From Comparison to Collaboration: Experiments with a New Scholarly and Political Form

Society and the workplace are two factors that are important for the individual's health status. It is important that the individuals has the right skills to take care of their health. For organizations, it is important to strive for the welfare of their employees. This has proven to have a positive impact on work performance, reduced absenteeism and reduced costs for rehabilitation. In 2007, the local authorities in Umeå implemented a wellness offering for all employees working in the municipality administration. They later saw a need to assist employees who needed help getting started with new exercise habits. This study aims to examine how the participants in the "Get Started Programme", succeeded in creating lasting exercise habits , 3-4 years after completing the program. Research questions are: How have the participants increased their knowledge practically and theoretically after the programme has finished? How have the participants succeeded in creating the content of the programme in their daily lives? How do the participants assess their health compared to before they participated in the programme? Are there any beneficial factors highlighted by the participants as during the program? The study was conducted on the basis of semi-structured interviews with eight voluntary participants who previously participated in the Get Started Programme. The results show that six of the eight participants succeeded to get started with the goals for behavioral change, and still maintain a sufficient physical activity level today. Participants who do not consider themselves to have succeeded in reaching the goals they set up in the beginning of the program, point out that they have the tools needed to go on and continue the behavioral change they strive for

The Political Economy of Agrarian Change: Dinosaur or Phoenix?

In this paper I argue for the resurrection of the political economy of agrarian change (PEACH) in mainstream policy research in order to understand the deeper causes of poverty and its transformation in rural areas. I critically examine chronic poverty research and argue that in the wake of the devastating critique of PEACH theory, an unlikely combination of post-structural and methodologically individualist new development economics (NDE) theory became hegemonic in development studies throughout the 90s and shaped emergent chronic poverty methodology. As a consequence subsequent chronic poverty empirical research tended to produce results confirming post-PEACH theory - poverty caused by assets based vulnerability experience of poor people and by their exclusion from economies and societies. In order to address the possibility of poverty as a problem of inclusion into economies and societies, chronic poverty research advanced new social relational concepts in the intergenerational transmission of poverty literature (IGT) and in adverse incorporation and social exclusion research (AISE). These and other such critical oppositional thinkers endorse a dynamic, relational transformational approach, one which combines realist structural and interpretive thinking and which coheres with critical realist PEACH methodology. However, they hesitate in fully embracing PEACH concepts - such as capitalist accumulation, class relations and unfreedom - which can shed light on materialist processes of poverty. I argue that the difficulties this body of research confronts in addressing the deeper causes of poverty can be resolved by drawing on PEACH concepts together with critical realist PEACH methods, and that the pluralism that this entails enables much deeper explanations for processes of impoverishment and escape and a wider range of empowering policy responses.

The Officina Emilia Initiative:Innovative Local Actions to Support Education and Training Systems

The issue of the regeneration of skills, in particular in the light engineering industry, is addressed by Officina Emilia (henceforth OE) as a crucial one in order to re-examine the interweaving of education, innovation and local development in the SMEs production systems. The project, aimed at the education and training systems, is designed to enhance the industrial culture in order to strengthen technical and scientific education. First sponsored in 2000 by the University of Modena & Reggio Emilia (Italy), over the last years OE has gathered the support of local actors dealing with the themes of training, culture, and local development. In 2009 it opened its museolaboratorio (“workshop-museum”) in which teaching activities promote an interest in the themes of work, technologies and the socio-economic development of the territory among the students and teachers of schools of all types and levels. The involvement of class groups, of teachers and other visitors takes place through active learning practices that foster motivation and develop a sense of belonging which is likely to lead to a more profitable educational experience, both secondary and tertiary, as well as to contribute to improving career prospects. Officina Emilia proposes innovative action on a local level, allowing for the implementation of effective teaching practices as well as the broadening and consolidation of best practices which might support a society-wide trend towards maintaining a high demand for a better quality of education and the ability to provide it. Ten years after the beginning of the initiative, with this paper we intend to open up the discussion on the various research issues and on the actions undertaken, focusing on the analytical tools and the main critical areas in the further implementation of the Officina Emilia initiative.Analysis of Education; Education Policy; Regional Development Policies; Innovation

Designing transition paths for the diffusion of sustainable system innovations. A new potential role for design in transition management?

Copyright @ 2008 Umberto AllemandiIt is a shared opinion that the transition towards sustainability will be a continuous and articulated learning process, which will require radical changes on multiple levels (social, cultural, institutional and technological). It is also shared that, given the nature and the dimension of those changes, a system discontinuity is needed, and that therefore it is necessary to act on a system innovation level. The challenge now is to understand how it is possible to facilitate and support the introduction and diffusion of such innovations. Bringing together insights from both Design for sustainability and Transition management literatures, the paper puts forward a model, called Transition model of evolutionary co-design for sustainable (product-service) system innovations, aimed at facilitating and speed-up the process of designing, experimentation, niche introduction and branching of sustainable such innovations

How do older adults communicate with the UK public sector? : Comparing online communication channels

Copyright and all rights therein are retained by the authors. All persons copying this information are expected to adhere to the terms and conditions invoked by each author's copyright. These works may not be re-posted without the explicit permission of the copyright holdersGovernments around the world are moving away from conventional ways of face to face communication to a more digital approach when delivering services to their citizens. This includes using the internet as both a communication tool and an information source to improve efficiency in their services. However, not all the citizens are making use of these changes, especially the older adults. Therefore, this research-in-progress paper aims to investigate and identify the factors that encourage older adults to continue using a particular communication channel when interacting with the government. In addition, future directions, limitations and conclusions are also provided within this paper. The implication of this study to academia is viewed to be the development of an extended framework that allows an understanding of continuance intention of online communication tools usage. Equally, this framework will benefit industry by informing providers of communication channels to the government to be aware of the factors that influence older adults’ choices when interacting with the government. For policymakers this research will identify the communication channels that promote interaction with citizensFinal Published versio

Invest to Save: Report and Recommendations of the NSF-DELOS Working Group on Digital Archiving and Preservation

Digital archiving and preservation are important areas for research and development, but there is no agreed upon set of priorities or coherent plan for research in this area. Research projects in this area tend to be small and driven by particular institutional problems or concerns. As a consequence, proposed solutions from experimental projects and prototypes tend not to scale to millions of digital objects, nor do the results from disparate projects readily build on each other. It is also unclear whether it is worthwhile to seek general solutions or whether different strategies are needed for different types of digital objects and collections. The lack of coordination in both research and development means that there are some areas where researchers are reinventing the wheel while other areas are neglected. Digital archiving and preservation is an area that will benefit from an exercise in analysis, priority setting, and planning for future research. The WG aims to survey current research activities, identify gaps, and develop a white paper proposing future research directions in the area of digital preservation. Some of the potential areas for research include repository architectures and inter-operability among digital archives; automated tools for capture, ingest, and normalization of digital objects; and harmonization of preservation formats and metadata. There can also be opportunities for development of commercial products in the areas of mass storage systems, repositories and repository management systems, and data management software and tools.

A systems approach to evaluate One Health initiatives

Challenges calling for integrated approaches to health, such as the One Health (OH) approach, typically arise from the intertwined spheres of humans, animals, and ecosystems constituting their environment. Initiatives addressing such wicked problems commonly consist of complex structures and dynamics. As a result of the EU COST Action (TD 1404) “Network for Evaluation of One Health” (NEOH), we propose an evaluation framework anchored in systems theory to address the intrinsic complexity of OH initiatives and regard them as subsystems of the context within which they operate. Typically, they intend to influence a system with a view to improve human, animal, and environmental health. The NEOH evaluation framework consists of four overarching elements, namely: (1) the definition of the initiative and its context, (2) the description of the theory of change with an assessment of expected and unexpected outcomes, (3) the process evaluation of operational and supporting infrastructures (the “OH-ness”), and (4) an assessment of the association(s) between the process evaluation and the outcomes produced. It relies on a mixed methods approach by combining a descriptive and qualitative assessment with a semi-quantitative scoring for the evaluation of the degree and structural balance of “OH-ness” (summarised in an OH-index and OH-ratio, respectively) and conventional metrics for different outcomes in a multi-criteria-decision-analysis. Here, we focus on the methodology for Elements (1) and (3) including ready-to-use Microsoft Excel spreadsheets for the assessment of the “OH-ness”. We also provide an overview of Element (2), and refer to the NEOH handbook for further details, also regarding Element (4) (http://neoh.onehealthglobal.net). The presented approach helps researchers, practitioners, and evaluators to conceptualise and conduct evaluations of integrated approaches to health and facilitates comparison and learning across different OH activities thereby facilitating decisions on resource allocation. The application of the framework has been described in eight case studies in the same Frontiers research topic and provides first data on OH-index and OH-ratio, which is an important step towards their validation and the creation of a dataset for future benchmarking, and to demonstrate under which circumstances OH initiatives provide added value compared to disciplinary or conventional health initiatives

Future Supply Chains Enabled by Continuous Processing-Opportunities Challenges May 20-21 2014 Continuous Manufacturing Symposium.

This paper examines the opportunities and challenges facing the pharmaceutical industry in moving to a primarily "continuous processing"-based supply chain. The current predominantly "large batch" and centralized manufacturing system designed for the "blockbuster" drug has driven a slow-paced, inventory heavy operating model that is increasingly regarded as inflexible and unsustainable. Indeed, new markets and the rapidly evolving technology landscape will drive more product variety, shorter product life-cycles, and smaller drug volumes, which will exacerbate an already unsustainable economic model. Future supply chains will be required to enhance affordability and availability for patients and healthcare providers alike despite the increased product complexity. In this more challenging supply scenario, we examine the potential for a more pull driven, near real-time demand-based supply chain, utilizing continuous processing where appropriate as a key element of a more "flow-through" operating model. In this discussion paper on future supply chain models underpinned by developments in the continuous manufacture of pharmaceuticals, we have set out; The paper recognizes that although current batch operational performance in pharma is far from optimal and not necessarily an appropriate end-state benchmark for batch technology, the adoption of continuous supply chain operating models underpinned by continuous production processing, as full or hybrid solutions in selected product supply chains, can support industry transformations to deliver right-first-time quality at substantially lower inventory profiles. © 2015 The Authors. Journal of Pharmaceutical Sciences published by Wiley Periodicals, Inc. and the American Pharmacists Association.The authors would like to acknowledge the following for valuable comments and inputs during the preparation of this white paper; Professor Lee Cronin (Glasgow University, UK), Patricia Hurter (Vertex), Mark Buswell (GSK), and Chris Price (GSK). We would also like to acknowledge the support and funding from the UK's Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council's (EPSRC) Centre for Innovative Manufacturing in Continuous Manufacturing and Crystallisation (CMAC), and the UK's Department of Business Innovation and Skill's (BIS) Advanced Manufacturing Supply Chain Initiative (AMSCI) funded Project Remedies.This is the final version of the article. It first appeared from Wiley via http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/jps.2434

Integrating contested aspirations, processes and policy: development as hanging in, stepping up and stepping out

There are continuing disagreements regarding aspirations and processes in development and appropriate policies for promoting these. This paper proposes a dialogue around a conceptualisation of development as involving three complementary processes: ‘hanging in’, ‘stepping up’ and ‘stepping out’. It argues that these can describe different types of structural change operating at different scales and affecting national and sub-national societies and economies, different sectors within these economies, and people’s evolving livelihoods. The simplicity of this conceptualisation and its strong theoretical, empirical and experiential content make it a powerful framework both for inter-disciplinary, inter-sectoral, multi-scale analysis of dynamic development processes, and for structuring dialogue about contested aspirations, assumptions, modalities and constraints among development analysts and stakeholders with different interests and paradigms