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Introduction. Forecasting and predication are influenced by the conventional perception of a reality that has been engulfed by a reaction to austerity and scarcity. Forecasting and linear projection toward the future are problem-solving trajectories that aim at maintaining the status quo. The future is inventable, not inevitable. A desired future cannot be achieved through forecasting and prediction, whether in dystopian fiction or utopian fancy, but can be accomplished through an imaginative future memory and by design. Memory is a phantasmagorical phenomenon, where present reality is constructed by past memory, it can also be transformed by future memory. Future memory requires a shift from being trapped by the gravity of the present to the weightless imaginary future and the freedom of toying with the real. Past memory is recalled to augment strategies for solving current problems, but future memory is imagined to explore design alternatives. Whereas memory of the past becomes our familiar path to forecasting the future, memory of thefuture provides a meaningful way to access a wide range of unfamiliar options for imagining a desired future.Purpose. The paper aims at explaining the possible ways of interpreting the language of future as semiology, which can be located within the larger scope of semiotics. Under this larger scope, there are three major semiotic systems: linguistics, kinesics, and objects.Methods. In cognitive semiotic perspective the paper highlights the methods of interpreting the semiological concept of future in literary text focusing on psychological and sociological data.Results. Going faster and acquiring material, physical things are considered winning the game of forecasting and projection. It is clear that postmodernity has been superseded by transmodernity. The core value of transmodernity, which embodies many integrative qualities and undissolved differences, emphasizes transparency between pre-modern, modern, and postmodern realities. Not only does transmodernity discard modernity’s insistence on autonomy and absoluteness, it also transcends modernism and postmodernity’s inclination toward dualistic rationality and an either-or position. A desired future in the transmodern world can be created through phantasmagorical memory and communicated by the notating and scoring process. Such future possibilities are emergent outcomes of the design process that teleologically reveals unlimited options.Conclusion. Notating the imagination of phantasmagorical memory transforms the status quo into a visceral experience of a desirable future in our transmodern world. This is the way we can transform the present reality into a desired future reality. Without such memory, it would be difficult to avoid the despair about the status quo and to go beyond utopianism and dystopianism. To imagine the future is to transform absoluteness and to participate in a process that seeks meaningful change. Imagining a desired future in the transmodern world is essential for rejuvenating cultural practices and renewing natural environments. And notating imagination – the unseen forces behind physical manifestations – reveals an integrated consciousness that highlights the reciprocal relationship between cultural ethos and environmental ethics.

The diversification of applicant pools constitutes an important step for broadening the participation of women and underrepresented minorities (URMs) in the workforce. The current study focuses on recruiting diverse applicant pools in an academic setting. We test strategies grounded in homophily theory to attract a diverse set of applicants for open faculty positions. Analysis of recruitment data (13,750 job applications) showed that women search committee chairs and greater percentages of women on search committees related to more women applicants and that URMs search chairs and a greater percentage of URM members on search committees related to more URM applicants, resulting in 23% more women applicant pools with a woman chair and over 100% more URM applicants for a URM chair. Furthermore, women and URMs actively engage in ways to reach out to a more diverse set of applicants, whereas men and non-URMs' behavior maintains the status quo. We discuss the implications and advancement of homophily theory that can ultimately increase the representation of women and URM in the workforce. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

This paper takes a critical interactional sociolinguistic approach to examine the construction of interculturality (e.g., Nishizaka 1995; Mori 2003) through the use of vocatives in the discourse of a multi-cultural graduate student project group at a large American university. Interviews and descriptive information contextualize the analysis to demonstrate that the use of vocatives achieves a tight linking of inclusion but also inequality in the group talk that involves the Japanese member. The group’s vocatives show a shared interest in bringing the Japanese member into the interaction, but they also construct unequal rights to the floor. They contribute to an interculturality of subordination and an artificial sense of intimacy, characteristics consistent with the institutional setting of the group and attitudes members held about each other. In this environment, the status quo of power identities and a deficit view of the Japanese member goes largely uncontested and limits the ability of American members to learn from their Japanese partner.

Background The COVID-19 pandemic has caused changes that disrupted the status quo of society. As a result, the level of conflict in community pharmacy has increased significantly. With existing conflict research more focused on the management of conflict, it is important to direct attention towards understanding the nature of conflict. This understanding will allow for informed resources to be developed to guide practice, decreasing the occurrence of and negative effects of conflict. Objective This research explored experiences of pharmacists working in community pharmacies, to identify the occurrence and nature of conflicts which may have been motivated by changes resulting directly or indirectly from the COVID-19 pandemic, to provide directions for future research into the nature of conflict. Method Person-to-person semi-structured telephone interviews were conducted. Transcripts were analysed using inductive reasoning to identify themes. Results Thirteen pharmacists agreed to participate in this study and 9 were interviewed. Analysis revealed 7 themes that described the causes, contributors, management, outcome, and essence of experienced conflict. A model that incorporated existing theory and themes derived from this study was developed to facilitate understanding of the nature of conflict in community pharmacy during the COVID-19 pandemic. Conclusion Conflict in community pharmacy settings follows a defined model with multiple interrelated themes. Guidance from this model may assist pharmacists in reducing occurrences of dysfunctional conflicts during their practice.

People are often reluctant to sell a house, or shares of stock, below the price at which they originally bought it. While this is generally not consistent with rational utility maximization, it does reflect two strong empirical regularities that are central to the behavioral science of human decision-making: a tendency to evaluate outcomes relative to a reference point determined by context (in this case the original purchase price), and the phenomenon of loss aversion in which people are particularly prone to avoid outcomes below the reference point. Here we explore the implications of reference points and loss aversion in optimal stopping problems, where people evaluate a sequence of options in one pass, either accepting the option and stopping the search or giving up on the option forever. The best option seen so far sets a reference point that shifts as the search progresses, and a biased decision-maker's utility incurs an additional penalty when they accept a later option that is below this reference point. We formulate and study a behaviorally well-motivated version of the optimal stopping problem that incorporates these notions of reference dependence and loss aversion. We obtain tight bounds on the performance of a biased agent in this model relative to the best option obtainable in retrospect (a type of prophet inequality for biased agents), as well as tight bounds on the ratio between the performance of a biased agent and the performance of a rational one. We further establish basic monotonicity results, and show an exponential gap between the performance of a biased agent in a stopping problem with respect to a worst-case versus a random order. As part of this, we establish fundamental differences between optimal stopping problems for rational versus biased agents, and these differences inform our analysis., Comment: To appear in the 2021 ACM Conference on Economics and Computation (EC'21)

Participatory work structure is a popular concept but its causal impacts in real-world work groups have heretofore been unquantified and research has been Western-centric. We test the hypothesis that participatory group structure increases productivity for blue-collar workers in a context where participation is not a normative default. We conducted a pre-registered longitudinal field experiment with 65 Chinese factory groups (1752 workers). Half of the groups were randomly assigned to a 20-minute participatory meeting once per week for 6 weeks, in which the group's supervisor stepped aside and workers contributed ideas and personal goals in an open discussion of their work. The other half continued withstatus-quomeetings in which supervisors spoke and set goals, workers listened, and a researcher observed. We found that a participatory versus a hierarchical structure led to a 10.6% average increase in individual treatment workers’ productivity, an increase that endured for 9 weeks after the experiment ended. The brief participatory meetings also increased treatment workers’ retention rate (an 85% vs. 77% retention rate in treatment vs. control groups) and feelings of empowerment such as job satisfaction and sense of control. We found no evidence of informational gains or new worker goals; instead, evidence suggests that the increase in frequency of workers’ voicing opinions may have driven higher productivity. These findings provide rare causal evidence in a setting where participation is not a normative default, indicating the benefits of direct group participation for changing and sustaining behavior and attitudes.

Over the past years, the emergence of intelligent networks empowered by machine learning techniques has brought great facilitates to different aspects of human life. However, using machine learning in intelligent networks also presents potential security and privacy threats. A common practice is the so-called poisoning attacks where malicious users inject fake training data with the aim of corrupting the learned model. In this survey, we comprehensively review existing poisoning attacks as well as the countermeasures in intelligent networks for the first time. We emphasize and compare the principles of the formal poisoning attacks employed in different categories of learning algorithms, and analyze the strengths and limitations of corresponding defense methods in a compact form. We also highlight some remaining challenges and future directions in the attack-defense confrontation to promote further research in this emerging yet promising area.

Over the last 2 years, nursing leaders have operated in a fluid and disruptive environment, constantly adapting to changes in the workplace. The global pandemic challenged these leaders on various fronts: workforce, technology, and regulatory, threatening the status quo of traditional orderly change. Factors external to organizations and a highly contagious disease were forcing rapid hourly and daily changes. Today, nursing leader skills are also morphing, requiring a revisit of the competencies needed for visionary leadership. Traditional models of leadership need to shift from transformational to disruptive. This article reviews and offers suggestions for competencies needed in the future by nurse leaders.

In recent decades, social movements have experienced transformations since the beginning of the Internet and the development of social network sites for digital activism and movement organizations. This article initially considers a theoretical review of the relevant aspects that are considered for the evolution of social movements through the use of the Internet and social network sites, considering their scope and limitations. This study analyses, through a qualitative methodology of thirteen in-depth interviews with experts, activists and a journalist, how the social movements for peace in Mexico were formed and how their causes were displayed through the social network sites, beyond the technological determinism about the potential of these digital tools, considering the complexity of sociocultural factors that made possible the formation of these social movements in the context of the war on drugs. This article also analyses the change in the status quo of Mexican politics for peace, emphasizing the role of civil society and the work of peace groups in Mexico to generate transformations in Mexican politics peace.

With the continuous development of science and technology, the information age has arrived, and people have fully entered the information age. In this new era, Internet technology has achieved unprecedented development, and many innovative technologies have also been proposed. The competition in the logistics industry is becoming more and more fierce. Someone proposed the concept of intelligent logistics. This concept has been continuously expanded and the requirements have become higher and higher. Finally, an intelligent logistics management supported by the Internet of Things technology has emerged. technology. In our school's research, we mainly proposed an intelligent distribution model based on the Internet of Things. This model not only optimizes the distribution process, but also proposes an efficient distribution strategy when faced with a large amount of data. This technology mainly uses the information interaction technology in the Internet of Things, which can ensure that the average delivery speed is the fastest, the average transportation distance is the shortest, and the time consumed in the logistics transmission process is the shortest. In the decision-making process of this intelligent distribution model, we must first establish some intelligent distribution models controlled by multiple indicators. During the experiment, we built a logistics perception system and used heuristic algorithms to solve the packing problem. Answered. The mainstream solution algorithm we use genetic algorithm, a large number of experiments and data show that this algorithm is scientifically based, and it has also exerted its due effect in application. This article mainly analyzes the impact of the intelligent logistics system provided by the Internet of Things technology, and then looks forward to the future development trend of the system. We hope that through the analysis of the status quo, we can promote the further development of my country's Internet of Things technology, and also promote the further development and optimization of my country's intelligent logistics system technology.

Reverse innovations from developing countries have changed the course of innovation globally in recent times from the status quo. Innovations developed to meet the needs of emerging markets are also routed to the developed countries. Developing countries in Asia are taking advantage of their reverse innovations to internationalize globally. This study is a conceptual paper that emphasizes on the importance of reverse innovation for Africa globalization. Pathway for African countries to achieve internationalization through reverse innovations are elaborated.

We focus on the interaction of an incumbent leader, an elite who can seize power, and a separate country wanting to maintain a peaceful status quo. Both leaders and elites are distinguished between hawks, who benefit from conflict, and doves, who prefer peace. We show that while deterrence is successful when leaders are perfectly secure, it breaks down when leaders are insecure because hawks can escape punishment and doves use the threat of international conflict to quell internal challenges. These deterrence failures have important implications for various foreign policy positions that conceptually rely on the logic of deterrence.

Objectives It is common practice to use pain quality indicators (QI) to accurately assess the medical care situation of patients. This literature review identifies the status quo of acute pain QI among adult inpatients. Data Sources Studies published in English or German were identified using a systematic search on CINAHL, Cochrane Library, PubMed, Web of Science, and Google Scholar from 01/2007 to 02/2018. Additional pain management journals, conference proceedings, and websites of health organizations and pain societies were manually screened. Studies about postoperative pain in adults (≥18 years) during inpatient stay after all types of surgery in Europe were included in this review. Review/Analysis Methods The identified study results were categorized into structural, process, and outcome indicators based on Donabedian's framework of evaluating care quality. Results The search identified 319 citations, of which 20 studies used structure, process, and outcome data including 180,988 patients and 1,970 health care professionals to gain insight into the quality of acute pain management. Overall, 80% used patient surveys to collect data. National data on pain management are reported in five European studies (France [2], the Netherlands, Spain, and Austria). Conclusions European studies comprehensively comparing acute pain management results are currently missing. Thus, this report highlights the need to develop consensus-based quality indicators in management of acute pain, which take into account both the methodologic quality and the relevance to clinical practice.

Fossil fuel-based development has resulted in climate change and biodiversity loss, threatening the ability of the biosphere to sustain civilization. However, despite the transformative change needed to address climate change, the complexity inherent in dynamic, coupled social-ecological systems can create challenges that stifle mitigation and adaptation efforts. For example, increasing urbanization can mask information about the local and distal ecological impacts of unsustainable consumption patterns. Diverse actors, powerful vested interests in the status quo, and differential impacts of climate change create inevitable tradeoffs and conflicts among stakeholders. The multitude of plausible future scenarios and their dependence on actions taken today create challenges for planning, governance, and collective action. While there is a long history in psychology and economics of studying decision-making under uncertainty, we argue that the deep uncertainty inherent in climate change cannot be easily understood using these same paradigms. In this context, narratives-stories about how the world works, what the future will look like, and our own role in this process-can extend cognition, creating shared knowledge across space and time, and shape our beliefs, values and actions in the face of tremendous uncertainty. Narratives thus have political and psychological agency and can reinforce or challenge existing power relations and trajectories. Here, we review some of this literature in the context of climate change.

The best wind locations are nowadays often occupied by old, less efficient and relatively small wind turbines. Many of them will soon reach the end of their operating lifetime, or lose financial support. Therefore, repowering comes to the fore. However, social acceptance and land use restrictions have been under constant change since the initial expansions, which makes less area available for new turbines, even on existing sites. For the example of Germany, this study assesses the repowering potential for onshore wind energy in high detail, on the basis of regionally differentiated land eligibility criteria. The results show that under the given regional criteria, repowering will decrease both operating capacity and annual energy yield by roughly 40% compared to the status quo. This is because around half of the wind turbines are currently located in restricted areas, given newly enacted exclusion criteria. Sensitivity analyses on the exclusion criteria show that the minimum distance to discontinuous urban fabric is the most sensitive criterion in determining the number of turbines that can be repowered. As regulations on this can vary substantially across different regions, the location-specific methodology chosen here can assess the repowering potential more realistically than existing approaches.

We review recent literature on the social psychology of climate change, focusing on the application of social identity theory and self-categorization theory. These two theories, together forming the social identity approach, point to ways in which collective identities influence responses to climate change. Recent research demonstrates that collective identities influence attitudes, beliefs and behavior relevant to climate change, and they do this through processes such as group norms and social influence, collective efficacy, and collective emotions. The SIA suggests that, in general, people are motivated to protect the identity and status of their ingroups. Indeed, recent studies find that groups who are of higher status, and thus have more to gain from protecting the status quo, tend to be less concerned about addressing climate change than lower status groups, who are more likely to be harmed by climate change. However, individuals from both high and low status groups will be more likely to work towards pro-environmental social change when they perceive current social systems that perpetuate climate change as illegitimate and when they can imagine cognitive alternatives to the status quo, where humans have a more sustainable relationship with nature.

This edited volume was published in 2020 as part of the ‘Elgar Research Agendas’ series by Edward Elgar Publishing. As the publisher states: ‘Elgar Research Agendas outline the future of research in a given area. Leading scholars are given the space to explore their subject in provocative ways and map out the potential directions of travel. They are relevant but also visionary. Forward-looking and innovative, Elgar Research Agendas are an essential resource for PhD students, scholars and anybody who wants to be at the forefront of research’. This is true with regard to the research agenda on academic integrity: twenty-four authors – scholars, practitioners, and policymakers, including Tracey Bretag, the editor and an authority in the field – describe the status quo in this volume and set an agenda for future research.

The paper is an overview of the international legal stances of Russia, which were formed in the period from 2000 to 2020. The application of international law within the legal order of Russia is complicated by inconsistency of the Russian monistic concept, unclear status of customary law and general principles of law; lack of a developed judicial tradition. The Russia’s treaty policy comprises wide participation in general U.N. treaties, as well as bilateral treaties in the field of economic cooperation and legal assistance; unwillingness to participate in treaties, if this may entail negative political consequences. Russia backs down from some minor territorial claims in order to ensure stability; in some cases, she does not formulate a clear legal stance, limiting herself to political statements; she refuses to use judicial mechanisms, preferring bilateral negotiations and/or maintaining the status quo, and does not make efforts to create coalitions that support its claims. Russia uses international organizations rather as political fora, and not as a mechanism to create new legal order; she often takes a passive position when considering issues that do not affect its interests; she makes efforts to use the U.N. mechanisms, but sometimes lacks allies and trust from other members of international community. Russia recognizes the jurisdiction of international courts, but takes a passive position by rarely filing suits, objecting to jurisdiction and refusing to participate in the proceedings. The postSoviet international courts are politicized and do not make a serious contribution to the development of integration law. Russian doctrine is experiencing a serious crisis, which is caused by various reasons and can hardly be overcome by the efforts of the corporation itself

Zusammenfassung Einleitung Beim Fast-Track(FT)-Konzept handelt es sich um multimodale, interdisziplinäre Maßnahmen zur perioperativen Patientenbetreuung zur Reduktion postoperativer Komplikationen. Trotz guter Evidenz erscheint die Umsetzung verbesserungswürdig, wobei sich nahezu alle Untersuchungen ungeachtet des interdisziplinären Aspektes auf die Implementierung der chirurgischen Module fokussieren. Die Adhärenz zu den anästhesiologischen Maßnahmen (präoperative Patientenoptimierung, Prämedikation, Volumen- und Wärmemanagement, Schmerztherapie) ist hingegen nur unzureichend untersucht. Um den Status quo zu erfassen, wurde eine Umfrage zur Umsetzung der anästhesiologischen FT-Bausteine unter den Mitgliedern der Deutschen Gesellschaft für Anästhesiologie und Intensivmedizin (DGAI) durchgeführt und analysiert, wo mögliches Verbesserungspotenzial besteht. Methoden Mithilfe des Online-Umfragetools SurveyMonkey® wurden 28 Fragen zur perioperativen anästhesiologischen Versorgung kolorektalchirurgischer Patienten an die Mitglieder der DGAI verschickt und die Adhärenz zu den FT-Maßnahmen analysiert. Ergebnisse Während einige der FT-Maßnahmen (Wärmemanagement, PONV-Prophylaxe) bereits routinemäßig umgesetzt sind, gibt es bei anderen Bausteinen eine Divergenz zwischen den aktuellen Empfehlungen und der klinischen Umsetzung. Besonders betroffen sind neben der Prämedikation insbesondere interdisziplinäre Maßnahmen (Prähabilitation) sowie Maßnahmen, die mehrere Schnittstellen (OP, Aufwachraum (AWR), Station) betreffen, wie beispielsweise Volumenmanagement oder perioperative Schmerztherapie Fazit Die anästhesiologischen Empfehlungen des FT-Konzepts werden in Deutschland nur teilweise umgesetzt. Hiervon sind insbesondere die interdisziplinären Bausteine sowie Maßnahmen an den Schnittstellen OP-AWR-Station betroffen. Die Bildung eines interdisziplinären FT-Teams und die interdisziplinäre Ausarbeitung von SOP können die Adhärenz optimieren, was wiederum das kurz- und langfristige Outcome der Patienten verbessert.

Best practices in preclinical algesiometry (pain behaviour testing) have shifted over the past decade as a result of technological advancements, the continued dearth of translational progress and the emphasis that funding institutions and journals have placed on rigour and reproducibility. Here we describe the changing trends in research methods by analysing the methods reported in preclinical pain publications from the past 40 years, with a focus on the last 5 years. We also discuss how the status quo may be hampering translational success. This discussion is centred on four fundamental decisions that apply to every pain behaviour experiment: choice of subject (model organism), choice of assay (pain-inducing injury), laboratory environment and choice of outcome measures. Finally, we discuss how human tissues, which are increasingly accessible, can be used to validate the translatability of targets and mechanisms identified in animal pain models.

The leadership of companies influences the organisational climate of companies by creating a cycle of continuous improvement or failing to do so. The same applies to educational leadership in their search for favourable teaching and learning conditions for all learners, especially those of underperforming schools whose academic results are not up to standard. Critical dialogue and new thinking regarding school leadership are mandatory to improve the status quo. It is proposed that the servant leadership paradigm, when practiced by school leadership, may have a significant influence on the school environment. A qualitative approach was utilised to measure the impact of servant school leadership on the organisational climate of private schools in South Africa, with the aim of learning valuable lessons to implement in the public school domain and especially the underperforming school sector. A purposive convenience sampling approach was applied to select participants for three focus group interviews. A theoretical thematic, semantic, and essentialist analytical approach served as the foundation for this study. The focus group interviews confirmed that the participants perceived their school leaderships to implement specific characteristics of servant leadership and organisational climate to enhance a positive school environment for teachers and learners to succeed. The participants also perceived definite links between servant leadership and organisational climate. It is recommended that the servant leadership paradigm and its impact on the organisational climate of underperforming schools be researched and considered for implementation nationally and internationally.

Authorship can be a source of tension on research teams, in academic/industry collaborations, and between mentors/mentees. Authorship misconduct is prevalent among biomedical researchers, and disputes about authorship can generate tensions that have the potential to disrupt professional relationships and damage careers. Early-career researchers may experience particular challenges navigating authorship both because of inexperience and power differentials; in effect, they lack the language and confidence to have these conversations and may feel unwilling to challenge the status quo. The authors implemented an Authorship Agreement for use when collaborating on a manuscript and hypothesized that using this agreement would reduce authorship tensions and speed time to manuscript submission by helping early-career investigators manage authorship conversations more effectively. The authors surveyed trainees (n=65) on the prevalence of authorship-related tensions and compared the results from the first survey in 2017 to the final survey administered in 2020. The decrease in tensions around meeting deadlines was significant (z=2.59, p=0.010). The authors believe the effect of an Authorship Agreement on authorship-related tensions has not previously been investigated. This work extends what is known about the prevalence of commonly cited authorship tensions, and provides evidence of the effectiveness of steps that can be taken to alleviate them.

Purpose Free and open-source software (FOSS) has been used worldwide because of the advantages of user control, cost-saving, flexibility, openness, freedom, more security and better stability. The purpose of this study is to explore the status quo of educational application of FOSS and the trends from international perspectives and its implications for higher education in Hong Kong. Design/methodology/approach The method of cluster analysis was used in this study. The Web of Science database was used as the data source and all relevant literature for the year 2010–2020 on the theme of “FOSS” was collected for analysis. The information visualization software CiteSpace was used for citation visualization analysis, revealing the research results of FOSS worldwide, including hot spots and development trends. Findings This paper found that FOSS has become an important research area and is playing an important role in the reform and development of education. Meanwhile, the development and application of FOSS have regional imbalances and strong differentiation, including the educational sector. The paper also found that although FOSS has entered the stage of interdisciplinary development, the research and development of FOSS in the field of education is insufficient, which poses a huge challenge to decision-makers, teachers and students. Originality/value Implications for higher education in Hong Kong including: attach importance to and vigorously promote FOSS research and practice to benefit more teachers and students; teachers and students need to be trained for acquiring the awareness and skills of FOSS applications and formulate different strategies; the government should provide greater support to formulate and implement a short and middle-term development plan to facilitate the application of FOSS; and Hong Kong higher education institutions may strengthen exchanges and cooperation with counterparts around the world to jointly promote the development of FOSS. It is hoped that the findings will provide a reference for the study and application of FOSS in higher education in Hong Kong.

Realist political theory is often confronted with the objection that it is biased towards the status quo. Although this criticism overlooks the fact that realist political theories contain various resources for critique, a realist approach that is strong in status quo critique and contributes, constructively, to the theorising of alternatives to the status quo is a desideratum. The article argues that contextual realism, which sources its normativity from particular contexts, harbours an underexploited potential to establish such a form of political theorising. By drawing on ideas and principles that have guided critical engagements with social and political forms in a particular context, and on widely shared views of need for reform, realists can identify deficits of the status quo and contribute to a debate on how these deficits might be addressed. This article describes and illustrates the idea of a transformative contextual realism, and defends it against some potential objections.

Taking Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei as an example, it analyzes the comprehensive competitiveness of Beijing, Tianjin, and Hebei. It selects four dimensions: economic dimension, social dimension, environmental dimension, and technological dimension. From a new perspective, it explores the application of niche theory in regional synergy. Based on the analysis of the ecological niche, the coordination degree model of the composite system is further used to calculate the status quo of the coordinated development of the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region from 2013 to 2019. The results show that Beijing has the highest ecological niche, followed by Tianjin, and Hebei is the weakest. In 2019, the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region is at a good level of coordination, with the social subsystem having the highest order and the technological subsystem having the lowest order. Based on this, it is proposed that the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei regions should be scientifically positioned, the overall need to be aligned with international trends, and the internal planning should be integrated to further enhance the level of cooperation in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region.

This contribution applies the theoretical framework developed by Schoeller and Falkner (this issue) to the case of Belgium. First, it examines Belgium’s preferences and the status quo before and af...

This study examines the status quo of workplace gender (in)equality research in the Chinese context. By reviewing 173 articles from 96 English journals throughout 1988–2020, it reveals that various...

Of the various less-than-comfortable narrative strands of the status quo that the COVID-19 pandemic has succeeded in showing up in stark relief—our rather troubling (if somewhat half-hearted) complacence about the systemic blind-spots that continue to colour the prevailing culture of a clearly inequitable higher education policy-framework—easily features among the most worrying, and thus, among those precise pulse-points that carry tremendous potential to help build the post-pandemic reset better, stronger and palpably fairer.1 In this piece, the authors endeavour to elaborate upon this and supplement the same with a brief analysis of India’s year-old National Education Policy, 20202—and how this nation (India) of more than 1.3 billion,3 supposedly poised on the cusp of a massive self-reinvention—is attempting to embark upon this journey.

An abstract game consists of a set of states, preferences over states, and an effectivity correspondence specifying what coalitions are allowed to replace one state by another one. Agents are called farsighted if, when deciding whether to support a coalition's move, they compare the status quo to the long term outcome following their deviation. Yet, this definition of farsightedness ignores a coalition's option to remain at the status quo allowing another coalition to move: agents are not fully farsighted. Therefore, we introduce extended expectation functions, which assign to each state a list of pairs consisting of a state and a coalition that is expected to move from the former to the latter. They endow agents with an expectation about what any deviation vis-a-vis maintaining the status quo entails. We impose three rationality axioms and provide a characterization of extended expectation functions that satisfy our axioms in terms of coalition behavior.

Slam poets in Africa are part of an emerging social movement. In this article, the focus is on women in this upcoming slam movement in francophone Africa. For these women, slam has meant a change in their lives as they have found words to describe difficult experiences that were previously shrouded in silence. Their words, performances and engaged actions are developing into a body of popular knowledge that questions the status quo and relates to the ‘emerging consciousness’ in many African urban societies of unequal, often gendered, power relations. The women who engage in slam have thus become a voice for the emancipation of women in general.

On the basis of a single-period, guns-versus-butter, complete-information model in which two agents dispute control over an insecure portion of their combined output, we study the choice between a peace agreement that maintains the status quo without arming (or unarmed peace) and open conflict (or war) that is possibly destructive. With a focus on outcomes that are immune to both unilateral deviations and coalitional deviations, we find that, depending on war's destructive effects, the degree of output security and the initial distribution of resources, peace can, but need not necessarily, emerge in equilibrium. We also find that, ex ante resource transfers without commitments can improve the prospects for peace, but only when the configuration of parameters describing the degree of output security and the degree of war's destruction ensures the possibility of peace without such transfers at least for some sufficiently even initial resource distributions.

Over the last few decades, China has witnessed a great leap in economic growth and social welfare. Unfortunately, Chinese people have also been affected by a pandemic of over-nutrition, lack of physical activity, and increasing prevalence of metabolic disorders including obesity, diabetes, non-alcohol fatty liver disease, and cardiovascular disease. For instance, China currently has the largest number of diabetic patients (∼116 million) in the world. The fire of metabolic disorders is further fanned by the increased aging population, according to the survey results from the National Bureau of Statistics. On the other hand, progress in metabolic research has also made big strides. Here, we offer a glimpse at metabolic research in China, including not only its status quo but also its prospects, which aims to make significant contributions to our understanding of metabolism from bench to bedside.

Sensing and measurement systems are quintessential to the safe and reliable operation of electric power grids. Their strategic placement is of ultimate importance because it is not economically viable to install measurement systems on every node and branch of a power grid, though they need to be monitored. An overwhelming number of strategies have been developed to meet oftentimes multiple conflicting objectives. The prime challenge in formulating the problem lies in developing a heuristic or an optimisation model that, though mathematically tractable and constrained in cost, leads to trustworthy technical solutions. Further, large-scale, long-term deployments pose additional challenges because the boundary conditions change as technologies evolve. For instance, the advent of new technologies in sensing and measurement, as well as in communications and networking, might impact the cost and performance of available solutions and shift initially set conditions. Also, the placement strategies developed for transmission grids might not be suitable for distribution grids, and vice versa, because of unique characteristics; therefore, the strategies need to be flexible, to a certain extent, because no two power grids are alike. Despite the extensive literature on the present topic, the focus of published works tends to be on a specific subject, such as the optimal placement of measurements to ensure observability in transmission grids. There is a dearth of work providing a comprehensive picture for developing optimal placement strategies. Because of the ongoing efforts on the modernisation of electric power grids, there is a need to consolidate the status quo while exposing its limitations to inform policymakers, industry stakeholders, and researchers on the research-and-development needs to push the boundaries for innovation. Accordingly, this paper first reviews the state-of-the-art considering both transmission and distribution grids. Then, it consolidates the key factors to be considered in the problem formulation. Finally, it provides a set of perspectives on the measurement placement problem, and it concludes with future research directions. National Renewable Energy Laboratory, Laboratory Directed Research and Development; U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Electricity, Advanced Grid Research and Development Published version NationalRenewable Energy Laboratory, Laboratory DirectedResearch andDevelopment; U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Electricity, Advanced Grid Research andDevelopment

In today’s competitive global business environment, companies and organizations are emphasizing return on assets. By analyzing the status quo of Internet of things and warehouse management, this paper puts forward the application of radio frequency identification technology in logistics warehouse management. Based on the intelligent management of logistics and warehousing, the overall structure of intelligent management of logistics and warehousing based on radio frequency identification technology is established, and the functions of each functional module of the system are introduced in detail. Warehouse management system uses B/S architecture mode design; warehouse management system determines the location of goods in the warehouse management program, through radio frequency identification technology reader collection of goods in and out of the warehouse data and data processing results reported to the warehouse management system. Through the optimization of warehouse management process, the intelligent management of logistics and warehousing is realized efficiently. By testing the response time of the system and comparing the test efficiency before and after optimization, the reliability and efficiency of the warehousing intelligent management system are verified, which provides a basis for the study of logistics warehousing intelligent management.

the academic community. Yet, in some respects, they occupy a selectively inferior niche due to structural constraints, as well as personal and professional limitations. ECRs, who are at an initial stage of their careers, face multiple challenges in research and publishing due to a relative lack of experience. These may make them vulnerable to abuse and cause stress and anxiety. Those challenges may have been amplified in the COVID-19 era. ECRs' efforts may unfairly boost the reputation of their mentors and/or supervisors (Matthew Effect), so greater credit equity is needed in research and publishing. This opinion paper provides a broad appreciation of the struggles that ECRs face in research and publishing. This paper also attempts to identify extraneous factors that might make ECRs professionally more vulnerable in the COVID-19 era than their established seniors. ECRs may find it difficult to establish a unique career path that embraces creativity and accommodates their personal or professional desires. This is because they may encounter a rigid research and publishing environment that is dominated by a structurally determined status quo. The role of ECRs' supervisors is essential in guiding ECRs in a scholarly volatile environment, allowing them to adapt to it. ECRs also need to be conscientious of the constantly evolving research and publishing landscape, the importance of open science and reproducibility, and the risks posed by spam and predatory publishing. Flexibility, sensitivity, creativity, adaptability, courage, good observational skills, and a focus on research and publishing integrity are key aspects that will hold ECRs in good stead on their scientific career path in a post-COVID-19 era.

Social movements have contested the elitist character of Chilean political institutions in the streets for the past two decades. Citizens have distanced themselves from conventional participation, and turnout rates dropped dramatically. Protesting against unequal treatment and demanding “dignity,” the social uprising in 2019 in Chile consisted of massive protests marked by large-scale demonstrations and violent riots alike. Lasting many weeks, the protest-driven crisis opened up the opportunity for a constitutional change. Political elites agreed on a referendum on a new constitution to channel heterogeneous demands put forward by leaderless and inorganic protests and demonstrations. This critical juncture brought about by the social uprising set in motion institutional change that, confirming theoretical expectations, entirely departs from the status quo. Furthermore, amidst a profound representation crisis, social organizations pushed for reforms in the electoral system to select conventional delegates to restore confidence and legitimacy in representative institutions. Based on evidence that diversity in elective bodies boosts perceptions of legitimacy, proposals included gender parity in both nominations and results, the possibility for independent candidates to run in lists, and reserved seats for indigenous peoples. The result was a constitutional assembly with 50% of women, delegates from ten indigenous peoples, and many independent candidates elected. Time will tell if this constitutional assembly manages to rebuild Chileans’ trust in politics.

To date, nutritional epidemiology has relied heavily on relatively weak methods including simple observational designs and substandard measurements. Despite low internal validity and other sources of bias, claims of causality are made commonly in this literature. Nutritional epidemiology investigations can be improved through greater scientific rigor and adherence to scientific reporting commensurate with research methods used. Some commentators advocate jettisoning nutritional epidemiology entirely, perhaps believing improvements are impossible. Still others support only normative refinements. But neither abolition nor minor tweaks are appropriate. Nutritional epidemiology, in its present state, offers utility, yet also needs marked, reformational renovation. Changing the status quo will require ongoing, unflinching scrutiny of research questions, practices, and reporting—and a willingness to admit that “good enough” is no longer good enough. As such, a workshop entitled “Toward more rigorous and informative nutritional epidemiology: the rational space between dismissal and defense of the status quo” was held from July 15 to August 14, 2020. This virtual symposium focused on: (1) Stronger Designs, (2) Stronger Measurement, (3) Stronger Analyses, and (4) Stronger Execution and Reporting. Participants from several leading academic institutions explored existing, evolving, and new better practices, tools, and techniques to collaboratively advance specific recommendations for strengthening nutritional epidemiology.

Taxonomies are classification systems that help researchers conceptualize phenomena based on their dimensions and characteristics. To address the problem of ‘ad-hoc’ taxonomy building, Nickerson et al. (2013) proposed a rigorous taxonomy development method for information systems researchers. Eight years on, however, the status quo of taxonomy research shows that the application of this method lacks consistency and transparency and that further guidance on taxonomy evaluation is needed. To fill these gaps, this study (1) advances existing methodological guidance and (2) extends this guidance with regards to taxonomy evaluation. Informed by insights gained from an analysis of 164 taxonomy articles published in information systems outlets, this study presents an extended taxonomy design process together with 26 operational taxonomy design recommendations. Representing an update for taxonomy designers, it contributes to the prescriptive knowledge on taxonomy design and seeks to augment both rigorous taxonomy building and evaluation.

Climate change is a major contemporary global challenge. For developing countries like Nigeria, further challenge is poor power supply. Traditional power supply strategy has been through fossil-fuel based macrogrids. While most developed countries are replacing some macrogrids with renewable energy based microgrids, developing countries like Nigeria still maintain the status quo. This study intends to contribute to knowledge in the management of climate change and power supply in Nigeria through the adoption of microgrids as power supply strategy. In the study, data collected from a detached energy consuming community in Nigeria was used in a simulation using HOMER software for five different scenarios of energy resources combination, based on environmental impact and energy cost criteria. Results indicate that microgrids combining solar photovoltaic (SPV) and grid connection with battery energy storage (BES) are best in on-grid detached communities while microgrids combining diesel generators and SPV with BESare good for off-grid communities.

The introduction of the CRISPR-Cas9 system in 2013 has revolutionized experimental genetics in mice and rats. This commentary gives an overview on the use of CRISPR either for gene editing in the germline or for editing and beyond editing in somatic cells. Future perspectives are opened by emerging CRISPR technologies that could enable genome engineering at larger scale.

Challenging anticompetitive acquisitions of nascent competitors is a top priority of the Antitrust Division of the U.S. Department of Justice. It is especially important that competition agencies remain vigilant of such acquisitions in platform markets, where indirect network effects and other market forces tend to preserve the status quo at the expense of smaller, more innovative rivals and potentially final consumers. This article discusses two such attempted acquisitions: (1) Visa’s acquisition of technology firm Plaid that threatened to disrupt Visa’s monopoly power in online debit; and (2) Sabre’s acquisition of Farelogix, which is a firm that allows airlines to connect directly to travel agencies and thereby disintermediates Sabre and other global distribution systems.

Objectives The current experiment tested the causal effect of goal orientation on subjective satisfaction with performance on a cognitive task. Method A sample of N = 231 young, middle-aged, and older adults (21–79 years) completed a dot-memory task in one of 3 goal orientation conditions aiming for improvement, maintenance, or avoidance of decline in performance. Results Bayesian analyses showed that in all age groups, goal orientation influenced actual performance, but did not affect perceived performance or performance satisfaction. Performance satisfaction was positively correlated with perceived performance, but not with actual performance. Discussion The findings suggest that whether goal orientation benefits older adults’ subjective well-being might depend on (a) the goal content (previous research targeted personal goals) or (b) whether it enhances their perception of the status quo (and thus reduces the discrepancy between actual and desired states). This study contributes to a better understanding of the role of goal orientation in subjective well-being across adulthood.

The Canadian Real-world Evidence for Value in Cancer Drugs (CanREValue) Collaboration was established to develop a framework for generating and using real-world evidence (RWE) to inform the reassessment of cancer drugs following initial health technology assessment (HTA). The Reassessment and Uptake Working Group (RWG) is one of the five established CanREValue Working Groups. The RWG aims to develop considerations for incorporating RWE for HTA reassessment and strategies for using RWE to reassess drug funding decisions. Between February 2018 and December 2019, the RWG attended four teleconferences (with follow-up surveys) and two in-person meetings to discuss recommendations for the development of a reassessment process and potential barriers and facilitators. Modified Delphi methods were used to gather input. A draft report of recommendations (to December 2018) was shared for public consultation (December 2019 to January 2020). Initial considerations for developing a reassessment process were proposed. Specifically, reassessment can be initiated by diverse stakeholders, including decision makers from public drug plans or industry stakeholders. The reassessment process should be modelled after existing deliberation and recommendation frameworks used by HTA agencies. Proposed reassessment outcome categories include maintaining status quo, revisiting funding criteria, renegotiating price, or disinvesting. Overall, these initial considerations will serve as the basis for future advancements by the Collaboration.

Background Transurethral resection of the urinary bladder (TURB) is the standard intervention in the diagnostic workup and treatment of non-muscle invasive bladder cancer. In order to minimize cancer recurrence and potential complications, continuous technical development of TURB is of high clinical interest. Objectives Presentation of the current standards and discussion of technological changes. Materials and methods Analysis of the current guideline recommendations and literature research. Results The limitations of classic monopolar TURB is supplemented by new resection methods (en bloc) and technologies (bipolar and laser resection). Along with improved visualization through partially established technologies of photodynamic and digital image enhancement, there is potential for optimization regarding the likelihood of recurrences and complications as well as the histological quality of the resected material. Conclusion A positive impact on the oncological value and safety of TURB seems possible through the use of modern technologies. Further establishment up to evidence-based guideline recommendations are necessary.

Throughout Europe, entrepreneurship education in higher education institutions has achieved great progress. This recently published book Entrepreneurship education at universities: learning from twenty European cases edited by Christine K. Volkmann and David B. Audretsch could give us valuable experiences on how European universities find their own ways of being entrepreneurial. It collects 20 cases of higher education institutions across Europe based on three key criteria, presenting the status quo and characteristics of entrepreneurship education in European higher education institutions. The findings show that entrepreneurship education is being carried out effectively, not only in top universities, but also in other lesser-known universities.

This paper re-validates middle school students’ learning progression of the concept of buoyancy (Gao et al., 2020) by using two-time point data. The previous study developed a four-level learning progression based on data collected at a single time point using cross-sectional design. This single-time-point model of learning progression calls for a further validation through a longitudinal design focusing on changes in individual students as a result of targeted instruction. In this study, 91 eighth-grade students first learned buoyancy under a traditional pedagogy and took test A of buoyancy. Based on results of test A, the teacher provided a targeted remediation instruction to students. Students then took a second test B which was designed as a parallel instrument to test A. Latent class analysis was conducted to locate students’ levels in the learning progression, and a rule space model was employed to diagnose students’ concept mastery patterns at each level. The test A data provide evidence to support the original learning progression of buoyancy developed by Gao et al. (2020), but the test B data suggest two more additional progression sub-levels for the prior study. Together, our findings indicate that one-time point data under the current status quo of teaching might be insufficient to accurately depict pathways of scientific thinking for how students progress from the lower anchor to the upper anchor. We thus argue that it is essential to involve well-designed instruction and collect multi-time-point data that could portray alternative pathways in students’ learning progression.

Australian elections are digitising. Electronic ballots, electronic certified lists, electronic scrutiny, and electronic data are becoming part of the electoral status quo. The digitisation of elec...

This article analyses the 16th Sabah State Election, focusing on the Kadazandusun-majority seats. It is based on an ethnographic study comprising interviews with candidates and casual conversations with local people in "competitive" Kadazandusun seats such as Matunggong, Kiulu, Moyog, Tambunan, Keningau, Sook, Nabawan, Tenom and Melalap. The results of the election showed that the Kadazandusun voted for status quo. In addition, following the trend of GE14, the Gabungan Rakyat Sabah (GRS) managed to maintain its strong presence in the Kadazandusun areas. This article argues that ethnic and personality politics play an instrumental role in determining the Kadazandusun support to GRS particularly STAR (Parti Solidariti Tanah Airku Rakyat Sabah/Homeland Solidarity Party) and PBS (Parti Bersatu Sabah/Sabah United Party). While economic factors are decisive as well, the role of the Kadazandusun traditional leadership institution is pertinent in influencing the people’s decision to vote.