Load cell protection device Patent

Load cell protection device using spring-loaded breakaway mechanis

The Senate’s torture report shows how hamstrung Congressional oversight of the intelligence community really is

On December 9th, the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence released the executive summary of its longer report into the Central Intelligence Agency’s (CIA) use of ‘enhanced interrogation methods’ after 9/11. Jennifer Kibbe writes that the report is replete with examples of the CIA’s inaccurate representations concerning its programs, and its lack of cooperation with the committee’s investigation. She argues that the report illustrates the difficulties that Congress faces in holding highly secretive agencies such as the CIA to account

Hiring a Strategic Planning Consultant

Engaging a strategy consultant is per se high stakes. Looking across your organization and its work to find and describe the most effective path forward can be exhilarating. It can also be unsettling as "outsiders" review, question, assess, and opine on the state of your enterprise. In fact, the best strategy processes are both exhilarating and unsettling.It goes without saying that all strategy processes should inspire and motivate staff and board, challenging these and other key participants to question assumptions and explore opportunities. Taking advantage of the process of engaging strategy experts to accomplish some skill transfer to internal staff is an added plus. But a strategy process worth the effort and investment should provide more than a boost for morale or a training exercise.Getting started with strategy work can be complicated by the fact that strategy consultants are a diverse group. Individuals and firms differ -- sometimes wildly -- from each other in terms of skills and approach. What then is the best way to start this journey? How can you find and work well with the "right" strategy consultant?There are at least four distinct purposes for strategy work, each of which suggest a different approach. Identifying the right approach to meeting your needs will depend on whether the reason for doing strategy work is occasioned by internal needs or external shifts in the context for the work of your organization, and on whether the audience for the new strategy is mostly internal or mostly external

Breaking Up Is Hard to Do

What do funders leave behind when they exit? What is lost? Are there approaches to exits that are more effective at preserving the results of good work? Through interviews with 19 professionals who have experienced or are currently working through a foundation exit, this article draws on stories of more than a dozen such exits to fill the gaps in what is known about how to exit well. This article discusses four areas where foundation exits present particular challenges and where there are significant opportunities to improve practice – deciding on and planning to exit, funder leadership, clear communication, and final grants – and includes summaries of advice from funder and grantee perspectives. This article aims to offer practical insights that may help improve what is all too often an uncomfortable, confusing, and potentially damaging process, and, it is hoped, will spur continued research and contribute to a sustained dialogue about how to preserve, or even extend, value in the context of a foundation exit

Breaking Up Is Hard to Do (Excerpted from the Foundation Review)

Funding relationships begin, and they end. An exit might occur as planned in a time-limited initiative, arise through new research or evaluation insights, or follow shifts in funder priorities. Whatever the reason, grantmakers can take steps to advance positive relationships and outcomes for grantees. What do funders leave behind when they exit? What approaches to exits are most effective at preserving or extending the results of good work? At ensuring that grantees and fields thrive?These and other questions were explored through interviews with a combination of funders and grantees, drawing from stories of more than a dozen exits. The greatest exit challenges related to the confluence of three factors: (1) the central role the funder had chosen for itself; (2) the scale of support offered, especially when it outpaced other support for the issue or organization; and (3) the difference between the expected and actual duration of that support.While much more needs to be understood about why and how funders exit as well as about the effects, below are some sensible practices that can immediately improve both relationships and outcomes related to funder exits

Themes of Sexualization, Racialization, and Intersectional Objectification in University “Crush Pages” on Twitter

My research assesses textual information from four universities’ “crush pages” on Twitter, a widely used social media website. Furthermore, I conducted focus groups to record and analyze university students’ reactions to and experiences with crush pages. A crush is defined as “a strong feeling of romantic love for someone that is usually not expressed and does not last a long time” (“Crush,” n.d.). Crush pages allow Twitter users to anonymously submit a “tweet” – or status update consisting of 140 characters or less – about a person they have a crush on, and a moderator then posts this tweet on the crush page. Crush pages are open to the public and individuals do not need a Twitter account to view the information that is posted to them. I investigated if there is evidence of sexualization, racialization, and intersectional objectification in tweets posted on crush pages and if these same themes were discussed in focus group sessions with university students. Before describing my research in further detail, I discuss existing scholarship on the Internet and social networking sites, online sexual harassment, racialization, sexualization, and intersectionality. I have derived my coding categories and theoretical framework from the prevalent academic discourse on these processes

The Perceived value of videogame packaging among young adults

Numerous forms of media content that once utilized physical distribution, such as music, movies, and publications, are now being distributed digitally. Videogames are the latest media content to be distributed in this manner, thus removing suppliers--such as packaging printers--who played a role in traditional physical distribution. With the U.S. printing industry projected to decline by 15% by 2015 (Romano & Broudy, 2010), the loss of packaged videogames as a source of revenue for packaging printers may further threaten the viability of the industry. The purpose of this research was to determine the current perceived value of packaged vs. digitally distributed videogames. A survey of 140 students at a large university located in the upstate New York area was sampled. The results revealed that an average of 66% of videogames purchased in the last six months were bought digitally. In regards to the perceived value of packaged videogames, More Content was cited by 70% of respondents as a reason to purchase packaged games. For digitally distributed games, Convenience (88%), Accessibility (86%), and Price (74%) were all cited as advantages. When asked about their preference for packaged over digital videogames, Ownership (18%) and Tangibility (18%) were the top open-ended responses. In sum, even though respondents provided numerous statements supporting packaged videogames, the value provided by digitally distributed videogames seems to be enough to sway the majority of consumers in this study towards the digital procurement of videogames. This trend will further decrease the need for printing of videogame packages

Mindful Mending: The Repair of Thought and Action Amidst Technologies

My thesis is that the concept and practice of repair, properly understood and circumscribed, can serve to: (1) specify a responsibility to care for individuals who are cognitively dependent on particular configurations of technologies and suffer cognitively significant harms following damage to various technologies, and (2) to act as a standard by which to regulate the design, implementation, and selection of technologies available for human use and appropriation. I begin (Chapters One and Two) by providing a critical investigation of the concept and practice of repair. In Chapters Three and Four, I set forth a proposal to consider what I term cognitive-agentic repair as the mindful mending of agentic skills/autonomy competency by way of those constitutive cognitive processes that are extended/situated in objects and arrangements of objects that constitute particular material spaces and places (home, workplace). As such, I argue that when either intentional or unintentional harms are committed against individuals who are cognitively situated in the world, there is a prima facie responsibility to attempt the specific act of cognitive-agentic repair so as to support the possibility of personal autonomy. To justify this ethical responsibility, I advance an account of human persons that is grounded in both feminist philosophy and recent work in the cognitive sciences on the hypotheses of extended and embedded cognition. I then move to consider how my account of repair can constructively inform the design, implementation, and selection of particular technologies by acting as a regulative standard. This analysis is divided into two parts: (1) a theoretical construction that utilizes work in the philosophy of technology to distinguish the pattern of those technologies that would facilitate cognitive-agentic repair (Chapter Five) and (2) a practical application to telemedical/telehealth technologies (Chapter Six)

Best practices for building interoperable systems for translational research

Research databases, clinical systems, and lab systems all have different standards, formats and drivers for data capture, operation, analysis and integration. For interdisciplinary nutritional researchers, however, there is a dependence on all of these areas and technologies. While building and integrating these systems can be difficult, using agile practices including short iterations, testing and continuous integration methods, and close engagement with all stakeholders to create useful systems for translational research. Interoperability also requires good data standards, including the use of structured data dictionaries and existing data standards such as HL7, UMLS, LOINC, ICD, and OBO foundry ontologies

Strategy and Evaluation: The Twin Engines of Effective Philanthropy

This essay provides a fast-paced tour of grantmaker approaches, launching with the advent of long-range planning in the 1980s and visiting scenario planning, social return on investment, human-centered design, big data, and other developments that have influenced practice. The author lands on strategy and evaluation as the anchor approaches that will fuel greater philanthropic impact in the new decade.This writing draws on content the author originally published in the Stanford Social Innovation Review blog in March 2014. It makes the case that philanthropy needs to reclaim the meaning of strategy and conveys insights via "five things strategy isn't" -- e.g., strategy cannot be inflexible, insulated, or disconnected from those responsible for implementation. The author concludes with a refreshed set of predictions for the next chapter in the unfolding story of strategy and evaluation