Megatrends Assessment Tool: An exploratory workshop

The European Commission’s Competence Centre on Foresight at the Joint Research Centre has developed this Megatrends Assessment Tool, which uses 14 megatrends to examine how systemic change could impact the future of a chosen topic, in an accessible workshop. Megatrends are key drivers of change affecting all policy areas and every aspect of life (eg technology, climate change, geopolitical shifts, migration and so on). Because of the connections and interdependencies between megatrends, they should not be examined in isolation, hence 14 provides a sytemic view and helps to overcome silos and bias. The participative workshop provides a framework to look at complexity and change in a systemic way, and to examine how developments might affect the longer-term future of the topic chosen. You can explore the future and anticipate how change could impact your topic area, with a view to getting better prepared. Potential future consequences can be explored, along with implications for policy (or specific actors). By doing this collective intelligence work, you can become better prepared for how a problem might evolve in the future, and subsequently if a policy objective is ‘future fit’ or if a new or revised policy action or interventions are needed. You can also look at potential timelines, actors, wild cards, or pinpoint research needs.JRC.S.1 - EU Policy Lab: Foresight, Design & Behavioural Insight

Bmi1 is required for tumorigenesis in a mouse model of intestinal cancer

The epigenetic regulator BMI1 is upregulated progressively in a wide variety of human tumors including colorectal cancer. In this study, we assessed the requirement for Bmi1 in intestinal tumorigenesis using an autochthonous mouse model in which Apc was conditionally ablated in the intestinal epithelium. Germline mutation of Bmi1 significantly reduced both the number and size of small intestinal adenomas arising in this model, and it acted in a dose-dependent manner. Moreover, in contrast to wild-type controls, Bmi1[superscript −/−] mice showed no increase in median tumor size, and a dramatic decrease in tumor number, between 3 and 4 months of age. Thus, Bmi1 is required for both progression and maintenance of small intestinal adenomas. Importantly, Bmi1 deficiency did not disrupt oncogenic events arising from Apc inactivation. Instead, the Arf tumor suppressor, a known target of Bmi1 epigenetic silencing, was upregulated in Bmi1 mutant tumors. This was accompanied by significant upregulation of p53, which was confirmed by sequencing to be wild-type, and also elevated apoptosis within the smallest Bmi1[superscript −/−] adenomas. By crossing Arf into this cancer model, we showed that Arf is required for the induction of both p53 and apoptosis, and it is a key determinant of the ability of Bmi1 deficiency to suppress intestinal tumorigenesis. Finally, a conditional Bmi1 mutant strain was generated and used to determine the consequences of deleting Bmi1 specifically within the intestinal epithelium. Strikingly, intestinal-specific Bmi1 deletion suppressed small intestinal adenomas in a manner that was indistinguishable from germline Bmi1 deletion. Thus, we conclude that Bmi1 deficiency impairs the progression and maintenance of small intestinal tumors in a cell autonomous and highly Arf-dependent manner.Virginia and D.K. Ludwig Fund for Cancer ResearchNational Science Foundation (U.S.)National Cancer Institute (U.S.

What’s Past Is . . . Still Messing With Our Workflows

Scholars Portal has been aggregating locally loaded e-books for Ontario universities on an ebrary-backed platform since 2009—eons ago in the world of library technology! Over the last year, Scholars Portal Books has received a rewrite from the ground up, and this time the focus is on building a platform that anticipates the future of e-book access and usage. No surprise that there have been many challenges along the way, and most of them are unique to consortia: How do we handle corrections to old PDFs? What do we do with six ISBNs? More broadly, how do we support local scholarship at scale, and how can we make space for the open educational resources increasingly being integrated into higher education? This session looked at the complex e-book landscape through a consortial lens—from licensing and entitlements management, to wrangling a dozen XML schemas and implementing ever-changing DRM restrictions, toward the ultimate goal of preserving Ontario universities’ books content for the long term

The problems of offenders with mental disorders: A plurality of perspectives within a single mental health care organisation

Managers, doctors, nurses, occupational therapists, social workers, psychologists, unqualified staff and service users were interviewed for a qualitative study of risk management and rehabilitation in an inner city medium secure forensic mental health care unit. Different professional orientations to service user problems were identified. Doctors focused primarily on the diagnosis of mental disorder, which they managed mainly through pharmaceutical interventions. Psychologists were principally concerned with personal factors, for example service user insight into their biographical history. Occupational therapists concentrated mainly on daily living skills, and social workers on post-discharge living arrangements. Some front line nurses, held accountable for security lapses, adopted a criminogenic approach. Service users were more likely than professionals to understand their needs in terms of their wider life circumstances. These differences are explored qualitatively in relation to four models of crossdisciplinary relationships: monoprofessional self-organisation combined with restricted communication; hermeneutic reaching out to other perspectives; the establishment of interdisciplinary sub-systems; and transdisciplinary merger. Relationships between professions working in this unit, as portrayed in qualitative interviews, corresponded mainly to the first model of monoprofessional self-organisation. Reasons for restricted crossdisciplinary understanding, particularly the wide power/status differences between the medical and other professions, and between staff and patients, are discussed

Family and Gender Values in China

Previous research has reported on structural changes in Chinese families. However, questions remain as to whether/how social change has influenced family and gender values and how this differs across generations, regions, and gender in China. Drawing on 2006 data from the China General Social Survey, we find that values pertaining to filial piety are traditional, whereas patrilineal and gender values are less traditional. Historic events/policies provide the context for how social change can shape differential generational, geographic, and gender perspectives. Our hypothesis that generation, region, and gender associations will differ across the various ideational domains is confirmed. We find significant interaction effects in how generation and geography differ by gender in patrilineal, filial piety, and gender values; and higher education erodes patrilineal and traditional gender values but enhances filial piety. Such findings indicate that family values should be understood in the specific sociocultural contexts governing Chinese families across time and place.</jats:p

Changing Business Models: Implications for Construction

The UK Government’s Transforming Construction Agenda is encouraging firms in the industry to re-think how they create and deliver whole life value through the application of digital technologies and new manufacturing techniques. Firms in the construction industry should be considering how their current business model can help them address the risks and opportunities arising from this transformation, and whether they need to change their business model to deliver on construction client expectations sustainably. In practice, we see quite a bit of confusion about what a business model actually is. We have created this digest for businesses wanting to understand more about business models, and to provide a structure for exploring how their business models can be changed. To do so, the digest summarises influential ideas about business models from industry and academia. It begins by clarifying what business models are, goes on to describe a framework for thinking about analysing business models, and ends by exploring how organisations can change their business models

Risks on the horizon

Decision makers are faced with a world characterised by increasing turbulence, uncertainty, novelty, and ambiguity. These conditions make it more difficult to assess risks when making strategic decisions or planning for the long-term. This study presents a foresight approach to increase preparedness for unexpected developments and the risks they could create. Foresight methods offer a way to consider and focus on risks that may be beyond the scope of traditional quantitative and qualitative risk assessment approaches. Several snapshots of the future depict different worlds that have undergone substantial changes as a consequence of emerging developments. An analysis of the risks inherent in the possible futures identified ten risk clusters that are relevant for decision makers, and mapped future developments that might lead to them. The same development pathways that could lead to risks can also create opportunities, and the study provides some examples. Decision makers face the challenge of mitigating the adverse effects of risks, while reaping the benefits of potential opportunities. This study also presents the results of a Delphi survey that evaluated the scope and severity of risks. Three of the 40 risks identified in this study were assessed to be potentially existential for humanity: 1) environmental degradation, 2) environmental disasters, and 3) loss of power by humans.JRC.S.1 - EU Policy Lab: Foresight, Design & Behavioural Insight

Improved-high-quality draft genome sequence of Rhodococcus sp. JG-3, a eurypsychrophilic Actinobacteria from Antarctic Dry Valley permafrost

The actinobacterium Rhodococcus sp. JG-3 is an aerobic, eurypsychrophilic, soil bacterium isolated from permafrost in the hyper arid Upper Dry Valleys of Antarctica. It is yellow pigmented, gram positive, moderately halotolerant and capable of growth from 30&nbsp;°C down to at least -5&nbsp;°C. The 5.28&nbsp;Mb high-quality-draft genome is arranged into 6 scaffolds, containing 9 contigs and 4998 protein coding genes, with 64&nbsp;% GC content. Increasing the availability of genome sequences from cold-adapted species is crucial to gaining a better understanding of the molecular traits of cold adaptation in microbes

What’s in a Name? Exploring identity in the field of library journal publishing

INTRODUCTION This paper explores the variability in self-identifying practices of academic libraries engaged in journal publishing and hosting activities. We were interested in how libraries characterized their efforts in this area and looked at whether there is an unspoken threshold for differentiation with respect to publishing-support naming conventions. METHODS Using the Library Publishing Directory, in-depth interviews, and a more widely circulated follow-up survey, the research team examined service offerings, divisions of responsibility, funding, terminology, and semantic associations within publishing, both as an active practice and as an advertised service. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION We aimed to tease out whether there was any sort of tipping point, or inferred rules, around when an institution chose to call the activity either publishing or hosting. We found no particular service, set of services, funding structure, or division of labor that obviously influenced the use of a particular term. Rather than noting a divide between publishing and hosting, participants spoke of both a spectrum and a tiering of work and support, though all emphasized that these models did not describe the quality of the work produced. This paper also discusses how use of the term library publishing creates additional ambiguity in naming practices, and considers some implications for library staff newly immersed in scholarly publishing work