Cities and population health.

A majority of the world's population will live in urban areas by 2007 and cities are exerting growing influence on the health of both urban and non-urban residents. Although there long has been substantial interest in the associations between city living and health, relatively little work has tried to understand how and why cities affect population health. This reflects both the number and complexity of determinants and of the absence of a unified framework that integrates the multiple factors that influence the health of urban populations. This paper presents a conceptual framework for studying how urban living affects population health. The framework rests on the assumption that urban populations are defined by size, density, diversity, and complexity, and that health in urban populations is a function of living conditions that are in turn shaped by municipal determinants and global and national trends. The framework builds on previous urban health research and incorporates multiple determinants at different levels. It is intended to serve as a model to guide public health research and intervention

The mystery of the writing that isn’t on the wall: differences in public representations in traditional and agile software development

This paper considers the use of public displays, such as whiteboards and papers pinned to walls, by different software development teams, based on evidence from a number of empirical studies. This paper outlines differences in use observed between traditional and agile teams and begins to identify the implications that they may have for software development

Diminishing Return for Increased Mappability with Longer Sequencing Reads: Implications of the k-mer Distributions in the Human Genome

The amount of non-unique sequence (non-singletons) in a genome directly affects the difficulty of read alignment to a reference assembly for high throughput-sequencing data. Although a greater length increases the chance for reads being uniquely mapped to the reference genome, a quantitative analysis of the influence of read lengths on mappability has been lacking. To address this question, we evaluate the k-mer distribution of the human reference genome. The k-mer frequency is determined for k ranging from 20 to 1000 basepairs. We use the proportion of non-singleton k-mers to evaluate the mappability of reads for a corresponding read length. We observe that the proportion of non-singletons decreases slowly with increasing k, and can be fitted by piecewise power-law functions with different exponents at different k ranges. A faster decay at smaller values for k indicates more limited gains for read lengths > 200 basepairs. The frequency distributions of k-mers exhibit long tails in a power-law-like trend, and rank frequency plots exhibit a concave Zipf's curve. The location of the most frequent 1000-mers comprises 172 kilobase-ranged regions, including four large stretches on chromosomes 1 and X, containing genes with biomedical implications. Even the read length 1000 would be insufficient to reliably sequence these specific regions.Comment: 5 figure

Choice, responsibility, and health: What role for the food movement?

https://scholarworks.uvm.edu/fss2014/1002/thumbnail.jp

Fachkräftebedarfsdeckung heute und in der Zukunft: Handlungsempfehlung für eine erfolgreiche Personalbedarfsdeckung in Unternehmen

Unternehmen beklagen zunehmend den wachsenden Fachkräftemangel in Deutschland. Gleichzeitig erhalten Berufseinsteigerinnen und Berufseinsteiger reihenweise Absagen trotz guter Abschlüsse, internationaler Erfahrung, hoher Grundmotivation und umfangreicher Praktika. Wie passt das zusammen? Zum einen verhindern starre Unternehmensstrukturen, veraltete Personalmarketingmodelle und Generationenkonflikte eine zeitgemäße Anpassung an die Dynamik des Arbeitsmarktes. Zum anderen gibt es nach wie vor die Herausforderung des demographischen Wandels. Wenn sich Unternehmen zukunftsgerichtet und nachhaltig aufstellen wollen, ist ein Umdenken im Personalmanagement zwingend erforderlich. Instrumente zur Bewusstmachung und Reduzierung von Alters-, Gender- und Herkunftsdiskriminierung werden dringend benötigt. Vielfalt sollte als Chance verstanden werden. Damit sind - auch kurzfristige - Lösungen des Fachkräftebedarfs möglich. Auf der anderen Seite sollte der Gesetzgeber den Rahmen für internationale Personalaustauschsysteme schaffen, die der heute gleichzeitig existierenden hohen Arbeitslosigkeit und dem Fachkräftemangel in verschiedenen Teilen Europas entgegenwirken. Bisher ungenutzte Potenziale zur Deckung des Fachkräftebedarfs können ebenso in einer integrativen Lösung der Flüchtlingsthematik liegen. Der Beitrag liefert Handlungsempfehlungen für ein zeitgemäßes Personalmarketing und eine potenzialabschöpfende Personalbedarfsdeckung in Unternehmen