Innovation sustainability in challenging health-care contexts : embedding clinically led change in routine practice

The need for organizational innovation as a means of improving health-care quality and containing costs is widely recognized, but while a growing body of research has improved knowledge of implementation, very little has considered the challenges involved in sustaining change – especially organizational change led ‘bottom-up’ by frontline clinicians. This study addresses this lacuna, taking a longitudinal, qualitative case-study approach to understanding the paths to sustainability of four organizational innovations. It highlights the importance of the interaction between organizational context, nature of the innovation and strategies deployed in achieving sustainability. It discusses how positional influence of service leads, complexity of innovation, networks of support, embedding in existing systems, and proactive responses to changing circumstances can interact to sustain change. In the absence of cast-iron evidence of effectiveness, wider notions of value may be successfully invoked to sustain innovation. Sustainability requires continuing effort through time, rather than representing a final state to be achieved. Our study offers new insights into the process of sustainability of organizational change, and elucidates the complement of strategies needed to make bottom-up change last in challenging contexts replete with competing priorities

Studying Migrant Assimilation Through Facebook Interests

Migrants' assimilation is a major challenge for European societies, in part because of the sudden surge of refugees in recent years and in part because of long-term demographic trends. In this paper, we use Facebook's data for advertisers to study the levels of assimilation of Arabic-speaking migrants in Germany, as seen through the interests they express online. Our results indicate a gradient of assimilation along demographic lines, language spoken and country of origin. Given the difficulty to collect timely migration data, in particular for traits related to cultural assimilation, the methods that we develop and the results that we provide open new lines of research that computational social scientists are well-positioned to address.Comment: Accepted as a short paper at Social Informatics 2018 (https://socinfo2018.hse.ru/). Please cite the SocInfo versio

Descriptive Analysis of Assaults in Domestic Violence Incidents Reported to Alaska State Troopers: 2004

This project examined the characteristics of assaults in domestic violence incidents reported to the Alaska State Troopers. Assaults are only one type of criminal offense defined in Alaska statutes as a crime involving domestic violence. This report is not inclusive of all crimes involving domestic violence reported to AST, because it only includes assaults. In addition, this report is not inclusive of assaults in domestic violence incidents that were reported to municipal police departments across Alaska. Only assaults in domestic violence incidents reported to AST are described in this report. The term assault will be used throughout this report to define assault cases that are crimes involving domestic violence incidents; this includes felony and misdemeanor assaults. The sample utilized for this analysis included all assaults in domestic violence incidents reported to AST in 2004. It included information from 1,281 reports on 1,803 assault charges, 1,356 suspects, 1,523 victims, and 1,283 witnesses. This descriptive analysis documents the characteristics of these reports, charges, suspects, victims, witnesses, and legal resolutions.Index of Tables and Figures / Acknowledgements / Executive Summary / Descriptive Analysis of Assaults in Domestic Violence Incidents / Brief Overview of the State of Alaska / Brief Overview of the Alaska State Troopers / Summary of Alaska's Criminal Assault Statutes / Purpose of this Study / Methods / Report Characteristics / Suspect Characteristics / Victim Characteristics / Incident Characteristics / Witness Characteristics / Legal Resolutions / Appendix A -- Data Collection Instruments / Appendix B -- 2004 Alaska's Criminal Assault Statute

Eldred B. Wales Correspondence

Entries include brief biographical information with a typographical error and correspondence with Dr. Wales concerning his announcement to present a copy of his book Overweight and Your PBI in person to the Maine State Library, for the Maine Author Collection

A Century of Conflict...the Official Record

For the past 100 years, the United States has been involved in conflicts across the globe. This exhibit explores this history through United States federal government documents.https://cornerstone.lib.mnsu.edu/lib-services-govdoc-display-history/1008/thumbnail.jp

James B. Vickery Correspondence

Entries include a typed introductory letter to Vickery from the Maine State Library and a letter typed on receipt of a gift of Vickery\u27s book, the celebrated An Illustrated History of the City of Bangor for the Maine Author Collection

Ansel B. Sterling Correspondence

Entry is the fanciful, handwritten biographical sketch of a Maine artist readying his book of poetry Weavings and Meanderings for publication

Rita B. Stadig Correspondence

Entry is a handwritten biographical sketch of Rita Stadig author of Our Maine Heritage, a history of Maine

Philip B. Shaw Correspondence

Entries include brief biographical information and a revealing biographical letter on The Maine Society of Poets, Bridgton, Maine, stationery

A giant skull, ontogenetic variation and taxonomic validity of the Late Triassic phytosaur Parasuchus

Parasuchus (= Paleorhinus) is the most primitive known phytosaur, and its fossils define a Carnian biochron recognizable across much of Pangea. The largest known specimen of this primitive taxon, an incomplete skull from the Popo Agie Formation in northwestern Wyoming, demonstrates that the nares remain anterior to the antorbital fenestra throughout the ontogeny of Parasuchus, an observation confirmed by an analysis of a broad database. The fact that this character is not variable through the ontogeny of this phytosaur genus, as some previous authors have speculated, helps to cement the taxonomic validity of Parasuchus. For the past century, systematists have attempted to establish a classification of organisms rooted in some form of a biological species concept. Cladotaxonomy, on the other hand, is the recognition of cladotaxa, which are low-level taxa (genera and species) that correspond to clades in a cladistic analysis. Cladotaxonomic relegation of all primitive phytosaurs to a metataxon is based on a posteriori evaluation of character polarity that fails to acknowledge the existence of a biotaxon regardless of how a cladist evaluates character polarities millions of years later. We reject assignment of primitive phytosaurs to a metataxon as uninformative, and recognize Parasuchus as a diagnosable phytosaur genus