Reconciliation through Description: Using Metadata to Realize the Vision of the National Research Centre for Truth and Reconciliation

PostprintThis articlewill discuss the history and context surrounding the document collection and statement gathering mandates of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada and the challenges the newly established National Research Centre for Truth and Reconciliation will face in applying the Commission’s metadata set in the realization of its vision. By working respectfully with Indigenous people through the implementation of Indigenous knowledge best practices and the application of contrasting traditional/nontraditional, archival/user-generated, and institutional/Indigenous descriptive elements, the Centre will attempt to create a “living archive” and facilitate Indigenous participation, collaboration, and ultimately, the process of reconciliation.https://www-tandfonline-com.uwinnipeg.idm.oclc.org/doi/full/10.1080/01639374.2015.100871

The Reifying Center Archive Process: Sustainable Writing Center Archive Practice for Praxis, Research, And Continuity

A structured process to capture, sort, digitize, and curate a researchable history of a writing center has the potential to improve writing center administration with greater recall at both the local and global level. Maintaining a standard of practice from year to year with effective training, stable institutional partnerships, and evidence-based practice is already challenging. This is compounded by the continual erosion of accumulated memory and context for numerous administrative choices through the regular departure of tutors and administrators, posing further challenge to consistent practice, pedagogy, and policy. To preserve the programmatic memory informing countless decisions, relationships, and administrative expediencies, writing center administrators must establish a regular process to curate a researchable archive of the history produced by a center’s operation. Failure to do so risks the atrophy of critical memory every time a staff member leaves the writing center. Adoption of the proposed Reifying Center Archive Process, or ReCAP, provides a robust archive for programmatic recall. Creating an archive will enable writing center administrators to delve into the history of how a center has operated in the past; as a result, the center is better insulated against operational missteps or retreading in the future. Beyond the clear benefit to individual centers, the eventual standardization of such an archive process has long-term potential to improve historically challenging efforts to collect and synthesize the work done in centers across multiple institutions at the regional, national, and global levels. To promote the necessity of the ReCAP, this dissertation: reviews the scholarship that establishes the necessity of an archive-supported writing center; presents a case study of a large public university writing center; prescribes the literature-based archivist practices that will best sustain a writing center’s materials for future research; outlines the ReCAP as a tool to digitally present the physical holdings of the writing center’s archive; establishes a new standard for the organization of writing center materials within the ReCAP; and finally, tests these proposed practices by creating a prototype ReCAP archive for the case study center, the Georgia State University Writing Studio

adobe medicus 2008 6 November-December

https://digitalrepository.unm.edu/adobe-medicus/1063/thumbnail.jp

Colorado water, July/August 2016

The newsletter is devoted to highlighting water research and activities at CSU and throughout Colorado.Newsletter of the Colorado Water Center. Theme: Water data

The quality factor in patent systems

In this paper, Bruegel senior Fellow Bruno van Pottelsberghe develops a methodology to compare the quality of examination services in different patent offices. Quality is defined as the extent to which patent offices comply with their patentability conditions in a transparent way. The methodology consists of a two-layer analytical framework encompassing 'legal standards' and their 'operational design', which includes several interdependent components that affect the stringency and transparency of the filtering process.

The unavoidable costs of ethnicity : a review of evidence on health costs

This report was commissioned by the Advisory Committee on Resource Allocation (ACRA), and prepared by the Centre for Health Services Studies (CHESS) and the Centre for Research in Ethnic Relations (CRER) at the University of Warwick. The NHS Executive does not necessarily assent to the factual accuracy of the report, nor necessarily share the opinions and recommendations of the authors. The study reviews the evidence concerning the degree to which the presence of populations of minority ethnic origin was associated with ‘unavoidable additional costs’ in health service delivery. While local health authorities retail full autonomy in their use of funds allocated to them under the Hospital and Community Health Services formula, the size of that budget is governed by a set of weightings applied to their population, to allow for factors known to influence levels of need, and the costs of providing services. The study began by considering the definitions used in describing ‘ethnicity’ and ethnic groups in relevant medical and social policy literature. It is clear that no fixed set of terms can be adopted, and that flexibility is required to respond to social changes. The terms used in the 1991 Census, with additions to allow for local and contemporary developments, provide a suitable baseline but require additional information on religion language and migration history for clinical and health service delivery planning. There have been notable developments in health service strategy to meet the needs of black and minority ethnic groups which have been encouraged by good practice guidelines and local initiatives. Together with research into epidemiology and ethnic monitoring of services, these have enlarged understanding of the impact of diversity. A conceptual model is developed which explores the potential for such diversity to lead to variations in the cost of providing health services to a multi-ethnic population. The research team reviewed the existing published evidence relating to ethnic health and disease treatment in medical, social science, academic and practitioner literature, using conventional techniques. Additional evidence was located through trawls of ‘grey’ literature in specialist collections, and through contacting all English health districts with a request for information. A number of authorities and trusts provided written and oral evidence, and a bibliography of key materials is provided. Key issues considered include the need for and use of, interpreter and translation services, the incidence of ‘ethnically-specific’ disease, and variations in the prevalence and cost of treating ‘common’ conditions in minority ethnic populations. Sources of variation are discussed, and a ‘scoping’ approach adopted to explore the extent to which these variations could be adequately modelled. It is clear that while some additional costs can be identified, and seen to be unavoidable, there are other areas where the presence of minority populations may lead to lessened pressures on budgets, or where provision of ‘ethnic-specific’ facilities may be alternative to existing needs. The literature provides a range of estimates which can be used in a modelling exercise, but is deficient in many respects, particularly in terms of precise costs associated with procedure and conditions, or in associating precise and consistent categories of ethnic group with epidemiological and operational service provision data. Certain other activities require funding to set them up, and may not be directly related to population size. There is considerable variation in the approaches adopted by different health authorities, and many services are provided by agencies not funded by NHS budgets. The study was completed before the announcement of proposed changes in health service commissioning which may have other implications for ethnic diversity. The presence of minorities is associated with the need to provide additional services in respect of interpreting and translation, and the media of communication. In order to achieve clinical effectiveness, a range of advocacy support facilities or alternative models of provision seem to be desirable. Ethnic diversity requires adaptation and additional evidence in order to inform processes of consultation and commissioning. Minority populations do create demands for certain additional specific clinical services not required by the bulk of the majority population: it is not yet clear to what extent the reverse can be stated since research on ‘under-use’ is less well developed. Some variations in levels of need, particularly those relating to established clinical difference in susceptibility or deprivation, are already incorporated in funding formulae although it is not clear how far the indicators adequately reflect these factors. Costs are not necessarily simply related to the size of minority populations. The provision of services to meet minority needs is not always a reflection of their presence, but has frequently depended upon the provision of additional specific funds. There is a consensus that the NHS research and development strategy should accept the need for more work to establish the actual levels of need and usage of service by ethnic minority groups, and that effort should be made to use and improve the growing collection of relevant information through ethnic monitoring activities. A variety of modelling techniques are suggested, and can be shown to have the potential to provide practical guidance to future policy in the field. Current data availability at a national or regional scale is inadequate to provide estimates of the ‘additional costs of ethnicity’ but locally collected data and the existence of relevant policy initiatives suggest that a focused study in selected districts would provide sufficiently robust information to provide reliable estimates. The review has demonstrated that there are costs associated with the presence of minority ethnic groups in the population which can be shown to be unavoidable and additional, but that others are either ‘desirable’ or ‘alternative’. It would be wrong to assume that all cost pressures of this nature are in the same direction. Our study has drawn attention to deficiencies in data collection and budgeting which may hinder investigation of the effectiveness of the service in general. The process of drawing attention to ethnic minority needs itself leads to developments in services which are functional and desirable for the majority population

Tax research techniques

https://egrove.olemiss.edu/aicpa_guides/1569/thumbnail.jp

Origins of Modern Data Analysis Linked to the Beginnings and Early Development of Computer Science and Information Engineering

The history of data analysis that is addressed here is underpinned by two themes, -- those of tabular data analysis, and the analysis of collected heterogeneous data. "Exploratory data analysis" is taken as the heuristic approach that begins with data and information and seeks underlying explanation for what is observed or measured. I also cover some of the evolving context of research and applications, including scholarly publishing, technology transfer and the economic relationship of the university to society.Comment: 26 page

Advanced therapy medicinal products : new strategies for clinical applications of cell and gene therapy

Advanced therapy medicinal products (ATMPs) have a massive potential to address existing unmet medical needs. Specifically, gene therapy medicinal products (GTMPs) may potentially provide cure for several genetic diseases. Despite much research conducted in this field, only a modest number of products are approved and available. This thesis intends to develop an end-to-end understanding of ATMPs, identifying regulatory and patient access hurdles on gene therapy use In Chapter 1, broad research conducted in this field over the last few decades is explored as well as different clinical applications investigated worldwide. These are based on diverse strategies that range from direct gene replacement or addition to more complex pathways such as specific gene editing or RNA targeting. Important safety risks, limited efficacy, manufacturing hurdles, or ethical conflicts may represent challenges in the success of a candidate GTMP. During the development process, it is fundamental to take such aspects into account and establish overcoming strategies. Then, the current European legal framework of ATMPs is reviewed and an overview of the clinical applications for approved and investigational GTMPs is provided. In Europe, the ATMP regulation was fully implemented in 2009 and, at this point, the Committee for Advanced Therapies was created as a dedicated group of specialists to evaluate medicinal products requiring specific expertise in this area. In Chapter 2, major objections, issues, or concerns raised during the Marketing Authorization Application (MAA) for GTMPs between 2009 and 2017 were identified. During the first few years following CAT establishment, quality issues were often identified as major deficiencies, whereas issues at the nonclinical level appeared to be less frequent. Clinical efficacy and safety issues appeared to have a major role in unsuccessful MAA outcome for GTMPs. Most deficiencies were addressed through clarification during the MAA review or in post-marketing settings. The MAA procedure for GTMPs is complex and it is anticipated that continuous MAA submissions will further enhance the experience of both regulators and applicants, reducing the attrition rate for approval. Despite having a positive Marketing Authorization, this does not mean that these products are being used in clinical practice. In Chapter 3, a full set of hurdles potentially preventing patient access to Gene Therapies is identified based on the most recently available literature. A review of the literature using a systematic approach in two distinct databases was performed by identifying relevant, peerreviewed publications, between 2012 and 2018. Seven major topics were identified as potential patient access hurdles, namely affordability, assessment of value, development of therapy, ethical/social factors, evidence generation, operational implementation and regulatory hurdles. From these, twenty-five additional subthemes were further identified. The most frequently mentioned obstacle in the literature is related to the affordability aspect especially focusing on high cost of therapy (84%) and therapy payment/reimbursement (51%). Importantly, the evidence generation focusing on limited trial outcomes (81%) seems to be a strong obstacle in patient access to these therapies. In Chapter 4, a global discussion on the results obtained in chapter 2 and 3 is presented and summarized in the context of the current body of evidence, as well as the current GTMP landscape. A growing number of Gene Therapies are expected to be developed and made available to patients and health care professionals. This thesis contributed to understanding all hurdles, in a complete and integrated fashion, so that strategies are timely established to ensure gene therapy’s benefits are provided to patients and to the society