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Structuring sustainable knowledge brokering in street level organisations
No full textAbstract Background: The idea and need for knowledge mobilization (KM) have gained traction in research and practice, but the long-term sustainability of KM practices remains challenging. Recent research suggests shifting from sustainability as an end-goal to ‘sustaining’ as actors’ work to keep knowledge translation practices productive. However, little is known about sustaining work, especially in street-level public welfare organizations.Aims and Objectives: This paper explores a) how organizational systems for sustainable KM can be built in street-level organizations, and b) how knowledge brokers in these organizations support the development of such structures.Methods: We draw on ongoing research collaboration between researchers and five Danish municipal public employment services. Data includes extensive qualitative data from interviews, fieldwork, observations, and mutual learning platforms with managers, professionals, knowledge brokers, and researchers. Data are analysed using concepts of translating, contexting, and institutionalizing KM.Findings: We identify three axes of a sustaining KM infrastructure: a horizontal axis focused on mobilizing knowledge at the professional level; a vertical axis focused on mobilizing knowledge between organizational levels; and an extra-organizational axis focused on mobilizing knowledge between the organization and the outside world, specifically research.Discussion and Conclusion: This paper highlights sustaining KM as ongoing and multifaceted work, emphasizing the role of street-level organization knowledge brokers. Their embeddedness in professional practice enables them to translate, context, and institutionalize KM. By outlining three axes of sustaining infrastructure, we suggest a framework for further research on sustaining in organizational practices.Background: The idea and need for knowledge mobilisation (KM) have gained traction in research and practice, but the long-term sustainability of KM practices remains challenging. Recent research suggests shifting from sustainability as an end-goal to ‘sustaining’ as actors’ work to keep knowledge translation practices productive. However, little is known about sustaining work, especially in street-level public welfare organisations.Aims and Objectives: This paper explores a) how organisational systems for sustainable KM can be built in street-level organizations, and b) how knowledge brokers in these organisations support the development of such structures.Methods: We draw on ongoing research collaboration between researchers and five Danish municipal public employment services. Data includes extensive qualitative data from interviews, fieldwork and observations. Data are analysed using concepts of translating, contexting, and institutionalizing KM.Findings: We identify three axes of a sustaining KM infrastructure: a horizontal axis focused on mobilizing knowledge at the professional level; a vertical axis focused on mobilizing knowledge between organisational levels; and an extra-organisational axis focused on mobilizing knowledge between the organisation and the outside world, specifically research.Discussion and Conclusion: This paper highlights sustaining KM as ongoing and multifaceted work, emphasising the role of street-level organisation knowledge brokers. Their embeddedness in professional practice enables them to translate, context, and institutionalise KM. By outlining three axes of sustaining infrastructure, we suggest a framework for further research on sustaining in organisational practices.<br/
The Impacts of Poor Sleep Quality on Knee Pain and Quality of Life in Young Adults:Insights from a Population-Based Cohort
No full textObjectives: Poor sleep is common among young adults and is often associated with pain. This study investigates the relationship between pain-related outcomes, sleep quality, and quality of life (QoL) in young adults with and without knee pain. Methods: This study is a secondary analysis of the 5-year follow-up of a prospective cohort study. Five hundred twenty-three young adults were surveyed for knee pain in 2011 and followed up 5 years later. Respondents reporting knee pain at both points were categorized as having knee pain (n = 177), while controls did not report knee pain (n = 85). Five-year follow-up data assessed clinical pain intensity, pain-related outcomes, QoL, and physical activity. In addition, respondents were scored as having good, moderate, or poor sleep quality. Results: Respondents in the knee pain group with poor sleep had worse Knee injury and Osteoarthritis Outcome Score (Knee Outcome and Osteoarthritis Score) across all domains (P < 0.05), decreased QoL (P < 0.001), impacted mood (P < 0.05), and impacted everyday life (P < 0.001) compared with those with good sleep. Respondents with poor sleep in both the knee pain and control group reported more pain sites per month (P < 0.01) compared with those with good sleep. Finally, respondents in the knee pain group with poor sleep had increased pain medication usage compared with those with good sleep (P < 0.05). Conclusion: This study emphasizes the negative association between poor sleep quality and knee pain in young adults. The results indicate a need for strategies to address sleep disturbances in young adults to alleviate pain-related suffering and to increase HRQoL.</p
Power outage profiles’ generation to assess resilience performance of an educational building
No full textAdvancing social work research and practice:celebrating ten years of the Decisions, Assessment and Risk Special Interest Group (DARSIG)
No full textThis article commemorates the tenth anniversary of the Decisions, Assessment and Risk Special Interest Group (DARSIG), established under the umbrella of the European Social Work Research Association in 2014. We reflect on developments in DARSIG in the context of advancements in practice, service management, theory, collaborative research and teaching on decision making, assessment and risk. We conclude that DARSIG provides a mechanism for further advancing social work research and teaching across Europe
Ethnomethodology
No full textEthnomethodology was developed by Harold Garfinkel (1917–2011). Garfinkel worked 1954–1987 at University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), and after that as emeritus until his death in 2011. Garfinkel regarded social order first and foremost as something maintained continually in real-life situations. Therefore, he insisted that studying social order should be about where and how it happens instead of relying on data about it: Interviews and questionnaires are regarded as missing the gist of social order.We give a short introduction to ethnomethodology’s relation to the Anglo-American social theory, mostly that of Talcott Parsons. The focus is, however, on introducing the core concepts of ethnomethodology. When teaching about them, Garfinkel asked his students to conduct breaching experiments of which we give examples. Garfinkel’s focus changed later from practical action to workplace studies. Conversation analysis, CA, has a theoretical background in ethnomethodology. We will point out some differences in CA’s analytical focus
Electrochemical biosensing of L-phenylalanine and bioelectrosynthesis of phenylpyruvate based on an efficient cofactor regeneration electrode
Get PDFThis study presents a hybrid system combining MIP-202 (Zr⁴⁺-Asp-coordinated framework) immobilized L-phenylalanine dehydrogenase with polymerized methylene blue (PMB) based electrodes. MIP-202 acted as a biocompatible framework that preserved enzymatic activity. PMB modulated the oxidation of the enzyme cofactor NADH into NAD + via proton-coupled electron transfer (PCET), reducing overpotentials. Such a biohybrid, operated at a relatively low potential of +0.15 V vs. SCE, enables proof-of-concept electrochemical biosensing of L-phenylalanine (L-Phe) and bioelectrosynthesis of phenylpyruvate (PPA). Both applications are of great significance, as L-Phe is an important biomarker for the diagnostics of phenylketonuria, while PPA is a common α-keto acid. It demonstrated a limit of detection (LOD) of 17.03 μM for sensing L-phe and a ca. two-fold increase in PPA production compared to the biocatalysis system without using cofactor regeneration.</p
Federated neural nonparametric point processes
No full textTemporal point processes (TPPs) are effective for modeling event occurrences over time but struggle with sparse and uncertain events in federated systems, where privacy is a major concern. To address this, we propose FedPP, a federated neural nonparametric point process model. FedPP integrates neural embeddings into sigmoidal Gaussian Cox processes (SGCPs) on the client side. SGCPs is a flexible and expressive class of TPPs, allowing FedPP to generate highly flexible intensity functions that capture client-specific event dynamics and uncertainties while efficiently summarizing historical records. For global aggregation, FedPP introduces a divergence-based mechanism to communicate the distributions of kernel hyperparameters in SGCPs between the server and clients, while keeping client-specific parameters local to ensure privacy and personalization. FedPP effectively captures event uncertainty and sparsity. Extensive experiments demonstrate its superior performance in federated settings, showing global aggregation with the KL divergence and the Wasserstein distance.</p
More-than-capitalist economies:Insights from community supported agriculture, tiny houses and hitchhiking in Denmark
Get PDFThe accelerating planetary crises call for rapid reductions in carbon emissions, unlikely to be achieved alone through increasing renewable energy and more efficient production. A wide-ranging transformation of affluent lifestyles and current consumption-production relationships is needed as well. This brings existing economic models into question, as profit often stands in the way of necessary reductions. Thus, a growing field of research points to the need of rethinking the economic system, and frameworks of degrowth and sufficiency are receiving more attention.In the context of Denmark, this paper maps the landscape of both mainstream and alternative consumption-production relationships across three high-emission domains: food, housing and mobility. Based on focus groups with 52 professional stakeholders, I identify a correlation between economic activities and sustainability approaches, with efficiency-oriented models being tied to profit-driven economies and sufficiency-oriented models aligned with alternative, collective economic practices. This finding shows how economic systems shape the strategies organizations employ in addressing environmental challenges.Furthermore, more-than-capitalist economic activities in this landscape are explored. By zooming in on three cases, community supported agriculture, tiny houses and hitchhiking, I draw attention to diverse economies as a lens to reframe consumption-production relationships in a sufficiency-oriented direction. I contribute to this field by proposing three key dimensions in which more-than-capitalist actors share characteristics across food, housing and mobility: 1) spatial; 2) temporal; and 3) relational. Highlighting these, the paper calls for further research and attention to spatial proximity, long-term engagement and community-building in developing consumption-production relationships for a sustainable future