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Background: Palliative care-related postdoctoral training opportunities are critical to increase the quantity and quality of palliative care research. Objective: To describe the history, activities, challenges, and future goals of the National Postdoctoral Palliative Care Research Training Collaborative. Design: National web-based survey of participating program leaders. Measurements: Information about participating programs, trainees, challenges faced, and future goals. Results: Nine participating programs at academic institutions across the United States focus on diverse aspects of palliative care research. The majority of 73 current and former fellows are female (75%) and white (84%). In total, 38% of fellows (n = 28) have MD backgrounds, of whom less than half (n = 12) completed hospice and palliative medicine fellowships. An additional 38% of fellows (n = 28) have nursing PhD backgrounds and 23% (n = 17) have other diverse types of PhD backgrounds. Key challenges relate to recruiting diverse trainees, fostering a shared identity, effectively advocating for trainees, and securing funding. Future goals include expanding efforts to engage clinician and nonclinician scientists, fostering the pipeline of palliative care researchers through expanded mentorship of predoctoral and clinical trainees, increasing the number of postdoctoral palliative care training programs, and expanding funding support for career development grants. Conclusion: The National Postdoctoral Palliative Care Research Training Collaborative fills an important role in creating a community for palliative care research trainees and developing strategies to address shared challenges.

The world is experiencing new relations and transformations between natural, synthetic, and digital substances. Rather than considering these as materially distinct or ontologically separate, this Special Issue of TSANTSA interrogates how they are interlocked in socio-material processes of mediation, transmutation, and valuation. By conceptualizing the specificity of their separateness, the special issue makes possible the comparison and commensuration of their relationship, and to move beyond their essential qualities. What are the boundaries, leakages, or dis/connections between human and digital, natural and artificial, the organic and synthetic matters? Based on ethnographic research in laboratories, gold refineries, bio-tech microbial seeds and digitally-produced natural sounds, human-machine apps and cellular agriculture, each contribution theorizes the mediation, transmutation, and valuation of natural synthetics, the humanness of artificial intelligence, or the materiality of digital elements.

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Many farming systems in Australia are underperforming. For example, a recent analysis showed that only about 29% of current crop sequences in the northern grains region of Australia are achieving 80% of their water-limited yield potential (Hochman et al., 2014). This is compounded by tight profit margins and changing climate and market conditions. Available evidence also suggests that between 2013 and 2018, the cost of consumable inputs, such as fertiliser, has increased by 5.7% (ABARES, 2018). Also, over the past five years, the cost of agricultural machinery in Australia has increased by 13.4% (ABS, 2018). However, several farming system component analyses and simulations have predominantly focused on the impact of biophysical processes on farming system performance, including soil quality, water use efficiency, dynamics of nitrogen, crop yields, and disease and nematodes effects of farming practices at the paddock scale. While biophysical optimisation of the farming system may be possible to improve the efficiency of most farming systems, key elements that are often ignored is how the intensity and diversity of different cropping systems impact on whole-farm factors, such as labour and machinery resources. Far from being obvious, these input resources are critical because they modify farm productivity and profitability in the short and long term. Moreover, a consideration of these factors is crucial because they can influence the adoption of farm innovations. The central objective of this study is to examine farm resource constraints with a focus on machinery, labour requirements and fuel requirements as influenced by diverse crop rotations in the northern grain-growing region of Australia. Our analysis is based on three steps. First, we simulated different crop rotations over 112 years (i.e., 1900-2012) of historical climate records using the Agricultural Production Simulator (APSIM). These crop rotations were identified following focus group meetings with leading farmers and advisors throughout the northern cropping zone of Australia. Second, we obtained information on machinery and labour parameters from existing literature, local technical guides and through a consultation process with farm advisers and growers (N = 26 farmers). Finally, we combined the APSIM generated outputs with the machinery and labour data to comprehensively determine how different crop rotations affect labour and machinery requirements within the farming system using analysis of variance. Results showed that the low-intensity systems required 46% less labour per ha than the higher-intensive systems, while the less diverse systems required about 33% less labour per ha than the more diverse systems. Planting and spraying operations respectively represent about 27% and 37% of total fieldwork requirements. Also, the labour required per ha is less in bigger farms compared to smaller farms, which may be explained by the larger machines used by these larger farms. For all sequences considered, peak labour periods fell in July, October to November, while non-peak period is August to September and December to January, corresponding with the periods in which most farm production activities occur. We conclude that Diversified crop rotation systems had significant effect on labour and machinery requirements and differed significantly among rotations (P < 0.05). Also, diverse rotations may create higher labour demand and peak periods that might, in some cases, limit the adoption of diversified crop rotations in some farm businesses, suggesting that labour efficiency can be an important consideration in farming systems research and analysis. These findings will be explored further as part of the on-going development of a bio-economic modelling to explore the trade-offs and synergies between system performance objectives and impacts of innovations options at the whole-farm level.

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Whether expressed as something critically needed to feel included, something absent that prevented inclusion, or something that was a key ingredient in their peak moments of inclusion, the thousands of employees with whom we interacted regularly mentioned mentoring,1 and coaching.2 A mentor is an organizational member who guides another’s success. Oftentimes, this is a successful manager or leader “who relates well to a less-experienced employee and facilitates his or her personal development for the benefit of the individual as well as that of the organization.”3 The role of the mentor involves two functions: providing career and psychological support.4 The career functions include providing the mentee with sponsorship, exposure and visibility, coaching, protection, and challenging assignments. The psychological functions provide the mentee with role modeling, acceptance and confirmation, counseling, and friendship. Some mentors are formal, having been assigned to employees in formal organizational mentoring programs. Other times, mentors are informal, having arisen from either the mentee or mentor reaching out to another individual. Both types of mentors were sought, appreciated, and valued by organizational stakeholders when they considered what made them maximally included.

This chapter is different from other chapters because it presents two dimensions of Ubuntic inclusion: Fairness and Trust. Though distinct, to the thousands of employees with whom we interacted in these organizations, fairness and trust were so highly correlated that sometimes respondents discussed them concurrently.

The French quote “Je pense, donc je suis,” more commonly recognized in its Latin translation, “Cogito ergo sum,” is attributed to seventeenth-century French philosopher and mathematician Rene Descartes—the father of modern Western philosophy. One of his major contributions was transcending the philosophies of Aristotle to define a dualism between mind and body.1 This dualism is clearly reflected in the opening quote of this paragraph which means, “I think therefore I am.” Though brief, this quote posits that: (1) the “I” exists, (2) the “I” engages in thinking, and, most important for our purposes, (3) the causative proposition: “I” exists because “I” thinks. This notion of existence is wholly self-contained—somewhat the epitome of individualism and self-determination.

As we conclude this book, we join the world in saying a deeply heartfelt thank you and farewell to “Madiba,” one of the early inspirations for our work in this area. Mr. Mandela’s wisdom, equanimity, forgiveness, and elevation of South Africa’s healing above his own needs represented the epitome of Ubuntu.

Fewer acts convey a stronger sense of organizational inclusion than being publically rewarded for excellent performance by one’s peers. If you’re still not convinced, consider the end of the 1993 sports film, Rudy,1 which ended with the film’s namesake being carried off of the Notre Dame football field on the shoulders of his teammates. Being celebrated in a highly visible way, even being rewarded in a less public way, became the peak inclusive moment for hundreds of the employees and managers with whom we corresponded. In fact, the scale of recognition that Big Store’s top sellers received was comparable to that of a Big 10 football stadium since Big Store sometimes rented out major professional athletics venues for its annual international conference. So, when awards and retirements were announced, they were literally before thousands of peers.

This study examines whether elementary school-aged children can report behaviors relevant to assessing symptoms of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).Interviews were conducted with 120 children aged 6 to 12 years and their parents across 3 waves as part of a longitudinal cohort study of ADHD detection and service use. Child self-reports obtained through the Dimensions of Temperament Scale-Revised-Child (DOTS-R-C) were correlated with parent-reported ADHD symptoms, which were assessed through DSM-IV-based instrument ratings obtained concurrently and 5 years later.The Dimensions of Temperament Scale-Revised-Child subscales Activity Level and Task Orientation demonstrate adequate internal consistency after eliminating items requiring reverse scoring. Children's self-reports of Task Orientation Problems correlate with their parents' concurrent reports of inattention, r(117) = .23, p.05, and with parents' Wave 3 reports of inattention, r(118) = .25, p.01 as well as hyperactivity, r(118) = .25, p.01. Children's self-reports of Activity Level correlate with their parents' concurrent reports of hyperactivity, r(117) = .21, p.05, as well as Wave 3 reports of hyperactivity/impulsivity, r(118) = .37, p.001 and inattention, r(118) = .23, p.05.Findings suggest that children may be capable of producing meaningful self-reports of Activity Level and Task Orientation. We propose that the development of child-friendly self-report instruments targeting ADHD symptoms is merited to facilitate the collection of child input during ADHD assessments.

Crop and livestock production have become spatially decoupled in existing commercial agricultural regimes throughout the world. These segregated high input production systems contribute to some of the world’s most pressing sustainability challenges, including climate change, nutrient imbalances, water pollution, biodiversity decline, and increasingly precarious rural livelihoods. There is substantial evidence that by closing the loop in nutrient and energy cycles, recoupling crop and livestock systems at farm and territorial scales can help reduce the environmental externalities associated with conventional commercial farming without declines in profitability or yields. Yet such “integrated” crop and livestock systems remain rare as a proportion of global agricultural area. Based on an interdisciplinary workshop and additional literature review, we provide a comprehensive historical and international perspective on why integrated crop and livestock systems have declined in most regions and what conditions have fostered their persistence and reemergence in others. We also identify levers for encouraging the reemergence of integrated crop and livestock systems worldwide. We conclude that a major disruption of the current regime would be needed to foster crop-livestock reintegration, including a redesign of research programs, credit systems, payments for ecosystem services, insurance programs, and food safety regulations to focus on whole farm outcomes and the creation of a circular economy. An expansion of the number of integrated crop and livestock systems field trials and demonstrations and efforts to brand integrated crop and livestock systems as a form of sustainable agriculture through the development of eco-labels could also improve adoption, but would likely be unsuccessful at encouraging wide-scale change without a more radical transformation of the research and policy landscape., Ecology and Society, 25 (1), ISSN:1708-3087