Knowledge Cartography for Controversies: The Iraq Debate

In analysing controversies and debates—which would include reviewing a literature in order to plan research, or assessing intelligence to formulate policy—there is no one worldview which can be mapped, for instance as a single, coherent concept map. The cartographic challenge is to show which facts are agreed and contested, and the different kinds of narrative links that use facts as evidence to define the nature of the problem, what to do about it, and why. We will use the debate around the invasion of Iraq to demonstrate the methodology of using a knowledge mapping tool to extract key ideas from source materials, in order to classify and connect them within and across a set of perspectives of interest to the analyst. We reflect on the value that this approach adds, and how it relates to other argument mapping approaches

Introduction : towards a better understanding of corruption and anti-corruption

Despite widespread interest in corruption and how to root it out, the problem continues to grow. Anti-corruption strategies and methods have proved ineffective in achieving lasting reductions in corruption. Anti-corruption academic research has not been free of criticism, and part of the problem is its emphasis on macro-level analysis. The case studies in corruption and anti-corruption in this symposium focus on specific areas that have received surprisingly little attention in the literature: the effectiveness of political finance supervisory bodies; the impact of European Union post-conditionality on anti-corruption efforts; and the increased use of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) in shaping the way that corruption is conceptualised and combated on a global scale. Together, the articles in this symposium offer some novel insights and approaches to the issue of how best to understand and assess different ways of addressing corruption in specific sectors which have received insufficient attention in the literature to date

Are We Missing an Opportunity? Prediabetes in the U.S. Military

INTRODUCTION: The prevalence of prediabetes is estimated to be one-third of Americans with approximately 80% of these individuals unaware of the diagnosis. In the active duty military population, the prevalence of prediabetes is largely unexplored. The purpose of this study was to investigate the prevalence of prediabetes in military service members by quantifying those meeting prediabetes screening criteria, those actually being screened, and those being appropriately diagnosed. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Data were analyzed from calendar years 2014 to 2018 for active duty service members 18 years of age or older. Vitals records were collected to obtain body mass index values. Composite Health Care System laboratory data were queried for hemoglobin A1c (HbA1c) results as well as fasting plasma glucose (FPG) and oral glucose tolerance test (OGTT) results. The percentage of active duty service members meeting criteria for prediabetes screening was determined by totaling members age 45 and older with members age 18- to 44-year old with a body mass index ≥25.0 kg/m2, then dividing by the total number of members for each respective military branch. The percentage of active duty service members actually screened for prediabetes was determined based on members meeting prediabetes screening criteria who in fact had FPG, OGTT, or HbA1c labs. The total number of labs meeting prediabetes criteria was determined based on those aforementioned labs with results in the prediabetes range (FPG between 100 and 125 mg/dL, OGTT between 140 and 199 mg/dL, or HbA1c range of 5.7%-6.4%). The total number of service members with appropriate prediabetes International Classification of Disease (ICD) code was determined by identifying members with ICD-9 and ICD-10 codes 790.21, 790.22, and R73.01-R73.03 in their medical record. RESULTS: From 2014 to 2018, 53.9% of 332,502, 56% of 543,081, and 47.3% of 531,313 active duty service members in the Air Force, Army and Navy, respectively, met criteria for prediabetes screening. The rates of actually screening for prediabetes were similar across the Air Force (4.8%), Army (6.7%), and Navy (5.5%). The percentage with labs meeting prediabetes criteria ranged from 17.9% to 28.4% in the Air Force, 24.2% to 30.3% in the Army, and 24.2% to 30.9% in the Navy. The rate of ICD coding for prediabetes increased from 2014 to 2018 across all branches (29.8%-65.3% for the Air Force, 24.6%-46.8% for the Army, and 40.0%-45.5% for the Navy). CONCLUSION: Screening for prediabetes in the active duty military population is grossly inadequate, and even of those screened, diagnosing those meeting prediabetes criteria is similarly inadequate. Although this scenario is not unique to the Military Health System, but reflective of a larger national problem, efforts should be made within the Military Health System to increase the screening for this common disorder. Identifying service members with prediabetes enables opportunities for targeted interventions to delay or prevent the progression to diabetes mellitus

To Act and Learn: A Bakhtinian Exploration of Action Learning

This paper considers the work of the Russian social philosopher and cultural theorist, Mikhail Mikhailovich Bakhtin as a source of understanding for those involved in action learning. Drawing upon data gathered over two years during the evaluation of 20 action learning sets in the north of England, we will seek to work with the ideas of Bakhtin to consider their value for those involved in action learning. We consider key Bakhtin features such as Making Meaning, Participative Thinking, Theoreticism and Presence, Others and Outsideness, Voices and Carnival to highlight how Bakhtin's can enhance our understanding of the nature of action and learning

Thinking with a New Purpose: Lessons Learned from Teaching Design Thinking Skills to Creative Technology Students

This paper reports on the insights gained from introducing design thinking into the final year of a UK university course where students created positive behavior change interventions. The rationale for the course design and teaching process are outlined, with a focus on design as engineering versus innovation process. The students took a design thinking journey using Stanford University d.school's 5-step approach of Empathize-Define-Ideate-Prototype-Test, and their journey is described in detail. We found that at first students found the Design Thinking approach counter-intuitive and confusing, yet throughout the process they recognized the strengths and opportunities it offers. On the whole, students reflected positively on their learning and on their re-evaluation of the role of a (service) designer. Lessons learned from a teaching point of view are also outlined, the most poignant being the realization that it was necessary to 'un-teach' design practices students had come to take for granted, in particular the view of design as a self-inspired, linear and carefully managed process

Mepolizumab as an effective treatment in a case of hypophysitis in eosinophilic granulomatosis with polyangiitis

Granulomatosis or eosinophilic granulomatosis with polyangiitis (GPA/EGPA) can affect multiple organs resulting in heterogeneous symptoms and phenotypes. Pituitary gland dysfunction rarely occurs in GPA (1–3%) and even less in EGPA (two case reports). Here, we report a case of a 51-year-old female patient with a four-year history of EGPA who presented with new polydipsia and polyuria. Laboratory testing and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) confirmed pituitary gland dysfunction caused by a hypophysitis. Therapeutic adjustment with a switch from dupilumab to mepolizumab resulted in a decrease in clinical symptoms, inflammation in MRI, and normalization of C-reactive protein in serum. This case underlines hypophysitis as a rare organ involvement also in EGPA. Moreover, this case demonstrates the responsiveness of neuroinflammatory manifestations to the recently approved anti-interleukin-5 monoclonal antibody mepolizumab as a new potential treatment option

Inelastic diffraction and color-singlet gluon-clusters in high-energy hadron-hadron and lepton-hadron collisions

It is proposed, that ``the colorless objects'' which manifest themselves in large-rapidity-gap events are color-singlet gluon-clusters due to self-organized criticality (SOC), and that optical-geometrical concepts and methods are useful in examing the space-time properties of such objects. A simple analytical expression for the $t$-dependence of the inelastic single diffractive cross section $d\sigma/dt$ ($t$ is the four-momentum transfer squared) is derived. Comparison with the existing data and predictions for future experiments are presented. The main differences and similarities between the SOC-approach and the ``Partons in the Pomeron (Pomeron and Reggeon)''-approach are discussed.Comment: 12 pages, 2 figure

Motivations for innovation in the built environment: new directions for research

Innovation in the built environment involves multiple actors with diverse motivations. Policy-makers find it difficult to promote changes that require cooperation from these numerous and dispersed actors and to align their sometimes divergent interests. Established research traditions on the economics and management of innovation pay only limited attention to stakeholder choices, engagement and motivation. This paper reviews the insights that emerge as research in these traditions comes into contact with work on innovation from sociological and political perspectives. It contributes by highlighting growing areas of research on user involvement in complex innovation, collective action, distributed innovation and transition management. To differing extents, these provide approaches to incorporate the motivations of different actors into theoretical understanding. These indicate new directions for research that promise to enrich understanding of innovation

Designing electronic collaborative learning environments

Electronic collaborative learning environments for learning and working are in vogue. Designers design them according to their own constructivist interpretations of what collaborative learning is and what it should achieve. Educators employ them with different educational approaches and in diverse situations to achieve different ends. Students use them, sometimes very enthusiastically, but often in a perfunctory way. Finally, researchers study them and—as is usually the case when apples and oranges are compared—find no conclusive evidence as to whether or not they work, where they do or do not work, when they do or do not work and, most importantly, why, they do or do not work. This contribution presents an affordance framework for such collaborative learning environments; an interaction design procedure for designing, developing, and implementing them; and an educational affordance approach to the use of tasks in those environments. It also presents the results of three projects dealing with these three issues