10 for Today starts with Martin Luther and ends with a serious story about death by taser.

9.5 myths about the Reformation
via the OUP blog by Peter Marshall

Painting of Luther nailing 95 theses by Julius Hübner (1806–1882). 

Public domain via Wikimedia Commons.

This year [2017] marks the 500th anniversary of the beginning of the Reformation and Martin Luther’s nailing of his 95 Theses to the doors of Wittenberg Castle Church. But how much of what we think about it is actually true? To coincide with this occasion, Peter Marshall addresses 9.5 common myths about the Reformation.
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Scientists Prove Nanomagnets Can Levitate, Expect More Exotic Quantum Phenomena
via the Big Think blog by Paul Ratner

Cosimo Rusconi (l.) and Oriol Romero-Isart (r.) play with a levitron to demonstrate their work on nano magnets. Credit: IQOQI Innsbruck/M.R.Knabl
Researchers demonstrate in two new papers that despite a classic 175-year-old theorem saying it’s impossible, nanomagnets can be stably levitated in an external magnetic field. How can this be accomplished? Thanks to quantum mechanical principles.
In 1842, the British mathematician Samuel Earnshaw proved you can’t have a stable and permanent configuration of levitating magnets. If you float one above another, the whole setup can collapse with the slightest movement. An international team of physicists has shown that “in the quantum world, tiny non-gyrating nanoparticles can stably levitate in a magnetic field.”
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England's freedom, soldier's rights: Civil War army disputes
via The National Archives blog by Ralph Thompson

Title page of the ‘Agreement of the People’, printed at Smithfield by George Ibbitson (catalogue reference SP 116/530/23)
Three hundred and seventy years ago this autumn [of 2017], among the dying embers of bloody civil war, emerged what was to be the first truly democratic pressure group in British political history.
By the end of the First Civil War (or war of the Stuart Kingdoms), the divisions of 1642 had become further complicated by the formation of the New Model Army in 1645. Valuing merit and proficiency above privilege and social standing, in 1648 it was to use force against a Parliament that wished to disband it.
During the summer of 1647, attempts by parliamentary commanders – army grandees like Thomas Fairfax and Henry Ireton – to negotiate a settlement with Charles I lost them the support of the military and civilian radicals (or ‘Levelling’ party) within their ranks.
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This border collie is busy saving New Zealand's endangered parrots
via Boing Boing by Andrea James

A doggo named Ajax has been specially trained to sniff out the kea, an endangered bird endemic to New Zealand. Watch this charming short as they roam the mountainous South Island.
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Nine things you didn't know about love and marriage in Byzantium
via OUP blog by Anthony Kaldellis

Marriage Ring with Scenes from the Life of Christ” provided  by the Walters Art Museum. Public domain via Wikimedia Commons.
The Byzantine civilization has long been regarded by many as one big curiosity. Often associated with treachery and superstition, their traditions and contributions to the ancient world are often overlooked. Referencing A Cabinet of Byzantine Curiosities, we’ve pulled together nine lesser known facts about love and marriage in Byzantium.
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The Childlike Joy of Alexander Calder
via Arts & Letters Daily: James Gardener in the weekly Standard

Alexander Calder's Parasite (1947)
In the past 100 years, no visual artist has contributed more to the sum total of human happiness than Alexander Calder. If you think about it, this generating of happiness, to the extent to which it retains any cultural prestige these days, is seen as the domain of musicians and writers far more than of painters and sculptors; rather, since the rise of modernism, vexing the public has been the more likely mission of visual art. But if the works on view in the Whitney’s current Calder: Hypermobility exhibition, devoted to his kinetic sculptures, are among the most revolutionary of the past century, they present themselves with such grace and modesty and charm that even small children, knowing nothing of vanguardist aesthetics, respond with all the delight that Calder clearly wanted them, and us, to feel.
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10 of the Best Poems about Identity and the Self
via Interesting Literature
Classic poems about selfhood and identity
Poetry and self-expression go hand in hand: we often treat them as synonymous. Of course, this is a relatively modern notion, largely the legacy of the Romantics in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries – and poets in the twentieth century in particular have sought to move away from this idea of poetry as a record of the poet’s own self. (See T. S. Eliot’s influential essay ‘Tradition and the Individual Talent’ for one prominent example.) Nonetheless, many poets have written about the self, and their individual identity, as the following classic poems about selfhood demonstrate.
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Earth’s Hidden Continent Zealandia Finally Recognized
via Big Think by Teodora Zareva

Simplified map of Earth’s tectonic plates and continents, including Zealandia. Credit: GSA Today
After decades of research and analysis of geoscience data, a paper published in February this year (2017) made “official” in the scientific community the classification of the seventh largest geological continent - Zealandia.
Zealandia is the youngest, thinnest and most submerged of all continents, with 94% of its surface currently under water. The name Zealandia was first used in 1995 by geophysicist Bruce Luyendyk to describe a large region of continental crust encompassing New Zealand, the Chatham Rise, Campbell Plateau, and Lord Howe Rise.
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Taser says its weapons don't kill people, so Reuters built a massive database of 1000+ Taser deaths
via Boing Boing by Cory Doctorow

The official party line from Taser – who make less-lethal electrical weapons as well as a range of police body-cameras and other forensic devices – is that its weapons don't kill ("no one has died directly from the device’s shock"). Reuters reporters who heard this claim decided it was highly suspect and took action, mining America's court records to find "150 autopsy reports citing Tasers as a cause or contributor to deaths," and that those deaths were disproportionately inflicted on "society’s vulnerable – unarmed, in psychological distress and seeking help" – all told, they found 1005 deaths in which Tasers were implicated.
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Maybe It's Not All Good or All Bad

a post by Ginelle Testa for the Tiny Buddha blog


“You are the sky. Everything else—it’s just the weather.” ~Pema Chödrön

A farmer has a horse for many years; it helps him earn his livelihood and raise his son. One day, the horse runs away. His neighbor says sympathetically, “Such bad luck.”

The farmer replies, “Maybe. Who knows?”

The next day, the horse makes its way back home bringing with it another horse. The neighbor says with a smile, “Such good luck.”

The farmer replies, “Maybe. Who knows?”

The following day, the farmer’s son rides the new horse and seeks to tame it. In the process, he breaks his leg. The neighbor says sympathetically, “Such bad luck.”

The farmer replies, “Maybe. Who knows?”

The last day of the story, the military comes to the village to draft all able-bodied young men to fight in a war. The son is exempt from the draft due to his broken leg. You can guess what the neighbor said, and how the farmer replied.

Continue reading and discover how to apply the farmer’s attitude to your own life.

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Retweet or like? That is the question

an article by Eva Lahuerta-Otero, Rebeca Cordero-Gutiérrez and Fernando De la Prieta-Pintado (University of Salamanca, Spain) published in Online Information Review Volume 42 Issue 5 (2018)

Abstract

Purpose
Due to the size and importance of social media, user-generated content analysis is becoming a key factor for companies and brands across the world. By using Twitter messages’ content, the purpose of this paper is to identify which elements of the messages enable tweet diffusion and facilitate eWOM.

Design/methodology/approach
In total, 30,082 tweets collected from 10,120 Twitter users were classified based on four assorted brands. By comparing with multiple regression techniques high vs low purchase involvement and hedonic vs utilitarian products and using the theory of heuristic-systematic processing of information, the authors examine the causes of tweet diffusion.

Findings
The authors illustrate how the elements of a tweet (hashtags, mentions, links, sentiment or tweet length) influence its diffusion and popularity.

Research limitations/implications
This study validated the use of information processing theories in the social media field. The study showed a picture on how different Twitter elements influence eWOM and message diffusion under several purchase involvement situations.

Practical implications
The results of this study can help social media brand community managers of all types of companies on how to write their Twitter messages to obtain greater dissemination and popularity.

Originality/value
The study offers a unique deep brand analysis which helps brands and companies to understand their social media popularity in detail. Depending on product category, companies can achieve maximum social impact on Twitter by focusing on the interactivity items that will work best for their products or brands.

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Returns to Human Capital and the Incorporation of Highly-Skilled Workers in the Public and Private Sector of Major Immigrant Societies: An Introduction

an article by Neli Demireva (University of Essex, UK) and Ivana Fellini (University of Milano-Bicocca, Italy) published in Social Inclusion Volume 6 Number 3 (2018)

Abstract

Across the major immigrant societies of the European Union, EU-15 countries, migrants and minorities still experience economic disadvantage. This failure of economic integration poses significant questions about the utilization of human capital, the management of mobility and the competitiveness of European labour markets (Cameron, 2011; OECD, 2017).

Using a variety of datasets, this special issue pushes the debate forward in several ways.

We will consider the integration outcomes of both migrants and second generation minority members in comparison to majority members. Labour market outcomes will be considered broadly: the probability of employment but also overqualification will be taken into account.

Offering both analysis of single country cases and a cross-national comparison, the special issue will build a comprehensive picture of the factors associated with labour market disadvantage of migrant men and women, and their descendants—particularly, differential returns to foreign qualifications and educational credentials, differences between public and private sectors placements, and where possible the period of the economic crisis will be examined as well.

Full text (PDF 5pp)

Inequality in the Middle East

a column by Facundo Alvaredo, Lydia Assouad and Thomas Piketty for VOX: CEPR’s Policy Portal

Survey estimates suggest that inequality in the Middle East is not particularly high despite considerable political conflict.

This column uses new ‘distributional national accounts’ data to show that the Middle East is in fact the most unequal region in the world, with both enormous inequality between countries and large inequality within countries. The results emphasise the need to develop mechanisms of regional redistribution and to increase transparency on income and wealth data.

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New theory of dark personality reveals the 9 traits of the evil people in your life

a post by Paul Ratner for the Big Think blog


Credit: No Country for Old Men (2007)

Do evil people exist? While the answer to this may depend on your religious background and what you understand “evil” to be, scientists have figured out that people have a “dark core” to their personality. What’s more, a General Dark Factor of Personality (D-factor) exists that can tell the extent of a person’s dark traits, which cause questionable ethical, moral and social behavior.

What is the D-factor?
The research team from Germany and Denmark defined the D-factor as “the basic tendency to maximize one's own utility at the expense of others, accompanied by beliefs that serve as justifications for one's malevolent behaviors.”

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A Creative Way to Cope with Depression

a post by Margarita Tartakovsky for the Make a Mess: Everyday Creativity [via World of Technology blog]



“Ghostlike, you watch me in my morning shower,

You hover in the corner of the kitchen.

You sit seductively on the soft sofa

Wearing an evil smirk,

Beckoning for me to spend

My precious hours there with you.”

These are the first few lines of Elizabeth Maynard Schaefer’s poem about her own depression in her powerful book Writing Through the Darkness: Easing Your Depression with Paper and Pen. Schaefer, who has bipolar disorder, believes that writing saved her life. She also takes medication, and has received electroconvulsive therapy (ECT). As she writes in the book, “Writing was as healing to me as all my medical treatments—this did matter. Writing helped bring me back.”

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People with Bipolar Disorder Share How They Started Treatment—and Why They Stick with It

a post by Margarita Tartakovsky for the World of Psychology blog



Bipolar disorder is highly treatable, and yet so many people don’t seek treatment. Or if they do seek help, they later stop taking their meds or stop attending their therapy sessions. Or both. And then their bipolar blows up. Their mania spikes. Their depression sinks even deeper.

Sticking to treatment is not easy. Medication has side effects. Therapy takes work. The illness itself can be stubborn, exhausting, confusing.

It can all feel so frustrating.

We wanted to know what led some individuals to stick to their initial treatment — and why they’ve stayed dedicated ever since. Of course, life is not linear, and the people we interviewed haven’t had linear journeys either. Because bipolar disorder is complex. Their stories will no doubt inspire you, and remind you that you are not alone, and you can get better — even if your journey’s been jagged, too, even if it doesn’t feel like that right now.

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Who benefits from the ‘hidden welfare state’? The distributional effects of personal income tax expenditure in six countries

an article by Silvia Avram (University of Essex, UK) published in Journal of European Social Policy Volume 28 Issue 3 (July 2018)

Abstract

We use a tax-benefit microsimulation model to investigate the size and distributional effects of tax allowances and tax credits in six European countries.

Results indicate that tax allowances and tax credits benefit large sections of the population, not just individuals with high incomes and that together they amount to substantial amounts of foregone revenue. However, with some (important) exceptions, their effect on inequality is small.

Tax allowances are generally regressive while tax credits tend to be proportional or mildly progressive. Yet, the redistributive effect of tax allowances and tax credits works in complex and often unanticipated ways.

Other features of the income tax system (such as the tax rate schedule or the definition of the taxpayer unit) are as important in determining the size and direction of the redistributive effect as the characteristics of the tax allowances/tax credits themselves. Even instruments inversely linked to taxable income can be more beneficial to high-income households in some contexts.

Consequently, tax allowances and tax credits appear ill-suited to target resources towards households in the bottom part of the income distribution.

Full text (PDF 23pp)

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Tiny Habits Can Support Big Goals

a post by Carl Phillips for the Tiny Buddha blog

“A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.” ~Lao Tzu

Many of us have big, grand goals for our lives.

These goals can be tied to our work, or maybe starting a family, or ideals for a new home with that family, or travel to an exotic location we’ve long dreamed about, or pretty much anything else. Oftentimes these goals can seem a very long way from where we are presently in our lives. In fact, sometimes they can seem so far away that they appear to be totally out of reach.

As a consequence, too many of us give up even trying to make these things happen. And that’s a real shame, because sometimes all that is required to make them so is putting one foot in front of the other, in their general direction.

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Low-pay sectors, earnings mobility and economic policy in the UK

an article by Neil Lee (London School of Economics and Political Science, UK), Anne Green (University of Birmingham, UK) and Paul Sissons (Coventry University, UK) published in Policy & Politics Volume 46 Number 3 (July 2018)

Abstract

Low pay is a significant and growing issue in many developed economies. Sectoral approaches are often used in both economic development and labour market policy, yet there is little evidence on how low pay and earnings mobility vary by sector.

This article investigates this issue in the UK.

It shows pronounced sectoral variations in low pay and earnings mobility. It highlights the policy implications of growth in large, low paying sectors. While policymakers have focused on high-wage, high-skill sectors, efforts to improve productivity in low-wage sectors could improve living standards and the UK's economic performance.

Full text (PDF 23pp)

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Risk, commercialism and social purpose: Repositioning the English housing association sector

an article by Tony Manzi (University of Westminster, UK) and Nicky Morrison (University of Cambridge, UK) published in Urban Studies Volume 55 Issue 9 (July 2018)

Abstract

Originally seen as the ‘third arm’ of UK housing policy, the independent, not-for-profit housing association sector had long been seen as effective in ‘filling the gap’ where the state or market were unable to provide for households in need. Since the 1980s in particular, successive governments had viewed housing associations in favourable terms as efficient, semi-autonomous social businesses, capable of leveraging significant private funding.

By 2015, in contrast, central government had come to perceive the sector as inefficient, bureaucratic and wasteful of public subsidy. Making use of institutional theory, this paper considers this paradigm shift and examines the organisational responses to an increasingly challenging operating environment.

By focusing, in particular, on large London housing associations, the paper analyses their strategic decision-making to address the opportunities and threats presented.

The paper argues that in facing an era of minimal subsidy, low security and high risk, the 2015 reforms represent a critical juncture for the sector. Housing organisations face a stark dilemma about whether to continue a strategy of ‘profit for purpose’ or to embrace an unambiguously commercial ethos. The article contends that the trajectory of decision-making (although not unidirectional) leads ultimately towards an increased exposure to risk and vulnerability to changes in the housing market.

More fundamentally, the attempt to reconcile social and commercial logics is likely to have wider consequences for the legitimacy of the sector.

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Human capital and the supply of agricultural workers

a column by Tommaso Porzio for VOX: CEPR’s Policy Portal

The share of the population employed in agriculture across the globe declined steeply over the second half of the 20th century. This coincided with an unprecedented increase in average years of schooling.

This column explores whether these two trends are related.

The results lend support to the idea that increased schooling led more workers to sort out of agricultural work. Whether reallocation out of agriculture has been beneficial for growth, however, remains to be seen.

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Innovating for a cause: the work and learning required to create a new approach to healthcare for homeless people

an article by Alison Fuller and Rebecca Taylor (Institute of Education, UCL, London, UK), Susan Halford and Kate Lyle (University of Southampton), and Anne-Charlotte Teglborg (ESCP Europe, Paris, France) published in Journal of Education and Work Volume 31 Number 3 (April 2018)

Abstract

Innovation occupies a pivotal place in our understanding of knowledge-based economies, and this is raising questions about sources of innovation, how it originates, and the role played by employees, work practices and learning.

This paper explores these issues through case study research into a new approach to providing healthcare for homeless people in England, and by bringing together conceptual insights from the employee-driven innovation literature, and more broadly from social and practice-based learning theory and organisational theory.

Applying these perspectives to our case enables illumination of the innovation as a process – not an event – and as an ongoing set of organisational practices that transcend their origins. Through our analysis we argue that the notion of ‘a cause’ is helpful in elucidating the impetus and the commitment to making the innovation happen (and go on happening).

Our findings are presented under three themes: ‘establishing a cause’, ‘organising for innovation’, and ‘innovative capability in practice’.

Building on these, we have identified five key inter-related dimensions which help conceptualise the work and learning that it took to create and (re-)enact the innovation and that we suggest may have relevance for understanding and characterising other employee-led innovations in and perhaps beyond healthcare.

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Poverty, Material Hardship, and Mental Health among Workers in Three Front-Line Service Occupations

an article by Bill McCarthy and Ryan Finnigan (University of California-Davis, USA), Angela Carter (University of California Berkeley, USA), and Mikael Jansson and Cecilia Benoit (University of Victoria, BC, Canada) published in Journal of Poverty Volume 22 Issue 4 (2018)

Abstract

Many studies document links between income poverty, material hardship, and mental health; however, we know less about the mental health consequences of within-person changes in income poverty and material hardship, particularly for low-income workers.

The authors examine these relationships with longitudinal data from a sample of frontline service workers interviewed in two cities (one each in the United States and Canada).

Mixed-effects regression models show between- and within-person differences in income poverty are associated with changes in material hardship, and between- and within-person differences in material hardship are associated with poorer mental health and depression.

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The Importance of Finding and Standing in Our Truth

a post by Paul Hellwig for the Tiny Buddha blog


“What I know for sure is that you feel real joy in direct proportion to how connected you are to living your truth.” ~Oprah Winfrey

If we cannot live in and from our truth, then we cannot be authentic. The process of self- actualization is not striving to become the person we are supposed to be. It is removing what is not true for or about us so that we can be the person that we already are.

The hardest part of living in my truth was coming to understand and accept that it didn't matter how anyone else experienced my childhood and my life but myself. That includes my father, mother, and three siblings. It also didn't matter how others were affected or not. For our recovery only our truth matters

Why is standing in our truth so important? It is impossible to build a solid life on a foundation of untruths, lies, denial, fabrications, and misinterpretations.

Continue reading

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Challenges and Contradictions in the ‘Normalising’ of Precarious Work

an article by Jill Rubery, Arjan Keizer and Mathew Johnson (The University of Manchester, UK) and Damian Grimshaw (The University of Manchester, UK; International Labour Organisation, Switzerland) published in Work, Employment and Society Volume 32 Issue 3 (June 2018)

Abstract

Precarious work is increasingly considered the new ‘norm’ to which employment and social protection systems must adjust.

This article explores the contradictions and tensions that arise from different processes of normalisation driven by social policies that simultaneously decommodify and recommodify labour. An expanded framework of decommodification is presented that identifies how the standard employment relationship (SER) may be extended and flexibilised to include those in precarious work, drawing examples from a recent study of precarious work across six European countries.

These decommodification processes are found to be both partial and, in some cases, coexisting with activation policies that position precarious work as an alternative to unemployment, thereby recommodifying labour.

Despite these challenges and contradictions, the article argues that a new vision of SER reform promises greater inclusion than alternative policy scenarios that give up on the regulation of employers and rely on state subsidies to mitigate against precariousness.

The power of environmental norms: marine plastic pollution and the politics of microbeads

an article by Peter Dauvergne published in Environmental Politics Volume 27 Issue 4 (2018)

Abstract

Emerging environmental norms gain strength and diffuse more quickly when scientific evidence of harm is consolidating, when activism is intensifying, and when political and corporate resistance is relatively weak.

The anti-microbead norm – that plastic microbeads should be removed from personal care products – has been gaining global influence since 2012; witness the upsurge in anti-microbead activism, public concern, voluntary corporate phasedowns and governmental bans. By 2018, the world was on track to eliminate microbeads from ‘rinse-off’ products within a decade, reducing microplastics flowing into oceans by 1–2%.

This confirms the power of environmental norms, but how and why this phaseout is occurring – unequally across jurisdictions, with firms creating loopholes, missing deadlines and limiting the scope of reforms – also reveals innate weaknesses of bottom-up, ad hoc norm diffusion as a way of improving marine governance.

These weaknesses are heightened when economic stakes are high, solutions are complex and costly, authority is fragmented across jurisdictions and corporate resistance is strong.

Full text (PDF 20pp)

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Changing the structure of minimum wages: Firm adjustment and wage spillovers

a column by Giulia Giupponi and Stephen Machin for VOX: CEPR’s Policy Portal

n 2016 the National Living Wage in the UK raised the minimum hourly wage for workers aged 25 and over.

The column uses data from English care homes to analyse the impact of this policy, finding that the main non-wage effect has been a deterioration in quality of care. Younger colleagues also received wage rises, which seems to reflect a preference for fairness among employers.

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Protectionism and the business cycle

a column by Alessandro Barattieri, Matteo Cacciatore and Fabio Ghironi for VOX: CEPR’s Policy Portal

Populist politicians argue that protectionism stimulates the domestic economy. This column uses data on temporary trade barriers from antidumping investigations to show that when small open economies have imposed protectionist measures, it has caused inflation to rise and real economic activity to fall. Empirical analysis and model-based exercises show that protectionism is costly even when used temporarily, even for economies stuck in liquidity traps, and regardless of the flexibility of the exchange rate.

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Everyone's Doing The Best That They Can

a post by Hailey Magee for the Tiny Buddha blog


“All I know is that my life is better when I assume that people are doing their best. It keeps me out of judgment and lets me focus on what is, and not what should or could be.” ~Brené Brown

My favorite principle is this simple truth: Everyone is doing the best that they can with the resources they have. Adopting this belief has radically changed my relationship to myself and to others.

This idea has been explored by a constellation of religious, spiritual, and wellness practitioners. As Deepak Chopra said, “People are doing the best that they can from their own level of consciousness.”

At first, it's a hard concept for us to swallow. In a culture that constantly urges us to do more, to be better, and to excel, “I'm doing the best that I can” sounds like complacency—like an excuse. But what if we took a step back from our culture's infinite growth paradigm and considered, “What if, right now, there is a limit to what I can achieve? Can I be okay with that?”

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When You Reframe Your Breakup as an Opportunity, Everything Changes

a post by Eric Ibey for the Tiny Buddha blog

“Sometimes the most uncomfortable learning is the most powerful.” ~Brené Brown

Seems impossible, doesn’t it?

How can you look at your breakup as an opportunity when it feels like someone cut your right arm off and ripped out your heart?

Breakups can be rough. When you open yourself up to another person, love them unconditionally, and compromise your own needs for the “betterment of the relationship,” you put yourself all-in. It’s no surprise that you feel lost, confused, and unwilling to move on when that connection is torn away from you. You gave everything to your relationship and now it’s gone. Forever.

Breakups have taught me something that I never learned in school: I’ve learned that losing love is hard. Brutally hard. I experienced more pain after the toughest breakup of my life than completing an engineering degree, doing standup comedy for the first time, and walking 400 kilometers in two weeks with 50 pounds on my back. When I lost my soul mate, I didn’t know how I was going to move on.

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Skilful means – a Buddhist approach to social responsibility

an article by Mai Chi Vu (Durham University, UK) published in Social Responsibility Journal Volume 14 Issue 2 (2018)

Abstract

Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to explore the link between spirituality and corporate social responsibility (CSR) from a Buddhist perspective. The paper addresses critical issues in CSR and highlights how the concept of Buddhist skilful means can be applied to tackle such issues. Skilful means is highlighted among various Buddhist concepts because it represents a context-sensitive and practical approach that can be effectively applied in CSR practice.

Design/methodology/approach
The paper reviews scholarly conversations on the challenges faced by CSR in contemporary business management and justifies the application of Buddhist principles, especially skilful means, to tackle such issues. The paper draws upon a wide range of Buddhist teachings and Sutras to propose a Buddhist skilful means approach to CSR.

Findings
Studies show that CSR is a highly contextualised term. Its definition and implementation differ in various contexts. Buddhism is set apart from other religions by its flexibility in practice and contextualisation. Further, the non-attachment that sits at the heart of the skilful means allows the exploration of different CSR practices to respond effectively to local contexts.

Practical implications
The paper proposes practical means for CSR practices adopted from a number of Buddhist qualities and principles in response to challenges for the practice of CSR.

Originality/value
Buddhist concepts have yet to be discovered or included in major scholarly conversations because of their contradiction of some well-known Western concepts and theories. Skilful means, including the principle of non-attachment, is a Buddhist approach. This paper argues that skilful means is a good fit with CSR as it has practical applications that can address issues identified in relation to CSR and organisational management practices.

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Unemployment and the Division of Housework in Europe

an article by Tanja van der Lippe and Lukas Norbutas (Utrecht University, the Netherlands) and Judith Treas (University of California, Irvine, USA) published in Work, employment and society Volume 32 Issue 4 (August 2018)

Abstract

Unemployment, especially in insecure times, has devastating effects on families, but it is not clear what happens to domestic work.

On the one hand, unemployment frees up time for more housework by both men and women. On the other hand, once unemployed, women may take on more additional housework than men do, either because they capitalize on their time to act out traditional gender roles or because unemployment compounds women’s general disadvantage in household bargaining.

Multi-level analyses based on the European Social Survey show that both men and women perform more housework when unemployed. However, the extra domestic work for unemployed women is greater than for unemployed men. They also spend more time on housework when their husband is unemployed.

Compared to their employed counterparts, unemployed women, but not men, perform even more housework in a country where the unemployment rate is higher.

Full text (PDF 20pp)

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10 for today start with Mark Twain (not seen him in a while) and ends with an items about human sense

Mark Twain’s Get-Rich-Quick Schemes
via Arts & Letters Daily: Alan Pell Crawford in the Paris Review

FROM THE COVER OF HOW NOT TO GET RICH.
Like most of us, Mark Twain hated writing checks to other people. But there were times when he happily paid out large sums. Issuing a check for $200,000 drawn on the United States Bank of New York on February 27, 1886, for example, made him almost giddy. The check was made out to Julia Dent Grant, the widow of Ulysses S. Grant, the former president of the United States and commanding general of the Union Army, who had died of cancer the summer before, just after completing his remembrances of the Civil War. That payment represented the first profits from sales of volume one of the Personal Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant, published only a few months earlier by Charles L. Webster and Company, a start-up publishing house Twain had established two years before. He had installed a nephew, Charles “Charley” Webster, as its business manager. Webster got his name on the letterhead and a salary, but that’s about all he got out of the position, besides aggravation. Twain made all the business and financial decisions, except when he didn’t feel like it.
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What Court of Chivalry records reveal about 14th century soldiers
via The National Archives Blog by Benjamin Trowbridge

Records of proceedings in the Court of Chivalry for the legal dispute between John Lord Lovell and Thomas Lord Morley over the right to bear heraldic arms of a black lion, rampant with a golden crown, on a silver field, 1385-86 (catalogue reference: C 47/6/1).
“The highest and most sovereign things a knight ought to guard in defence of his estate are his troth and his arms.”
These were the words of Richard Lord Scrope of Bolton proclaimed to Sir Robert Grosvenor in the presence of the king at the Palace of Westminster on 11 November 1391, recorded verbatim in the Calendar of the Close Rolls.
Sir Richard Lord Scrope had recently won the right to bear a certain shield of arms against Sir Robert Grosvenor (C 47/6/2), a Cheshire knight, after a four year dispute in the Court of Chivalry (1386-1390) and was now demanding his defeated rival pay recompense for damages and costs. The suit had been filed in the court in 1386 after it had become apparent during Richard II’s Scottish campaign the previous year that both parties had displayed similar arms: a gold bend (a thick strip running diagonally across the shield) against an azure (blue) background. It is likely that the duplication was accidental.
Continue reading
If you have any interest in this period of history then you will need to allow plenty of time for reading this item!!

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Insects Are In Serious Trouble
via 3 Quarks Daily: Ed Yong in The Atlantic

The bottles were getting emptier: That was the first sign that something awful was happening.
Since 1989, scientists from the Entomological Society Krefeld had been collecting insects in the nature reserves and protected areas of western Germany. They set up malaise traps – large tents that funnel any incoming insect upward through a cone of fabric and into a bottle of alcohol. These traps are used by entomologists to collect specimens of local insects, for research or education. “But over the years, [the Krefeld team] realized that the bottles were getting emptier and emptier,” says Caspar Hallmann, from Radboud University.
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The Earth’s interior is teeming with dead plates
via ResearchBuzz: Firehose: Howard Lee in Ars Technica
Last week [in October 2017], scientists released a monumental interactive catalog that tracks 94 ancient tectonic plates lurking deep within Earth’s mantle, a resource they’re calling an “Atlas of the Underworld.”
Although scientists have known for decades that tectonic plates plunge into the Earth’s interior at subduction zones, until recently, those plates disappeared off the geological map once they stopped generating earthquakes, which happens after they’re around 670km below the surface. In the last few years, seismic tomography, which uses waves from earthquakes to make images of the planet’s interior, has restored their visibility. It has revealed subducted plates sinking in the mantle all the way down to the core-mantle boundary, 2,900km below Earth’s surface.
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From Olivier's dance of death to Picasso's Quixote: the National Theatre's poster power
via the Guardian by Michael Billington

National Theatre posters for Don Quixote, The Deep Blue Sea and Volpone. Composite: National Theatre
Theatre posters are by definition ephemeral. One of the few that has endured is Lautrec’s famous image of a Moulin Rouge dancer, Jane Avril, whose high-kicking cancan is seen from the perspective of a double-bass player. That is a rare example of the poster as a durable work of art. But, if most of them fade with the productions they are designed to promote, they are still worth preserving and the National Theatre has made a fascinating selection from the 1,700 posters in its archive. A handful are on display in an exhibition at the Olivier theatre’s Wolfson Gallery. An even larger collection can be found in a magnificent book, National Theatre Posters, in which Rick Poynor traces their design history.
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Novels were never the same after Henry James
James invented the ‘psychological novel’ in The Portrait of a Lady. How could I not follow the fortunes of its heroine?
via Arts & Letters Daily: John Banville in The Irish Times
Although I often feel that I have been reading him since I was in the cradle, the somewhat embarrassing fact is that I came late to Henry James. It was in the mid-1970s that I first read The Portrait of a Lady, the great achievement of his middle years, if not the greatest of all his novels, as many readers consider it to be. I fell at once under the spell of the Master, and have knelt at his knee ever since.
That first encounter with The Portrait took place in Florence, where I was staying with my wife and son, in an eccentric little hotel run by two cadaverous but kindly and almost identical brothers, in the Via della Scala.
It seemed to me a nice coincidence that so much of the action in the book I was reading takes place in Florence. However, there was a greater coincidence that I was unaware of at the time.
The hotel we were in stood only a few streets away from where, a hundred years previously, James had begun the composition of the novel, in a room overlooking the Arno, a river that is less river than slow-moving mudslide, thick as it is with alluvial marl the colour, and probably also the texture, of Colman’s Mustard.
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A Short Summary of Aristotle’s Poetics
via Interesting Literature
An introduction to the first great work of literary criticism
Aristotle was the first theorist of theatre – so his Poetics is the origin and basis of all subsequent theatre criticism. His Poetics was written in the 4th century BC, some time after 335 BC. The important thing is that when Aristotle’s writing his Poetics, Greek theatre was not in its heyday, but was already past its peak, and Aristotle was writing a good 100 years after the Golden Age of Greek tragic theatre – so in many ways it’s like a contemporary critic writing about the plays of Chekhov or Oscar Wilde. It’s past, the writers of the plays are already long dead, but they’ve survived and Aristotle is writing about them and highlighting their importance. What follows are some notes towards a summary of, and introduction to, Aristotle’s Poetics – the first great work of literary criticism in the Western world.
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The history of the library
via OUP Blog by Amelia Carruthers

Featured image via Pixabay.
Our love of libraries is nothing new, and history records famous libraries as far back as those of Ashurbanipal (in 7th-century BCE Assyria) and Ancient Greek Alexandria. As society and culture have progressed, so too have our libraries. Even epochs such as the Middle Ages (known erroneously as the “Dark Ages” for its lack of learning and culture) had their share of renowned book collections. Indeed, the later Renaissance was only possible because of these stores of learning, preserved for centuries. The very concept of the Renaissance predicates access to a library, because if Antiquity were to be reborn, the guidelines for this rebirth had to emerge from research into the culture of Greece and Rome – which had to take place in a well-stocked library.
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In Space, Ice Flows Like Honey and Pops Like Champagne
via Big Think blog by Robby Berman

(NASA/JPL)
The first clue appeared in 2016, when researchers found that water, ammonia, and methanol ice – the kind found in interstellar clouds where stars form, and in comets – could contain a range of molecule types, including ribose, a precursor of RNA. One of the great mysteries surrounding the origin of life on earth is the question of where its life-starting RNA came from. Maybe this meant it could have come from space, but some were skeptical: Was the ribose found in the ice a natural occurrence, or just lab contamination? Now a new study of ice’s weird behavior under space-like conditions answers that question: Ribose happens.
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Beyond the big five, humans have dozens of senses
via Boing Boing by Andrea James

The five traditional senses are tied to visible sense organs, but depending on the definition, humans possess dozens of senses, including thermoception (temperature), proprioception (bodily spatial relations), nociception (pain), equilibrioception (balance), and mechanoreception (vibration).
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10 for today starts with "bunga bunga" and floats through a wide variety of subjects to conclude with a ginormous Lego installation

Bunga bunga! The great Edwardian Dreadnought hoax
via The National Archives Blog by Dr Richard Dunley
On the late afternoon of 7 February 1910, four men in long robes, accompanied by two in western dress, were greeted at Weymouth station by Captain Herbert Richmond and an honour guard. They were taken by Admiral’s Barge to HMS Dreadnought, the flagship of the Home Fleet, and the symbol of British naval might. Here they were shown around the ship by the Commander in Chief of the Home Fleet, Admiral Sir William May.

Virginia Woolf (far left) and the other ‘Abyssinian Princes’ (ADM 1/8192)
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DNA proves the amazing "tree lobster" insect still alive after 100 years of supposed extinction
via Boing Boing by Carla Sinclair
Scrolling through to check and, where necessary, edit I have taken out the image of this fascinating stick insect.

Once a species is considered extinct, it usually stays that way. But not so for an Australian stick insect that had been considered extinct since the early 1920s, and officially extinct by 1986. Alas, they have come back from the dead.
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The Little-known Friendships of Iconic Women Writers
via Arts & Letters Daily: Emily Midorikawa and Emma Sweeney in Literary Hub

Literary friendships are the stuff of legend. The image of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and William Wordsworth tramping the Lakeland Fells has long been entwined with their joint collection of groundbreaking poems. The tangled sexual escapades of the later Romantics Lord Byron and Percy Bysshe Shelley fueled gossip in their own time, and remain a source of endless fascination. By the mid-19th century, Charles Dickens was taking Wilkie Collins under his wing: publishing the younger writer’s stories, acting in his household theatricals, initiating excursions to bawdy music halls. And the memoirs of Ernest Hemingway offer readers a ringside view of his riotous drinking sprees with F. Scott Fitzgerald, thereby securing the pair’s Jazz Age friendship its place in literary lore.
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Simon Schama: finding the light in the darkness of the Jewish story
via The Guardian by Jonathan Freedland
Simon Schama is erudite to the point of self-parody. A conversation with him will range across continents and epochs at breakneck speed, the references to kings, painters, writers and scholars coming so fast that just as you’ve placed one, another has taken its place. When we meet, in the Academicians’ Room at the Royal Academy – the closest the New York-based Schama has to a London club – we have barely sat down before he has recommended The Five, a novel by Vladimir Jabotinsky, the intellectual godfather of Likud-style “revisionist” Zionism who died in 1940 (“It’s frighteningly good. It’s strangely sub-Dostoevskian”) and offered a description of the architecture visible in the demilitarised zone that separates North and South Korea (“pseudo-Mussolini, neoclassical, colossalist columns”).
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Ten Things You Might Not Know About Famous Poets
via Interesting Literature by Ana Sampson
Some of the items are fairly weird but not Edward Lear taking extraordinary measures to make moving house easier for his cat.
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These mid-century control rooms are sheer eye candy
via Boing Boing by Mark Frauenfelder

These power plant control rooms are so cool looking that they don't even seem real. This site, called Present /&/ Correct, has a nice gallery of them. Above image is from the nuclear ship Savannah.

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Those 3% of scientific papers that deny climate change? A review found them all flawed
via 3 Quarks Daily: Katherine Ellen Foley in Quartz

Hard to deny.
It’s often said that of all the published scientific research on climate change, 97% of the papers conclude that global warming is real, problematic for the planet, and has been exacerbated by human activity.
But what about those 3% of papers that reach contrary conclusions? Some skeptics have suggested that the authors of studies indicating that climate change is not real, not harmful, or not man-made are bravely standing up for the truth, like maverick thinkers of the past. (Galileo is often invoked, though his fellow scientists mostly agreed with his conclusions – it was church leaders who tried to suppress them.)
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Mapping Reformation Europe
via OUP blog by Graeme Murdock

Europe around 1560, The Historical Atlas by William R. Shepherd, 1923. Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons.
Maps convey simple historical narratives very clearly – but how useful are simple stories about the past? Many history textbooks and studies of the Reformation include some sort of map that claims to depict Europe’s religious divisions in the sixteenth century. Some of these maps show Catholic as opposed to Protestant states marked out in distinct colours. Other maps distinguish between varieties of Protestantism and show rival colours for Lutheran and Calvinist (and sometimes also Anglican) territories. Other maps attempt to present a more complex image of Europe’s religious demography with blobs of different colours showing the presence of minority groups within states. Some maps also provide a range of different colours to depict where Anabaptist, Antitrinitarian, Orthodox, Greek Catholic, Hussite, Muslim and Jewish Europeans lived. Some maps show states that offered legal rights to more than one religion and regions with a mixed religious demography using multi-coloured stripes or overlapping blotches of different colours. The viewer might well be drawn to worry that such places would be unlikely to enjoy peace and stability until they could match the comforting monochrome of their neighbours.
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A Just-Discovered Papyrus Reveals How the Great Pyramid Was Built
via Big Think by Robby Berman

(PAWEESIT)
The Great Pyramid in Egypt is the last of the ancient Seven Wonders of the World. The tomb for Pharaoh Khufu — “Cheops” in Greek — sits on the Giza plateau about 3 kilometers southwest of Egypt’s capitol Cairo, and it’s huge: nearly 147 meters high and 230.4 meters on each side (it’s now slightly smaller due to erosion). Built of roughly 2.3 million limestone and rose granite stones from hundreds of kilometers away, it’s long posed a couple of vexing and fascinating mysteries: How did the ancient Egyptians manage to get all of these stones to Giza, and how did they build such a monumental object? All sorts of exotic ideas have been floated, including assistance from aliens visiting earth. Now, as the result of an amazing find in a cave 606 kilometers away, we have an answer in the form of 4,600-year-old, bound papyrus scrolls, the oldest papyri ever found. They’re the journal of one of the managers who helped build the great pyramid. It’s the only eye-witness account of building the Great Pyramid that’s ever been found.
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Timelapse of Lego’s largest kit construction
via Boing Boing by David Pescovitz
Lego's new Star Wars Millennium Falcon set is the largest model kit the company has ever sold. It contains 7,500 pieces and retails from Lego.com for $800. It's sold out for now though, but you can get one from a scalper on Amazon for $1,800. Or you can watch Benjamin Große's video of him building the kit, 20 hours compressed to less than two minutes.

10 for today starts with a very old shipwreck and ends with a relaxing journey through the desert

What mysteries could be unlocked by new Antikythera shipwreck finds?
via The Guardian by Peter B Campbell

A diver holds a bronze disc discovered during the 2017 underwater excavations at Antikythera, Greece. Photograph: Brett Seymour/EUA/ARGO 2017
The shipwreck at Antikythera, Greece, continues to reveal its secrets and surprise archaeologists. As reported last week, recent excavations on the 1st century BC shipwreck have revealed statue fragments, bronze ornamentation, and wooden remains from the ship’s hull. The finds are sensational, but the artifacts and the project have broader importance.
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Are your cells sedentary?
via Boing Boing by Reanna Alder
Biomechanist Katy Bowman uses the metaphor of nutrients – and nutritious movement vs. junk food movement – to unpack what’s not working for most of us about our modern lifestyle.
Turns out that even those we consider “active” spend most of their time sedentary, according to research. And our shoes, furniture, pillows and other props mean that we are not getting the full range of motion – the essential movement nutrients – out of the limited activity that we do.
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Through the looking glass: what the pre-Raphaelites took from Van Eyck
via New Statesman by Michael Prodger

Such was the grip exerted on the arts in Britain by the Italian Renaissance that the first early-Netherlandish painting didn’t enter the National Gallery until 1842. That picture was Jan van Eyck’s Arnolfini Portrait of 1434, depicting Giovanni di Nicolao Arnolfini, a merchant from Lucca resident in Bruges, and his second wife. It was sold to the gallery by a Scottish soldier who had acquired it in Spain in mysterious circumstances during the Peninsular War.
The portrait became an object of instant fascination and sparked a scholarly debate that still rumbles on: who are the sitters? Is the woman Giovanni’s first wife or his second? Does the picture celebrate a marriage, a betrothal, a pregnancy – or is it an Annunciation disguised within a domestic interior? The acquisition also sparked an interest in van Eyck, who was widely (if erroneously) thought to have invented the technique of oil painting and whose attention to detail, skills as a colourist and ability to depict light on reflective objects seemed nothing less than magical.
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10 of the Best Poems about Beaches
via Interesting Literature
The greatest coastal poems
We’ve taken ourselves off to the seaside for this week’s poetry selection. What are the best poems about beaches and the coast?
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Smallest Ichthyosaurus ever found was squid-eating newborn, research reveals
via The Guardian by Susannah Lydon

Reconstruction of a newborn Ichthyosaurus communis. Illustration: (c) Julian Kiely
Not all new palaeontology discoveries are made on dramatic rocky outcrops. Sometimes dusty drawers in the back-rooms of museums are the source of exciting discoveries. A new study by Dean Lomax, a researcher at the University of Manchester, and colleagues on a previously neglected specimen in the the Lapworth Museum of Geology, University of Birmingham, UK, has increased our knowledge of how the youngest ichthyosaurs – a group of extinct marine reptiles – lived and fed.
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Learn how to go deep undercover in a hostile foreign country
via Boing Boing by Andrea James

Undercover is a World War II training film from the OSS, precursor to the CIA, would be enough to dissuade most people from a career in espionage. They enact numerous examples of tiny slip-ups that ended up blowing the covers of various spies and secret agents.
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Study Discovers How Impacts from Giant Meteorites Drastically Changed Early Earth
via Big Think blog by Paul Ratner

Geodynamic simulation of the early Earth. Credit: Macquarie University.
Researchers discovered how impacts from giant meteorites may have helped jump-start the tectonic processes and the magnetic field of early Earth.
An international study, led by scientists from Macquarie University in Australia, found that impacts from massive meteorites could have caused subduction - a process described as “where the solid outer section of the Earth sinks into the deeper mantle at ocean trenches” by the study’s lead author Associate Professor Craig O’Neill from Macquarie University.

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(Almost) no natural disasters are natural
via 3 Quarks Daily by Thomas R. Wells

A natural disaster is a disaster because it involves a lot of human suffering, not because the event itself is especially big or spectacular. The destruction of an uninhabited island by a volcano is not a natural disaster, because it doesn't really matter to humans. A landslide doesn't matter, however enormous, unless there is a town at the bottom of it.
So what does the word ‘natural' add? We use it to demarcate the edges of responsibility. We don't use it very well.
Man-made disasters, like Chernobyl or Deepwater Horizon or Bhopal or Grenfell Tower, are ones acknowledged to have been brought about by human decisions. These disasters could have been avoided if certain people had made different choices. The suffering of a man-made disaster is therefore the responsibility of particular persons and institutions. They can be held answerable for their decisions: required to justify them and judged – and punished – if they cannot. For example, the investigation into the Grenfell Tower fire will scrutinise in forensic detail the reasoning behind the key decisions that permitted a containable danger to be transformed into mass death; such as the installation of a flammable cladding, the absence of sprinklers; and refuge in place instructions for residents. Some decision-makers may face criminal charges for negligence. They will certainly be vilified in the tabloid press and hate-mobbed on social media. Organisations like the local council and the company running the building will likely receive an official shaming, fines, and compulsory reorganisation or dissolution.
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Following the trail of a mystery
via OUP Blog by Daniel C. Taylor
What would you think, when crossing a Himalayan glacier, if you found this footprint? Clearly some animal made the mark.

SHIPTON 1951 PHOTO (By Permission: Royal Geographical Society, Eric Shipton Photographer)
This print is in a longer line of tracks, and shows not just one animal. The print looks like a person’s … but that gigantic toe on what is a left foot has the arch on the outside of the foot. Big toe on one side, the arch on the other, three tiny toes? And the longer line of footprints suggests that a family of mysteries walked the route.
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Watch a train roll through the desert for an hour
via Boing Boing by Andrea James

The fine folks at Super Deluxe mounted a camera on a train traveling through the desert, and it's as relaxing and scenic as it sounds.

When Life Hurts: 3 Tips for Hard Times

a post by Audrey Wociechowski for the Tiny Buddha blog


“When you come to the end of your rope, tie a knot and hang on.” ~Franklin D. Roosevelt

Life is an unpredictable experience filled with peaks and plateaus. One thing is certain, at some point on this wild ride you will find yourself in hard times. Not everyone experiences the same kind, but life does offer each person struggle in some way. When you find yourself in this situation be gentle with yourself.

There is no true way to ever be fully prepared for hard times. Similar to a hurricane, you can have an understanding that they will happen, but until you live through the experience of the storm and the aftermath there is no way to truly know how these events will impact you and your life.

I have experienced many hard times, but my father’s death in January was absolutely devastating to me. My relationship with him had ebbs and flows just like any relationship does. He had been sick and when I moved closer to home three years ago we used to spend our Fridays together.

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Tackling Precarious Work in Public Supply Chains: A Comparison of Local Government Procurement Policies in Denmark, Germany and the UK

an article by Karen Jaehrling (University of Duisburg-Essen, Germany), Mathew Johnson (University of Manchester, UK), Trine P Larsen (University of Copenhagen, Denmark), Bjarke Refslund (Aalborg University, Denmark) and Damian Grimshaw (International Labour Organisation, Switzerland) published in Work, Employment and Society Volume 32 Issue 3 (June 2018)

Abstract

Through a cross-national comparative study of local government ‘best practice cases’ of socially responsible procurement in Denmark, Germany and the UK, this article critically examines the role of labour clauses in addressing issues of low wages and precarious work in public supply chains.

It provides new insights on the negotiations and outcomes of labour clauses across different stages of the policy process, including implementation and monitoring. The analysis demonstrates the importance of pragmatic alliances of progressive local politicians, unions and employers in ensuring that socially responsible procurement moves beyond rhetoric, along with supportive national and sectoral employment regimes.

Labour clauses can compensate for weak systems of labour market regulation by setting higher standards for outsourced workers, while they play a complementary role in more regulated labour markets by levelling up wages and working conditions to prevailing collectively agreed standards.

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The ethnic segregation of immigrants in the US from 1850 to 1940

a column by Katherine Eriksson and Zach Ward for VOX: CEPR’s Policy Portal

Those opposed to immigration often contend that immigrants are slow to assimilate.

This column takes a longer-term view of assimilation by looking at the degree of ethnic spatial segregation in the US during and after the Age of Mass Migration. New methods and newly digitised data suggest that segregation in the US between 1850 and 1940 was both higher and more widespread than previously thought.

However, despite slow rates of spatial assimilation, immigrants tend to assimilate culturally at a fast rate.

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The Absence of Mental Illness Doesn't Equal Mental Health

a post by Naomi Vaida for the World of Psychology blog

In an increasingly globalized and mediatized world, in which mental illness is one of society’s most discussed cultural artifacts, Colleen Patrick Goudreau’s words ring out: “If we don’t have time to be sick, then we have to make time to be healthy”.

With the prevalence of mental health problems, it is clear why. Mental health issues are one of the leading causes of the overall disease burden globally, according to the World Health Organisation. One study reported that mental health is the primary source of disability worldwide, causing over 40 million years of disability in 20 to 29-year-olds.

Compared to previous generations, mental illness is now said to surpass the effects of the Black Death. The root causes of the unprecedented rise in people directly affected by mental illness, and the cost of this, can be considered across at least three levels of analysis.

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Tapping into the wearable device revolution in the work environment: a systematic review

an article by Jayden Khakurel, Helinä Melkas and Jari Porras (Lappeenrannan Teknillinen Yliopisto, Lappeenranta, Finland) published in Information Technology & People Volume 31 Issue 3 (2018)


Abstract

Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to expand current knowledge about the recent trend of wearable technology to assess both its potential in the work environment and the challenges concerning the utilisation of wearables in the workplace.

Design/methodology/approach
After establishing exclusion and inclusion criteria, an independent systematic search of the ACM Digital Library, IEEE Xplore, ScienceDirect and Web of Science databases for relevant studies was performed. Out of a total of 359 articles, 34 met the selection criteria.

Findings
This review identifies 23 categories of wearable devices. Further categorisation of the devices based on their utilisation shows they can be used in the work environment for activities including monitoring, augmenting, assisting, delivering and tracking. The review reveals that wearable technology has the potential to increase work efficiency among employees, improve workers’ physical well-being and reduce work-related injuries. However, the review also reveals that technological, social, policy and economic challenges related to the use of wearable devices remain.

Research limitations/implications
Many studies have investigated the benefits of wearable devices for personal use, but information about the use of wearables in the work environment is limited. Further research is required in the fields of technology, social challenges, organisation strategies, policies and economics to enhance the adoption rate of wearable devices in work environments.

Originality/value
Previous studies indicate that occupational stress and injuries are detrimental to employees’ health; this paper analyses the use of wearable devices as an intervention method to monitor or prevent these problems. Introducing a categorisation framework during implementation may help identify which types of device categories are suitable and could be beneficial for specific utilisation purposes, facilitating the adoption of wearable devices in the workplace.

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Inequality and ordinary living standards in rich countries

a column by Brian Nolan for VOX: CEPR’s Policy Portal

The narrative that globalisation and technological change have been the central forces hollowing out the jobs market, squeezing ‘the middle’, driving up inequality, and undermining growth is frequently taken to apply across the rich countries.

This column presents a set of country case studies of the US alongside nine other rich countries that highlights just how varied their experiences since the 1980s have actually been. Country contexts really matter, and policy responses must be framed in light of the institutional point of departure and distinctive challenges each country faces.

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The impact of waiting time targets in emergency departments

a column by Jonathan Gruber, Thomas Hoe and George Stoye for VIX: CEPR’s Policy Portal

Emergency departments in hospitals around the world are under pressure to reduce waiting times.

This column analyses the effect of a government target for hospitals in England which mandates a maximum waiting time of four hours. The target successfully reduced waiting times and mortality, but increased costs per patient.

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How Can We Handle Bullying in the Workplace?

a post by Michele Hellebuyck for the World of Psychology blog


Bullying is often considered something we think about when recalling moments from our childhood. We automatically turn to the experiences of youth in middle school or high school.

But as adults we also experience bullying, and despite a change in environment and age, the look and feel of the bullies are the same. They are individuals who have been given, and have assumed, the power to decide if you will be rewarded as an insider or mistreated as the outsider.

In the workplace, bullying behavior can often appear to be acceptable and supported by an organization’s culture or rules. Andrew Faas, the author of The Bully’s Trap: Bulling in the Workplace writes that, in most organizations, those in power are expected to have bullying traits: assertive, demanding, and detached. Additionally, he argues that whether these traits are used to intimidate or control others depends on workplace culture. Bullies grow in power in organizations where rules are unclear or optional, people are punished for speaking up, and rewards are given based on whether you are well-liked. In these work environments, one person or a set of people can behave as bullies without running into any problems.

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What Is Affect or Emotion Dysregulation?

a post by Fabiana Franco for the World of Psychology blog



In research, clinical and therapeutic settings, we sometimes use the term Affect Dysregulation. Affect is the clinical term that is used to describe emotions and feelings. Many practitioners also use the term Emotion Dysregulation. Essentially, Affect Dysregulation and Emotion Dysregulation are interchangeable terms in the psychiatric literature.

What is Affect/Emotion Dysregulation?

Emotion Dysregulation may be thought of as the inability to manage the intensity and duration of negative emotions such as fear, sadness, or anger. If you are struggling with emotion regulation, an upsetting situation will bring about strongly felt emotions that are difficult to recover from. The effects of a prolonged negative emotion may be physically, emotionally, and behaviorally intense.

For example, an argument with a friend or family member may cause an over-reaction that significantly impacts your life. You can’t stop thinking about it or you may lose sleep over it. Even though on a rational level you feel it’s time to let it go, you are powerless to control how you feel. You may escalate a conflict to the point it is difficult to repair, or you may indulge in substances to help yourself feel better, thus creating further stress for yourself and others.

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How to Enjoy Your Days More: 4 Ways to Live Life to the Fullest

a post by Bethany Thornton for the Tiny Buddha blog


“It wasn’t until I slowed the car and rolled down the windows that I realized I spend most of my days driving ‘through’ life without driving ‘in’ life. So, I’ve decided to walk because the pace is slower and the windows are always down.” ~Craig D. Lounsbrough

Voices – they’re everywhere. As soon as I wake up, I can feel the stress of keeping up with their demands. As soon as I look at my smartphone, I am overwhelmed with all the notifications “needing” attention. They seem to pull me in every direction and keep me dodging here and there, attempting to keep up with all the differing opinions, unnecessary tasks, and media.

The sound of the voices seems to echo throughout every part of our lives. Calling to us from our Snapchat notifications, our workplace newsletters, and our family reunions. Wherever we go, distractions and other people’s opinions shout for our attention.

We desperately try to keep up with the influx of media, news, responsibilities, and social events, but we often find ourselves too worn out to really enjoy any of the aspects of our lives. Everything seems bland and dull, like an endless mill of things to do and ponder that we aimlessly run to keep up with, much like a hamster on a wheel.

So how can we truly relish the fullness of life?

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Migration aspirations and migration cultures: A case study of Ukrainian migration towards the European Union

an article by Christof Van Mol (Tilburg University,The Netherlands / Netherlands Interdisciplinary Demographic Institute, The Hague / Universiteit Antwerpen, Belgium), Erik Snel (Erasmus Universiteit Rotterdam (EUR), The Netherlands), Kenneth Hemmerechts (Vrije Universiteit Brussels, Belgium) and Christiane Timmerman (Universiteit Antwerpen, Belgium)  published in Population, Space and Place Volume 24 Issue 5 (July 2018)

Abstract

An abundant body of research focused on macrolevel, mesolevel, and microlevel factors explaining why individuals move across international borders.

In this paper, we aim to complement the existing literature by exploring how, within a single country, mesolevel factors differently impact migration aspirations, focusing on a case study of Ukraine. We particularly focus on how migration aspirations of individuals in two different regions can be explained by their international social networks with family members, on the one hand, and with friends, on the other.

Furthermore, we explore whether regional migration characteristics play a role, as well as the interaction of such characteristics with individuals' frequency of contact with transnational networks.

Our analyses are based on the EUMAGINE project and suggest that the interplay between regional migration characteristics and transnational social contact are key for explaining the decline of migration systems over time.

Full text (PDF 11pp)

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New study links depression to a single molecule

a post by Matt Davis published in the Big Think blog


Photo by Cherry Laithang on Unsplash.

A new study published in PNAS has uncovered a critical biomarker of depression and a promising treatment method based on the body’s levels of a single molecule called acetyl-L-carnitine (ALC). This molecule’s main job is to help transport fatty acids into mitochondria; in effect, it helps provide cells with energy. By comparing the blood levels of 71 depressed individuals and 45 healthy individuals, it was discovered that ALC levels were significantly lower in those suffering from depression. Not only that, but the more depressed the individual was, the lower their ALC levels.

Depression affects nearly 10% of the population at a given time, and one in four adults will experience a major depressive episode at some point in their lifetime. Although sadness is a major symptom of depression, it’s not the only way that it manifests. Rather, depression is a pervasive and persistent experience of symptoms such as a loss of energy, difficulty thinking, a loss of interest in previously pleasurable activities, as well as a sense of sadness.

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I want my molecule back!
OK, this was only a relatively small study but it indicates a move in the right direction.

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