The SmithVent Experience and a Framework for Collaborative Distributed Design and Fabrication

This paper addresses the collaborative journey of the SmithVent team, a 30-person distributed group of volunteers, who designed, fabricated, and tested a simplified and cost-efficient ventilator over a three-month period, and won the CoVent19 Challenge in July 2020. The paper first presents the SmithVent experience through a co-constructed narrative that describes the team’s approaches to collaborative distributed design and fabrication. The paper next reviews frameworks from five theoretical lenses and then details the process of extracting, synthesizing, and organizing relevant factors to create a new and emergent framework reflective of the SmithVent experience. Lastly, the paper discusses educational implications of the SmithVent experience and proposed framework, emphasizing that the team’s strategies provide a model for educational and industry settings for future collaborative and distributed design and fabrication

Corporate political activity in less developed countries:The Volta River Project in Ghana, 1958-66

The article expands existing categorisations of political and economic governance by including literature on less developed countries (LDCs). In four consecutive negotiations between the US multinational Kaisers and the US and Ghana governments in the early 1960s, it is argued that the company reached levels of influence that are at odds with existing explanations. In order to understand corporate political activities in LDCs, analysis needs to go beyond static factors (political risk) and include dynamic factors such as diplomatic relations and 'arenas of power', and consider the role of the investor's home country relative to the host economy

The Spanish flu in Uppsala, clinical and epidemiological impact of the influenza pandemic 1918–1919 on a Swedish county

Introduction and aim: The Spanish flu reached Sweden in June 1918, and at least one-third of the population (then 5.8 million) became infected. Some 34,500 persons (5.9 per 1,000 people) died from influenza during the first year of the pandemic (when acute pneumonia is included, the number of deaths rose to 7.1 per 1,000 people). In this historical look back at the pandemic, our aim was to review the epidemiological impact on the Swedish county of Uppsala, the clinical outcomes and the economic impact on the regional hospital; a relevant backgound to consider the impact of a future virulent pandemic. We also focused on how the pandemic was perceived by the medical community and by health care authorities. Methods: Health care reports, statistics, daily newspapers, medical journals, and records of patients treated for influenza at the Uppsala Academic Hospital from July 1918 to June 1919 were included in our review. Results: An influenza related mortality rate of 693 persons (5.1 per 1,000 people) was reported in the Uppsala region from 1918–1919; from July 1918 to June 1919, 384 patients were treated for influenza at the Uppsala Academic Hospital. The first wave peaked in November 1918 with case fatality rates up to 30%; a second wave peaked in April 1919 with a lower rate of mortality. Of the patients treated, a total of 66 died. Of these, 60% were 20–29 years of age, and 85% were less than 40 years old. Autopsy reports revealed pneumonia in 89% of the cases; among these, 47% were hemorrhagic, 18% were bilateral, and 45% had additional extrapulmonary organ involvement. Signs of severe viral disease were documented, but secondary bacterial disease was the primary cause of death in the majority of cases. Conclusion: The epidemiologic and pathologic results were in accordance with other publications of this time period. The costs of running the hospital doubled from 1917 to 1920 and then reversed by 45%. Today, an influenza pandemic of the same virulence would paralyze health care systems and result in extremely high financial costs and rates of mortality

Livelihood adaptation to risk: Constraints and opportunities for pastoral development in Ethiopia's afar region

Development policies in the pastoral areas of Africa assume that pastoralists are poor. Using the Afar pastoralists of Ethiopia as the focus of research this article challenges this depiction of pastoralism by exploring pastoral livelihood goals and traditional strategies for managing risk. Investment in social institutions to minimise the risk of outright destitution, sometimes at the cost of increased poverty, and significant manipulation of local markets enable the Afar to exploit a highly uncertain and marginal environment. Improved development assistance and enhanced targeting of the truly vulnerable within pastoral societies demands an acceptance that pastoral poverty is neither uniform nor universal