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The development of responsibility in product designers
Investigations of ethics in product design have been limited. This paper offers an insight into designer's perceptions of responsibilities over three levels of expertise; first year design students, graduating design students, and design practitioners. The paper presents the use of some novel methods including triad and card sorting to uncover perceptions of designers responsibilities. The findings give rise to categories of development including knowledge development, ethical development, and role context development. The result is a descriptive model of the development of responsibility in product designers
The enemy has passed through the gate: insider threats, the dark triad, and the challenges around security
Purpose
– The purpose of this paper is to highlight the potential role that the so-called “toxic triangle” (Padilla et al., 2007) can play in undermining the processes around effectiveness. It is the interaction between leaders, organisational members, and the environmental context in which those interactions occur that has the potential to generate dysfunctional behaviours and processes. The paper seeks to set out a set of issues that would seem to be worthy of further consideration within the Journal and which deal with the relationships between organisational effectiveness and the threats from insiders.<p></p>
Design/methodology/approach
– The paper adopts a systems approach to the threats from insiders and the manner in which it impacts on organisation effectiveness. The ultimate goal of the paper is to stimulate further debate and discussion around the issues.<p></p>
Findings
– The paper adds to the discussions around effectiveness by highlighting how senior managers can create the conditions in which failure can occur through the erosion of controls, poor decision making, and the creation of a culture that has the potential to generate failure. Within this setting, insiders can serve to trigger a series of failures by their actions and for which the controls in place are either ineffective or have been by-passed as a result of insider knowledge.<p></p>
Research limitations/implications
– The issues raised in this paper need to be tested empirically as a means of providing a clear evidence base in support of their relationships with the generation of organisational ineffectiveness.<p></p>
Practical implications
– The paper aims to raise awareness and stimulate thinking by practising managers around the role that the “toxic triangle” of issues can play in creating the conditions by which organisations can incubate the potential for crisis.<p></p>
Originality/value
– The paper seeks to bring together a disparate body of published work within the context of “organisational effectiveness” and sets out a series of dark characteristics that organisations need to consider if they are to avoid failure. The paper argues the case that effectiveness can be a fragile construct and that the mechanisms that generate failure also need to be actively considered when discussing what effectiveness means in practice.<p></p>
Peirce's sign theory as an open-source R package.
Throughout Peirce’s writing, we witness his developing vision of a machine that scientists will eventually be able to create. Nadin (2010) raised the question:Why do computer scientists continue to ignore Peirce’s sign theory? A review of the literature on Peirce’s theory and the semiotics machine reveals that many authors discussed the machine;however, they donot differentiate between a physical computer machine and its software. This paper discusses the problematic issues involved in converting Peirce’s theory into a programming language, machine and software application. We demonstrate this challenge by introducing Peirce’s sign theory as a software application that runs under an open-source R environmen
Population pharmacokinetic and pharmacodynamic properties of intramuscular quinine in Tanzanian children with severe Falciparum malaria.
Although artesunate is clearly superior, parenteral quinine is still used widely for the treatment of severe malaria. A loading-dose regimen has been recommended for 30 years but is still often not used. A population pharmacokinetic study was conducted with 75 Tanzanian children aged 4 months to 8 years with severe malaria who received quinine intramuscularly; 69 patients received a loading dose of 20 mg quinine dihydrochloride (salt)/kg of body weight. Twenty-one patients had plasma quinine concentrations detectable at baseline. A zero-order absorption model with one-compartment disposition pharmacokinetics described the data adequately. Body weight was the only significant covariate and was implemented as an allometric function on clearance and volume parameters. Population pharmacokinetic parameter estimates (and percent relative standard errors [%RSE]) of elimination clearance, central volume of distribution, and duration of zero-order absorption were 0.977 liters/h (6.50%), 16.7 liters (6.39%), and 1.42 h (21.5%), respectively, for a typical patient weighing 11 kg. Quinine exposure was reduced at lower body weights after standard weight-based dosing; there was 18% less exposure over 24 h in patients weighing 5 kg than in those weighing 25 kg. Maximum plasma concentrations after the loading dose were unaffected by body weight. There was no evidence of dose-related drug toxicity with the loading dosing regimen. Intramuscular quinine is rapidly and reliably absorbed in children with severe falciparum malaria. Based on these pharmacokinetic data, a loading dose of 20 mg salt/kg is recommended, provided that no loading dose was administered within 24 h and no routine dose was administered within 12 h of admission. (This study has been registered with Current Controlled Trials under registration number ISRCTN 50258054.)
What role for health in the new Commission? EPC Policy Brief 4 February 2020
The Juncker Presidency came to an end two months ago,
giving experts the chance to analyse the achievements
of EU action in the field of health over the past five years
and speculate on what Europe’s health policy will look
like in the future. Despite little space for manoeuvre,
the past European Commission mandate did gain some
significant wins. Nevertheless, more efforts are needed
if Europe is to tackle the unprecedented challenges
affecting people’s health, such as demographic changes,
environmental degradation and the rapidly changing
world of work
Confirmatory factor analysis of the Adult Asperger Assessment: The association of symptom domains within a clinical population
Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is a behaviourally defined disorder characterised by impairments in three domains of social interaction, communication, and repetitive, stereotyped behaviours and activities. Proposed changes to diagnostic criteria suggest that the diagnostic triad may no longer fit as the best way to conceptualise ASD, and that social and communication impairments should be considered as a single domain. The aim of this study was to examine the structure of symptom domains within the Adult Asperger Assessment (AAA; Baron-Cohen, Wheelwright, Robinson, & Woodbury-Smith, 2005), a diagnostic tool for high functioning adults. As theoretical models already exist, confirmatory factor analysis was used to examine data from a clinical population of adults (n = 153) diagnosed with Asperger Syndrome (AS) and High Functioning Autism (HFA). Confirmatory factor analysis was used to fit different models based on the structure proposed by the authors of the AAA, the traditional triad and the newly proposed diagnostic dyad. Analysis suggested that none of the tested models were a good fit on the AAA dataset. However, it did highlight very high correlations between social and communication factors (r > 0.9) within unmodified models. The results of the analysis provide tentative support for the move towards considering ASD as a dyad of 'social-communication' impairments and repetitive/restricted interests behaviours and activities, rather than the traditional triad
MEASURING THE PERFORMANCE OF XYZ GOVERNMENT AGENCY WITH THE BASIS OF MALCOLM BALDRIGE METHOD
Government agency is collective designation which includes work unit and organizational unit of ministries or departments, non-departmental government institution, secretariat of state high institution, and other central and regional government agencies; including state-owned
enterprises, state-owned legal entities, and regional-owned enterprises. One of the very effective models in improving the quality of performance of an agency is by using the
Malcolm Baldrige Criteria for Performance Excellence. This research was conducted with the aim of: 1) measuring the performance of XYZ Government Agency so that their performance consistency can be monitored and 2) finding out the opportunities and obstacles in measuring the performance of XYZ Government Agency by using the Malcolm Baldrige Quality Award (MBNQA) criteria. The type of this research is descriptive research that uses XYZ Government Agency as the research object. The measurement conducted in this research applies the Malcolm Baldrige method. The findings showed that the criteria with the highest percentage score is operation (39.8%) and the lowest percentage score is strategy (35.1%). The total score is 377.5 from a maximum score of 1000 points. It showed that the performance of XYZ Government Agency is at the level of “initial growth” (scale point of 376-475
Exponential Random Graph Modeling for Complex Brain Networks
Exponential random graph models (ERGMs), also known as p* models, have been
utilized extensively in the social science literature to study complex networks
and how their global structure depends on underlying structural components.
However, the literature on their use in biological networks (especially brain
networks) has remained sparse. Descriptive models based on a specific feature
of the graph (clustering coefficient, degree distribution, etc.) have dominated
connectivity research in neuroscience. Corresponding generative models have
been developed to reproduce one of these features. However, the complexity
inherent in whole-brain network data necessitates the development and use of
tools that allow the systematic exploration of several features simultaneously
and how they interact to form the global network architecture. ERGMs provide a
statistically principled approach to the assessment of how a set of interacting
local brain network features gives rise to the global structure. We illustrate
the utility of ERGMs for modeling, analyzing, and simulating complex
whole-brain networks with network data from normal subjects. We also provide a
foundation for the selection of important local features through the
implementation and assessment of three selection approaches: a traditional
p-value based backward selection approach, an information criterion approach
(AIC), and a graphical goodness of fit (GOF) approach. The graphical GOF
approach serves as the best method given the scientific interest in being able
to capture and reproduce the structure of fitted brain networks
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