Code Nation, Pivotal and Year Up to receive $250,000 from PayPal in grant funding for programs supporting underserved youth in an effort to strengthen the financial health of the San Jose community

SAN JOSE, Calif., Sep. 21 /CSRwire/ - PayPal Holdings, Inc. today announced it is committing $250,000 to three organizations that are working to support underserved youth in the San Jose, California community:Code Nation,PivotalandYear Up. PayPal has chosen to award grants to these nonprofits because their work aligns closely to the companys mission to provide all people with the opportunity for financial health by giving them the tools and resources that are needed to join and thrive in the global economy.

Each year, PayPal supports partnerships with nonprofits within the communities where its employees live and work through grant funding and other support including skills-based volunteering. This years grants to Code Nation, Pivotal and Year Up are part of the companys latest steps to support its San Jose headquarters community. These organizations are working to help underserved and diverse youth byempowering them with the skills, experiences and support needed for professional jobs, which in return will contribute to sustained financial health for these individuals and their families while also building a well skilled and diverse talent pool.

Financial health is essential to enable a better future for individuals, families and communities, said Franz Paasche, senior vice president of corporate affairs, PayPal. Many young people still lack sufficient access to the education, workplace experiences and mentors needed to launch their careers. This disparity contributes to long-term economic inequality while leaving tremendous untapped potential in our communities. These three outstanding organizations are addressing the opportunity divide, which is why we are partnering with them to drive meaningful impact in the San Jose community.

The Bay Area is home to nearly 60,000 opportunity youth with nearly 20,000 living in Santa Clara County.Code Nation mobilizes a volunteer teaching corps that includes hundreds of professional software developers to provide tuition-free coding courses and work-based learning programs to students who attend under-resourced schools. Pivotal works with foster youth starting as early as ninth grade to ensure they dont fall through the cracks as they navigate high school, college, and the transition into the workforce. Year Up seeks to disrupt the cycles of exclusion by providing underserved youth relevant job skills, internships, stipends, college credit recommendations, and support under one comprehensive model.

Too many of our young people lack opportunities to develop the skills they need to succeed at great companies, said San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo. Thank you, PayPal, for your generous commitment to our future leaders of Silicon Valley.

PayPal will continue to collaborate with these three organizations along with dozens of other local nonprofits in the San Jose area through grants, volunteer opportunities, mentorship, internship placements and other activities. These efforts are part of the companys ongoing commitment to theSan Jose community, which also includes initiatives such as employee-led grantmaking, contributions to theSilicon Valley Strongfund and toSVCFs COVID Funds, participation among theSilicon Valley Recovery Roundtable, and more.

About PayPal

PayPal has remained at the forefront of the digital payment revolution for more than 20 years. By leveraging technology to make financial services and commerce more convenient, affordable, and secure, the PayPal platform is empowering more than 300 million consumer and merchantsin more than 200 markets to join and thrive in the global economy. For more information, visitpaypal.com.

About Code Nation

Code Nation is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit on a mission to equip young people with the skills, experiences, and connections that together create access to careers in technology. With a volunteer teaching corps of nearly 300 professional web and software developers and a network of school and company partners, we provide coding courses and work-based learning programs to students who attend under-resourced high schools. To date, Code Nation has served over 5,000 young people in New York City, Chicago, and the Bay Area.

About Pivotal

Pivotal is theonly private non-profit in Silicon Valley exclusively focused on meeting the educational and career needs of foster youth.We offer a comprehensive set of services designed to connect foster youth to academic and employment success. In high school, we help foster youth develop and stick to a graduation plan. In college, we offer scholarship dollars, academic coaching, and tutoring. At all ages, we build their career readiness and confidence, and connect them to paid internships that provide critical work experience and professionalism skills.We have a proven track record of developing and implementing programs to help young people from foster care get the support they need to earn a sustainable income and reach self-sufficiency.For nearly twenty years, our work has changed the educational trajectory of thousands of local foster youth. Scholars in our program are 10x more likely to graduate college than their foster youth peers.

About Year Up

Year Up is an award-winning, national 501(c)3 organization that enables motivated young adults to move from minimum wage to meaningful careers in just one year by providing the skills, experience, and support that will empower them to reach their full potential. Through a one-year, intensive program, Year Up utilizes a high-expectations, high-support model that combines marketable job skills, stipends, coursework eligible for college credit, and corporate internships at more than 250 top companies. Its holistic approach focuses on students' professional and personal development to enable young adults with a viable path to economic self-sufficiency and meaningful careers. Year Up has served more than 30,000 young adults since its founding in 2000. Year Up is active in 35 campuses across the U.S., including Arizona, Baltimore, Bay Area, Charlotte, Chicago, Dallas/Fort Worth, Greater Atlanta, Greater Boston, Greater Philadelphia, Jacksonville, Los Angeles, the National Capital Region, New York City/Jersey City, Pittsburgh, Puget Sound, Rhode Island, South Florida, Tampa Bay, and Wilmington. Year Up has been voted one of the Best Non-Profits to Work For by TheNonProfitTimes. To learn more, visitwww.yearup.org, and follow us onLinkedIn,Facebook,Instagram, andTwitter.

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*Opportunity Youthare defined as young people between the ages of 16 and 24 who are neither enrolled in school nor participating in the labor market or about one in nine members of this age group in the United States.

Media Contact

Tiffany Peng tipeng@paypal.com

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PayPal Continues to Expand Nonprofit Partnerships in the San Jose Community - CSRwire.com

Jazmean Williams, a 2020 graduate with a BS in biomedical engineering, in the lab during her six-month research co-op in Wellington, New Zealand funded partially by Drexel-LSAMP.

When Stephen Cox started as an undergraduate student at Drexel University (then called the Drexel Institute of Technology) in 1969, it was sparsely populated with minority students like him, he says.

Then, after receiving his BS in physics and atmospheric science in 1974 and his MS in biophysics and biomedical engineering (both from Drexel) in 1976, Cox left Drexel and jumped into an industry career with positions at General Electric and Boeing. There, he saw a similar trend very few people of color were operating alongside him in these scientific positions and venues.

So in the early 90s, Cox started working to reverse this trend, and he had help. The National Science Foundation (NSF) wanted to establish multi-year, multi-million-dollar grants to support institutions and programming proven to increase the number of underrepresented students moving into STEM-related paths of study and, ultimately, careers.

In 1994, this funding and Coxs work helped found the Greater Philadelphia Region Alliance for Minority Participation (Philadelphia AMP), which is part of the national, NSF-founded Louis Stokes Alliances for Minority Participation (LSAMP) program. Philadelphia AMP brought together nine higher-education institutions to work and share resources toward a common goal to double the number of minority students receiving degrees in STEM disciplines over the next five years as this NSF-funded alliance model had already proven successful in doing so in additional areas of the country.

Stephen Cox (BS '74 MS '76) is co-principal investigator and project director of Philadelphia AMP.

And in that five-year time frame, Philadelphia AMP had more than achieved the goal, and Cox had also been invited to headquarter the alliance at his alma mater. He is now co-principal investigator and project director of Philadelphia AMP, leading the alliance alongside Nina Henderson Provost Paul Jensen, PhD, and Aroutis Foster, PhD, an associate dean of Drexels School of Education.

Because I knew of the impact of cooperative education, I thought that Drexel would be a good site to create the leadership of the initiative, he said.

Now, the 27-year-old Philadelphia AMP Alliance continues to thrive at host institution Drexel and across partner institutions, including the University of Pennsylvania, Temple University, Community College of Philadelphia, Cheyney University of Pennsylvania, Lincoln University, the University of Delaware, Delaware State University and Rowan University. The LSAMP model has also taken hold in all areas of the country, from Puerto Rico to Hawaii.

Each university in the Philadelphia Alliance supports its own programming, activities, research opportunities, academic coaching, mentorship and funding, and the institutions also support each other, all in an effort to sustain what is now the annual graduation of well over 1,000 minority students into STEM graduate and PhD programs or careers. This is compared to the just 200 graduating with STEM degrees back before the alliance began.

As an alliance, we've been very successful in capturing the funding, but also providing the opportunities for students to succeed, who prior to this were not really looked at as a necessary outcome, Cox said. You know, it's easy to talk about being diverse, but the reality of diversity is how you produce a product and we've been able to do that successfully over a 26-year period, so much so that this year NSF has awarded us again a $3.2 million grant to continue this work from now through 2025.

The continued work of Philadelphia AMP is both important and complex, and critical in current turbulent times, Cox said.

We see right now, the country is in turmoil. Issues of race and ethnicity and gender are all things that are still issues 25, 30 years later, he added. That has not gone away in America.

But despite all this complexity, how Drexel students get involved with LSAMP on an individual level is often quite simple.

For Jazmean Williams, a 2020 graduate with a BS in biomedical engineering, it started with a friend encouraging her to come to an LSAMP meeting while she was on campus summer term of her first year participating in the STAR Scholars program.

Just hearing what some of the current students in the program were doing and how LSAMP had basically bolstered their research rsum and the different outreach programs that they were able to do, that just made me so excited, Williams remembered. So I was like, OK, I'm going to join and I'm going to be involved, and I've been involved ever since.

From that moment on, LSAMP became a very big part of Williams Drexel experience. Without it, she said many of the research opportunities she was able to do in undergrad wouldnt have been possible, including the six-month research co-op in New Zealand she completed last year, and through which she solidified her goal of doing stem cell research as a career.

Jazmean Williams enjoying some down time while on an LSAMP-funded research co-op in New Zealand.

Without LSAMP, I would have never been able to leave the ground, Williams said. [The program] was able to help pay for my plane ticket and also provided resources for finding housing.

Because of that experience, I feel like it made my rsum a lot more attractive. Its a great talking point, too. I'm able to just talk about the experience of living in a new country on my own and being involved within a new culture, she continued. It shows not only your flexibility, but your ability to adapt and ability to problem solve. So, yeah, it was just an awesome experience.

For Julian Rath and Salamata Bah, it started with an email from Drexel-LSAMP Director Marisol Rodriguez Mergenthal, which arrived in their inbox at the right time, offering the right opportunity. Rath was having trouble back in March securing his first co-op opportunity due to complications caused by the pandemic. Then he found out that through LSAMP, he could take an online scientific computing course taught by scientists of the Brookhaven National Laboratory that was bound to help give him a leg up in his area of career interest, nuclear science. Better yet, he could get paid to take the course.

There were literally no aspects of the opportunity that I could have ever considered turning down, Rath, a pre-junior majoring in chemistry, said. With the career that I'm planning on going into, I need as much experience and credibility as I can get. Taking a class with Brookhaven National Laboratory on how to actually use the programs utilized in the field should help me greatly in the future.

Funded by a part-time stipend from LSAMP, Rath went on to complete a co-op position with the Peace Innovation Institute arranged by Joseph Hughes, PhD, and other College of Engineering faculty.

Bah, now a second-year computer science major, got involved with LSAMP during her first year when she saw an email about a research project in partnership with Cheyney University. LSAMP students from both institutions worked with faculty on annotating videos and collecting data centered around machine learning. Bah even had the opportunity to design the front end of an application the team wanted to create for the research.

Salamata Bah, a second-year computer science major involved with Drexel-LSAMP.

Bah said this experience helped her be accepted and solidify a project for the STAR Scholars program this summer.

I chose to do something related to machine learning because I found it so interesting, she said.

Because of how much LSAMP helped shape their time at Drexel, all of these participants would encourage other eligible students to keep an eye out for emails about programming and get involved.

I wouldn't be doing half the things that I've been doing over the past six months if I just never got the email and I never signed up for it, Rath said. It's only done good things for me, basically. Its an opportunity just sitting there

You never know which one of them will help you in your career or just build the network that will help you in the future, Bah added.

Williams specifically encouraged eligible students to get involved early on in their Drexel career like she did, whether theyre students who hit the ground running or take more time to adjust.

It's really great to have someone who's like a cheerleader, who's willing to cheer you on and make sure that you're getting the resources that you need, getting involved in the things that you need to be involved in, and also just providing mental health advice and academic advice, she said. Even if you're not a student who's ready to just take on the world right once you step on the campus, it's good to have someone who's willing to guide you through that process and to also have other students and other upperclassmen who've been where you've been and who can also guide you through that process as well.

Through the years, Cox has enjoyed hearing from students how much the LSAMP program at their institution or the Philadelphia AMP Alliance as a whole benefitted their personal growth and development.

Many of them attribute their success in their life now, many of them have families and children that it had to do with working with me, because I told them that they could do anything they wanted to do if they really invested themselves in believing that they could do it, he said. Many times, while I could say that I was the catalyst for their success, the reality is they were the raw material that just needed some encouragement.

Cox will be taking the Philadelphia AMPs Phase VI grant period, which will carry the alliance through 2025 and 30 years of existence, to start grooming a predecessor to take over his role and continue with this important work.

The reality is I could probably do this forever because I really enjoy what I do, but I will be 72 in October of this year, he said. In order to ensure the same kind of energy and excitement about this continues, I need to groom some other people.

All in all, he was happy to play a part in reversing the trends he saw as a student 50 years ago, and help students not unlike himself over the past 25 years find success, motivation and community.

At one of our graduation sequences, as the students were walking across stage, I overheard [the late Drexel University President Constantine Papadakis] say, These are Steve Coxs kids, he remembered. For me, that kind of summed it up, because there are so many students that I invested my knowledge, my background in industry, my technical capacity and my belief that all students can learn, particularly underrepresented students, if they are given the opportunity.

To find out more about Drexel-LSAMP participation and programming, please contact the Director Marisol Rodriguez Mergenthal at mr444@drexel.edu.

The rest is here:
Changing STEM Representation Trends Through the Philadelphia AMP Alliance - DrexelNow - Drexel Now

As a support unit the Task Force is responsible for a fast and efficient problem solving for the onboarding of partner articles on Zalando's platform. This team goes the extra mile to guarantee that the full partners' assortment is offered to Zalando's customers.

We are looking for a Team Coordinator who will lead the Task Force to contribute into Zalando's strategy of becoming the starting point for fashion.

WHERE YOUR EXPERTISE IS NEEDED

PERKS AT WORK

ABOUT ZALANDO

Zalando is Europe's leading online platform for fashion and lifestyle, connecting customers, brands and partners across 17 markets. We drive digital solutions for fashion, logistics, advertising and research, bringing head-to-toe fashion to more than 23 million active customers through diverse skill-sets, interests and languages our teams choose to use.

Please note that all applications must be completed using the online form - we do not accept applications via e-mail.

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Team Coordinator Task Force job with Zalando | 146778 - The Business of Fashion

September 21, 2020 17:01 ET | Source: Kingsoft Cloud Holdings Limited

BEIJING, Sept. 21, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Kingsoft Cloud Holdings Limited (Kingsoft Cloud or the Company) (NASDAQ: KC), a leading independent cloud service provider in China, today announced that the Company has recently entered into a multi-year strategic framework agreement (the Agreement) with CEC D-Commerce Technology (Shanghai) Co., Ltd. (CEC D-Commerce Tech), to invest in and expand healthcare cloud services, re-engineering the data services layer, and improving the analytical capabilities of healthcare organizations across China.

Pursuant to the Agreement, both companies will jointly develop cloud-based healthcare solutions, and provide healthcare organizations with powerful data analysis and application tools which can significantly reduce on-premise IT construction, operation and maintenance costs for hospitals and healthcare agencies across China. Both parties will execute cloud projects at the national, provincial and municipal levels. Flagship projects will first be implemented within a number of regions, and then be gradually expanded to provinces and cities across the country.

CEC D-Commerce Tech will capitalize on its extensive connections with the healthcare supply chain to generate qualified sales leads and commit resources to facilitate healthcare projects, while Kingsoft Cloud will leverage its existing public cloud technologies to further research and develop proprietary technology in healthcare solutions, advise best-fit cloud adoption patterns, achieve enhanced technical interoperability, and successfully execute and deliver projects.

Kingsoft Clouds strategic expansion into the healthcare industry is primarily due to the following reasons:

1) Demand for healthcare cloud-native services is still in its infancy and presents an enormous growth opportunity in China. An IDC report asserts that IT spending on cloud services for Chinas healthcare industry is expected to reach RMB17 billion by 2023.

2) National policies are supportive of healthcare digitalization, providing guidance on timetable, technology standards, data requirements and accommodative budget allocations.

3) The rapid onset and impact of the COVID-19 pandemic has urged national and local governments to digitalize the healthcare industry. As a result, there has been sustainable demand for the establishment of standardized data centers, unified information standards and data services for the healthcare industry across China.

4) Healthcare use cases for big data is multifaceted, spanning personal health, medical services, disease control and health preservation. The integration of various data sources and the growing need for data analysis create recurring demand for healthcare cloud services.

This new partnership with CEC D-Commerce Tech will enable Kingsoft Cloud to establish a solid foothold in a market with significant growth prospects.

Kingsoft Clouds robust cloud infrastructure, end-to-end healthcare solutions and unparalleled service capabilities will support healthcare data centers, along with healthcare information, medical insurance and medical community platforms. As an independent cloud service provider with no exposure to healthcare business, Kingsoft Cloud will provide secure, compliant and resilient data services, break down data silos and enable on-demand access to the data. By leveraging its expertise in enterprise service delivery, Kingsoft Cloud is best-positioned to manage the complexities of running enterprise programs, which is critical for operating in the highly regulated and standardized healthcare industry. CEC D-Commerce Tech is one of the leading companies advocating for favorable national policy to be deployed across China. It has deep access to a pool of project resources for the healthcare sector. This cooperation will expand Kingsoft Clouds integration into the operational infrastructure of the healthcare industry.

In order to fully capture this long-term growth opportunity, Kingsoft Cloud plans to devote additional resources, hire talent with specialized healthcare cloud computing experience and further invest in upgrading the Companys technology capabilities for the healthcare industry.

About Kingsoft Cloud Holdings Limited Kingsoft Cloud Holdings Limited (NASDAQ: KC) is a leading independent cloud service provider in China. Kingsoft Cloud has built a comprehensive and reliable cloud platform consisting of extensive cloud infrastructure, cutting-edge cloud products and well-architected industry-specific solutions across public cloud, enterprise cloud and AIoT cloud services.

For more information, please visit: http://ir.ksyun.com.

About CEC D-Commerce Tech CEC D-Commerce Technology (Shanghai) Co, Ltd. (CEC D-Commerce Tech) is a subsidiary of China Electronics Investment Holdings Limited. It is one of the leading companies in the healthcare industry that promotes migration of on-premise IT to the Cloud.

Safe Harbor Statement This announcement contains forward-looking statements. These statements are made under the safe harbor provisions of the U.S. Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These forward-looking statements can be identified by terminology such as will, expects, anticipates, future, intends, plans, believes, estimates and similar statements. Among other things, the Business Outlook and quotations from management in this announcement, as well as Kingsoft Clouds strategic and operational plans, contain forward-looking statements. Kingsoft Cloud may also make written or oral forward-looking statements in its periodic reports to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), in its annual report to shareholders, in press releases and other written materials and in oral statements made by its officers, directors or employees to fourth parties. Statements that are not historical facts, including but not limited to statements about Kingsoft Clouds beliefs and expectations, are forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements involve inherent risks and uncertainties. A number of factors could cause actual results to differ materially from those contained in any forward-looking statement, including but not limited to the following: Kingsoft Clouds goals and strategies; Kingsoft Clouds future business development, results of operations and financial condition; the relevant government policies and regulations relating to Kingsoft Clouds business and industry; the expected growth of the cloud service market in China; the expectation regarding the rate at which to gain customers, especially Premium Customers; Kingsoft Clouds ability to monetize the customer base; fluctuations in general economic and business conditions in China; the impact of the COVID-19 to Kingsoft Clouds business operations and the economy in China and elsewhere generally; Chinas political or social conditions and assumptions underlying or related to any of the foregoing. Further information regarding these and other risks is included in Kingsoft Clouds filings with the SEC. All information provided in this press release and in the attachments is as of the date of this press release, and Kingsoft Cloud does not undertake any obligation to update any forward-looking statement, except as required under applicable law.

For investor and media inquiries, please contact: Kingsoft Cloud Holdings Limited Nicole Shan Tel: +86 (10) 6292-7777 Ext. 6300 Email: ksc-ir@kingsoft.com

Christensen Ms. Linda Bergkamp Phone: +1-480-614-3004 E-mail: lbergkamp@christensenir.com

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Kingsoft Cloud and CEC D-Commerce Tech Form Strategic Partnership to Drive Healthcare Cloud Development in China - GlobeNewswire

The Good Veterinary Workplaces Voluntary Code sets out various criteria for what makes a good workplace, based on a new evidence-based BVA policy position.

The code is accompanied by a workbook which veterinary teams can work through together and consider how theymight meet a range of criteria.Theycan alsodownload, sign and display a Voluntary Code poster signallingtheircommitment to working towards being a good veterinary workplace.

Teams will be asked to assess what they already do well in areas including health and wellbeing, diversity and equality, workload and flexibility, and providing opportunities for personal and career development, as well as identifying areas for improvement and any HR and management processes that need to be put in place to achieve a positive workplace culture.

At the same time, the BVA has also launched its Good Veterinary Workplaces policy position, a paper which offers 64 recommendations for employers and staff on how to offer a fair and rewarding work environment where everyone feels valued.

The BVA says it decided to develop the Good Veterinary Workplaces policy off the back of an extensive body of work looking at workforce issues in the profession, including recruitment and retention challenges, a lack of diversity across the workforce, and general high levels of stress and burn-out in veterinary teams.

The joint BVA/RCVS-led Vet Futures project identified the need to explore the work-related challenges facing vets and take action to create a sustainable and thriving workforce that can maximise its potential.

Gudrun Ravetz, Chair of the Good Workplace Working Group, said: Im absolutely delighted to see the launch of our valuable and comprehensive policy, which sets out a vision of the good veterinary workplaces that we should all be striving to create across the profession. This vision has been shaped by valuable contributions from across the veterinary community, and its also been really useful to draw on good practice in the wider world of work.

Each and every one of us deserves to work in a setting where we feel valued, supported and fairly rewarded for the contribution we make, but sadly this isnt the reality for all veterinary professionals. By setting out the steps that all veterinary workplaces can take to offer a more welcoming and inclusive environment, with measures in place to help them address issues and continue to improve, we hope to see more workplaces where staff can thrive and enjoy a fulfilling career.

Daniella Dos Santos, BVA Senior Vice President, said: Its time for us all to take action to create a culture shift in veterinary workplaces. That means taking positive steps so that diversity and inclusion is championed at all levels, all team members have access to personal and professional development opportunities, and there is recognition that prioritising staff wellbeing is good for businesses.

In creating the Voluntary Code and workbook, weve purposefully made this something that isnt driven from the top down but is instead something that everyone in the team can feel empowered to feed into and sign up to. This is a golden opportunity for our profession to take ownership of our workplaces, improve conditions, and make sure that we have positive working environments in which we can all take pride.

Whilst you're here, take a moment to see our latest job opportunities for vets.

Read more:
New BVA initiative to make vet practices a better place to work - VetSurgeon News

Grief is all around us these days. With nearly 200,000 Americans dead from a perniciously contagious virus, the number of friends and loved ones in mourning is incalculable. For those of us still walking, grieving is even harder when that health crisis suspends our daily lives, making the normal processing of loss and sorrow even more difficult.

Now imagine youre in prison.

Apart from the daily pain of incarceration, where fear and guilt are the unwelcome daily companions to the base-level disquiet all Americans are living through. Even more so than the rest of us, the incarcerated have little chance for escape. (Figuratively speaking, of course.) But, for a Maine dancer and the moviemaker who filmed her grief-themed dance performance, escape has come from a most unlikely place.

We dont deal well with grief in our culture and society, and its even worse in a prison system where theres more grief and even less access to resources, said Portlands Lindsey Bourassa, whose multimedia dance performance El Lobo y La Paloma (The Wolf and the Dove) was filmed in 2017-18 by producer/directors David Camlin and Scott Sutherland and recently picked up by Edovo, a company dedicated to bringing educational, arts, and communication projects to people in the nations prisons and jails. Its also available for rent or purchase through Vimeo for those on the outside.

Inspired by a poem written by Bourassas father about the long-ago death of her mother, El Lobo y La Poloma sees Bourassa and fellow flamenco dancer Megan Keogh physically manifesting the grieving process over projected paintings by Khosro Berahmandi and a striking performance by singer Talal Alzefiri and musician Thomas Kovacevic. Incorporating narration of her fathers poem and her own on the subject of death and loss, the film is simultaneously passionate, theatrical, and for those of us not versed in the art of dance mysterious. Even opaque.

Its resonated with incarcerated viewers to an extent that even Bourassa and Camlin have found surprising. As an artist, youre always looking for ways to bring your work to different populations, to make it accessible there, says Bourassa. Flamenco is a really great art form for telling stories, because, while its very technical, its goal is emotional. Sometimes I feel it touches people in a way that maybe other forms that are less outwardly emotional cant.

While El Lobo y La Poloma wasnt conceived with incarcerated audiences in mind, both Camlin and Bourassa tout Edovos approach to bringing uplifting, thought-provoking art behind prison walls where such experiences are perpetually scarce. Edovos whole concept is education-based learning experience, explains Camlin, who splits his professional life between Maine and Michigan. From muffin recipes to GED tracks to skill training, its all about personal development. Our goal was to develop a learning component to go along with the film.

Camlin notes that he and Bourassa went through a learning process, as well. We initially thought about bringing this to a group setting, like we have at public screenings of the film, where Ive witnessed some of the best conversations Ive ever seen. But for a lot of incarcerated people, there isnt a person they can trust enough to show their emotions. So we tailored it to an individual experience.

Introduced to Edovo by the PMAs Jon Courtney (whose work promoting prison education and arts weve profiled at Indie Film), Bourassa and Camlin alongside Hospice of Southern Maine counselor Carol Schonberg have created an immersive experience about processing grief that has clearly struck a chord. They started to receive positive feedback from incarcerated viewers within days of the films Edovo release, and the pair say the anonymous responses have been sometimes overwhelming. (One unedited response reads, I didnt take my losses well and this shows me a way to turn pain into art, while another states plainly, Makes me wanna fix my ways so im remebered by something impressive.)

For a work so personal, the success of El Lobo y La Paloma in touching people in need has been humbling for Bourassa. Noting that her own process has been one of realizing that joy and creativity are as much a part of grieving as sadness, Bourassa says, The feedback is so helpful in asking, What does this work do? How is this helpful? Thats what struck me how they want to leave a legacy, want to be remembered for something really wonderful.

El Lobo y La Paloma can be seen on-demand at Vimeo. For more of Lindsey Bourassas dance and David Camlins filmmaking work, check out their respective websites, bourassadance.com and 7cylinders.com.

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Processing grief through dance - Portland Press Herald - Press Herald

At TU Dresden, School of Engineering Sciences, the newly established Lab Dresden Centre for Intelligent Materials (DCIM) offers in the field of Materials Informatics data-driven approaches for materials research a position as

Research Associate / Group Leader

(Subject to personal qualification employees are remunerated according to salary group E 14 TV-L)

starting at the next possible date and limited until 31.12.2022. The period of employment is governed by the Fixed Term Research Contracts Act (Wissenschaftszeitvertragsgesetz - WissZeitVG).

The Lab Dresden Centre for Intelligent Materials (GCL DCIM) is focused on novel materials which, as a central component of intelligent systems, feel, think and act autonomously through integrated sensory and actuator functionalities. It initially consists of the two research groups Hierarchical Topologies structures with material-inherent control functions and Materials Informatics data-driven approaches for materials research and is intended to establish complementary competencies and to develop promising future research areas.

The research group Materials Informatics is concerned with data-driven approaches for the description and integration of novel tailor-made materials. Modern materials research requires an integrative and multidisciplinary approach, which increasingly relies on methods from mathematics and computer science in addition to traditional approaches from chemistry, physics and engineering. In particular, machine learning and the evaluation of "big data" are essential for tomorrow's materials research and related engineering sciences. The development of strategies for materials discovery and development are therefore the focus of Materials Informatics.

You will be part of a team of enthusiastic scientists who will creatively pursue their individual research agenda, inspired by the innovative approach and support of the Centre. Your research environment will include access to state-of-the-art research infrastructure, the promotion of gender equality and a family-friendly working environment.

Tasks: You will be integrated into the activities of the Materials Informatics research group and will interact with scientists in the field of computational materials research involved in the Dresden Centre for Computational Materials Science (DCMS). The tasks include - in the field of development and application of data-driven approaches for the description and integration of novel tailor-made materials - besides own research activities, the monitoring of the scientific development of the group, an active role in the collaboration with internal and external partners in research and industry and the acquisition of external funding. The position offers perfect perspectives for personal development within the framework of a university career from postdoc to group leader. The willingness to prepare an application for an individual junior research group (e.g. Emmy Noether Group, ERC Starting Grant) is expected and supported.

Requirements: a university degree and a doctorate are required, preferably in physics, chemistry, mechanical engineering, materials science or computer science. Personal initiative, the ability to work independently as well as team-oriented research and excellent language skills (German, English) are expected. Experience in the field of materials simulations, with a special focus on data-based and data-intensive approaches and materials genomics is considered advantageous. We are looking for a top notch proactive young scientist who wants to make a name for herself or himself in science.

Applications from women are particularly welcome. The same applies to people with disabilities.

Please submit your comprehensive application including a letter of motivation, a two-page research statement about your possible contribution to the scientific activities of the group considering the research environment at TU Dresden and the scientific environment in Dresden, CV, complete list of publications and at least two letters of reference as one single pdf-file until 22.10.2020 (stamped arrival date of the university central mail service applies) preferably via the TU Dresden SecureMail Portal https://securemail.tu-dresden.de by sending it to dcim@tu-dresden.de with the subject in the header: "Application DCIM Materials Informatics, your_surname" or by mail to TU Dresden, Fakultt Maschinenwesen, Institut fr Werkstoffwissenschaft, Professur fr Materialwissenschaft und Nanotechnik, Herrn Prof. Dr. Gianaurelio Cuniberti, Helmholtzstr. 10, 01069 Dresden. Please submit copies only, as your application will not be returned to you. Expenses incurred in attending interviews cannot be reimbursed.

Reference to data protection: Your data protection rights, the purpose for which your data will be processed, as well as further information about data protection is available to you on the website: https: //tu-dresden.de/karriere/datenschutzhinweis

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Research Associate / Group Leader in the field of Materials Informatics data-driven approaches for job with TECHNISCHE UNIVERSITAT DRESDEN (TU...

With severe osteoarthritis in my left hip, I am due to have a hip replacement. My having been a wicket-keeper for over 30 years cant have helped, but I also have a long-standing deformity in that hip, and the right hip is fine. So today I went for a preoperative assessment.

To assess the origins of assessment we must start with the IndoEuropean root SED, to put something down or sit.

In Latin, SED gives the verb sedre, to sit. Its not obvious, but in Greek it gives the verb , to sit. The S in the IndoEuropean root becomes an aspirate in Greek (see Box 1).

Add to the prefix , down, and you get , to sit down. Akathisia is an inability to sit still, associated with an inner feeling of restlessness. It is sometimes caused by dopamine receptor antagonists, such as chlorpromazine and haloperidol. The focal form of akathisia, the restless legs syndrome, also called Ekboms syndrome or WillisEkbom disease, if severe, is sometimes treated with dopamine receptor agonists.

Related to is the Greek verb , which also means to sit. Add a suffix, , on or over, and we get the verb, , to sit heavily on, to press down. This gives us the English prefix piezo-, referring to physical phenomena that are elicited by the application of pressure, such as the piezoelectric effect, piezomagnetism, and piezoresistance.

The Greek nouns from are and , each meaning some form of seat. This gave -, metaphorically referring to each base (or seat) of a many-sided three-dimensional figure, such as an octahedron or dodecahedron. The Greeks regarded each of the five regular polyhedra (tetrahedron, cube, octahedron, dodecahedron, and icosahedron), also called the Platonic solids, as being intrinsic to the construction of the universe. In his Mysterium Cosmographicum (1596), the German astronomer Johannes Kepler proposed a model of the solar system in which the five Platonic solids sat inside one another, interlaid with a series of inscribed and circumscribed spheres (Figure 1).

Add to and you get , a chair or throne, especially for a teacher, a professor, or a bishop. Anyone who speaks ex cathedra does so with authority, or more often with apparent authority. And a cathedral is where the bishop sits. In French a cathedra becomes a chaise, from which we have the now largely obsolete chaise-longue. In an essay titled The First Mrs. Tanqueray in a collection called While Rome Burns (1934), the American critic Alexander Woollcott quoted Mrs Patrick Campbell as having referred to The deep, deep peace of the double-bed after the hurly-burly of the chaise-longue.

Now add to and we get Ephedra, a genus of plants that trail along the ground, from which comes the adrenoceptor agonist ephedrine.

In Latin SED gave sedre, to sit, giving us sit and seat and many other English words (Figure 2). Add the prefix ad, beside or towards, and you get ad sedre, contracted to assidre, literally to sit beside. An assessor was originally one who sat beside a judge or other official, as an assistant, giving advice. When I was Oxford University Assessor some years ago, an elderly visiting Royal asked me whom I assessed. I told her that I didnt assess anyone, but assisted the Proctors, Senior and Junior, the university officials appointed annually from among the rank and file of the university, primarily to take care of student discipline and to oversee examinations.

An assessor was also one who assisted tax collectors, and so assessment came to mean fixing the rate of tax or determining the amount owed by an individual. From there it came to mean determining other matters, evaluating a person or thing or estimating the quality, value, or extent of anything.

Assessment of people normally involves others, but these days we are all being encouraged to assess ourselves, as part of our personal development, and to plan our future work on the basis of the outcomes. Is this helpful, or are we fooling ourselves? I shall look at the evidence next week.

Jeffrey Aronsonis a clinical pharmacologist, working in the Centre for Evidence Based Medicine in Oxfords Nuffield Department of Primary Care Health Sciences. He is also president emeritus of the British Pharmacological Society.

Competing interests:None declared.

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Jeffrey Aronson: When I Use a Word . . . Assessment - The BMJ - The BMJ

A year-long examination of global work patterns and plans has found that, by 2035, employees will become more engaged and productive and fuel innovation and growth. This is a key finding of Work 2035, a study undertaken by Citrix Systems to understand how work will change and the role that technology will play in enabling people to perform at their best.

The key question was: What will the workforce, work models and the work environment look like in 2035? And how will technology shape them?

Citrix teamed up with futurist consultancy Oxford Analytica and business research specialist Coleman Parkes to survey over 500 C-Suite leaders and 1,000 employees within large corporations and mid-market businesses across the United States, United Kingdom, Germany, France and the Netherlands on current and future workforce strategies and work models.

The main conclusions were:

Robots will not replace humans But they will make us smarter and more efficient. More than three-quarters of those polled (77 percent) believe that in fifteen years, artificial intelligence (AI) will significantly speed up the decision-making process and make workers more productive.

New Jobs will be created New roles will emerge to support a technology-driven workplace and the changing relationship between humans and machines. Here are the positions respondents believe will be created:

Work will be more flexible Technology that allows for seamless access to the tools and information people need to collaborate and get work done wherever they happen to be will fuel flexible models that the future of work will demand.

Leadership will have a new look More than half of those surveyed (57 percent) believe AI will make most business decisions and potentially eliminate the need for senior management teams.

Productivity will get a major boost Technology, closely integrated with humans, will drive step changes in productivity as workers are supported by solutions that enable them to perform at their best. AI-ngels digital assistants driven by AI will draw on personal and workplace data to help employees prioritize their tasks and time and ensure mental and physical wellness. These worker augmented assistants will, for example, schedule meetings to take place at the most effective time based on factors ranging from the blood sugar levels of participants to their sentiments at different times of day. And while the meetings are taking place, they will monitor concentration levels and attitudes and adjust as necessary to drive optimal outcomes.

More than half of professionals surveyed (51 percent) believe technology will make workers at least twice as productive by 2035. Among the solutions they believe will be commonplace:

Employee engagement will improve As technology and AI takes over time-consuming, mundane tasks, work will become more strategic and employees more engaged.

Innovation and growth will soar Organizations will invest more in technology and AI than human capital. This will open the door to unprecedented levels of innovation and new revenue streams and fuel sustainable growth particularly among small businesses.

The COVID-19 pandemic has forced companies to reimagine the way things get done, and over the next 15 years, they will face more challenges and disruptions than ever, says Tim Minahan, executive vice president of business strategy at Citrix. But as Work 2035 makes clear, within this chaos lies opportunity. Savvy companies are using this crisis to begin planning for the next normal. Not just return to where they were, but to embrace new workforce and work models to power their business forward.

* Click here to download a complimentary copy of Work 2035.

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What the world of work will look like in 2035 - Gadget

By Piers Wilson, Head of Product Management atHuntsman Security

The Financial Reporting Council (FRC), which is responsible for corporate governance, reporting and auditing in the UK, has been consulting on the role of technology in audit processes. This highlights growing recognition for the fact that technology can assist audits, providing the ability to automate data gathering or assessment to increase quality, remove subjectivity and make the process more trustworthy and consistent. Both theBrydon reviewand the latestAQR thematicsuggest a link between enhanced audit quality and the increasing use of technology. This goes beyond efficiency gains from process automation and relates, in part, to the larger volume of data and evidence which can be extracted from an audited entity and the sophistication of the tools available to interrogate it.

As one example, thePCAOBin the US has for a while advocated for the provision of audit evidence and reports to be timely (which implies computerisation and automation) to assure that risks are being managed, and for the extent of human interaction with evidence or source data to be reflected to ensure influence is minimised (the more that can be achieved programmatically and objectively the better).

However, technology may obscure the nature of analysis and decision making and create a barrier to fully transparent audits compared to more manual (yet labour intensive) processes.There is also a competition aspect between larger firms and smaller ones as regards access to technology:

Brydonraised concerns about the ability of challenger firms to keep pace with the Big Four firms in the deployment of innovative new technology.

The FRC consultation paper covers issues, and asks questions, in a number of areas.Examples include:

Clearly these are real issues for a process that aims to provide trustworthy, objective, transparent and repeatable outputs any use of technology to speed up or improve the process must maintain these standards.

Audit technology solutions in cyber security

The cyber security realm has grown to quickly become a major area of risk and hence a focus for boards, technologists and auditors alike. The highly technical nature of threats and the adversarial nature of cybers attackers (who will actively try and find/exploit control failures) means that technology solutions that identify weaknesses and report on specific or overall vulnerabilities are becoming more entrenched in the assurance process within this discipline.

While the audit consultations and reports mentioned above cover the wider audit spectrum, similar challenges relate to cyber security as an inherently technology-focussed area of operation.

Benefits of speed

The gains from using technology to conduct data gathering, analysis and reporting are obvious removing the need for human questionnaires, interviews, inspections and manual number crunching. Increasing the speed of the process has a number of benefits:

Benefits of flexibility

The ability to conduct audits across different sites or scopes, to specify different thresholds of risk for different domains, the ease of conducting audits at remote locations or on suppliers networks (especially during period of restricted travel) are ALL factors that can make technology a useful tool for the auditor.

Benefits of transparency

One part of the FRCs perceived problem space is that of transparency, you can ask a human how they derived a result, and they can probably tell you, or at least show you the audit trail of correspondence, meeting notes or spreadsheet calculations.But can you do this with software or technology?

Certainly, the use of AI and machine learning makes this hard, the learning nature and often black box calculations are not easy to either understand, recalculate in a repeatable way or to document. The system learns, so is always changing, and hence the rationale that a decision might not always be the same.

In technologies that are geared towards delivering audit outcomes this is easier.First, if you collect and retain data, provide an easy interface to go from results to the underlying cases in the source data, it is possible to take a score/rating/risk and reveal the specifics of what led to it.Secondly, it is vital that the calculations are transparent, i.e. that the methods of calculating risks or the way results are scored is decipherable.

Benefits of consistency

This is one obvious gain from technology, the logic is pre-programmed in. If you take two auditors and give them the same data sets or evidence case files they might draw different conclusions (possibly for valid reasons or due to them having different skill areas or experience), but the same algorithm operating on the same data will produce the same result every time.

Manual evidence gathering suffers a number of drawbacks it relies on written notes, records of verbal conversations, email trails, spreadsheets, or questionnaire responses in different formats. Retaining all this in a coherent way is difficult and going back through it even harder.

Using a consistent toolset and consistent data format means that if you need to go back to a data source from a particular network domain three months ago, you will have information that is readily available and readable. And as stated above, if the source data and evidence is re-examined using a consistent solution, you will get the same calculations, decisions and results.

Benefits of systematically generated KPIs, cyber maturity measuresand issues

The outputs of any audit process need to provide details of the issues found so that the specific or general cases of the failures can be investigated and resolved. But for managers, operational teams and businesses, having a view of the KPIs for the security operations process is extremely useful.

Of course, following the lines of defence model, an internal or external formal audit might simply want the results and a level of trust in how they were calculated; however for operational management and ongoing continuous visibility, the need to derive performance statistics comes into its own.

It is worth noting that there are two dimensions to KPIs: The assessment of the strength or configuration of a control or policy (how good is the control) and the extent or level of coverage (how widely is it enforced).

To give a view of the technical maturity of a defence you really need to combine these two factors together. A weak control that is widely implemented or a strong control that provides only partial coverage are both causes for concern.

Benefits of separation of process stages

The final area where technology can help is in allowing the separation and distribution of the data gathering, analysis and reporting processes. It is hard to take the data, evidence and meeting notes from someone else and analyse it.For one thing, is it trustworthy and reliable (in the case of third-party assurance questionnaires perhaps)?Then it is also hard to draw high-level conclusions about the analysis.

If technology allows the data gathering to be performed in a distributed way, say by local site administrators, third-party IT staff or non-expert users BUT in a trustworthy way, then the overhead of the audit process is much reduced. Instead of a team having to conduct multiple visits, interviews or data collection activities the toolset can be provided to the people nearest to the point of collection.

This allows the data analysis and interpretation to be performed centrally by the experts in a particular field or control area.So giving a non-expert user a way to collect and provide relevant and trustworthy audit evidence takes a large bite out of the resource overhead of conducting the audit, for both auditor and auditee.

It also means that a target organisation doesnt have to manage the issue of allowing auditors to have access to networks, sites, data, accounts and systems to gather the audit evidence as this can be undertaken by existing administrators in the environment.

Making the right choice

Technology solutions in the audit process can clearly deliver benefits, however if they are too simplistic or aim to be too clever, they can simply move the problem of providing high levels of audit quality. A rapidly generated AI-based risk score is useful, but if its not possible to understand the calculation it is hard to either correct the control issues or trouble shoot the underlying process.

Where technology can assist the audit process, speed up data gathering and analysis, and streamline the generation of high- and low-level outputs it can be a boon.

Technology allows organisations to put trustworthy assurance into the hands of operations teams and managers, consultants and auditors alike to provide flexible, rapid and frequent views of control data and understanding of risk posture. If this can be done in a way that is cognisant of the risks and challenges as we have shown, then auditors and regulators such as theFRCcan be satisfied.

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Uncertain Times for the Financial Sector Is Open Source the Solution? - Global Banking And Finance Review