Participation¿why bother?: The views of Black and Minority Ethnic mental health service users on participation in the NHS in Bradford. Report of a community research process undertaken by the International Centre for Participation Studies, University of Bradford and Sharing Voices (Bradford).

YesThe International Centre for Participation Studies and Sharing Voices Bradford (for information on these organisations, see Appendices 3 and 4) maintain that participation is an important part of a healthy democracy, with benefits for all. However, participation can be anything from empowering to tokenistic, and must be critically examined if we are to understand how to use it effectively. This paper considers the contribution of participation to improved service delivery in the health service. For beneficiaries, participation can be about ownership and responsibility for the services we use, as well as rights and the chance to express what we want from them. For service providers, participation is widely recognised as an effective way of tailoring services to the needs of the different communities they serve. The NHS and other service providers have made great strides in developing mechanisms for participation by service users. However, these do not always reach all sections of the community. Many individuals feel sceptical about getting involved, unconvinced that their contribution could make a real difference. Through the Participation ¿ Why Bother? workshops, we set out to explore these feelings, to reflect on perceived barriers and identify changes that might help overcome them. The aim was not to look at the substance of service delivery issues, but to try and work out how the process of involving people in decision-making in the NHS could be improved, to make it easier for voices from Black and Minority Ethnic (BME) communities to be heard.Bradford District Care Trust; South and West PCT; City tPC

Listening Talk. An experience of academic-practitioner dialogue in Bradford district: Second systematisation of learning (2007-2012)

YesIn human societies there will always be differences of views and interests. But the reality today is that we are all interdependent and have to coexist on this small planet. Therefore, the only sensible and intelligent way of resolving differences and clashes of interests, whether between individuals or nations, is through dialogue. The promotion of a culture of dialogue and nonviolence for the future of mankind is thus an important task of the international community. (His Holiness the Dalai Lama, in a speech to the “Forum 2000″ Conference, Prague, Czech Republic, September 4, 1997

Economic issues in distributed computing

textOn the Internet, one of the essential characteristics of electronic commerce is the integration of large-scale computer networks and business practices. Commercial servers are connected through open and complex communication technologies, and online consumers access the services with virtually unpredictable behavior. Both of them as well as the e-Commerce infrastructure are vulnerable to cyber attacks. Among the various network security problems, the Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) attack is a unique example to illustrate the risk of commercial network applications. Using a massive junk traffic, literally anyone on the Internet can launch a DDoS attack to flood and shutdown an eCommerce website. Cooperative technological solutions for Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) attacks are already available, yet organizations in the best position to implement them lack incentive to do so, and the victims of DDoS attacks cannot find effective methods to motivate the organizations. Chapter 1 discusses two components of the technological solutions to DDoS attacks: cooperative filtering and cooperative traffic smoothing by caching, and then analyzes the broken incentive chain in each of these technological solutions. As a remedy, I propose usage-based pricing and Capacity Provision Networks, which enable victims to disseminate enough incentive along attack paths to stimulate cooperation against DDoS attacks. Chapter 2 addresses possible Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) attacks toward the wireless Internet including the Wireless Extended Internet, the Wireless Portal Network, and the Wireless Ad Hoc network. I propose a conceptual model for defending against DDoS attacks on the wireless Internet, which incorporates both cooperative technological solutions and economic incentive mechanisms built on usage-based fees. Cost-effectiveness is also addressed through an illustrative implementation scheme using Policy Based Networking (PBN). By investigating both technological and economic difficulties in defense of DDoS attacks which have plagued the wired Internet, our aim here is to foster further development of wireless Internet infrastructure as a more secure and efficient platform for mobile commerce. To avoid centralized resources and performance bottlenecks, online peer-to-peer communities and online social network have become increasingly popular. In particular, the recent boost of online peer-to-peer communities has led to exponential growth in sharing of user-contributed content which has brought profound changes to business and economic practices. Understanding the dynamics and sustainability of such peer-to-peer communities has important implications for business managers. In Chapter 3, I explore the structure of online sharing communities from a dynamic process perspective. I build an evolutionary game model to capture the dynamics of online peer-to-peer communities. Using online music sharing data collected from one of the IRC Channels for over five years, I empirically investigate the model which underlies the dynamics of the music sharing community. Our empirical results show strong support for the evolutionary process of the community. I find that the two major parties in the community, namely sharers and downloaders, are influencing each other in their dynamics of evolvement in the community. These dynamics reveal the mechanism through which peer-to-peer communities sustain and thrive in a constant changing environment.Information, Risk, and Operations Management (IROM

Adverse events related to coordination between primary and secondary health care services in Norway

Master's thesis in Health and social sciencesAt present, nearly 25 percent of all patients experience some variety of adverse event during the life cycle of their patient experience in a hospital admission (Kable, et al. 2008). It is critical to effectively gain a comprehensive understanding of the types, frequencies, causes and consequences of adverse events related to coordination of care between primary and specialized health care services in Norway, in order to effective prevent future adverse events. This research seeks to determine the primary characterizations of adverse events, as they relate to patient transfers between care providers, as well as to identify details and additional areas for research associated with these characterizations. The research was accomplished through review of adverse event reports using a developed taxonomy to appropriately sort and present event occurrences. Within the findings were a number of significant results, including a higher propensity for errors associated with improper or inadequate communication, caused by multiple causal factors. In utilizing a number of existing taxonomic structures to sort, evaluate and classify adverse events, it became apparent that there is no existing taxonomy that is fully suited to apply to patient handovers occurring between primary and specialized health care providers in Norway, resulting in the need to develop one. Additionally, resulting data supported a need for further research and development of best-practice defensive barriers to mitigate hazards within patient handovers and care transfers, to better protect against multifactorial risks associated with typical adverse events

Benchmarking and Validation of Cascading Failure Analysis Tools

Cascading failure in electric power systems is a complicated problem for which a variety of models, software tools, and analytical tools have been proposed but are difficult to verify. Benchmarking and validation are necessary to understand how closely a particular modeling method corresponds to reality, what engineering conclusions may be drawn from a particular tool, and what improvements need to be made to the tool in order to reach valid conclusions. The community needs to develop the test cases tailored to cascading that are central to practical benchmarking and validation. In this paper, the IEEE PES working group on cascading failure reviews and synthesizes how benchmarking and validation can be done for cascading failure analysis, summarizes and reviews the cascading test cases that are available to the international community, and makes recommendations for improving the state of the art

Do Easy Cases Make Bad Law? Antitrust Innovations or Missed Opportunities in United States v. Microsoft

Much has been said and written regarding the legal and economic merits of U.S. v. Microsoft and the practicality of antitrust in high technology industries. The focus here is what this prominent case says about the role of economics in general, and in particular, "post-Chicago" approaches. Is antitrust economics and law on a progressive path, producing more refined analyses of industrial practices? Or is the path more like that of a pendulum, with doctrines coming back in style that had once fallen out of fashion? U.S. v. Microsoft suggests that the path of antitrust may be cyclical rather than progressive. The crux of the argument is that in U.S. v. Microsoft , the three aspects of an economically sound antitrust case, theory, evidence, and remedy, were largely independent of, if not inconsistent with, each other. Roughly speaking, the theory focused on monopolizing application platforms, the evidence spoke to monopolizing browser distribution, and the remedy treated applications themselves as the competitive lynchpin. The plaintiffs' success at trial suggests, in contrast to the older aphorism that , "hard cases make bad law," that this "easy case" may be responsible for "bad law," where an "easy case" is one where the victory at trial was so compelling and "bad law" refers to an ultimately reduced role for economics as an antitrust policy guidepost. These observations need not imply that Microsoft's conduct was benign. Isolating the theory, evidence, and remedy from the case, one can construct three potential rationales for finding Microsoft's actions anticompetitive. We also identify three additional stories based on tying with transaction costs, reputation-preserving predatory pricing, and intellectual property. That none of these stories were told suggests that U.S. v. Microsoft signals a return to pre-Chicago antitrust. Those preferring a less constraining role for economics in antitrust courts may agree with this assessment without finding it disagreeable. Moreover, there may be no better alternative, legislation or regulation need not lead to better outcomes. It may offer small comfort to observe that antitrust is not the only policy area in which progress in economic theory may ironically lead to regress in its importance.

Examining the impact of a novel integrated care pathway for faecal incontinence on patients and within a National Health Service organisation

Background: Faecal incontinence (FI) is a common healthcare problem. The management of FI patients is widely reported as being disjointed. In response to this and governmental guidance, an integrated care pathway (ICP) was implemented at a local NHS trust. Aim: To assess how the implementation of a community-based ICP affects the key stakeholders and to observe the process of organisational change within the trust using normalization process theory (NPT). Methods: Mixed methodology combining semi-structured interviews of key stakeholders, narrative interviews with patients, focus group discussion, observational work and clinical quantitative data. Qualitative data was analysed using thematic analysis and the Framework Method, with NPT being used to structure the qualitative findings. Results: Key facilitators to the implementation of the ICP included clinical leadership, staff commitment, teamwork, adequate clinical capacity and good clinical outcomes. There was a delay in the implementation due to lack of organisational management input and key stakeholder time From a patient perspective, benefits were identified such as improved access to the service and symptom improvement. Conclusions: An ICP for FI could provide an answer to the long-standing issues that have blighted continence services. Patients report satisfaction based on improved access to the service alongside good clinical outcomes

Life beyond ritual? Preserving the shamanic performance arts in South Korea today.

An overview of the remaining topic teams: Innovative Research, Scholarship and Creative Activities, Campus Climate, and Faculty Roles and Structure