Woopski

19/04/2022

The RFI ‘System’ consists of two complementary components:

1. RFI Reporting – biennial institutional self-assessments. The RFI framework of questions and indicators provides a pragmatic tool for institutional self-assessment of the policies and practices used to promote fairness and equitability in their research collaborations. Its focus is forward: ‘How to improve policies and practices in the next 2 years’. Responding to the questions in the RFI Framework often provides a first opportunity for organisations to strategically and systematically assess their own partnership policies, practices and expectations. A short overview of questions and indicators can be found at:https://rfi.cohred.org/wp-content/uploads/RFI_Summary_Guide_1.pdf

2. The RFI Global Learning Platform aggregates and analyses the information provided by institutions in their RFI Reports. Once fully developed, it will provide both real-time and special reports to enhance the evidence base the world of research needs to improve research partnerships and, where possible, reach global agreements on standards or benchmarks.

The full RFI website information can be viewed here: https://rfi.cohred.org

For full certification, organisations have to publish their RFI reports on their own, corporate websites AND enable a comment function for readers.

Once complete, the RFI website will republish these reports and encourage further comments that will remain anonymous to the organisation. In this way, the RFI System should become a global platform for learning and action.

RFI Reporting Organisations

The RFI has had a slow but gradually increasing uptake since its release as ‘version 1’ in 2019. We now have reports from almost all the main research actors listed above and more. The COVID-19 pandemic did not help its progress, but the pace of completing reports is picking up. There are currently five completed reports available (Nova University of Lisbon (Portugal), World Health Organization (WHO/TDR), Univ Alioune Diop de Bambey (UADB, Senegal), IRD (Institut de Recherche pour le Développement, France), and the Swiss TPH (Switzerland)). There are four more submitted or close to completion (Fondation Botnar (Basel, Switzerland), University of Cape Town (South Africa), Epicentre Paris (MSF, France), CAPRISA (Centre for the AIDS Programme of Research in South Africa (South Africa)), and we are aware of several organisations in the process of obtaining approval to start their RFI reporting.

Although the number of institutions is small – looking at this list of ‘early adopters’, the results of these reports is likely to impact on many global, regional and national partnerships.

There have also been other uses of the RFI System, for example, The Philippines made 2021 the year of Research Fairness using the RFI, while the Ministers of Health of the Community of Portuguese Language Countries (CPLP) have recommended the RFI as guide for intra-CPLP health research collaborations.

The Evidence-base is growing

The sample is still small, but early lessons include:

• Completing the RFI Report is for many organisations the first and only time for strategical assessment of their own partnership policies, practices and expectations. It has proven to be an eye-opener for all, without exception.
• It is a challenge to change perspective – away from writing a ‘report card’ focusing on past performance towards preparing a two-year, forward looking improvement plan for fairness and equitability in research collaborations. Once the perspective has changed, it encourages interest, engagement, creativity and intent to learn how others are doing.
• There are original policies and practices not known outside organisations that are clearly going to be helpful to others – and can possibly generate global consensus for standards or benchmarks in future.
• Different organisations voiced different concerns. These may include a fear of funder backlash should responses to financial management in the RFI be answered inadequately. (We have informal evidence to the contrary – awareness of needs for support generate support). Additional administrative load which, additionally, needs to be paid for from scarce core funding. (With the new interactive web-based RFI reporting platform, the production of the first draft report takes less than a day – once the information to questions is available. At the same time, all questions are actually relevant for any self-respecting research actor. If it takes a lot of time to find the answers – that is not because the RFI is complex, but because you should have measured these indicators in the first place). Or the concerns may be getting comments from partners. (Actually, transparency is what enables discussion and negotiation – the basis for great and lasting partnerships).

Next steps for the RFI

It seems the RFI is in the early phase of adoption, and we anticipate a faster uptake from all constituencies and also from ‘enablers’, like journals and funders. We look forward to journals and funders making it a requirement for any lead organisation of research collaborations involving LMICs to submit their RFI reports. Imagine if everyone would play ball…

13/04/2022

Introduction: Discourses of risk versus desire
This article seeks to understand Indigenous young people's relationships and their experiences of s*xual intimacy. A cohort of Indigenous 16–25-year olds from urban, rural and remote communities was invited to participate in a collaborative method involving scenario-based body mapping (Chenhall et al., 2013; Senior and Chenhall, 2008). In these activities, young people discussed the range and complexity of their relationships and how constructions and interpretations of relationships contribute to both positive and negative experiences. While young people discussed the fun and excitement of casual encounters, this study found that experiences and beliefs about relationships and s*xual intimacy were gendered, with s*x defined in relation to young men's pursuit of pleasure. While these understandings provide important insights into adolescent s*xuality as ‘multidimensional, socially constructed and negotiated’, they also point to the continued gendered power inequalities that subordinate young women's lives to the desires and control of young men (MacPhail and McKay, 2018: 2).

The public health literature on youth s*xuality often presents a discourse about risk, danger and disease (see Arabena, 2016; Shoveller and Johnson, 2006). This is particularly true for Indigenous Australian youth, where health-related research has discussed the higher rates of various s*xually transmitted diseases and pregnancy (Bell et al., 2017; Bowden et al., 1999; Miller et al., 2001, 2003; Panaretto et al., 2006; Wand et al., 2018). In attempts to understand these high rates, more recent qualitative research has examined the beliefs and behaviour of young Indigenous Australians in relation to s*xual health (Ireland et al., 2015; Larkins et al., 2007; Senior et al., 2016; Senior and Chenhall, 2017). In a recent systematic review of the social determinants of adolescent Aboriginal Australian s*xual health, MacPhail and McKay (2018) recommended that the development and implementation of s*xual health prevention programmes need to be informed by a deeper understanding around the meaning of casual s*x and how this transitions to trusting relationships among Indigenous young people. The focus is often still on the problematic aspects of negotiating s*x and the risks afforded by young people, creating a discourse of shame around s*xual practices.

The discourses of danger and risk presented in the academic literature (Aggleton and Campbell, 2010: 284) are often reproduced in the interactions between providers of s*xual health services and young people, and in turn internalized by young people themselves (Senior et al., 2014). Young people's s*xually transmitted infections and their teenage pregnancies become the focus of attention, rather than the dynamics of their relationships or any sense of pleasure. Similarly, for q***r youth, vulnerability and the potential to be victimized have become a focus of attention (Marshall, 2010). This reflects a general paucity of literature about subjects such as desire, love and intimacy between young people. Brown et al. (1999) argue that due to the rapid rise in s*xually transmitted diseases, teenage pregnancy and abortion in recent decades, most research has focused on s*xual activity rather than the romantic liaisons or relationships that are an important context of this activity. Of concern, they argue, is that romance and love is often equated with s*x and subsumed under s*xual activity. They argue that if we are to understand why and when young people engage in various forms of s*xual activity, the nature of their relationships needs to be explored. Allen's (2010) qualitative research with New Zealand youth has provided an important refocus on young people's s*xuality research. In this work, Allen explores the discursive formation of young people's subjectivities, describing their resistance to dominant discourses of s*xuality that articulate gendered views of s*x and love. Such discourses, Allen argues, have failed to capture the complexity and context-bound nature of young people's own definitions, experiences and expectations of their s*xual selves. Allen (2010: 464) states:

The pursuit of pleasure has been seen as the archenemy of s*xual health promotion, when in the heat of the moment the condom is forgotten. I wish to propose that the positives and pleasures of young people's relationships can offer an equally insightful window through which to understand their behavior and inform safer s*x promotion.

13/04/2022

12/04/2022

Introduction
Birds (Avialae) evolved from theropod dinosaurs during the Mesozoic, and many supposed ‘avian’ features characteristic of modern birds originated in their dinosaurian ancestors (Xu et al., 2014; Brusatte et al., 2015; Pittman et al., 2020), including aspects of reproductive biology (Zelenitsky and Therrien, 2008; Varricchio and Jackson, 2016; Norell et al., 1995; Varricchio et al., 2002). Non-avian theropods possess a mixture of reproductive features, including some that are avian-like and seen in today's birds, but others that are inherited from early reptilian ancestors or are unique features restricted to particular extinct dinosaur lineages (Horner, 2000; Zelenitsky, 2006; Yang et al., 2019b). Much of our knowledge on dinosaur reproduction has been developed from the study of eggs and embryos (if preserved), providing us with information on egg morphology and color, nest structure, nesting behavior, and early ontogeny/growth (e.g., Mikhailov, 2014; Tanaka et al., 2015; Wiemann et al., 2018; Yang et al., 2019b; Bi et al., 2021; Reisz et al., 2005; Norell et al., 2001).

Skeletons of dinosaurs are rarely preserved in ovo, but these embryonic fossils are important records of dinosaur reproduction as an embryo documents stages of early growth and development up until hatching. As for preserved eggshells of dinosaurs (e.g., Varricchio et al., 2002; Zelenitsky et al., 2002), aspects of their embryos are logically comparable in an evolutionary framework with those of their closest living relatives crocodiles and birds, the three clades of which belong to a group of diapsids called Archosauria.

With respect to in ovo embryonic posture, extant birds are known to have a degree of mobility, which allows them to develop different postures at different stages of development, and ultimately a characteristic tucking posture critical to successful hatching (Hamburger and Oppenheim, 1967; Hamburger, 1973; Oppenheim, 1973; Brooks, 1978; Rideout, 2012). The back of the embryo is against the air cell in the blunt pole of the egg and the head is tucked under the right wing with the beak pointing toward the lower slope of air cell (Oppenheim, 1973; Rideout, 2012). Such a posture or degree of mobility has not been observed in other extant archosaurs, the crocodilians (Ferguson, 1985; Casey and Sleigh, 2001), which instead have a sitting posture with the head bending upon the chest up to hatching (Deraniyagala, 1939), but it is not clear if deviations from this posture would increase mortality.

Owing to the scarcity of articulated dinosaur embryo fossils, it is unclear whether non-avian dinosaurs attained a bird-like posture before hatching, or were more similar to the ancestral archosaurian condition (i.e., as in living crocodiles, which we here presume to be plesiomorphic for Archosauria, although further evidence is needed from a range of tetrapods to determine the ancestral conditions of Archosauria and other clades). Although fossilized embryos of enantiornithine birds indicate that tucking behavior existed in the Cretaceous in early-diverging birds (Elżanowski, 1981; Zhou and Zhang, 2004). The prehatching posture of non-avian dinosaurs has rarely been commented on. A partial embryo of an oviraptorid—a non-avian theropod closely related to birds—was described to have the same posture as crocodilians (Norell et al., 1994, 2001), but the reasoning was not explained in detail. More in-depth comparative study from more recent discoveries is needed to illuminate the largely unexplored prehatching behavior of non-avian dinosaurs.

In this study, we describe a new non-avian theropod dinosaur embryo exquisitely preserved inside an egg, from the Late Cretaceous Hekou Formation of southern China. This articulated specimen is one of the most complete non-avian dinosaur embryos yet discovered, permitting detailed anatomical study and an unprecedented glimpse at the osteology of an in-ovo bird-like, but non-avian, theropod dinosaur. A comparison with the embryos of closely related taxa and extant archosaurs allows us to hypothesize aspects of prehatching behavior. Most importantly, we observe that oviraptorid embryos appear to take on aspects of avian-like tucking postures, and we propose that this prehatching behavior evolved prior to the origin of birds.

10/04/2022

The Thing That Got You Into The Game
We all have reasons for being pulled to the things we love.

When he was just a 19-year-old intern, Ira Glass had a taste for journalism and storytelling. He knew what good journalism looked like when it was done well. But it took him 17 years of work before he could start to do it well himself. And, as he says above, that was frustrating.

I think you and I face a similar type of battle.

Spend a year or two in the gym and you'll start to recognize good technique, even if your own could use some work. This is something I'm struggling with right now. I know a great clean and jerk when I see one, but when I grab hold of the bar it's still hard for me to pull it off.
Start writing consistently and you'll begin to take notice when you read great work. But good luck trying to produce your own brilliant words. In the beginning, it can be difficult just to get something on the page. And even when you can hammer out sentences, young writers quickly learn that all words aren't created equal. Even with consistent writing each week, I still feel like I fail to produce something of note.
Watch a dozen TED Talks and you'll be able to point out what you like and don't like about certain presenters, but jump up on stage yourself and the difficulty of captivating an audience — even for a minute or two — becomes quite apparent.
And so it goes for virtually any skill. There is always a gap between being an apprentice and being a craftsman. The apprentice has the taste, but not the skill. The craftsman has the taste and the skill.

It's easier to recognize beauty than it is to create it. You're good enough to know that what you're doing isn't good, but not good enough to produce something great. When you find yourself in this frustrating limbo, the challenge is to never forget what got you there in the first place. Remember that thing that got you into the game.

Your love. Your passion. Your taste. That's the reason you're here. You still belong, even if you don't feel like it right now. Your taste can be killer even if your ability is questionable.

Commit to the process and you'll become good enough, soon enough. Put in a volume of work. Close the gap.

What to Do Next
Developing skills that are as good as your taste comes down to habits. The ability to “fight your way through” as Glass says, hinges on your consistency to show up and do the work. Can you build the habits required to make small improvements day after day?

I don't claim to have all the answers, but my hope is that I can help a little bit. I've spent the last year writing and researching the science of habit formation. Much of what I have learned (including strategies for becoming more consistent and improving your performance) is covered in my book Atomic Habits.

10/04/2022

China's central bank on Friday conducted 10 billion yuan ($1.57 billion) of reverse repos to maintain liquidity in the banking system. The interest rate for the seven-day reverse repos was set at 2.1%, according to the People's Bank of China.

09/04/2022

How to Respond to Haters
Most people need love and acceptance a lot more than they need advice.
—Bob Goff
In rare circumstances, you may want to respond to the people who dish criticism your way. If that’s the case, then I think Gary Vaynerchuk provides a good example of how to do it.

When Vaynerchuk published his best-selling book Crush It, he received dozens of 1-star and 2-star reviews on Amazon. Negative reviewers claimed that the book was “absolutely awful” and called it a “piece of crap with no value whatsoever.”

And this was for a book that was a best-seller!

Rather than fight back and justify his work, Gary decided to respond to many of the negative reviews with a sincere apology. For example, a reader named Frank left a 1-star review for the book in which he complained, “How did this book ever get published?”

Vaynerchuk responded to him by saying…

Frank I am so so sorry I under delivered for you, I hope to meet u and spend 15 minutes apologizing and answering any questions u may have, I guess I needed more details in there for u, I am so sorry.
Despite using grammar from a high school text message, Vaynerchuk ended up getting Frank’s number and called him to talk things over.

After their conversation, Frank wrote a followup comment on his book review saying, “If Amazon had a people ranking system, I'd have to give Gary 5 stars. One can not help being impressed by someone who gets back to you so quickly and handles criticism so graciously.”

If you’re going to respond to your haters and critics, then getting a response like that should be your goal. Rather than beating the haters back with insults, win them back with sincerity. Most people don’t want to be convinced that your work is wonderful, they just want to know that you care.

Where to Go From Here
I've said this many times before, but it bears repeating: I don't really have anything figured out. I'm not an expert and I don't have all the answers. I'm still learning to deal with criticism like everyone else.

But in my limited experiences, here's what I can summarize about dealing with difficult people and haters.

First and foremost, don’t be the hater. Don’t be the person who tears down someone else's hard work. The world needs more people who contribute their gifts and share their work and ideas. Working up the courage to do that can be tough. Support the people who display that courage.
If you're dealing with criticism, then don't let the wall keep you from seeing the road. Focus on the path ahead. Another way I heard it put recently, “Ignore the boos. They usually come from the cheap seats.”
If you choose to respond to the haters, then surprise them with kindness. You might just win a new fan while you're at it.
Finally, and most importantly, make the choices that are right for you. People will criticize you either way.