Invisible no more : AfroLatina/o undergraduate student's sense of belonging and persistence at a small urban Northeastern college

Latina/os are the fastest growing demographic group in the United States but deterministic views of race and ethnicity have created a habitual way of assessing Latina/os in social science research – including higher education. This homogenous approach overlooks the racial and ethnic diversity of Latina/os who yield from 21 different countries from around the world. Thus, AfroLatina/o students have been overlooked in higher education research. This study utilized qualitative research methods and a phenomenological approach in order to gain an in-depth understanding of how AfroLatina/o college students at a small, commuter, urban, public institution in the Northeastern United States mold their racial and ethnic identities, how they negotiate in-group acceptance, and how the prior two impact their academic persistence. Three key findings emerged from this study: (1) AfroLatina/o student mold their own identities by reflecting on their experiences of pain and rejection, (2) their group membership is contingent on many factors not just phenotype or language, and (3) their academic persistence is impacted by their urban environment more than other factors.Educational Administratio

A Framework for Adoption of Challenges and Prizes in US Federal Agencies: A Study of Early Adopters

In recent years we have witnessed a shift in the innovation landscape of organizations from closed to more open models embracing solutions from the outside. Widespread use of the internet and web 2.0 technologies have made it easier for organizations to connect with their clients, service providers, and the public at large for more collaborative problem solving and innovation. Introduction of the Open Government initiative accompanied by the America Competes Reauthorization Act signaled an unprecedented commitment by the US Federal Government to stimulating more innovation and creativity in problem solving. The policy and legislation empowered agencies to open up their problem solving space beyond their regular pool of contractors in finding solutions to the nation\u27s most complex problems. This is an exploratory study of the adoption of challenges as an organizational innovation in public sector organizations. The main objective is to understand and explain how, and under what conditions challenges are being used by federal agencies and departments as a tool to promote innovation. The organizational innovation literature provides the main theoretical foundation for this study, but does not directly address contextual aspects regarding the type of innovation and the type of organization. The guiding framework uses concepts drawn from three literature streams: organizational innovation, open innovation, and public sector innovation. Research was conducted using a qualitative case study of challenge.gov. Data was collected from multiple adopting agencies using two primary sources: interviews with challenge managers and administrators and, archival data from the challenge.gov web platform. Related documentation was used to supplement and corroborate the main data. Analysis of the platform archival data revealed four types of challenges falling along a continuum of increasing innovation. The sequence of events, activities and conditions leading to adoption and implementation were represented as a challenge adoption model. Variations among components of the model resulted in three distinct agency groupings represented as a typology of enactments characterized as inertia, application, and change. Thus challenge adoption among agencies with varying missions, operations and conditions leads to varying enactment types and different levels of change

Risk across design domains

Design processes involve risk: to life and limb if the product is unsafe, to the financial health of the company if the product is late, unsuccessful or simply the wrong product, as well as to the emotions and careers of the designers. Many of the risks are shared universally by all designers, but each different industry and each different project faces its own spectrum of serious and minor risks. Different industries have put their methodological effort into finding ways to mitigate the risks they recognise as important. As part of the Across Design project exploring similarities and differences between design processes in different industries, this paper examines how risks are perceived and handled in different types of design process, and proposes that designers and managers can usefully look to other industries for ways to handle risks that are more central for those other industries

Orchestrating the digital transformation process through a ‘strategy-as-practice’ lens: A revelatory case study

Implementing a digital transformation (DT) strategy constitutes an important challenge for most firms. Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in particular must be helped in enacting and managing their DT process. To do so, we aim to answer two research questions: What are the dimensions that define a DT strategy in a SME context? And how do these dimensions contribute to the enactment of a DT process in this context? Using an information systems (IS) strategy-as-practice theoretical lens, combined with an information technology (IT) asset orchestration perspective, we opt for an interpretive case study of an industrial service SME whose characteristics are conducive to a renewed vision of IS strategy in a DT context. From this study emerges a process model that allows us to describe and better understand, in a concrete manner, how a DT occurs and how it is managed through a coherent DT strategy

Conditional Freedoms:Non-State Labour in Cuba between Institutional Delegitimisation and Civic Recognition

During the height of its power over everyday life, between 1968 and 1993, the Cuban Communist Party outlawed virtually all non-state labour and exchange. Since then, however, its continuity in power has increasingly depended on devolution: shifting responsibility for the provision of basic goods and services from failing state enterprises back to the self-employed. The latter now produce the majority of food and basic products; receive most of the national income from tourism, remittances and foreign investment; and generate most new jobs. Nevertheless, they subsist under a subaltern regime of fragile and conditional freedoms. The article adapts James Scott's consideration for the subaltern's 'hidden transcripts' and agencies to contemporary Cuba. It analyses the unavoidability of informal and illegal practices for daily subsistence; their naturalisation in society in contrast with their delegitimisation as opportunistic self-enrichment in party-controlled media; and how the self-employed resist such judgements in favour of more conciliatory civic visions.</p

12P. An Assessment of Factors Affecting Technology Adoption by Teachers: The Case of Caribbean Secondary Schools

This study aims to identify institutional factors that act as barriers to technology adoption in Caribbean Secondary Schools. The research model combines two distinct bodies of research – literature on technology adoption from Information Systems, and studies on IT use in schools from Education literature. Data was collected primarily through surveys completed by secondary school teachers in eight (8) Eastern Caribbean islands, and supported by interviews with education administrators from the various islands. Results indicated the most significant factors were the non-availability of hardware, and lack of time

Digital Transformation Capabilities in Manufacturing SMEs: Gaining Agility through IT Capability Configurations

Adopting a capability-based view of digital transformation as a 2nd-order ‘dynamic’ capability, this paper investigates how 1st-order dynamic and operational IT capabilities are strategically configured and aligned by manufacturing SMEs in order to gain organizational agility. Resulting from a fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) of 67 Canadian SMEs, our results show that a high level of organizational agility is concretized when these firms align at least three dynamic IT capabilities and one operational IT capability. Through three high-performing configurations composed of the sensing, learning, coordinating and integrating dynamic IT capabilities along with the IT management capability and e-business capability, we demonstrate which capabilities are present to achieve a high level of organizational agility, and under what environmental condition they manifest themselves. Providing a richer description and deeper understanding of the interrelationships between the IT capabilities required by manufacturing SMEs’ digital transformation, our contributions are both practical and theoretical

High-impedence NbSi TES sensors for studying the cosmic microwave background radiation

Precise measurements of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) are crucial in cosmology, because any proposed model of the universe must account for the features of this radiation. Of all CMB measurements that the scientific community has not yet been able to perform, the CMB B-mode polarization is probably the most challenging from the instrumental point of view. The signature of primordial gravitational waves, which give rise to a B-type polarization, is one of the goals in cosmology today and amongst the first objectives in the field. For this purpose, high-performance low-temperature bolometric cameras, made of thousands of pixels, are currently being developed by many groups, which will improve the sensitivity to B-mode CMB polarization by one or two orders of magnitude compared to the Planck satellite HFI detectors. We present here a new bolometer structure that is able to increase the pixel sensitivities and to simplify the fabrication procedure. This innovative device replaces delicate membrane-based structures and eliminates the mediation of phonons: the incoming energy is directly captured and measured in the electron bath of an appropriate sensor and the thermal decoupling is achieved via the intrinsic electron-phonon decoupling of the sensor at very low temperature. Reported results come from a 204-pixel array of Nb$_{x}$Si$_{1-x}$ transition edge sensors with a meander structure fabricated on a 2-inch silicon wafer using electron-beam co-evaporation and a cleanroom lithography process. To validate the application of this device to CMB measurements, we have performed an optical calibration of our sample in the focal plane of a dilution cryostat test bench. We have demonstrated a light absorption close to 20% and an NEP of about 7$\times10^{-16}$ W/$\sqrt{Hz}$, which is highly encouraging given the scope for improvement in this type of detectors.Comment: 6 pages, 10 figures. arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:1005.0555 by other author

Prospective, randomized, double-blind clinical trial about efficacy of homeopathic treatment in children with obstructive adenoid

AIM: the efficacy and security of homeopathic treatment was investigated on children with obstructive adenoid justifying an operation. STUDY DESIGN: Clinical prospective. MATERIAL AND METHOD: In a prospective, randomized, double-blind clinical trial included 40 children between the ages of 3 to 7 years old, 20 children were treated with homeopathic medication, based in the principle of similarity (Simillimum), and 20 children with placebo. All the children of the homeopathic group/ adenoid, were treated daily with Agraphis nutans 6 CH, Thuya 6 CH and Adenoid 21CH, and the patients of the placebo group received daily placebo medication. The duration of the study of each children was 4 months. The evaluation of the results was clinical, and it was made by questionnaire standard, clinical examination and direct flexible fiberoptic nasopharyngoscopy, in the first and last day of treatment. The criterion of selection was the adenoid that occuped more than 70% of the coanal space. RESULTS: From the group of 20 children treated with homeopathic treatment, 13 did not show any change on the size of adenoid after nasopharyngoscopy, and 7 children had their adenoid decreased; from another group of 20 children that have treated with placebo for 4 months, 11 did not show any change on the size of their adenoid, 4 had their adenoid decreased and 5 had their adenoid increased. The statistical analysis showed a not significant difference (P= 0,069). The clinical evaluation of the patients showed that from the group of 20 patients treated with homeopathy, 17 kept unchanging, with oral breathing and snoring, one patient got better, eliminating the snoring and two were cured, which mean that their oral breathing turned to nasal breathing without snoring. From the group of 20 patients treated with placebo, 17 kept unchanging, one eliminated the snoring and two were cured; and these differences were not statistically significant (P> 0,999). CONCLUSIONS: the homeopathic treatment was not efficient in the patients with obstructive adenoid, remaining it surgical indication in 85% of the children. The homeopathic remedies did not provoke adverse events in the children.OBJETIVO: Avaliar a eficácia e segurança do tratamento homeopático em crianças com adenóide obstrutiva, com indicação cirúrgica. FORMA DE ESTUDO: Clínico prospectivo. Material e método: Estudo prospectivo, duplo-cego, randomizado, em que foram incluídas 40 crianças com idade variando de 3 a 7 anos, 20 crianças foram tratadas com medicação homeopática individualizada (Simillimum), baseada no princípio da similitude e 20 crianças receberam placebo. Todas as crianças do grupo medicação homeopática foram medicadas diariamente com Agraphis nutans 6 CH, Thuya 6 CH e Adenóide 21CH; e as do grupo placebo receberam diariamente medicamentos sem o princípio ativo. A duração do estudo de cada paciente foi de 4 meses. A avaliação dos resultados foi clínica, por meio de questionário padrão, de exame otorrinolaringológico e nasofaringoscopia direta com fibroscópio flexível, no primeiro e no último dia de tratamento. Utilizou-se como critério de inclusão a adenóide que ocupou mais do que 70% da luz coanal. RESULTADOS: Das 20 crianças tratadas com medicamento homeopático, 13 não apresentaram alteração no tamanho da adenóide nos exames nasofaringoscópicos e 7 tiveram diminuição da adenóide; das 20 crianças que receberam placebo por 4 meses, 11 não apresentaram alterações no tamanho da adenóide, 4 tiveram diminuição da adenóide e 5 crianças tiveram aumento. Não houve diferença estatística significante entre os grupos (P= 0,069). Na avaliação clínica da evolução dos pacientes, dos 20 pacientes tratados com medicamento homeopático, 17 se mantiveram inalterados, com respiração oral e ronco, um paciente melhorou, ficando sem ronco e dois foram curados, isto é, a respiração alterou-se de oral para nasal e sem ronco. Dos 20 pacientes tratados com placebo, 17 pacientes se mantiveram inalterados, um paciente melhorou do ronco e dois foram curados, não tendo havido diferença estatística significante entre os grupos (P>0,999). CONCLUSÕES: O tratamento homeopático não foi eficaz nas crianças com adenóide obstrutiva, mantendo-se a indicação cirúrgica em 85% dos pacientes. O medicamento homeopático não provocou eventos adversos nas crianças.Instituto Brasileiro de Estudos Homeopáticos Faculdade de Ciências da Saúde de São PauloUniversidade Federal de São Paulo (UNIFESP), Escola Paulista de Medicina (EPM)Universidade Federal de São Paulo (UNIFESP) Escola Paulista de MedicinaUNIFESP, EPMSciEL