A Future of Failure? The Flow of Technology Talent into Government and Civil Society

This report is an evaluation of the technology talent landscape shows a severe paucity of individuals with technical skills in computer science, data science, and the Internet or other information technology expertise in civil society and government. It investigates broadly the health of the talent pipeline that connects individuals studying or working in information technology-related disciplines to careers in public sector and civil society institutions. Barriers to recruitment and retention of individuals with the requisite skills include compensation, a perceived inability to pursue groundbreaking work, and cultural aversion to innovation

Viewing the Future? Virtual Reality In Journalism

Journalism underwent a flurry of virtual reality content creation, production and distribution starting in the final months of 2015. The New York Times distributed more than 1 million cardboard virtual reality viewers and released an app showing a spherical video short about displaced refugees. The Los Angeles Times landed people next to a crater on Mars. USA TODAY took visitors on a ride-along in the "Back to the Future" car on the Universal Studios lot and on a spin through Old Havana in a bright pink '57 Ford. ABC News went to North Korea for a spherical view of a military parade and to Syria to see artifacts threatened by war. The Emblematic Group, a company that creates virtual reality content, followed a woman navigating a gauntlet of anti- abortion demonstrators at a family planning clinic and allowed people to witness a murder-suicide stemming from domestic violence.In short, the period from October 2015 through February 2016 was one of significant experimentation with virtual reality (VR) storytelling. These efforts are part of an initial foray into determining whether VR is a feasible way to present news. The year 2016 is shaping up as a period of further testing and careful monitoring of potential growth in the use of virtual reality among consumers

Global challenges for sustainable food production

No abstract available

The effects of acute arginine supplementation on 10 mile cycling time trial performance in young adult males

L-arginine is one of the most metabolically versatile amino acids in the human body, most notably serving as the pre-cursor for the biosynthesis of nitric oxide (NO). The reported physiological effects of L-arginine have served as the rationale behind the development and marketing of a number of NO stimulating dietary supplements, which profess to augment NO production and improve blood flow to muscle during exercise. Supplementation with L-arginine and similar “NO boosters” has soared in popularity over the last decade, despite the fact that there is an overall lack of supportive data in healthy humans, as ergogenic potential remains inconclusive. The aim of this study was therefore to determine the effects of acute supplementation of commercially available L-arginine on exercise performance. Twelve recreationally trained, young adult males (22.3 ± 4.1 yr, 79.3 ± 7.9 kg, 180.9 ± 2.3 cm) consumed either: a placebo (PLA), an L-arginine beverage containing 8g L-arginine (ARG) or no beverage (CON) in a double-blind, repeated-measures design. 45 minutes following consumption, participants completed a 10 mile time trial on a cycle ergometer. There was no significant difference (p=0.643) in time-trial performance between the conditions (CON 29:49 ± 2:19 vs ARG 29:49 ± 3:18 vs PLA 29:30 ± 2:42 minutes). There was no significant difference (p=0.276) between conditions in volitional power output (W) (CON 119.3 ± 8.7 vs ARG 120.1 ± 7.7 vs PLA 121.2 ± 6.2 W), or in heart rate responses (p=0.129) (CON 169.2 ± 11.3 vs ARG 167.2 ± 10.8 vs PLA 166.3 ± 7.8 bpm). Significant differences (p=0.033) were observed between conditions (CON 15.6 ± 1.6 vs ARG 15.2 ± 2.0 vs PLA 15.0 ± 1.7) in RPE responses. With no ergogenic benefits observed in this study, the rationale for pre-exercise supplementation with arginine may be further brought into question

The character table of a sharply 5-transitive subgroup of Alt(12){\rm Alt}(12)

In this paper we calculate the character table of a sharply $5$-transitive subgroup of ${\rm Alt}(12)$, and of a sharply $4$-transitive subgroup of ${\rm Alt}(11)$. Our presentation of these calculations is new because we make no reference to the sporadic simple Mathieu groups, and instead deduce the desired character tables using only the existence of the stated multiply transitive permutation representations.Comment: 12 pages; submitte

A Study Of The Costs Of Cloud-Based Website Parallel Archiving System

Parallel Archiving System supports web applications that are periodically renewed, frequently changed in design and supporting technologies, and are required to keep the previous periods’ applications operational in parallel with the current period application to form an easy-to-access archive for historical data. The system implements each period’s application with a virtual machine to preserve the technologies and deploys it in a cloud platform. This paper studies the costs of a cloud-based Parallel Archiving System that include the cost of virtual machine, database server, data storage, business transactions and website traffic. This study will help a manager in determining how many of previous periods’ applications an organization can afford to run for a given budget

Why Foundations? The Theory and Strategy of the General-Purpose Foundation

As foundations increasingly grapple with the penetration of socioeconomic dissension into every facet of our country’s public culture, it has become difficult to evade the moral salience of whether philanthropic wealth aggregation and allocation reflect or even entrench the structures of material accumulation many now see at the root of declining support for liberalism across advanced economies. This essay argues that contrary to growing internal and external anxieties about the role and legitimacy of general-purpose foundations in the United States, there is a sound theoretical expression of them as an essential institution in a liberal democracy. The core principle of this theory is that philanthropy’s exceptional status is justified by its unique ability to overcome critical limitations on our collective imaginations. It is the general-purpose foundation that, through its independence and partiality, can both take the longer view and challenge the orthodoxies of any particular societal configuration. The theory presented here also commends a specific strategic doctrine for the general-purpose foundation: to maximize impact by investing in the production, distribution, and adoption of new social knowledge through an optimized combination of activities and assets. General-purpose foundations ought to maximize and ought to be involved in social demonstration. When program officers talk about “filling gaps” or making “catalytic” grants, they are channeling philanthropy’s distinctiveness in being able to do what others cannot or will not. Unaccountable, privately aggregated wealth rightly elicits suspicion in an egalitarian society. And, certainly, philanthropy should welcome a public discourse in which such criticisms can freely manifest from outside its walls. But philanthropy should also arm itself, including those who draw a salary from endowments, with an affirmative democratic justification that is more than descriptive. If philanthropy will not assert for itself a morally legitimate and useful status in a democracy, then who will

Climbing the Mountain: An Approach to Planning and Evaluating Public-Policy Advocacy

· This article proposes a new methodology for planning and evaluating public-policy advocacy. The methodology is designed around a series of stages, each with a different set of strategic planning and assessment requirements. · The article suggests that both planning and evaluative approaches that fail to take account of the necessary stages required to develop and then implement an advocacy strategy will likely assign the wrong indicators of success. · This analysis is based on direct experience working with both policy processes and a wide range of foundations and nonprofits that have invested in public-policy advocacy, including the Rockefeller, Ford, David and Lucille Packard, and William and Flora Hewlett foundations

The role of white support in predicting racial minorities\u27 feelings of inclusion and retention

The main objective of the current study is to identify strategies that white individuals can use to support coworkers of color. For organizations to meet their goals, it is essential for racial minorities to experience a sense of belonging and integration in their workgroups. Thus, we introduced a measure of white support for coworkers of color (WSCC) in which employees of color rated their white coworkers’ openness to learning about sociocultural factors that impact the lives of racial minorities and their inclinations to demonstrate solidarity by promoting justice in the workplace. In a sample of people of color, we found that increased feelings of inclusion mediated the positive link between WSCC and intent to remain in their role. We discuss how these findings can be used to inform the development of diversity and inclusion (D & I) initiatives that educate employees about the harmful, and often indivisible, effects of structural racism and equipping majority employees for allyship behaviors. In conclusion, some directions for future work as well as suggestions for the prevention of white backlash are presented