Transformation through Inclusive Innovation: Literature Review and Commentary

With this Technical Note, the Independent Science for Development Council (ISDC) seeks to stimulate novel, thoughtful action by CGIAR leaders and researchers that embeds inclusive practices and behaviors in agri-food systems research. Based on a literature review and expert consultations, ISDC finds that concepts and practices of inclusive innovation are emergent and recommends that CGIAR pursue an inclusivity transition in a learning-while-doing mode. Readers are encouraged to: (1) Consider the Reflection Towards Action at the end of Sections 5-8 and find opportunities to discuss within your team, group, or committee. (2) Use the lens of inclusion to vet new and existing mechanisms supplying evidence to decision processes, such as proposal review, monitoring plans, process and performance evaluation, and others. (3) Draw on the ideas presented in this Note for formulation, reconfiguration, or implementation of frameworks that put CGIAR's 2030 strategy into effect (e.g., partner engagement; portfolio performance management; capacity strengthening)

Um modelo para a extração de conceitos e estabelecimento de contextos em sistemas baseados em conhecimento

Tese (doutorado) - Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, Centro Tecnológico. Programa de Pós-Graduação em Engenharia de ProduçãoSistemas de Recuperação de Informação normalmente trabalham com tecnologias baseadas em palavras-chave. Embora, tais sistemas atinjam resultados satisfatórios, eles não são aptos a responder consultas mais complexas elaboradas por usuários. Para isto, existem os Sistemas Baseados em Conhecimento, os quais utilizam-se de ontologias para a representação do conhecimento embutido nos textos. As técnicas mais avançadas de construção de ontologias atualmente baseiam-se na participação de três atores: o engenheiro de conhecimento, o especialista do domínio e o analista de sistemas. Este trabalho dispende tempo, haja vista os numerosos estudos que devem ser feitos para determinar quais elementos devem participar da base de conhecimento e como eles se inter-relacionam. Desta forma, utilizar sistemas computacionais que, ao menos, agilizem este trabalho é fundamental para a criação de sistemas para o mercado. Este trabalho apresenta um modelo que permite que a representação do conhecimento seja feita diretamente pelo computador, necessitando de intervenção mínima, ou até nenhuma, do usuário humano, ampliando a abrangência de domínios que um sistema pode manter, tornando-o mais eficiente e de fácil utilização

Professional Publics/Private Citizens: Human Rights NGOs and the Sponsoring of Public Activism

This dissertation examines the role of human rights Non Governmental Organizations (NGOs) in sponsoring public deliberation and activism. Activists who take part in an NGO’s campaigns encounter a system of genres that aligns their human rights literacies and discourse with the NGO’s ideological and organizational structure. The genres that activists use thus play a powerful socializing role, placing the discourse of activists within a complex context of organizational discourse that not only embodies specific human rights exigencies, but also specific organizational rationales for addressing those exigencies. Human rights NGOs, while often reflecting an ideology of a common, unified voice for human rights, are in fact heterogeneous networks of discursive agents that are linked together through complex interdiscursive exchanges. I argue that these rhetorical exchanges reflect a set of mediating rhetorical strategies that NGOs employ to translate their professional advocacy into terms and genres accessible to their membership and to their public activists. This analysis is developed from a case study of the organizational structure and discursive communities of Amnesty International (AI) and the influence of Amnesty‘s advocacy structures and techniques on the NGOs and social movements that lobby for human rights. Chapters one and two analyze the problem of discursive agency in discussions of global and transnational civil society, aligning critical discussions of the development of global public opinion with critiques of the growing professionalism of human rights NGOs. In chapter three, I trace the relationship of AI’s professional genres to the international institutions of human rights policy and law. Chapter four examines the activist genre system of Amnesty International and the role of professional discourse plays in framing opportunities for the activism of Amnesty’s members. I then turn in chapter five to an analysis of the multi-modal genres and web genres that AI has utilized to construct public awareness of its campaigns. Chapter six concludes the study by tracing out the implications of this analysis for theories of the public sphere and global civil society. I argue that genre analysis provides a means for understanding the social contexts, discursive agencies, and embodied literacies of contemporary public discourse

Across Systems: Preventing, Countering, and Defusing Violent Extremism—a Discussion of Strategy, Policy, Practice, and Theory

This paper explores today’s landscape of violent conflict in the context of the now 15-year-old “War on Terror” and its defining trait of strengthened, nimble, and networked violent extremist non-state militant groups. Through an exploration of primarily United Nations and United States strategies, policies, and programming the concepts of Countering Violent Extremism and Preventing Violent Extremism are melded into a discussion of the shifting frameworks and broadening notions of what it takes to create human security. This paper is particularly concerned with how the traditionally at odds fields of Counter Terrorism, Military Security, Development Assistance, and Peacebuilding practice are co-thinking about how to create security in the world. Drawing on secondary research material from governments, intergovernmental agencies, and development assistance and peacebuilding practioners and practitioner organizations, this paper endeavors to paint a picture of how sub-national, national, sub-regional, regional, and international state and civil society communities are all necessary to build peace in todays’ multi-layered crisis and conflict social ecosystems. Keeping a social systems framework in mind this paper endeavors to describe the importance of confronting marginalization, fragility, loss of dignity and identity, and group and individual grievance. It also endeavors to describe sources of hope enmeshed within community resilience and ownership of security in an integrated social, economic, and political way. This paper contains a set of guiding questions to examine how non-state violent extremist groups are motivated and build power, but its overarching research question is more concerned with the possibility of negative dissonance between international frameworks of how to defuse (not to be confused with diffuse!) violent extremism more generally. This paper concludes that any dissonance is likely to be more political than programmatic but that this makes it no less important to pay attention to. Lastly, this paper tries to engage with the above concepts through the author’s own story and voice of growing up over the past 15 years and watching this “War on Terror” unfold in such terrifying ways. I do my best to make the case that we all, everyone one of us, need to own security in the ways we personally best can for the good of all life, human and otherwise, on Planet Earth

CoPe_it! - Supporting collaboration, enhancing learning

CoPe_it! is an innovative web-based tool that complies with collaborative practices to provide members of communities with the appropriate means to manage individual and collective knowledge, and collaborate towards the solution of diverse issues. In this article, we demonstrate its applicability in tackling data-intensive collaboration settings, which are characterized by big volumes of complex and interrelated data obtained from diverse sources, and knowledge expressed by diverse participants. We focus on issues related to the representation of such settings and the proposed approach towards making it easier for participants to follow the evolution of a collaboration, comprehend it in its entirety, and meaningfully aggregate data in order to resolve the issue under consideration

Knowledge visualizations: a tool to achieve optimized operational decision making and data integration

The overabundance of data created by modern information systems (IS) has led to a breakdown in cognitive decision-making. Without authoritative source data, commanders’ decision-making processes are hindered as they attempt to paint an accurate shared operational picture (SOP). Further impeding the decision-making process is the lack of proper interface interaction to provide a visualization that aids in the extraction of the most relevant and accurate data. Utilizing the DSS to present visualizations based on OLAP cube integrated data allow decision-makers to rapidly glean information and build their situation awareness (SA). This yields a competitive advantage to the organization while in garrison or in combat. Additionally, OLAP cube data integration enables analysis to be performed on an organization’s data-flows. This analysis is used to identify the critical path of data throughout the organization. Linking a decision-maker to the authoritative data along this critical path eliminates the many decision layers in a hierarchal command structure that can introduce latency or error into the decision-making process. Furthermore, the organization has an integrated SOP from which to rapidly build SA, and make effective and efficient decisions.http://archive.org/details/knowledgevisuali1094545877Outstanding ThesisOutstanding ThesisMajor, United States Marine CorpsCaptain, United States Marine CorpsApproved for public release; distribution is unlimited

The missing puzzle piece in translation pedagogy: Adaptive and elastic competence

The study of effective and innovative translation pedagogy has been drawing increasing attention in recent years, but the training of adaptive and elastic competence is somewhat overlooked. This study investigates the importance of strategic translation through the theoretical lens of Verschueren's (1998) Adaptation Theory. The analysis is based on a case study of the 2001 Sino-American Hainan airplane collision crisis, and in particular the pivotal role of different versions of the American "two sorries" letter in facilitating the resolution. It highlights the need to incorporate language adaptation and the interests of all parties in a translation. This study argues that translation is a negotiable and adaptable process, influenced by both overt and covert components, and that this process should be reflected in translation education by foste1ing the ability to get behind the text to cater to the interests of all interested parties: that is, to cultivate adaptive and elastic competence. The findings suggest that a realistic, balanced, and robust account of adaptation and elasticity is needed for effective translation education

Environmentally Related Urbanization and Violence Potential

In contrast to historical examples in which urban increase is accompanied by the pull factors of wealth and development, post-industrialized sub-Saharan African urbanization patterns are characterized by a lack of economic growth, confounding experts. Simultaneously, African conflict scholars have observed a major geographical shift in African conflict onset, moving out of rural regions and into urban centers. Recognizing the effects of increasing climate variability and threatened agricultural livelihoods, this study hypothesizes perceived economic advantage in cities induces human movement with potential for over-urbanization dynamics that exacerbate civil unrest. To investigate, a Panarchy theoretical framework of nested adaptive cycles is used to construct a comprehensive multi-scalar model of environmental vulnerability, assessing topdown state-level factors as well as bottom-up sub-urban forces culminating at the municipal scale. A sixteen year time-series regression analysis (2000-2015) integrates these influences, confirming national composite measures of environmental vulnerability/adaptability and rural urban demographic transformation correlate strongly with a state’s likelihood of urban political violence. An out-of-sample validation comparing a geostatistical analysis of the model to observed georeferenced urban violence suggests the model is robust. The resulting state classifications of environmentally related urbanization and violence potential guide qualitative analysis. On this basis, identified patterns in governance, resources and human agency are consolidated into a framework of urban environmental vulnerability, revealing regime duration/consolidation, specifically at a threshold of fifteen years, and democratic polity reduce the likelihood of urban violence. Importantly, the structures, processes and norms of governance define the distribution of resource-driven national capacity—sharing resiliency at all scales or conserving it for the sake of the state, with major implications for household capacity and the likelihood of adaptive mobility. Additionally, democracies inherently encourage competition and contestation processes critical to adaptation and reorganization without dismantling the entire system; however, in “younger” democracies these dynamics typically align with higher mobility and lower levels of urban violence reflecting “healthy” function. Autocracies, on the other hand, stifle these processes and risk becoming too rigid, achieving urban stability where governance is well-established, but limiting overall adaptability to environmental impact and increasing vulnerability to crisis as revealed in destabilized autocracies where urban violence is most extreme