved” cook-stoves in developing countries. In India, adoption is limited despite massive promotion over many decades. Existing research suggests that many rural women in India do not want improved stoves, and those who do face obstacles to adoption. We step back from the many good case studies to examine the broader story of improved cook-stoves (ICs) in India. We do so by bringing together technical research of applied science and narrative critique of social science. Rather than assuming a priori that traditional stoves require replacement, we ask why Indian cook-stoves been a magnet for so much attention, why adoptions rates have remained low, and what lessons might be learned from a broad, multi-disciplinary perspective. Our approach is critical and reflexive, given our own involvement in IC efforts, and puts gender at the center. Our “big picture” review shows that the Indian chulha, for all its problems, is a remarkably successful technology which also satisfies several important household needs. Hence, targeting this device for obsolescence has profound implications that cannot be reduced to energy consumption or environmental hazards. Rural women do not prioritize ICs, but addressing their priorities requires either capital-intensive investment or challenging powerful institutions. In contrast, IC interventions are relatively cheap, decentralized, mechanical and seemingly apolitical, hence their popularity in development programs. Our review of chulha research leads us to reject both the optimism of development planners who frame such problems as technical and the antagonistic pessimism of their critics. Searching for a middle ground requires stepping back from the dogma of efforts to improve biomass cook-stoves.

On “Stepping Back and Letting Go”: The Role of Control in the Success or Failure of Social Studies Simulations

This comparative case study presents one key challenge that 2 experienced teachers faced when using simulations: control. Simulations are activities that place high demands on teachers, including the ability to anticipate pitfalls in advance, act in multiple capacities, shape the direction of the activity without unduly interfering, and to be comfortable with the structured chaos that simulations engender. Together these demands strain teachers’ restraint when it comes to control. Utilizing a series of interviews, observations, teacher visions of practice, and documents related to the simulations and context, data were collected on experienced teachers’ perspectives and practices with simulations. As this article indicates, the use of simulations requires teachers to engage in (soft) control that is applied both subtly and conservatively to maintain simulation’s dynamism, verisimilitude, and students’ productive engagement. Without such discretion, (hard) control serves as a destructive form of intervention, serving to undermine these teachers’ articulated goals. Although simulations are the instrument of this investigation, the findings presented in this article are relevant to the larger challenges social studies teachers face in their struggle with control as they aim to teach in more powerful and student-centered ways.

Document Appreciation: Some Characteristics of Legal Documents (and Talking with Students About Them)

This working paper is about legal documents. It describes (from a practitioner’s point of view) some characteristics of documents, makes observations about useful habits of mind for lawyers working with them, and offers a few thoughts for law school teachers who introduce students, in the clinic or the classroom, to these products of the trade. The idea is that we might be inspired by others who make refined objects and help novices learn to make them. Engineers, for example, study bridges. Mechanics examine engines. Artists contemplate sculptures. All step back and consider the objects’ variety, features, properties, and fabrication, and the qualities demanded of the maker. For us lawyers, talking generally about the characteristics of the products we make, whether the mention be a simple riff in a classroom discussion, a comment in the margin of a draft, or a more systematic curricular move, may help students build facility with these materials, convey a sense of the imagination and discipline needed to produce them, and reinforce important messages about practice and craft. At least that’s the suggestion here; stepping back may provide a step up, and spark deeper understanding and appreciation of the product. This paper secondarily is intended for designers interested in law and legal documents. For designers, who begin a development process with deep study of user and context, the paper provides information about legal materials and some ways lawyers understand them.

The latest information on Macrolane™: Its indications and restrictions

Hyaluronic acid has come to represent the most widely used injectable cosmetic product in the world. Brought into being by the Swedish company Q-Med, in 2007 Macrolane™ was authorized for use in France, and the year after, it received official European approval as a means of breast augmentation. Since then, however, numerous controversies pertaining to its side effects have led to its withdrawal from the worldwide breast augmentation market. The objective of this article is to carry out a review of the literature providing updated information on Macrolane™ and its recent indications. We carried out a review of the literature on the PubMed and PubMed Central data bases through use of the keywords "Macrolane™", "NASHA", "hyaluronic acid" and "soft filler", and subsequently analyzed the levels of evidence and possible biases of the different publications. The official sites of the French, English, Spanish and American scholarly organizations of plastic surgery were likewise consulted. Perusal of the notifications and recommendations for use brought out by the Q-Med company completed our study. A large majority of the available clinical series on Macrolane™ with regard to not only breast augmentation, but also its other indications, offer an insufficient level of evidence and present a number of conflicts of interest. Since April 2012 Macrolane™ has been temporarily withdrawn by its distributors from the worldwide breast augmentation market. In point of fact, Macrolane™ injections have been found to interfere with breast imaging and screening for breast cancer. As regards the latest indications for this controversial product, it is not yet possible to step back and take stock. Present-day scientific data fail to justify the market reappearance of Macrolane™ breast augmentation products. Q-Med has shown full awareness of the problem by imposing worldwide restrictions on products aimed at penis as well as breast enlargement. Larger cohorts of female patients are more necessary than ever, as is an approach based on stepping back and taking stock.

Opinion

AbstractANTHROPOLOGY AND CLIMATE CHANGE | “The Anthropological Difference: What Anthropologists Bring to Climate Change” by Merrill SingerMAXIMIZING SUCCESS FOR UNDERGRADUATE ANTHROPOLOGY MAJORS | “Mind Your Language” by Ty Matejowsky and Beatriz Reyes‐FosterOTRA ECONOMÍA AND ANTHROPOLOGY | “Ethnographic Understandings: On Creating and Learning” by Ana Inés HerasANTHROPOLOGY IN THE PUBLIC SECTOR | Sarah Ono, Heather Schacht Reisinger and Samantha L Solimeo, eds. “Stepping Back to Move Forward” by Heather Schacht ReisingerGHOST ANTHROPOLOGIES | “You Ruined My Game” by Samuel Gerald CollinsANTHROPOLOGY IN THE CLASSROOM | “Five Lessons Learned from Ethnographic Methods Classes” by Erin DeanREGARDING RELIGION | “Anti‐Evolutionism Evolving” by Daniel Martin VariscoKeywords:climate change, anthropology education, ethnography, anthropology of gaming, anthropology of religion

Structural Basis of Transcription: Backtracked RNA Polymerase II at 3.4 Angstrom Resolution

Transcribing RNA polymerases oscillate between three stable states, two of which, pre- and posttranslocated, were previously subjected to x-ray crystal structure determination. We report here the crystal structure of RNA polymerase II in the third state, the reverse translocated, or "backtracked" state. The defining feature of the backtracked structure is a binding site for the first backtracked nucleotide. This binding site is occupied in case of nucleotide misincorporation in the RNA or damage to the DNA, and is termed the "P" site because it supports proofreading. The predominant mechanism of proofreading is the excision of a dinucleotide in the presence of the elongation factor SII (TFIIS). Structure determination of a cocrystal with TFIIS reveals a rearrangement whereby cleavage of the RNA may take place.

Stepping back, looking outward: Situating transgender activism and transgender studies — Kris Hayashi, Matt Richardson, and Susan Stryker frame the movement

The objective of Sexuality Research & Social Policy’s two special issues titled The State We’re In: Locations of Coercion and Resistance in Trans Policy is to highlight research that is of immediate, practical value to transgender rights advocates and policy reformers. Dean Spade and I, the guest editors of these special issues, believe that the articles we have included accomplish that goal very well. As a whole, these pieces examine a wide range of laws, rules, and practices that constitute the state’s efforts to maintain and reinforce gender norms, as well as the effects of those efforts and the particular strategies advocates have deployed for resisting them. For the most part, these articles are very much located in the urgency of the present moment, when the consequences for many of those whose gender identity or gender expression do not fit with the conventions of the gender binary can be severe. With this roundtable, however, we step back and consider the broader outlines of the activism—usually branded in LGBT communities and, increasingly, in the popular press as the transgender rights movement—that has challenged not only the state’s enforcement of the gender binary but also its power to do so. My coeditor and I were interested in eliciting a dialogue that contemplated this movement relationally: How does this movement articulate with other movements for social justice, such as antiracist work? Can it be framed in relation to analogous struggles for gender self-determination in locations outside the United States without merely exporting the Western notion of transgender? Have the notions that gender is also racialized, that racial categories are also enforced through gender norms, influenced the policy goals of the movement and, if so, how? How might the relationship between the movement’s past, its present, and its future be understood? Finally, we wanted to take this opportunity to reflect on the relation between the newly emerging academic field of transgender studies and its central object of study—the challenges by gender-nonconforming people to traditional gender normativities. We thought it especially appropriate to consider this question here because the publication of the research presented in these two special issues of Sexuality Research & Social Policy marks a significant moment in the development of transgender studies. The last decade has witnessed the materialization of this interdisciplinary field with conferences, special issues of journals, and the publication of The Transgender Studies Reader (Stryker & Whittle, 2006) and Transgender Rights (Currah, Juang, & Minter, 2006). Despite these inroads, the place of transgender studies, especially work outside of the humanities that does not construct trans subjects as pathological, remains tenuous in academia. Indeed, one very significant facet of empirically grounded transgender studies, as is evident from the biographical statements of the authors of articles in these two special issues, is the site of its production. None of the articles in these two issues were produced by academics in tenure track positions at colleges or universities. Instead, some of the research we have featured has been produced by activists and advocates in the trenches who find time to write after they have put in their 40-plus hours of work every week. Other articles are by researchers temporarily based in grant-funded think tanks, by

Against Stepping Back: A Critique of Contextualist Approaches to the Semantic Paradoxes

A number of philosophers have argued that the key to understanding the semantic paradoxes is to recognize that truth is essentially relative to context. All of these philosophers have been motivated by the idea that once a liar sentence has been uttered we can ‘step back’ and, from the point of view of a different context, judge that the liar sentence is true. This paper argues that this ‘stepping back’ idea is a mistake that results from failing to relativize truth to context in the first place. Moreover, context-relative liar sentences, such as ‘This sentence is not true in any context’ present a paradox even after truth has been relativized to context. Nonetheless, the relativization of truth to context may offer us the means to avoid paradox, if we can justifiably deny that a sentence about a context can be true in the very context it is about.

Learning to step back can be hard on a nurse

One of the hardest things in nursingmust surely be learning to step back so that patients and clients can gain or regain control of their lives. It has been described as a process of de-nursing" and is a skill perhaps most needed in those nurses caring for particularly vulnerable groups of people. Take an older person undergoing rehabilitation following a stroke. Helping them relearn the requisite skills for daily life takes patience because it is so much easier and quicker to do things for them rather than with them. Trouble is, stepping in rather than stepping back is entirely counterproductive and hinders rehabilitation.

Baker's Helper

50 The girl who doesn't eat comes each day at the same time. You'll be filling a tray of cannoli, and there she is, crouched by the case, her face pressed against the glass. You mix sugar and ricotta, wipe your hands on your apron, all the while watching her. She is thin, almost fleshless, her olive skin drawn tight against bone. Even so, kneeling there she's Botticelli-beautiful, with dark curls and a full mouth. You don't move as her eyes take in the racks of tiramisu and macaroon?revealing what she likes by where her gaze lingers. Sometimes her breath leaves puffs on the glass and you think angel but there are fingerprints too, faint whorls you find later when you Windex the glass. Finally you ask Can I help you, miss? the way you would any one, you hope. Her eyes rise slowly. Your heart moves, resettles in a different place. Just looking, she always says, her voice soft, as if she's down the street at Bova's browsing silver. Then she stands, step ping back and running her tongue over dry lips. You turn to another customer, conscious of Jimmy in the back. When you look again, the girl is gone, until tomorrow, when she will return as Jimmy is pulling biscotti from the oven and the bak ery is filling with the nutty scent. Daily the girl who doesn't eat is thinner but beautiful as you wait, watching, until one afternoon she struggles to rise from the case and you realize she is disappearing. You see ribs through her blouse, her clavicle, the bones of her jaw. That night you lie awake in the hot still air. When you do sleep, you dream of sparrows that gather on the stone steps of the park at lunch time. In the bakery the next morning you fill a box with things she likes, one sweet after another. You begin to feel better. You hum, licking chocolate from your fingers. That's right. You will feed the girl who doesn't eat. You are ready when she comes, catching her before she kneels. Here, miss, you say, sliding the box across the counter. This is for you.

Papua New Guinea in 1999: Stepping Back from the Brink

Research Article| January 01 2000 Papua New Guinea in 1999: Stepping Back from the Brink Katherine S. Kerr Katherine S. Kerr Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Asian Survey (2000) 40 (1): 61–66. https://doi.org/10.2307/3021221 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Twitter LinkedIn Tools Icon Tools Get Permissions Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation Katherine S. Kerr; Papua New Guinea in 1999: Stepping Back from the Brink. Asian Survey 1 January 2000; 40 (1): 61–66. doi: https://doi.org/10.2307/3021221 Download citation file: Ris (Zotero) Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All ContentAsian Survey Search This content is only available via PDF. Copyright 2000 The Regents of the University of California Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.