Ready or Not? Protecting the Public's Health From Diseases, Disasters, and Bioterrorism, 2008

Examines ten indicators to assess progress in state readiness to respond to bioterrorism and other public health emergencies. Evaluates the federal government's and hospitals' preparedness. Makes suggestions for funding, restructuring, and other reforms

NIOSH Emergency Preparedness and Response Program: Evidence Package for 2007-2017

This document contains materials to demonstrate the relevance and impact of the Emergency Preparedness and Response Program\u2019s work in the areas of Emergency Responder Health Monitoring and Surveillance (ERHMS), anthrax preparedness and response capabilities, and other emergency preparedness activities and responses

Natural Disasters, Nuclear Disasters, and Global Governance

This chapter uses the analytical framework of transnational legal ordering (TLO) developed by Halliday and Shaffer and applies it to the area of law and disasters. In contrast to the increasingly transnational legal nature of social ordering highlighted by Halliday and Shaffer, it argues that the emergence of transnational regulatory networks and cross-border principles or policies in the area of disaster management has been uneven and incomplete. Although there are many factors that help to explain why the law/disasters area has resisted the trend toward “transnationalization,” two stand out. One is the relative dearth of national laws and policies governing disaster management, which means that unlike other areas in which TLOs have emerged, there is an inadequate foundation of nation-specific laws and norms on which to build a transnational edifice. The second, closely related reason is that governments tend to “go it alone” when it comes to disaster management. Disasters can be difficult to predict, can carry an extraordinarily high price tag, can be geographically specific, and can affect people who lack the political clout to demand an official response. Rather than treating disaster management as an area of reciprocal risk in which the needs and interests of various countries are interdependent, therefore, nations generally manage disasters on an ad hoc, individual basi

Natural Disasters, Nuclear Disasters, and Global Governance

This chapter uses the analytical framework of transnational legal ordering (TLO) developed by Halliday and Shaffer and applies it to the area of law and disasters. In contrast to the increasingly transnational legal nature of social ordering highlighted by Halliday and Shaffer, it argues that the emergence of transnational regulatory networks and cross-border principles or policies in the area of disaster management has been uneven and incomplete. Although there are many factors that help to explain why the law/disasters area has resisted the trend toward “transnationalization,” two stand out. One is the relative dearth of national laws and policies governing disaster management, which means that unlike other areas in which TLOs have emerged, there is an inadequate foundation of nation-specific laws and norms on which to build a transnational edifice. The second, closely related reason is that governments tend to “go it alone” when it comes to disaster management. Disasters can be difficult to predict, can carry an extraordinarily high price tag, can be geographically specific, and can affect people who lack the political clout to demand an official response. Rather than treating disaster management as an area of reciprocal risk in which the needs and interests of various countries are interdependent, therefore, nations generally manage disasters on an ad hoc, individual basi

Bodies of Seeing: A video ethnography of academic x-ray image interpretation training and professional vision in undergraduate radiology and radiography education

This thesis reports on a UK-based video ethnography of academic x-ray image interpretation training across two undergraduate courses in radiology and radiography. By studying the teaching and learning practices of the classroom, I initially explore the professional vision of x-ray image interpretation and how its relation to normal radiographic anatomy founds the practice of being ‘critical’. This criticality accomplishes a faculty of perceptual norms that is coded and organised and also, therefore, of a specific radiological vision. Professionals’ commitment to the cognitivist rhetoric of ‘looking at’/‘pattern recognition’ builds this critical perception, a perception that deepens in organisation when professionals endorse a ‘systematic approach’ that mediates matter-of-fact thoroughness and offers a helpful critical commentary towards the image. In what follows, I explore how x-ray image interpretation is constituted in case presentations. During training, x-ray images are treated with suspicion and as misleading and are aligned with a commitment to discursive contexts of ‘missed abnormality’, ‘interpretive risk’, and ‘technical error’. The image is subsequently constructed as ambiguous and that what is shown cannot be taken at face value. This interconnects with reenacting ideals around ‘seeing clearly’ that are explained through the teaching practices and material world of the academic setting and how, if misinterpretation is established, the ambiguity of the image is reduced by embodied gestures and technoscientific knowledge. By making this correction, the ambiguous image is reenacted and the misinterpretation of image content is explained. To conclude, I highlight how the professional vision of academic x-ray image interpretation prepares students for the workplace, shapes the classificatory interpretation of ab(normal) anatomy, manages ambiguity through embodied expectations and bodily norms, and cultivates body-machine relations

Organizational Conflict Within the Department of Homeland Security

This thesis seeks to explain why the Department of Homeland Security had difficulty fulfilling its roles when it was formed, specifically its role as grant administrator. Role theory surmises that conflict arises from unclear expectations, conflicting expectations, and too many roles. This study utilized various public testimonies, legislation, and other government documents to examine how the missions of the twenty-two agencies that were merged together to make up DHS changed. Even though DHS has changed continually over the five years since its existence most employees seem to be clear on the mission of the organization in which they work. However, there is still a considerable amount of conflict resulting from the agencies being forced together in such a frankensteinian way

Data infrastructures and digital labour : the case of teleradiology

In this thesis, I investigate the effects of digitalisation in teleradiology, the practice of outsourcing radiology diagnosis, through an analysis of the role of infrastructures that enable the transfer, storage, and processing of digital medical data. Consisting of standards, code, protocols and hardware, these infrastructures contribute to the making of complex supply chains that intervene into existing labour processes and produce interdependent relations among radiologists, patients, data engineers, and auxiliary workers. My analysis focuses on three key infrastructures that facilitate teleradiology: Picture Archiving and Communication Systems (PACS), the Digital Imaging and Communication in Medicine (DICOM) standard, and the Health Level 7 (HL7) standard. PACS is a system of four interconnected components: imaging hardware, a secure network, viewing stations for reading images, and data storage facilities. All of these components use DICOM, which specifies data formats and network protocols for the transfer of data within PACS. HL7 is a standard that defines data structures for the purposes of transfer between medical information systems. My research draws on fieldwork in teleradiology companies in Sydney, Australia, and Bangalore, India, which specialise in international outsourcing of medical imaging diagnostics and provide services for hospitals in Europe, USA, and Singapore, among others. I argue that PACS, DICOM, and HL7 establish a technopolitical context that erodes boundaries between social institutions of labour management and material infrastructures of data control. This intertwining of bureaucratic and infrastructural modes of regulation gives rise to a variety of strategies deployed by companies for maximising productivity, as well as counter-strategies of workers in leveraging mobility and qualifications to their advantage

Can Vermont Put the Nuclear Genie Back in the Bottle: A Test of Congressional Preemptive Power?

Even before the nuclear core meltdowns at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear reactors in Japan re-stoked public anxiety about nuclear energy, Vermont’s Senate, under the auspices of Vermont Act No. 160, voted to block continued operation of Vermont Yankee Nuclear Power Plant after the expiration of its forty-year operating license. This article examines whether a state can legislatively override a permit issued by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission extending the license of a power plant. The author places this question within a broader federalism context, in which states assert their sovereign rights to regulate the environment in the shadow of federal mandates. She finds persuasive the absence of an express preemption provision in the Atomic Energy Act (AEA) or language mandating the use of nuclear power, the AEA’s reservation of state authority over the generation, sale, and transmission of energy produced by nuclear power plants, and the passage of environmental laws giving states regulatory authority over some aspects of nuclear power plant operation. Additionally, the author argues that policy arguments favoring preemption, such as the need for uniformity and coordination of shared resources, superior federal resources and technical knowledge, and prevention of spillover effects do not apply in this situation; while arguments against preemption, such as preserving states as robust centers of governance and regulatory experimentation and as checks on federal government excesses and errors, and avoidance of regulatory gaps and regulatory capture, do. Even collective action problems, which arise when a state thinks solely of its own interests to the detriment of other states or the nation as a whole and often favor preemption, are weak. An argument that Vermont’s initiative may derail recent national efforts to “restart” the nuclear power industry as a way to reduce the nation’s dependence on foreign oil and its global carbon footprint also gains little traction. For these and other reasons, the author concludes that Vermont Act. No. 160 should withstand a preemption challenge

Occupational exposure of health workers to electromagnetic fields in the magnetic resonance imaging environment

Thesis (M. Tech.) -- Central University of Technology, Free State, 200