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1 – 10 of 71Abigail Breen, Sophie Brock, Katrina Crawford, Mary Docherty, Gavin Drummond, Lucy Gill, Sophie Lawton, Vivienne Mankarious, Andrea Oustayiannis, Gemma Rushworth and Kevin G. Kerr
Food‐borne infection remains a major public health concern and it is important that healthcare professionals in training understand the epidemiology of gastro‐intestinal infection…
Abstract
Purpose
Food‐borne infection remains a major public health concern and it is important that healthcare professionals in training understand the epidemiology of gastro‐intestinal infection and strategies for its prevention. This article describes a student selected component (SSC), i.e. an element which supplements the core curriculum for undergraduate medical students and its use as an educational tool.
Design/methodology/approach
The SSC incorporated a refrigerator safari in which students examined a number of domestic refrigerators for factors which might affect adversely the microbiological quality of the food within them as well as determining refrigerator temperatures with a sensitive thermometer.
Findings
The refrigerator safaris, although small in number (n=25) highlighted a number of frequently occurring factors such as unacceptable refrigerator temperatures and foods which had passed their use by/best before dates. Student feedback indicated that the safari was much appreciated as a practical way of learning about food safety.
Originality/value
The refrigerator safari is a novel method for the teaching of undergraduate students about food hygiene in the domestic setting and emphasises that consumers have important roles and responsibilities in protecting themselves from food‐borne infection.
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Daniel Diermeier, Robert J. Crawford and Charlotte Snyder
After Hurricane Katrina hit the coast of Louisiana on August 29, 2005, Wal-Mart initiated emergency operations that not only protected and reopened its stores, but also helped its…
Abstract
After Hurricane Katrina hit the coast of Louisiana on August 29, 2005, Wal-Mart initiated emergency operations that not only protected and reopened its stores, but also helped its employees and others in the community cope with the disaster's personal impact. This response was part of a wider effort by the company under CEO Lee Scott to improve its public image. Wal-Mart's efforts were widely regarded as the most successful of all corporations in the aftermath of the disaster and set the standard for future corporate disaster relief programs.
Move beyond the operational dimensions of disaster response and appreciate how disaster response is connected to the company's strategy and its position in the market place. Understand how disasters are different than other types of reputational crises and are subject to different expectation from the public. Understand how a company can do well by doing good: how it can do the right thing and benefit its business at the same time. Discuss the changing expectations of companies to act in the public interest.
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Cheryl J. Craig, Rakesh Verma, Donna W. Stokes, Paige K. Evans and Bobby Abrol
This research examines the influence of parents on students studying the science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) disciplines and entering STEM careers…
Abstract
This research examines the influence of parents on students studying the science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) disciplines and entering STEM careers. Participating youths were awarded scholarships from large funded US grant programmes. Cases of two graduate students (one female, one male) and one undergraduate student (male) are featured. The first two students in the convenience sample are biology and physics majors in a STEM teacher education program; the third is enrolled in computer science. National reports emphasizing the importance of parents on their children's education are presented, along with diverse international literature. The use of narrative in STEM curriculum and narrative inquiry in STEM research are also documented. Experience, story, and identity form the study's conceptual frame. The narrative inquiry research method employs broadening, burrowing, and storying and restorying to elucidate the students' academic trajectories. Incidents of circumstantial and planned parent curriculum making surfaced when the data were serially interpreted. Other noteworthy themes included: (1) relationships between (student) learners and (teacher) parents, (2) invitations to inquiry, (3) modes of inquiry, (4) the improbability of certainty, and (5) changed narratives = changed lives. While policy briefs provide sweeping statements about parents' positive effects on their children, narrative inquiries such as this one illuminate parents' inquiry moves within home environments. These actions became retrospectively revealed in their adult children's lived narratives. These small stories, while not generalizable, map how students, shaped by their parents' nurturing, enter the STEM disciplines and STEM-related careers through multiple pathways in addition to the identified pipeline.
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The paper's primary goals are three‐fold: to explore how disaster tourism serves as a vehicle for self‐reflection in respect to how the disaster tour affects the tourist; to…
Abstract
Purpose
The paper's primary goals are three‐fold: to explore how disaster tourism serves as a vehicle for self‐reflection in respect to how the disaster tour affects the tourist; to understand how cultures adapt to abrupt change; and to understand how the tourism industry can lead to the cultural and economic revitalization of devastated areas.
Design/methodology/approach
This paper draws on sociological theory, experience, and participant observation to complete an autoethnographic study of a “disaster tour” in and around the New Orleans, Louisiana, metropolitan area.
Findings
Conveying information via auto‐ethnographic disaster tourism helps readers develop an understanding of others by being immersed in the tour experience. Placing the researchers in the midst of the analysis presents a perspective of the cultural mix of New Orleans as place set apart, even among places in the south. Finally, this study highlights the importance of a rapidly rebounding tourism industry by “branding” New Orleans as a “Come back city.”
Research limitations/implications
Because the research employs an auto‐ethnograpic approach, it may not be possible to duplicate the observations and findings, which are subject to the interpretations of the reader.
Originality/value
The contribution of this work to the literature is its highlighting of the flexibility of the tourism industry after a catastrophe and noting that tour guides frame the reconstruction process as “signs of hope” and “rebirth,” rather than a city in decline. Readers come to understand that the key to the revival of New Orleans is how disaster tourists understand the disaster as well as the recovery process.
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Pankaj Sharma and Ashutosh Joshi
Big data analytics has emerged as one of the most used keywords in the digital world. The hype surrounding the buzz has led everyone to believe that big data analytics is the…
Abstract
Purpose
Big data analytics has emerged as one of the most used keywords in the digital world. The hype surrounding the buzz has led everyone to believe that big data analytics is the panacea for all evils. As the insights into this new field are growing and the world is discovering novel ways to apply big data, the need for caution has become increasingly important. The purpose of this paper is to conduct a literature review in the field of big data application for humanitarian relief and highlight the challenges of using big data for humanitarian relief missions.
Design/methodology/approach
This paper conducts a review of the literature of the application of big data in disaster relief operations. The methodology of literature review adopted in the paper was proposed by Mayring (2004) and is conducted in four steps, namely, material collection, descriptive analysis, category selection and material evaluation.
Findings
This paper summarizes the challenges that can affect the humanitarian logistical missions in case of over dependence on the big data tools. The paper emphasizes the need to exercise caution in applying digital humanitarianism for relief operations.
Originality/value
Most published research is focused on the benefits of big data describing the ways it will change the humanitarian relief horizon. This is an original paper that puts together the wisdom of the numerous published works about the negative effects of big data in humanitarian missions.
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Tharaka Gunawardena, Tuan Ngo, Priyan Mendis, Lu Aye and Robert Crawford
With many natural disasters such as earthquakes, cyclones, bushfires and tsunamis destroying human habitats around the world, post-disaster housing reconstruction has become a…
Abstract
With many natural disasters such as earthquakes, cyclones, bushfires and tsunamis destroying human habitats around the world, post-disaster housing reconstruction has become a critical topic. The current practice of post-disaster reconstruction consists of various approaches that carry affected homeowners from temporary shelters to permanent housing. While temporary shelters may be provided within a matter of days as immediate disaster relief, permanent housing can take years to complete. However, time is critical, as affected communities will need to restore their livelihoods as soon as possible. Prefabricated modular construction has the potential to drastically improve the time taken to provide permanent housing. Due to this time-efficiency, which is an inherent characteristic of modular construction, it can be a desirable strategy for post-disaster housing reconstruction. This paper discusses how prefabricated modular structures can provide a more time-efficient solution by analysing several present-day examples taken from published post-disaster housing reconstruction processes that have been carried out in different parts of the world. It also evaluates how other features of modular construction, such as ease of decommissioning and reusability, can add value to post-disaster reconstruction processes and organisations that contribute to the planning, design and construction stages of the reconstruction process. The suitability of modular construction will also be discussed in the context of the guidelines and best practice guides for post-disaster housing reconstruction published by international organisations. Through this analysis and discussion, it is concluded that prefabricated modular structures are a highly desirable time-efficient solution to post-disaster housing reconstruction.
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Ricarda Hammer and Tina M. Park
While technologies are often packaged as solutions to long-standing social ills, scholars of digital economies have raised the alarm that, far from liberatory, technologies often…
Abstract
While technologies are often packaged as solutions to long-standing social ills, scholars of digital economies have raised the alarm that, far from liberatory, technologies often further entrench social inequities and in fact automate structures of oppression. This literature has been revelatory but tends to replicate a methodological nationalism that erases global racial hierarchies. We argue that digital economies rely on colonial pathways and in turn serve to replicate a racialized and neocolonial world order. To make this case, we draw on W.E.B. Du Bois' writings on capitalism's historical development through colonization and the global color line. Drawing specifically on The World and Africa as a global historical framework of racism, we develop heuristics that make visible how colonial logics operated historically and continue to this day, thus embedding digital economies in this longer history of capitalism, colonialism, and racism. Applying a Du Boisian framework to the production and propagation of digital technologies shows how the development of such technology not only relies on preexisting racial colonial production pathways and the denial of racially and colonially rooted exploitation but also replicates these global structures further.
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Katrina Pritchard, Rebecca Whiting and Cara Reed
Retiring from work used to signify the end of paid employment and a transition to focus on life outside the workplace. From this perspective, the work-life interface may have no…
Abstract
Retiring from work used to signify the end of paid employment and a transition to focus on life outside the workplace. From this perspective, the work-life interface may have no relevance for the retired. However, recent changes, particularly resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic, suggest that conceptualizations of both retirement and the work-life interface are more fluid, ambiguous, and complex. In this chapter, we first set the scene, reviewing how and why the traditional concept of retirement has changed so dramatically. Drawing on empirical data from contemporary media, we then consider how the current experience of the older worker and retiree are being reframed in neoliberal terms, emphasizing individual responsibility to remain not just fit and healthy but also productive, through a wide range of activities. We then focus on the impact of COVID-19, highlighting how pre-pandemic structural inequalities have been exacerbated, resulting in a range of responses in both levels of retirement and work by older people. We conclude by suggesting that retirement and its work-life interface need to recognize lived experience as dynamic, messy, and varied and implicated in wider structural features of both the economy and society.
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Words on paper: that's the end result of most personal computing, at least in library related fields. The author revisits a topic covered extensively in his earlier articles, but…
Abstract
Words on paper: that's the end result of most personal computing, at least in library related fields. The author revisits a topic covered extensively in his earlier articles, but takes on a very different aspect this time around: typographic options for word processing. Content may be the crucial objective of written communication, but good typography can't hurt and frequently helps, while bad typography can get in the way of communication. The author notes some major options for desktop typography, discusses some of the issues involved in making the choices, and reviews Swfte Glyphix, a lesser‐known system for generating any size typeface, as needed, while using Microsoft Word or WordPerfect. January‐March 1990 brought more of the same in PC magazines; the most interesting new development for library PC users might be the introduction of the Hewlett‐Packard LaserJet III, which has been used to “typeset” this issue of Library Hi Tech.
Helen Williams and Katrina Pritchard
This chapter draws upon our experiences of using materials in research interviews. We build on the work of Woodward (2016, 2020) by reflexively exploring how our use of material…
Abstract
This chapter draws upon our experiences of using materials in research interviews. We build on the work of Woodward (2016, 2020) by reflexively exploring how our use of material objects; in this case, Lego enabled both participants and researchers to connect more fully with the entrepreneurial phenomena under investigation (Williams et al., 2021). In doing so, we unpack how our use of objects reveals the research interview as a more complex phenomenon than is typically represented (Gubrium et al., 2012).
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