Writing the doctoral thesis differently

© The Author(s) 2018. Writing a doctoral thesis is a testament to years of anxiety, excitement, confusion, terror and passion. A thesis is, however, much more than just an output of learning. It is a formative process through which a doctoral student learns what it means to be a researcher. The doctoral thesis as a form of academic writing has, however, received scant attention in organisational studies. My decision to write my thesis differently inspired me to think deeply about the conventions and procedures of doctoral writing. How is it that doctoral students write? What conventions govern them? And how could doctoral writing be done differently to expand the boundaries of thought in management? In this article, I give an autoethnographic account of how I wrote my thesis differently to provide the groundwork for doctoral students to reconsider the conventional approach to doctoral writing. Ultimately, I offer guidance and points of reflection for how doctoral students and their supervisors might break with writing conventions and contribute to their learning as emerging management researchers through writing the doctoral thesis differently

“What’s his is his and what’s mine is his”: Financial power and economic abuse of women in Aotearoa

AIM: This study aimed to understand the experiences and effects of economic abuse for women in Aotearoa New Zealand, particularly in relation to methods of coercive control, with the intention of developing risk matrices to be used by practitioners.METHODS: We conducted a survey with 448 respondents—with 398 the focus of analysis for this article. The survey contained a combination of scaling and open-ended questions.FINDINGS: Abusers employed a range of abusive methods to restrict victims’ freedom and exercise domination. These abusive behaviours seemed to follow traditional hegemonic construction of masculinity as synonymous with “provider” in that many of these methods relied on the reproduction of gendered stereotypes which subjugate women to a subordinate position in the household. Women experienced a range of adverse emotional impacts as a result of this abuse

The Motion of a Body in Newtonian Theories

A theorem due to Bob Geroch and Pong Soo Jang ["Motion of a Body in General Relativity." Journal of Mathematical Physics 16(1), (1975)] provides the sense in which the geodesic principle has the status of a theorem in General Relativity (GR). Here we show that a similar theorem holds in the context of geometrized Newtonian gravitation (often called Newton-Cartan theory). It follows that in Newtonian gravitation, as in GR, inertial motion can be derived from other central principles of the theory.Comment: 12 pages, 1 figure. This is the version that appeared in JMP; it is only slightly changed from the previous version, to reflect small issue caught in proo

The Utilization of the STOP-Bang Questionnaire for Identification of Surgical Patients at Risk for Obstructive Sleep Apnea

Obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) is a breathing disorder that if left untreated during the perioperative period can lead to deleterious complications. Considering there remains a significant amount of Americans undiagnosed, it is of utmost importance that adult surgical patients undergoing elective procedures be appropriately screened to detect OSA risk in order to decrease adverse events through individualized interventions during the surgical phases. Polysomnography testing is the diagnostic standard, but its complexity in the perioperative setting renders it impractical. The STOP-Bang questionnaire is a validated screening tool that can be utilized as an alternative in this population to accurately identify at risk patients. At a local urban hospital in Pennsylvania, a data analytics team determined that a 1.6% annual compliance rate exists with this risk stratification tool amongst anesthesia providers. The aim of this quality improvement (QI) project is to increase overall compliance of the STOP-Bang questionnaire via incorporation into the preoperative nursing assessment and ultimately, increase detection of OSA risk in the undiagnosed surgical population at this healthcare institution. Post implementation data was analyzed and it was revealed that STOP-Bang compliance increased at an upwards of 62.2% over a 4–week period. It was also shown that 14.8% of the surgical population was identified as intermediate to high-risk for OSA development. The STOP-Bang questionnaire is well documented for its reliability, precision, and ability to aid in provider identification of surgical patients at risk for OSA. Considering the specialized, individualized, and careful management OSA patients require to prevent perioperative complications, screening with the STOP-Bang questionnaire is recommended

A Categorical Equivalence between Generalized Holonomy Maps on a Connected Manifold and Principal Connections on Bundles over that Manifold

A classic result in the foundations of Yang-Mills theory, due to J. W. Barrett ["Holonomy and Path Structures in General Relativity and Yang-Mills Theory." Int. J. Th. Phys. 30(9), (1991)], establishes that given a "generalized" holonomy map from the space of piece-wise smooth, closed curves based at some point of a manifold to a Lie group, there exists a principal bundle with that group as structure group and a principal connection on that bundle such that the holonomy map corresponds to the holonomies of that connection. Barrett also provided one sense in which this "recovery theorem" yields a unique bundle, up to isomorphism. Here we show that something stronger is true: with an appropriate definition of isomorphism between generalized holonomy maps, there is an equivalence of categories between the category whose objects are generalized holonomy maps on a smooth, connected manifold and whose arrows are holonomy isomorphisms, and the category whose objects are principal connections on principal bundles over a smooth, connected manifold. This result clarifies, and somewhat improves upon, the sense of "unique recovery" in Barrett's theorems; it also makes precise a sense in which there is no loss of structure involved in moving from a principal bundle formulation of Yang-Mills theory to a holonomy, or "loop", formulation.Comment: 20 page

A Brief Remark on Energy Conditions and the Geroch-Jang Theorem

The status of the geodesic principle in General Relativity has been a topic of some interest in the recent literature on the foundations of spacetime theories. Part of this discussion has focused on the role that a certain energy condition plays in the proof of a theorem due to Bob Geroch and Pong-Soo Jang ["Motion of a Body in General Relativity." Journal of Mathematical Physics 16(1), (1975)] that can be taken to make precise the claim that the geodesic principle is a theorem, rather than a postulate, of General Relativity. In this brief note, I show, by explicit counterexample, that not only is a weaker energy condition than the one Geroch and Jang state insufficient to prove the theorem, but in fact a condition still stronger than the one that they assume is necessary.Comment: 8 page

Learn or Die: An Autoethnography of ECR Identities in Queer Time

Queer time speaks to those who live in different rhythms. As ECRs (early career researchers), who are, by turns, too feminist, too queer, too old, too young, or too brown for normative conceptualisations of the ECR; queer time may help us understand, and reimagine, the performative, political and pedagogical possibilities of being an ECR. The increasingly used category of ‘early career researcher’ has an evolutionist ring to it. An ECR is typically conceptualised as a specific career phase, usually extending to 5 years post-doctorate, during which ‘new’ academics learn what it means to be part of the academy. The identity of ECR is thus conceptualised with a particularly salient temporal dimension and positioned as a becoming; an identity that new academics will, through progress and development, transcend in time. These seemingly neutral notions of ‘progress’ and ‘development’ toward some other (assumed) more ‘ideal’ academic identity (Lund, 2012), however, erase or marginalise the ways in which ‘different’ or non-normative identities are targeted with institutional and personal violence because of racism, sexism, or heterosexism. In order to both understand the pain of erasure for non-normative ECRs and the political possibilities of being ‘different’ in the academy, we turn to queer time. Temporality and time have been continual and intimate concerns of queer theory, that help to understand the experiences of those whose identities are lived in different rhythms. Queer identities have long been positioned as ‘backwards’; as a ‘drag on civilisation’ (Love, 2009: 6) and positioned outside “the quotidian temporal rhythms” of family (McCallum & Tuhkanen, 2011: 8) and capitalism (Freeman, 2010). Queer time, therefore, is often positioned in opposition to “the institutions of family, heterosexuality, and reproduction” (Halberstam, 2006: 1). Alternatively, queer time is characterised by lives that disrupt norms of gender and sexuality and are indeterminate, unfixed, imprecise, and refuse to reproduce normative notions of progress, development, and longevity. Drawing on the notion of queer time, we engage in a collaborative autoethnography to explore our embodied experiences as ECRs and reflect on how multiple lines of our identity, including our shared identities as middle class women and our divergences in age, ethnicity, familial status, and sexuality, shaped our embodied experiences of being an ECR. Ultimately, we use queer time to reconceptualise the learning of academic identities not in terms of progress, development, and reproduction, but in terms of being out of step, out of place, and, ultimately, productive of alternatives within the academy

Global Burden of Sickle Cell Anaemia in Children under Five, 2010-2050: Modelling Based on Demographics, Excess Mortality, and Interventions

The global burden of sickle cell anaemia (SCA) is set to rise as a consequence of improved survival in high-prevalence low- and middle-income countries and population migration to higher-income countries. The host of quantitative evidence documenting these changes has not been assembled at the global level. The purpose of this study is to estimate trends in the future number of newborns with SCA and the number of lives that could be saved in under-five children with SCA by the implementation of different levels of health interventions.First, we calculated projected numbers of newborns with SCA for each 5-y interval between 2010 and 2050 by combining estimates of national SCA frequencies with projected demographic data. We then accounted for under-five mortality (U5m) projections and tested different levels of excess mortality for children with SCA, reflecting the benefits of implementing specific health interventions for under-five patients in 2015, to assess the number of lives that could be saved with appropriate health care services. The estimated number of newborns with SCA globally will increase from 305,800 (confidence interval [CI]: 238,400-398,800) in 2010 to 404,200 (CI: 242,500-657,600) in 2050. It is likely that Nigeria (2010: 91,000 newborns with SCA [CI: 77,900-106,100]; 2050: 140,800 [CI: 95,500-200,600]) and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (2010: 39,700 [CI: 32,600-48,800]; 2050: 44,700 [CI: 27,100-70,500]) will remain the countries most in need of policies for the prevention and management of SCA. We predict a decrease in the annual number of newborns with SCA in India (2010: 44,400 [CI: 33,700-59,100]; 2050: 33,900 [CI: 15,900-64,700]). The implementation of basic health interventions (e.g., prenatal diagnosis, penicillin prophylaxis, and vaccination) for SCA in 2015, leading to significant reductions in excess mortality among under-five children with SCA, could, by 2050, prolong the lives of 5,302,900 [CI: 3,174,800-6,699,100] newborns with SCA. Similarly, large-scale universal screening could save the lives of up to 9,806,000 (CI: 6,745,800-14,232,700) newborns with SCA globally, 85% (CI: 81%-88%) of whom will be born in sub-Saharan Africa. The study findings are limited by the uncertainty in the estimates and the assumptions around mortality reductions associated with interventions.Our quantitative approach confirms that the global burden of SCA is increasing, and highlights the need to develop specific national policies for appropriate public health planning, particularly in low- and middle-income countries. Further empirical collaborative epidemiological studies are vital to assess current and future health care needs, especially in Nigeria, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and India

Теоретичні засади дослідження виборчих технологій в електоральному процесі України та проблеми їх ефективності

Здійснено політологічний аналіз ефективності виборчих технологій та проаналізо­вано їх вплив на електоральні процеси в Україні.Осуществлен политологический анализ эффективности избирательных технологий и проанализировано их влияние на электоральные процессы в Украине.Political analysis of electoral technologies effectiveness and analyzes of their impact on the electoral process in Ukraine are made

Single-pulse transcranial magnetic stimulation (sTMS) for the acute treatment of migraine: evaluation of outcome data for the UK post market pilot program

BACKGROUND: Single pulse transcranial magnetic stimulation (sTMS) is a novel treatment for acute migraine. Previous randomised controlled data demonstrated that sTMS is effective and well tolerated in the treatment of migraine with aura. The aim of the programme reported here was to evaluate patient responses in the setting of routine clinical practice. METHODS: Migraine patients with and without aura treating with sTMS had an initial review (n = 426) and training call, and then participated in telephone surveys at week six (n = 331) and week 12 during a 3-month treatment period (n = 190). RESULTS: Of patients surveyed with 3 month data (n = 190; episodic, n = 59; chronic, n = 131), 62 % reported pain relief, finding the device effective at reducing or alleviating migraine pain; in addition there was relief reported of associated features: nausea- 52 %; photophobia- 55 %; and phonophobia- 53 %. At 3 months there was a reduction in monthly headache days for episodic migraine, from 12 (median, 8–13 IQ range) to 9 (4–12) and for chronic migraine, a reduction from 24 (median, 16–30 IQ range) to 16 (10–30). There were no serious or unanticipated adverse events. CONCLUSION: sTMS may be a valuable addition to options for the treatment of both episodic and chronic migraine