An Agent‐Based Model for Pathogen Persistence and Cross‐Contamination Dynamics in a Food Facility

We used an agent‐based modeling (ABM) framework and developed a mathematical model to explain the complex dynamics of microbial persistence and spread within a food facility and to aid risk managers in identifying effective mitigation options. The model explicitly considered personal hygiene practices by food handlers as well as their activities and simulated a spatially explicit dynamic system representing complex interaction patterns among food handlers, facility environment, and foods. To demonstrate the utility of the model in a decision‐making context, we created a hypothetical case study and used it to compare different risk mitigation strategies for reducing contamination and spread of Listeria monocytogenes in a food facility. Model results indicated that areas with no direct contact with foods (e.g., loading dock and restroom) can serve as contamination niches and recontaminate areas that have direct contact with food products. Furthermore, food handlers’ behaviors, including, for example, hygiene and sanitation practices, can impact the persistence of microbial contamination in the facility environment and the spread of contamination to prepared foods. Using this case study, we also demonstrated benefits of an ABM framework for addressing food safety in a complex system in which emergent system‐level responses are predicted using a bottom‐up approach that observes individual agents (e.g., food handlers) and their behaviors. Our model can be applied to a wide variety of pathogens, food commodities, and activity patterns to evaluate efficacy of food‐safety management practices and quantify contamination reductions associated with proposed mitigation strategies in food facilities.     

Reframing Resilience: Equitable Access to Essential Services

We urgently need to put the concept of resilience into practice if we are to prepare our communities for climate change and exacerbated natural hazards. Yet, despite the extensive discussion surrounding community resilience, operationalizing the concept remains challenging. The dominant approaches for assessing resilience focus on either evaluating community characteristics or infrastructure functionality. While both remain useful, they have several limitations to their ability to provide actionable insight. More importantly, the current conceptualizations do not consider essential services or how access is impaired by hazards. We argue that people need access to services such as food, education, health care, and cultural amenities, in addition to water, power, sanitation, and communications, to get back some semblance of normal life. Providing equitable access to these types of services and quickly restoring that access following a disruption are paramount to community resilience. We propose a new conceptualization of community resilience that is based on access to essential services. This reframing of resilience facilitates a new measure of resilience that is spatially explicit and operational. Using two illustrative examples from the impacts of Hurricanes Florence and Michael, we demonstrate how decisionmakers and planners can use this framework to visualize the effect of a hazard and quantify resilience-enhancing interventions. This “equitable access to essentials” approach to community resilience integrates with spatial planning, and will enable communities not only to “bounce back” from a disruption, but to “bound forward” and improve the resilience and quality of life for all residents.     

Learning from others: conditioning versus averaging

How should we revise our beliefs in response to the expressed probabilistic opinions of experts on some proposition when these experts are in disagreement? In this paper I examine the suggestion that in such circumstances we should adopt a linear average of the experts’ opinions and consider whether such a belief revision policy is compatible with Bayesian conditionalisation. By looking at situations in which full or partial deference to the expressed opinions of others is required by Bayesianism I show that only in trivial circumstances are the requirements imposed by linear averaging compatible with it.     

Funding Civil Society? Bilateral Government Support for Development NGOs

Research on the determinants of foreign aid tends to focus on the relationship between donor country priorities and recipient state characteristics, but donors also make decisions about which organizations and programs within countries will receive assistance. Although NGOs increasingly have been recipients of foreign aid, few data are available to investigate which organizations within a given country receive that funding. Donors may prioritize structural characteristics of NGOs or their local ties—or they may seek a combination that blends concern about efficiency and accountability with an interest in developing national civil society. We use original data from Cambodia to explore whether aid is likely to go to managerial organizations (professionalized NGOs and NGOs that utilize modern management tools) or to organizations that are embedded in the domestic context. We argue that managerialism provides legitimacy for NGOs by signaling capacity and accountability to donors, increasing the likelihood of government funding. We argue that local embeddedness also confers legitimacy by aligning community ties and networks to rights-based development, increasing the likelihood of government funding. We find general support for the managerialism argument, but donor agencies do not prioritize direct funding for “indigenous” NGOs—not even among those with high levels of managerialism.     

Relational Management Mechanisms for Strategic Alliances Among Nonprofit Organizations

This study employs a qualitative multiple-case study to explore relational management mechanisms for strategic nonprofit alliances (NPAs) formed by at least 3 nonprofit organizations by examining collaborative relationships among farmers associations in Taiwan. We explore these mechanisms by analyzing case data from four strategic cooperation characteristics, which can best explain NPAs. To effectively sustain partnerships, our findings suggest that an NPA applies acceptable collaborative rules and regulations, common standard procedures, symmetric information and communication, and capability building and corrective measures when cooperation involves high input commonality. The results also suggest empowerment for partners with deeper input commitment to direct decisions on resource distribution and utilization when collaborative ties involve low input measurability. Regarding high output commonality, we advise NPAs to enforce common output quality control, efficient substandard-output treatment, and external incentives as mechanisms to encourage partners for continued commitment. If relationships involve low output measurability, our findings suggest that NPAs heighten partners’ voluntary motivation for the common good, with goal-achievement assessment measures, professional certification by external experts, and acceptable and reasonable benefit-sharing methods     

What’s in a Name? The Negative Implications of Gender Neutrality in the Intimate Partner Violence Prevention and Intervention Literature

Research and interventions for intimate partner violence in current use largely consist of practices aimed at getting victims to leave their abusers, rather than helping perpetrators stop their violence. In the context of parenthood, the focus on programs targeting women experiencing violence has resulted in an emphasis on mothers’ responsibility for mitigating the adverse effects of witnessing violence on children. This has led to insufficient understanding of violent men’s identities as fathers. This narrative review employed content analysis to analyze the discursive constructions of men and women as parents in a selection of peer reviewed articles about the prevention of intimate partner violence during childbearing years that were published between January 2000 and January 2015 (N = 37). A quantitative word count was conducted in order to determine the frequency with which these articles referred to men and women in their parental roles when employing prevention and intervention strategies. Women were consistently identified as mothers in all areas of the literature, while the prevalence of men’s identities as fathers was confined only to the specific, specialized area of the literature that is aimed at men alone. The implications of these findings for future research and practice in the area of prevention and intervention of intimate partner violence specifically in the context of parenthood are discussed.     

Adaptive shrinkage of singular values

To recover a low-rank structure from a noisy matrix, truncated singular value decomposition has been extensively used and studied. Recent studies suggested that the signal can be better estimated by shrinking the singular values as well. We pursue this line of research and propose a new estimator offering a continuum of thresholding and shrinking functions. To avoid an unstable and costly cross-validation search, we propose new rules to select two thresholding and shrinking parameters from the data. In particular we propose a generalized Stein unbiased risk estimation criterion that does not require knowledge of the variance of the noise and that is computationally fast. A Monte Carlo simulation reveals that our estimator outperforms the tested methods in terms of mean squared error on both low-rank and general signal matrices across different signal-to-noise ratio regimes. In addition, it accurately estimates the rank of the signal when it is detectable.     

The Intersubjective Experience of the Physical Body in the Clinical Setting of Eating Disorders

This paper will illuminate one dimension of self-disclosure as it relates to the inescapable presence of the body in treatment, and the female clinician’s ability to bring her physical body into clinical discussions during an encounter with a female client with an eating disorder. Although the clinical literature on eating disorders validates that transference and countertransference issues are particularly powerful, it generally neglects the exploration of these issues specific to the body’s physical presentation. Since body dissatisfaction is increasingly normative for women today, female clinicians need to have a theoretical road map on which to rely when they encounter a shared body experience. Thus, in order to encourage discussions of the therapist’s body in clinical social work practice, the body needs to be situated in a larger theoretical framework within which it can be explained and located; this framework is object relations theory viewed through an intersubjective lens. Concepts from object relations theory will demonstrate the importance of the body in the clinical exchange by highlighting the parallel between Winnicott’s ‘good enough’ mother and the ‘good enough’ therapist’s body. When the therapist is able to judiciously invite discussions of her body into the clinical arena, the client is given the opportunity to move from object relating to object usage. A case presentation exemplifies how this conceptual framework can be applied to clinical social work practice, strengthening the relationship between knowing and doing.