State of the Artist: Challenges to the New York State Arts & Entertainment Industry and its Workforce

[Excerpt] In 2009, with support from Empire State Development (ESD), the Cornell University ILR School published its first report on the state of the New York arts and entertainment (A&E) workforce, Empire State’s Cultural Capital at Risk? Assessing Challenges to the Workforce and the Educational Infrastructure for New York State’s Arts and Entertainment Industry. The report analyzed a number of key characteristics of the A&E workforce across electronic media, live performing, and visual arts, identifying the most pressing issues for New York A&E workers and the support structures in place to protect their interests. The report concluded by proposing a number of questions to policymakers to be considered in future legislation. State of the Artist both updates this analysis of the State A&E workforce and analyzes trends in recent years based on comparable data presented in the 2009 report. The current report draws from government surveys, industry reports, and interviews with key stakeholders to assess the condition of the NYS A&E industry and its workforce, identifying key issues faced by workers in each sector of the industry. In addition to an extensive review of current literature, data from primary and secondary sources was analyzed to assess the state of the industry and major trends by sector. Survey data from the US Census Bureau and Department of Labor, notably from the American Community Survey (ACS), were retrieved to isolate trends in A&E workforce employment patterns, demographics, and income by occupational group. This analysis, including a conference attended by industry leaders and representatives to assess reactions to preliminary findings, served to identify current challenges facing this vital workforce to the state economy. Often left out of discussions about precarious workers, many working within the A&E industry continue to face high rates of contingent and project-based employment, low average income, and inadequate employment protections—all of which are explored here. State of the Artist concludes with a summary of public policies currently in place as well as those under consideration, providing an updated set of questions for New York policymakers

Medical data processing and analysis for remote health and activities monitoring

Recent developments in sensor technology, wearable computing, Internet of Things (IoT), and wireless communication have given rise to research in ubiquitous healthcare and remote monitoring of human\u2019s health and activities. Health monitoring systems involve processing and analysis of data retrieved from smartphones, smart watches, smart bracelets, as well as various sensors and wearable devices. Such systems enable continuous monitoring of patients psychological and health conditions by sensing and transmitting measurements such as heart rate, electrocardiogram, body temperature, respiratory rate, chest sounds, or blood pressure. Pervasive healthcare, as a relevant application domain in this context, aims at revolutionizing the delivery of medical services through a medical assistive environment and facilitates the independent living of patients. In this chapter, we discuss (1) data collection, fusion, ownership and privacy issues; (2) models, technologies and solutions for medical data processing and analysis; (3) big medical data analytics for remote health monitoring; (4) research challenges and opportunities in medical data analytics; (5) examples of case studies and practical solutions

A Priority-based Fair Queuing (PFQ) Model for Wireless Healthcare System

Healthcare is a very active research area, primarily due to the increase in the elderly population that leads to increasing number of emergency situations that require urgent actions. In recent years some of wireless networked medical devices were equipped with different sensors to measure and report on vital signs of patient remotely. The most important sensors are Heart Beat Rate (ECG), Pressure and Glucose sensors. However, the strict requirements and real-time nature of medical applications dictate the extreme importance and need for appropriate Quality of Service (QoS), fast and accurate delivery of a patient’s measurements in reliable e-Health ecosystem. As the elderly age and older adult population is increasing (65 years and above) due to the advancement in medicine and medical care in the last two decades; high QoS and reliable e-health ecosystem has become a major challenge in Healthcare especially for patients who require continuous monitoring and attention. Nevertheless, predictions have indicated that elderly population will be approximately 2 billion in developing countries by 2050 where availability of medical staff shall be unable to cope with this growth and emergency cases that need immediate intervention. On the other side, limitations in communication networks capacity, congestions and the humongous increase of devices, applications and IOT using the available communication networks add extra layer of challenges on E-health ecosystem such as time constraints, quality of measurements and signals reaching healthcare centres. Hence this research has tackled the delay and jitter parameters in E-health M2M wireless communication and succeeded in reducing them in comparison to current available models. The novelty of this research has succeeded in developing a new Priority Queuing model ‘’Priority Based-Fair Queuing’’ (PFQ) where a new priority level and concept of ‘’Patient’s Health Record’’ (PHR) has been developed and integrated with the Priority Parameters (PP) values of each sensor to add a second level of priority. The results and data analysis performed on the PFQ model under different scenarios simulating real M2M E-health environment have revealed that the PFQ has outperformed the results obtained from simulating the widely used current models such as First in First Out (FIFO) and Weight Fair Queuing (WFQ). PFQ model has improved transmission of ECG sensor data by decreasing delay and jitter in emergency cases by 83.32% and 75.88% respectively in comparison to FIFO and 46.65% and 60.13% with respect to WFQ model. Similarly, in pressure sensor the improvements were 82.41% and 71.5% and 68.43% and 73.36% in comparison to FIFO and WFQ respectively. Data transmission were also improved in the Glucose sensor by 80.85% and 64.7% and 92.1% and 83.17% in comparison to FIFO and WFQ respectively. However, non-emergency cases data transmission using PFQ model was negatively impacted and scored higher rates than FIFO and WFQ since PFQ tends to give higher priority to emergency cases. Thus, a derivative from the PFQ model has been developed to create a new version namely “Priority Based-Fair Queuing-Tolerated Delay” (PFQ-TD) to balance the data transmission between emergency and non-emergency cases where tolerated delay in emergency cases has been considered. PFQ-TD has succeeded in balancing fairly this issue and reducing the total average delay and jitter of emergency and non-emergency cases in all sensors and keep them within the acceptable allowable standards. PFQ-TD has improved the overall average delay and jitter in emergency and non-emergency cases among all sensors by 41% and 84% respectively in comparison to PFQ model

Epilepsy Behav

It is a significant public health concern that epilepsy, the fourth most common neurological disorder in the United States, is generally poorly understood by both the public and those living with the condition. Lack of understanding may magnify the challenges faced by those with epilepsy, including limiting treatment opportunities, effective management of symptoms, and full participation in daily life activities. Insufficient awareness of epilepsy and appropriate seizure first aid among the public and professionals can result in insufficient treatment, inappropriate seizure response, physical restraint, social exclusion, or other negative consequences. To address the need for increased public education and awareness about epilepsy, the national Epilepsy Foundation, supported by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, has conducted yearly multifaceted public education and awareness campaigns designed to reach the broad population and targeted segments of the population including youth, young adults, racial/ethnic groups (i.e., African-, Hispanic-, and Asian-Americans), and people with epilepsy and their caregivers. Campaign channels have included traditional media, social media, and community opinion leaders and celebrity spokespersons. The key activities of these campaigns, conducted from 2001 to 2013, are summarized in this report.20152016-03-01T00:00:00Z5U58DP003832-03/DP/NCCDPHP CDC HHS/United StatesCC999999/Intramural CDC HHS/United States25726152PMC4580242868

In the Battle for Reality: Social Documentaries in the U.S.

Provides an overview of documentaries that address social justice and democracy issues, and includes case studies of successful strategic uses of social documentaries

The Meeting of Two Cultures: Public Broadcasting on the Threshold of the Digital Age

Provides a summary of discussions held in November 2007 on "Public Broadcasting: The Digital Challenge" among representatives of foundations, public broadcasting corporations and academia. Includes essays on visions for the future of public media

Saved by \u3ci\u3eLabell\u3c/i\u3e: Local Taxation of Video Streaming Services

Over the last few years, Netflix and other video streaming services have erupted to become a preeminent form of entertainment for millennials and the public at large. With traditional forms of entertainment waning, video streaming services represent a novel source of revenue for cities. Local governments currently have numerous tax approaches that may be used to cover these services. Different cities and states have taken distinctive approaches to taxing these services. Certain jurisdictions tax them in line with traditional pay-TV providers under utility taxes, while other jurisdictions tax them under sales or amusement taxes. This Note considers these different approaches, with a focus on Labell v. City of Chicago, a 2018 case upholding Chicago’s application of its amusement tax to Netflix and other video streaming services. Recognizing the various constraints that state and federal laws place on local taxation, this Note outlines the benefits and drawbacks of different approaches and highlights the challenges that cities should consider when issuing interpretive rulings to bring video streaming services into their tax bases. This Note suggests that other cities should draw on Labell and follow Chicago’s lead in taxing these services under existing amusement tax laws where possible, given the easier procedural hurdles, strong theoretical backing, and recent supporting precedent from the U.S. Supreme Court