(Reuters) – Spire Healthcare said it decided to settle claims against the company relating to actions by Ian Paterson, a former breast surgeon currently facing jail-time for carrying out operations on patients he wrongly diagnosed.
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Tag: heal
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Hypnotherapy: Can It Be Used To Treat Alcoholism?
Hypnotherapy was first discovered in the ancient times by the Greeks, Romans and Egyptians as a healing art. Until today, it has evolved over the generations and has been used to treat a variety of i… [Author: Khaiyong Ng – November 15, 2011]
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Ways to make your skin healthy
The primary step to keeping your skin healthy is preventing damage. Pollutants, air, sun as well as by just natural aging can certainly mortify the form of your skin. Frequent grumbles incorporate dr… [Author: Chloe park – November 16, 2011]
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How to Choose the Right Slow Cooker
Do you love to cook healthy, nutritious home-cooked meals but do not have the time to prepare and watch over them? Then you need a slow cooker. Preparing delicious home-cooked meals will be as easy a… [Author: Jenny Khoo – December 14, 2011]
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How to Care for an Elderly Person or Senior
It is not always easy caring for an elderly person. Their physical condition, health issues and their emotional state can present challenges for you, the caregiver. There are no doubts that caring fo… [Author: Starlet Nicole – April 16, 2012]
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What Are The Negative Effects Of Black Mold On My Health?
Black molds are known to bring serious health problems in human beings. Though this type of fungus is essential for earth’;s ecosystem, it is not at all good for our health. You must stop this indoor … [Author: Kelsey Libby – April 20, 2012]
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A Guide to Selecting a Steel Toe Shoe for your Broken Toe
A broken toe will take about 6 weeks to heal. If the toe is still hurting after 6 weeks, you will need another X-ray to see how the toe is healing and to take further action. There are several treatm… [Author: Brace Doctor – June 12, 2012]
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Plos: Tensions in Scientific Culture Contribute to Reproducibility Challenges
“Once a system is running a certain way it’s hard to change course.”—Richard Harris, award-winning science correspondent for National Public Radio
Scientists, publishers, journalists and the public talk of the problem of reproducibility in experimental science. There are committees, symposia, peer-reviewed articles, blogs and opinion pieces documenting the issue and exploring remedies to the challenge of reproducibility. NPR science correspondent Richard Harris takes this societal challenge one step further in his book with a title that in no uncertain terms calls attention to the root cause of the reproducibility challenge—Rigor Mortis: How Sloppy Science Creates Worthless Cures, Crushes Hope and Wastes Billions.
PLOS interviewed Harris about the lack of rigor in experimental research that he describes in his book, and from a discussion that covered materials standards, publishing fewer papers with greater confidence, text and data mining and the cultural shift required to improve the rigor in science, one unifying theme emerged—tension. Tension between evaluation and culture, hands-on training and coursework, between making work public and ensuring its reliability, and between responsible reporting and satisfying the needs of a news organization.
These lines of tension contribute to the current structural rigidity in the culture of science that, according to Harris, make scientific rigor a difficult challenge to address. As he delved into biomedical sciences in 2014 after nearly a decade reporting on climate change and the environment, Harris took a broad look at the state of the research enterprise and asked, what are the consequences of limited funds on the structural influences supporting the current state of academic biomedical research?
Evaluation and Culture
The biggest obstacles influencing rigor, according to Harris, are the “underlying cultural issues” that confront science. He cites the financial crunch, career pressures and the hyper competitiveness of science, particularly in biomedical sciences, as examples. These are, he thinks, also the hardest problems to solve. “Even if you poured huge amounts of new money into biomedical research this problem would not go away quickly. It’s changing a mindset.” Fundamentally the “incentives are misaligned,” says Harris, to reward numbers of papers and how many of them are published in high profile journals, rather than “careful work where one is highly confident in results.”
Hands-on Training and Coursework
On the point of experimental responsibility, Harris’ book follows a path of practical recommendations to improve scientific rigor, including:
- Improve experimental design and provide methods training
- Validate cell lines, antibodies, gene constructs
- Apply appropriate statistical analysis
- Disclose experimental and analytical methods
During his research for the book, Harris was quite surprised to find out how little formal training there is in experimental methodology, particularly in biomedical research. He did note, however, that NIH is now funding attempts to develop curriculum, following an unsuccessful search to find the best training courses in the country to replicate. There is “huge room for improvement” in this area, he says, but how to integrate this into a training program? Changing a system that’s already in place to accommodate that is difficult, especially without reward and recognition for faculty teaching those courses. “Should it start more robustly at the end of the undergrad career?” One potential solution discussed during the interview is for post-docs to teach these courses to incoming graduate students, as part of a summer or first-quarter orientation program.
Making Work Public and Ensuring Reliability
Steps can be taken to improve the situation. For example, researchers with grants from the National Institutes of Health are required to authenticate the cell lines used in their work. “There’s no simple solution to be imposed from top down, it needs to also work bottom up,” says Harris when considering what key additional recommendations the community might consider. “Young scientists are more open to sharing and that leads to transparency, that helps solve some of the issues.” It’s not a silver bullet but it improves things if people can put their data out there, he says. Increased sharing and transparency addresses a number of these issues, and “to the extent that the culture of the young scientist is open to that, that’s great. Although it’s hard for them to change the culture, but over time this can help.”
A “more nimble publication system might encourage scientists to publish confirmatory or negative results,” Harris states. When asked specifically about the role of preprints and alternative forms of science communication, he acknowledges that experiments in openness and transparency are interesting although it’s unclear how successful they will be. Will that additional literature be less reliable, he wonders? “It’s the job of the entire community, not simply the scientist who makes a claim, to figure out what’s right and what’s wrong,” he says, when discussing the viable options of prepublication sharing of work and use of blogs and commenting as forums for peer review. However, as a science journalist, he ponders: “Do we want more literature out there or do we want more strict checks and less literature? Personally, I would like to see less literature, have people spend more time thinking about what they’re doing and being sure they’re right.”
Responsible Reporting and News Flow
Science journalists can help the issue of scientific rigor, acknowledges Harris. “They should step back from doing the story of the day. It takes more time to think about things from a broader perspective, but that’s more important than ever.” Science journalists must find a balance between that and satisfying the needs of their news organizations. Even an award-winning science correspondent like Harris admits that he needs to think differently about how he does his job on a day to day basis. “Look at what’s published and fits into the broader trend and context of similar results, and what it means elsewhere,” he recommneds. These are results that should be the focus of science journalists.
Easing the Tug of War
The good news is that many institutions now evaluate candidates for jobs and promotions based on a set limit of publications, chosen by the author to best represent their contributions to science. Additional efforts to broaden evaluation within the constraints of the existing scientific culture include recognition and credit for reagent validation, peer review activities and training others on experimental responsibility. Dedicating more time to thinking and less time to drafting and revising manuscripts may not the working philosophy of many labs or the culture of science, but it’s an issue getting attention and was expressed as a concern by leaders of the organization Rescuing Biomedical Research.
Everyone has a stake in the current structure of the scientific enterprise, says Harris, from journals caring about impact factors [PLOS de-emphasizes journal impact factors] to deans making sure scientists draw in funding and overhead for their institutions.
“The biomedical research enterprise is driven by economics; economic systems are much harder to change and that should be something the overall enterprise should be thinking about—how to rethink that.”
Harris believes clinical medicine in the 1990s experienced similar cultural stresses, but ClinicalTrials.gov, a web-based resource from the National Library of Medicine that provides public access to information about clinical studies and the availability of experimental drugs, got people “past some of these issues without making them rethink their place in the scientific universe.” Hopefully academic biomedical research can do the same.
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Richard Harris, science correspondent for National Public Radio (NPR) received the 2010 Kavli Science Journalism Award from the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) for his reporting on BP’s Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. He also received the award in 1988 and 1995. He currently covers biomedical sciences with a focus on investigative stories and in 2014 completed an eight-part series examining the stresses on biomedical research in the US caused by fluctuating funding levels.
Tug of War Image Credit: falco; pixabay.com
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Honoring Our Friend Bassel: Announcing the Bassel Khartabil Free Culture Fellowship
Photo by Joi Ito, CC BY 2.0 On August 1, 2017, we received the heartbreaking news that our friend Bassel (Safadi) Khartabil, detained since 2012, was executed by the Syrian government shortly after his 2015 disappearance. Khartabil was a Palestinian Syrian open internet activist, a free culture hero, and an important member of our community. Our thoughts are with Bassel’s family, now and always.
Today we’re announcing the Bassel Khartabil Free Culture Fellowship to honor his legacy and lasting impact on the open web.
Bassel was a relentless advocate for free speech, free culture, and democracy. He was the cofounder of Syria’s first hackerspace, Aiki Lab, Creative Commons’ Syrian project lead, and a prolific open source contributor, from Firefox to Wikipedia. Bassel’s final project, relaunched as #NEWPALMYRA, entailed building free and open 3D models of the ancient Syrian city of Palmyra. In his work as a computer engineer, educator, artist, musician, cultural heritage researcher, and thought leader, Bassel modeled a more open world, impacting lives globally.
To honor that legacy, the Bassel Khartabil Free Culture Fellowship will support outstanding individuals developing the culture of their communities under adverse circumstances. The Fellowship — organized by Creative Commons, Mozilla, the Wikimedia Foundation, the Jimmy Wales Foundation, #NEWPALMYRA, and others — will launch with a three-year commitment to promote values like open culture, radical sharing, free knowledge, remix, collaboration, courage, optimism, and humanity.
As part of this new initiative, fellows can work in a range of mediums, including art, music, software, and community building. All projects will catalyze free culture, particularly in societies vulnerable to attacks on freedom of expression and free access to knowledge. Special consideration will be given to applicants operating within closed societies and in developing economies where other forms of support are scarce. Applications from the Levant and wider MENA region are greatly encouraged.
Throughout their fellowship term, chosen fellows will receive a stipend, mentorship from affiliate organizations, skill development, project promotion, and fundraising support from the partner network. Fellows will be chosen by a selection committee composed of representatives of the partner organizations.
FELLOWSHIP DETAILS
Organizational Partners include Creative Commons, #FREEBASSEL, Wikimedia Foundation, GlobalVoices, Mozilla, #NEWPALMYRA, YallaStartup and SMEX.
Amazon Web Services is a supporting partner.
The Fellowships are based on one-year terms, which are eligible for renewal.
The benefits are designed to allow for flexibility and stability both for Fellows and their families. The standard fellowship offers a stipend of $50,000 USD, paid in 10 monthly installments. Fellows are responsible for remitting all applicable taxes as required.
To help offset cost of living, the fellowship also provides supplements for childcare and health insurance, and may provide support for project funding on a case-by-case basis. The fellowship also covers the cost of required travel for fellowship activities.
Fellows will receive:
- A stipend of $50,000 USD, paid in 10 monthly installments
- A one-time health insurance supplement for Fellows and their families, ranging from $3,500 for single Fellows to $7,000 for a couple with two or more children
- A one-time childcare allotment of up to $6,000 for families with children
- An allowance of up to $3,000 towards the purchase of laptop computer, digital cameras, recorders and computer software; fees for continuing studies or other courses, research fees or payments, to the extent such purchases and fees are related to the fellowship
- Coverage in full for all approved fellowship trips, both domestic and international
The first fellowship will be awarded in April 2018. Applications will be accepted beginning February 2018.
Eligibility Requirements. The Bassel Khartabil Free Culture Fellowship is open to individuals and small teams worldwide, who:
- Propose a viable new initiative to advance free culture values as outlined in the call for applicants
- Demonstrate a history of activism in the Open Source, Open Access, Free Culture or Sharing communities
- Are prepared to focus on the fellowship as their primary work
Special consideration will be given to applicants operating under oppressive conditions, within closed societies, in developing economies where other forms of support are scarce, and in the Levant and wider MENA regions.
Eligible Projects. Proposed projects should advance the free culture values of Bassel Khartabil through the use of art, technology, and culture. Successful projects will aim to:
- Meaningfully increase free public access to human knowledge, art or culture
- Further the cause of social justice/social change
- Strive to develop both a local and global community to support its cause
Any code, content or other materials produced must be published and released as free, openly licensed and/or open-source.
Application Process. Project proposals are expected to include the following:
- Vision statement
- Bio and CV
- Budget and resource requirements for the next year of project development
Applicants whose projects are chosen to advance to the next stage in the evaluation process may be asked to provide additional information, including personal references and documentation verifying income.
ABOUT BASSEL
Bassel Khartabil, a Palestinian-Syrian computer engineer, educator, artist, musician, cultural heritage researcher and thought leader, was a central figure in the global free culture movement, connecting and promoting Syria’s emerging tech community as it existed before the country was ransacked by civil war. Bassel co-founded Syria’s first hackerspace, Aiki Lab, in Damascus in 2010. He was the Syrian lead for Creative Commons as well as a contributor to Mozilla’s Firefox browser and the Red Hat Fedora Linux operating system. His research into preserving Syrian archeology with computer 3D modeling was a seminal precursor to current practices in digital cultural heritage preservation — this work was relaunched as the #NEWPALMYRA project in 2015.
Bassel’s influence went beyond Syria. He was a key attendee at the Middle East’s bloggers conferences and played a vital role in the negotiations in Doha in 2010 that led to a common language for discussing fair use and copyright across the Arab-speaking world. Software platforms he developed, such as the open-source Aiki Framework for collaborative web development, still power high-traffic web sites today, including Open Clip Art and the Open Font Library. His passion and efforts inspired a new community of coders and artists to take up his cause and further his legacy, and resulted in the offer of a research position in MIT Media Lab’s Center for Civic Media; his listing in Foreign Policy’s 2012 list of Top Global Thinkers; and the award of Index on Censorship’s 2013 Digital Freedom Award.
Bassel was taken from the streets in March of 2012 in a military arrest and interrogated and tortured in secret in a facility controlled by Syria’s General Intelligence Directorate. After a worldwide campaign by international human rights groups, together with Bassel’s many colleagues in the open internet and free culture communities, he was moved to Adra’s civilian prison, where he was able to communicate with his family and friends. His detention was ruled unlawful by the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, and condemned by international organizations such as Creative Commons, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and the Jimmy Wales Foundation.
Despite the international outrage at his treatment and calls for his release, in October of 2015 he was moved to an undisclosed location and executed shortly thereafter — a fact that was kept secret by the Syrian regime for nearly two years.
The post Honoring Our Friend Bassel: Announcing the Bassel Khartabil Free Culture Fellowship appeared first on Creative Commons.
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Free Book: Heal yourself – Discover The 7 Keys To Living a More Fulfilling, Healthy and Wealthy Life
ATTENTION: Feel a lack of fulfilment in life?…
“Discover The 7 Keys To Living a More Fulfilling, Healthy and Wealthy Life”
You’ll Find Out How To Finally Get Ahead And Attract Anything You Want In Life!
I am so tired of all the negativity around me! Are you?
This world is toxic and it is sick.
I hate watching the news, reading the newspaper or even interacting with my neighbors.
I don’t want to appear antisocial.
I genuinely love people. But this world has made us cold and cruel.
The result is a society of unhappy people.
Well over 50% of all marriages end in divorce.
Well over 50% of all young adults do not even believe in marriage.
We need to get back to the days where it was easy to talk to strangers and it was unnatural not to be polite.
Back to the days where people actually believed in love and looked out for their neighbors.
We need to start loving ourselves again. We each need to be the change we wish to see in the world.
We need to heal ourselves and start loving ourselves again.
Why Happy People Are Successful People
Happy people are successful people. This is simply because being happy makes it easy to stay motivated to reaching your goals.
Your thoughts have a very significant impact on the life you lead and the quality of the relationships you will have with family members, friends, and significant others.
Some even reason that our thoughts and beliefs can have an even stronger effect on our health than modern medicine.
Consider these examples:
- A middle-aged man dies a day after his Doctor diagnosed him with Cancer, even though his autopsy revealed he was misdiagnosed.
- Many women who are desperate to have a child will begin to have real symptoms of a pregnancy such as cravings and an increase in the size of their breasts, despite the fact that they are not actually pregnant.
- People who suffer from Depression who participate in clinical trials for new antidepressants start experiencing an improvement in their moods although they were given the placebo and not the actual drug.
That being said, it has been scientifically proven that you can improve your health, career and relationships simply by improving the way you think about yourself and the world around you.
I’ve written a guide intended to help you heal yourself of all the scars and the influence of all the negativity around.
Introducing…
HEAL YOURSELF
Here’s what you’ll discover in this guide:
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- Key #1: Know yourself. This is one if the most important keys to living a happy and fulfilled life. In this chapter, we’ll discuss how to get to know yourself.
- Key #2: Know your limits. In this section, we’ll discuss how to find your strengths and weaknesses.
Other keys you’ll find out in this guide:
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- Key #3: Be honest.
- Key #4: Be kind.
- Key #5: Be forgiving.
- Key #6: Be generous.
- Key #7: Be yourself.
How Can I Use This Powerful Guide Right Now?
You can own Heal Yourself today for FREE.
That is a truly incredible value, especially considering the significant difference it’ll make to your success.
Did I mention this eBook is only FREE? It’s definitely a point worth repeating. You will be hard-pressed to find a more valuable resource.
Get it now safely in your mail
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