Sustainable humanitarian supply chain management: exploring new theory

Disaster response operations aim at helping as many victims as possible in the shortest time, with limited consideration of the socio-economic context. During the disaster rehabilitation phase, the perspective needs to broaden and comprehensively take into account the local environment. We propose a framework of sustainable humanitarian supply chain management (SCM) that facilitates such comprehensive performance. We conceptualize the framework by combining literature from the fields of sustainable and humanitarian SCM. We test the framework through an analytic induction process by means of multiple case studies of four relief organisations. Our framework suggests that supply chain design needs to be aligned not only to relief organisations’ enablers, but also to the population’s long-term requirements as well as any socio-economic and governmental contingency factors. A good fit between these dimensions leads to sustainable performance. The framework provides an instrument for relief organisations to achieve sustainable performance in the disaster rehabilitation phase

Hearts, Minds, Hands: A Dream Team for Mental Health

Interpreting in a mental health setting with hearing staff members and deaf clientele, the ethical situations fly fast and furious, providing the interpreter with a wealth of war stories with which to regale neophyte students of this dynamic profession. Much has been written to improve the many and varied mental health services being extended to deaf populations. The most commonly described dyads are that of hearing therapist and deaf patient. However, consider the case of a deaf psychologist treating hearing clients. In this instance, the interpreter becomes the liaison between the deaf professional and the hearing patient. When an interpreter not only works primarily with one deaf professional among hearing staff members but also serves as a de facto member of the treatment team, ethics are challenged differently, unexpectedly, and often. The interpreter and the psychologist must function as a team, and the role of the interpreter will vary from more prosaic assignments. With the tables turned, the deaf professional must find ways to capitalize on the interpreting service so he or she can fully address the needs of his or her hearing clients and function smoothly among his or her hearing colleagues. Clearly, a commitment to teamwork and collegiality is fundamental to ensure a sense of professional satisfaction for both the psychologist and the interpreter

Common and Distinct Mechanisms of Cognitive Flexibility in Prefrontal Cortex

The human ability to flexibly alternate between tasks represents a central component of cognitive control. Neuroimaging studies have linked task switching with a diverse set of prefrontal cortex (PFC) regions, but the contributions of these regions to various forms of cognitive flexibility remain largely unknown. Here, subjects underwent functional brain imaging while they completed a paradigm that selectively induced stimulus, response, or cognitive set switches in the context of a single task decision performed on a common set of stimuli. Behavioral results indicated comparable reaction time costs associated with each switch type. Domain-general task-switching activation was observed in the inferior frontal junction and posterior parietal cortex, suggesting core roles for these regions in switching such as updating and representing task sets. In contrast, multiple domain-preferential PFC activations were observed across lateral and medial PFC, with progressively more rostral regions recruited as switches became increasingly abstract. Specifically, highly abstract cognitive set switches recruited anterior-PFC regions, moderately abstract response switches recruited mid-PFC regions, and highly constrained stimulus switches recruited posterior-PFC regions. These results demonstrate a functional organization across lateral and medial PFC according to the level of abstraction associated with acts of cognitive flexibility

White matter integrity and vulnerability to Alzheimer's disease: Preliminary findings and future directions

AbstractNeuroimaging biomarkers that precede cognitive decline have the potential to aid early diagnosis of Alzheimer's disease (AD). A body of diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) work has demonstrated declines in white matter (WM) microstructure in AD and its typical prodromal state, amnestic mild cognitive impairment. The present review summarizes recent evidence suggesting that WM integrity declines are present in individuals at high AD-risk, prior to cognitive decline. The available data suggest that AD-risk is associated with WM integrity declines in a subset of tracts showing decline in symptomatic AD. Specifically, AD-risk has been associated with WM integrity declines in tracts that connect gray matter structures associated with memory function. These tracts include parahippocampal WM, the cingulum, the inferior fronto-occipital fasciculus, and the splenium of the corpus callosum. Preliminary evidence suggests that some AD-risk declines are characterized by increases of radial diffusivity, raising the possibility that a myelin-related pathology may contribute to AD onset. These findings justify future research aimed at a more complete understanding of the neurobiological bases of DTI-based declines in AD. With continued refinement of imaging methods, DTI holds promise as a method to aid identification of presymptomatic AD. This article is part of a Special Issue entitled: Imaging Brain Aging and Neurodegenerative disease

Trauma-informed Dialectical Behavior Therapy for Dissociative Identity Disorder

Dissociative symptoms are regarded as forms of disconnection from external stimuli, internal experiences, and interpersonal relationships. The Contextual Trauma Treatment (CTT) model for survivors of prolonged childhood abuse integrates Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) treatment. DBT enhances capacities for skillful interactions with others, and identifying and tolerating emotional experiences through the use of didactically-taught skill-based groups that balance encouraging acceptance of difficulties with the recognition of the need for change. This presentation will provide an overview of CTT for conceptualizing dissociation in the context of family of origin environment and development, and describe how TRIP integrates trauma-informed and DBT-informed treatment

The role of 3D printing and open design on adoption of socially sustainable supply chain innovation

Social sustainability is a growing concern for supply chain management, but questionable practices endure due to insufficient stakeholder pressure on the market leading firms. Meanwhile small, socially oriented firms may have the will but lack the means to change dominant practices when entering a market. In this context 3D printing may offer a solution, by leveraging the voluntary effort of individuals through open design and distributed production. A system dynamics approach is applied to the case of a socially oriented mobile phone producer, whose fair supply chain practices may initially appeal only to a niche market. We examine how open design of 3D printed mobile phone accessories helps overcome size-related resource constraints, facilitate market growth and ultimately generate sufficient consumer demand to alter the market leaders’ supply chain practices, in favour of social sustainability. Our findings demonstrate the interaction between availability of 3D printers, consumer attitudes to social sustainability and the market entry. We discuss the implications for technology management, namely that 3D printing can help overcome resource constraints to support the diffusion of socially sustainable supply chain innovation

ranacapa: An R package and Shiny web app to explore environmental DNA data with exploratory statistics and interactive visualizations.

Environmental DNA (eDNA) metabarcoding is becoming a core tool in ecology and conservation biology, and is being used in a growing number of education, biodiversity monitoring, and public outreach programs in which professional research scientists engage community partners in primary research. Results from eDNA analyses can engage and educate natural resource managers, students, community scientists, and naturalists, but without significant training in bioinformatics, it can be difficult for this diverse audience to interact with eDNA results. Here we present the R package ranacapa, at the core of which is a Shiny web app that helps perform exploratory biodiversity analyses and visualizations of eDNA results. The app requires a taxonomy-by-sample matrix and a simple metadata file with descriptive information about each sample. The app enables users to explore the data with interactive figures and presents results from simple community ecology analyses. We demonstrate the value of ranacapa to two groups of community partners engaging with eDNA metabarcoding results

Lifelong Bilingualism Maintains Neural Efficiency for Cognitive Control in Aging

Recent behavioral data have shown that lifelong bilingualism can maintain youthful cognitive control abilities in aging. Here, we provide the first direct evidence of a neural basis for the bilingual cognitive control boost in aging. Two experiments were conducted, using a perceptual task-switching paradigm, including a total of 110 participants. In Experiment 1, older adult bilinguals showed better perceptual switching performance than their monolingual peers. In Experiment 2, younger and older adult monolinguals and bilinguals completed the same perceptual task-switching experiment while functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) was performed. Typical age-related performance reductions and fMRI activation increases were observed. However, like younger adults, bilingual older adults outperformed their monolingual peers while displaying decreased activation in left lateral frontal cortex and cingulate cortex. Critically, this attenuation of age-related over-recruitment associated with bilingualism was directly correlated with better task-switching performance. In addition, the lower blood oxygenation level-dependent response in frontal regions accounted for 82% of the variance in the bilingual task-switching reaction time advantage. These results suggest that lifelong bilingualism offsets age-related declines in the neural efficiency for cognitive control processes