Mining for Social Serendipity

A common social problem at an event in which people do not personally know all of the other participants is the natural tendency for cliques to form and for discussions to mainly happen between people who already know each other. This limits the possibility for people to make interesting new acquaintances and acts as a retarding force in the creation of new links in the social web. Encouraging users to socialize with people they don't know by revealing to them hidden surprising links could help to improve the diversity of interactions at an event. The goal of this paper is to propose a method for detecting "surprising" relationships between people attending an event. By "surprising" relationship we mean those relationships that are not known a priori, and that imply shared information not directly related with the local context of the event (location, interests, contacts) at which the meeting takes place. To demonstrate and test our concept we used the Flickr community. We focused on a community of users associated with a social event (a computer science conference) and represented in Flickr by means of a photo pool devoted to the event. We use Flickr metadata (tags) to mine for user similarity not related to the context of the event, as represented in the corresponding Flickr group. For example, we look for two group members who have been in the same highly specific place (identified by means of geo-tagged photos), but are not friends of each other and share no other common interests or, social neighborhood

The development of national competency standards for the midwife in Australia

Objective: to develop and validate national competency standards for midwives in Australia. This study was part of a commissioned national research project to articulate the scope of practice of Australian midwives and to develop national competency standards to assist midwives to deliver safe and competent midwifery care. Design: a multi-method, staged approach was used to collect data through a literature review, workshop consultations, interviews, surveys and written submissions in order to develop national competency standards for Australian midwives. Subsequently, direct observation of practice in a range of settings ensured validation of the competencies. Setting: maternity-care settings in each state and territory in Australia. Participants: midwives, other health professionals and consumers of midwifery care. Findings: The national competency standards for the midwife were developed through research and consultation before being validated in practice. Key conclusions: the national competency standards are currently being implemented into education, regulation and practice in Australia. These will be minimum competency standards required of all midwives who seek authority to practise as a midwife in Australia. It is expected that all midwives will demonstrate that they are able to meet the competency standards relevant to the position they hold. Implications for practice: the competency standards establish a national standard for midwives and reinforce responsibility and accountability in the provision of quality midwifery care through safe and effective practice. In addition, individual midwives may use the competency standards as the basis of their ongoing professional development plans. © 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved

The role of the midwife in Australia: views of women and midwives

Objective: to research the role of midwives in Australia from the perspectives of women and midwives. This study was part of a commissioned national research project to articulate the scope of practice of Australian midwives and to develop national competency standards to assist midwives to deliver safe and competent midwifery care. Design: a multi-method approach with qualitative data collected from surveys with women and interviews with midwives. Setting: participants represented each state and territory in Australia. Participants: midwives who were randomly selected by the regulatory authorities across the country and women who were consumers of midwifery care and involved in maternity activism. Key conclusions: midwives and women identified a series of key elements that were required of a midwife. These included: being woman centred; providing safe and supportive care; and working in collaboration with others when necessary. These findings were consistent with much of the international literature. Implications for practice: a number of barriers to achieving the full role of the midwife were identified. These included a lack of opportunity to practice across the full spectrum of maternity care, the invisibility of midwifery in regulation and practice, the domination of medicine, workforce shortages, the institutional system of maternity care, and the lack of a clear image of what midwifery is within the wider community. These barriers must be addressed if midwives in Australia are to be able to function according to the full potential of their role. © 2007

Some Basic Marxist Concepts to Help Understand Income Tax

The paper introduces readers to some basic Marxist concepts to give us the building blocks for an alternative understanding of tax and perhaps even to inspire some to use these concepts and ideas in their future research. It argues that the tax system reflects the phenomena of wealth and income and that there is a deeper reality obscured and ignored by the income tax system as an outcrop of a capitalist system which does the same. This deeper reality is that capital exploits workers and that profit, rent, interest and the like are the money form of the unpaid labour of workers, what Marx called surplus value. Tax is a deduction from that surplus value

Mi heroe

This unit is designed for high school. It attempts to have students reflect on what they value in a hero and what they choose to imitate. Students learn vocabulary to describe physical traits and personality characteristics of a hero/heroine. The students will engage in conversations and reflective writing about heroes in the target language of Spanish. The assessments include an interpersonal piece and a presentational writing assessment. As much as possible, I incorporated references to authentic resources such as, videos, music, infographics, and articles in Spanish

Food and food history

David R. Blanks, associate professor in the history department in the American University in Cairo talks about the course he is teaching on food history, the weekly column he writes in the Caravan about food titled Bite Me and on food, it\u27s history, and the Egyptian food culture

Barriers towards employees\u27 structural and psychological empowerment: A study of non-managerial employees in governmental service organizations in Cairo

The aim of this thesis is to pave the way for non-managerial employees’ empowerment in governmental service organizations in Egypt. Based on a review of previous studies that discussed the Egyptian bureaucracy, this study hypothesized that all the structural and psychological empowerment barriers - namely the organizational cultures and work context factors, managerial employees’ leadership style, and non-managerial employees’ readiness level and personalities - do exist within the governmental service organizations. Questionnaires were distributed to 223 non-managerial employees in Real Estate offices, Social Insurance and Pension offices, Traffic Services offices, Civil Registry offices, Health offices (Ministry of Health), Tax offices, and Courts’ Registry and Record offices all over Cairo. Statistical analyses of the findings of 183 eligible questionnaires reveal that ‘non-managerial employees’ inability to be empowered’ is the only empowerment barrier that does exist within governmental service organizations. Results have been inconclusive for the organizational cultures. The thesis concludes by providing recommendations for facilitating non-managerial employees’ empowerment, and offering suggestions for future research based on the limitations identified in this study