Personnel Practices in Japanese Government

This paper examines key aspects of Japanese Government personnel practices, and draws comparisons with the practices in the U.S. civil service and, as appropriate, with other U.S. models. Particular reference is made to the practices of two major agencies in Japan, the Ministry of International Trade and Industry (MITI) and the Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications (MPT). As appropriate, selected government businesses practices other than personnel practices are noted.

A psychological treatment programme for traumatised exmilitary personnel in the UK

A large proportion of homeless people in the UK are former members of the armed services and suffer from a mental illness. In fact, homelessness itself can be considered a symptom or manifestation of other underlying psychological difficulties. For these reasons Community Housing and Therapy (CHT) considers that providing psychological therapies to treat the homeless population is a more effective way of tackling the problem of homelessness, as it addresses the roots of the problem. This approach is one which is beginning to be recognized by leading agencies in the field. At the same time, the provision of psychological therapies for symptoms such as depression and anxiety has become accepted through the Department of Health’s (DoH) Increased Access to Psychological Therapies ( IAPT) initiative. Depression is the most common psychiatric disorder that homeless people suffer and it is well documented that psychological treatments for depression can be extremely effective. As well as approaching homelessness from the angle of psychological therapies, CHT in its work with the ex-service community has become increasingly aware that there are a large number of non statutory homeless that do not get the same attention as rough sleepers.

Working in partnership with the Museum Training Institute providing in service training for museum personnel

The South Eastern Museums Service is one of ten Area Museums Councils in Great Britain. They are partnerships; membership organizations to which the 2 000 + museums belong. They provide advice, support, technical services, information and training for their members. They are the principal channel of government grant-in-aid to local government, university and independent museums. This funding comes from the Department of National Heritage via the Museums & Galleries Commission. At the South Eastern Museums Service I am responsible for the development and delivery of training for 600 museums in our region and the provision of information about museums and of interest to museums. This paper explains how we approach in-service training and the value of the definition of national standards for our work. It will pose some questions: What is training? What is a training need? and describe a new initiative, the development of training materials and their delivery.

La protection des données à caractère personnel dans le cadre des activités d’une mission civile de gestion de crise ou la recherche de « l’inaccessible étoile » ? Data Protection within the context of one ESDP Mission - The search for the unreachable star

La question de la protection des données à caractère personnel posée dans le cadre des activités d’assistance et de soutien des missions civiles de gestion de crise ne semble guère avoir suscité l’intérêt des instances en charge de leur gestion et ce en dépit de son importance majeure au regard des tâches exécutées quotidiennement par les agents de ces missions dans le domaine de la coopération policière et judiciaire en matière pénale. S’appuyant sur une expérience de terrain, l’auteur s’efforcera, dans ces lignes, de démontrer la nécessité d’entamer une réflexion de fond sur ce sujet afin, le cas échéant, de prendre les initiatives utiles destinées à porter remède aux difficultés qui, en ce domaine, pourraient apparaître.

Co-operative explanatory capabilities in organizational design and personnel management

Based on an online image archive documenting the construction and history of an early computing company, the fictional story of "Co-Operative Explanatory Capabilities in Organizational Design and Personnel Management” follows the development of an experimental approach to worker productivity into a religious cult. The project investigates the place of creativity in efficiency management and the operation of bureaucratic systems in a post-industrial work environment. The project has spawned a series of collages, featured on the Economic Thought Projects 7" collaboration with Gelbart, The Eleventh Voyage, as well as the film of Co-Operative Explanatory Capabilities in Organizational Design and Personnel Management, which has also been published as a short story in Vertigo of the Modern and on Sacrifice Press.

An item response analysis of the motor and behavioral subscales of the unified Huntington's disease rating scale in huntington disease gene expansion carriers

Although the Unified Huntington's Disease Rating Scale (UHDRS) is widely used in the assessment of Huntington disease (HD), the ability of individual items to discriminate individual differences in motor or behavioral manifestations has not been extensively studied in HD gene expansion carriers without a motor-defined clinical diagnosis (ie, prodromal-HD or prHD). To elucidate the relationship between scores on individual motor and behavioral UHDRS items and total score for each subscale, a nonparametric item response analysis was performed on retrospective data from 2 multicenter longitudinal studies. Motor and behavioral assessments were supplied for 737 prHD individuals with data from 2114 visits (PREDICT-HD) and 686 HD individuals with data from 1482 visits (REGISTRY). Option characteristic curves were generated for UHDRS subscale items in relation to their subscale score. In prHD, overall severity of motor signs was low, and participants had scores of 2 or above on very few items. In HD, motor items that assessed ocular pursuit, saccade initiation, finger tapping, tandem walking, and to a lesser extent, saccade velocity, dysarthria, tongue protrusion, pronation/supination, Luria, bradykinesia, choreas, gait, and balance on the retropulsion test were found to discriminate individual differences across a broad range of motor severity. In prHD, depressed mood, anxiety, and irritable behavior demonstrated good discriminative properties. In HD, depressed mood demonstrated a good relationship with the overall behavioral score. These data suggest that at least some UHDRS items appear to have utility across a broad range of severity, although many items demonstrate problematic features.

Rodents as carriers of disease: preliminary studies in the United Kingdom

The University of Reading has conducted some preliminary work on the prevalence of Campylobacter spp., Salmonella spp. and Arenavirus in Norway rats trapped from farms and semi-urban areas in central southern England. Campylobacter is the cause of a notificable disease in the UK, with 57,772 cases reported for England and Wales in 2009. Transmission to humans is believed to be primarily through undercooked meat, from contaminated water, and through contact with pets; and symptoms include a high temperature, severe diarrhoea, vomiting and abdominal pain. Ninety-seven per-cent of sporadic cases have been attributed to farm animals, and in particular the meat and poultry industry. There are eighteen species of Campylobacter, eleven of which can be pathogenic to humans; although the principal species that cause gastrointestinal disease in humans are C. jejuni and C. coli; although C. lari, C. helveticus and C. upsaliensis are also involved. Salmonella species also causes a gastrointestinal disease, and in the UK, is common in chicken and has been linked to egg production. Species are typed using antigen specific agglutination tests, or by their susceptibility to specific bacteriophage. Some strains are known to be linked with human disease (eg. S. enteritidis PT4).