Title
Topic
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The hardest part of your job may be the people you work with (including you)
Odds are that your job is most challenging when working with others — Loredana Padurean, associate teaching professor at Northeastern University, has written “The Job Is Easy, the People Are Not: 10 Smart Skills To Become Better People,” which collects 10 interviews “with professional managers and academic leaders” and 10 skills that Padurean believes could replace “soft” skills. This book provides “practical suggestions about how to develop your own smart skills,” according to the book’s webpage, and might help some readers “realize that you are also one of the people that makes the job harder than it should be!”
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Increasing participation with ‘Conversational Design’
Michael Arnold Mages, assistant professor of art and design in the College of Arts, Media and Design, has published “Conversational Design: Improving Participation and Decision-Making in Public Organizations.” This new book helps public-facing organizations retain participation rates among their stakeholders and promises to “improve co-design and informed decision-making practices” by offering “practical tools and case studies to stimulate participation and foster better conversations.” Aimed at “both practitioners and scholars of design,” “Conversational Design” seeks to bridge the gap between policymakers, designers and “citizen voices.”
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Understanding a tragedy: Miller reviews ‘A Day in the Life of Abed Salama’
Professor of law and international affairs Zinaida Miller reviews Nathan Thrall’s “A Day in the Life of Abed Salama: Anatomy of a Jerusalem Tragedy,” for Just Security. The book analyzes the origins of a tragic school bus accident in 2012 — “the accident could be labeled accidental in only a literal and immediate sense: no one intended, planned, or desired it,” Miller writes. “And yet, the conditions that made a rainy day deadly were far from accidental.” “A Day in the Life of Abed Salama” examines the various structural forces that at play that contributed to such an accident.
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Discovering the ‘Fundamentals of IoT Communication Technologies’
Rolando Herrero, program director of telecommunication networks and cyber-physical systems at Northeastern University, “presents a comprehensive resource of the Internet of Things and its networking and protocols, intended for classroom use,” according to the publisher’s webpage. The textbook, titled “Fundamentals of IoT Communication Technologies,” is based on a “popular class” that Herrero teaches, and the book includes examples, slides and “a ‘hands-on’ section where the topics discussed as theoretical content are built as stacks in the context of an IoT network emulator.”
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How the placebo effect masks cognitive training gains
In this book chapter, titled “Expectations and Placebo Effects in the Context of Cognitive Training,” professors of psychology Susanne Jaeggi and Aaron Seitz, with co-authors Jocelyn Parong and C. Shawn Green, discuss the difficulties of quantifying the improvements brought on by cognitive training, as “the curse of specificity” means one form of cognitive training will often not create improvement in other areas. “The very nature of cognitive training interventions,” they write, “makes placebo effects a possible concern.”
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Teaching ophthalmology virtually: Two solutions
Tony Succar, lecturer in the College of Professional Studies, has co-authored a book chapter titled, “Digital Teaching and Learning: The Future of Ophthalmology Education,” which “highlights two digital teaching programs developed by” Succar’s working group, “implemented to act as a countermeasure to the restrictions placed in response to the pandemic,” the authors write. These programs “have proven that face-to-face learning is not required for all aspects of the ophthalmology medical student teaching,” and will continue to be employed post-pandemic. Find the chapter and full list of authors at “Digital Teaching, Learning and Assessment: The Way Forward,” or on Science Direct.
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How Nackey Scripps Loeb became the Republican Party’s ‘Political Godmother’
Associate professor Meg Heckman’s book, “Political Godmother: Nackey Scripps Loeb and the Newspaper That Shook the Republican Party” tells the story of “Newspaper publisher and GOP kingmaker Nackey Scripps Loeb,” according to the publisher’s webpage. Heckman’s examination “reveals Loeb as a force of nature, more than willing to wield her tremendous clout and able to convince the likes of Pat Buchanan to challenge a sitting president.”
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Serrador edits essays collecting latest research in ‘Mastering Project Leadership’
Pedro Serrador, a lecturer in the College of Professional Studies at Northeastern University, has edited “a collection of essays from key researchers in the field of project management who describe what they feel are the most impactful findings from research,” according to the publisher’s webpage. “Mastering Project Leadership: Insights from the Research” collects experts on topics as wide ranging as local stakeholder interactions with project managers to error, bias and how to leverage deadlines effectively.
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A decision-making guide to ‘Sustainability in Business’
“Sustainability in Business,” written by associate teaching professor of finance and director of the Business Sustainability Initiative David H. Myers, “provides an approach to sustainable decision-making rooted in financial and economic literature,” according to the publisher’s webpage. The text supplies a framework for sustainable practices that businesses can adopt while expanding their market reach, innovation and leverage, all while attending to “the different definitions of sustainability and the role those differences” play in business operations.
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For a volatile world, a practical guide to ‘Business Resilience’
As the complexity and volatility of the world increase, associate professor in project management Serhiy Kovela — writing with Islam Choudhury, David Roberts, Sheila Roberts and Jawwad Tanvir — has produced “Business Resilience,” which the publisher’s webpage calls “a practical guide to making organizations more resilient and improving current practices by building on what the organization does well.” The authors provide “new models for resilience and progress,” which focus on building a foundation of resilience into a company while still prioritizing progress.
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How Buddhist architecture has fostered ‘a comprehensive culture that sustains life’
Co-edited by associate professor of architecture Shuishan Yu, with Aibin Yan of East China University, “Buddhist Architecture in East Asia” examines how Buddhism “transformed not only the intellectual and practical lives but also the built environments of East Asia” over two millennia. The editors attempt “to restore a more balanced picture of Buddhist practice and the built environment by incorporating buildings and planning from the overlooked regions and aspects of Buddhism.” The volume prioritizes “in-depth discussions of examples from regions and cultures of religious hybridity [that] … foster a comprehensive culture that sustains life and identity of a place.”
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Exploring the history of woodworking through gender
Deirdre Visser, adjunct professor and visiting curator at Mills College at Northeastern, has published “Joinery, Joists and Gender: A History of Woodworking for the 21st Century.” The publisher’s webpage describes the book as “the first publication of its kind to survey the long and rich histories of women and gender non-conforming persons who work in wood.” After providing a history of women’s contributions — practical and philosophical — to woodworking in Europe and the U.S., the volume continues with “sixteen in-depth profiles of contemporary woodworkers, all of whom identify fine woodworking as their principal vocation.”
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‘Solid-State Sensors’ invites ‘advanced students’ into the field
Ravinder Dahiya, professor of electrical and computer engineering, with co-authors Ambarish Paul and Mitradip Bhattacharjee, has published “Solid-State Sensors,” an “up-to-date introduction to solid-state sensors, materials, fabrication processes and applications,” according to the publisher’s webpage. Oriented toward “advanced students and professionals in disciplines such as electrical and electronics engineering, physics, chemistry and biomedical engineering,” the textbook includes “the fundamentals and classification of all major types of solid-state sensors, including piezoresistive, capacitive, thermometric, optical bio-chemical, magnetic and acoustic-based sensors.”
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Hip-hop may be a house ‘that young people built,’ but ‘Hip-Hop Archives’ are here for everyone
Professor of communication studies Murray Forman has co-edited “Hip-Hop Archives: The Politics and Poetics of Knowledge Production,” which collects scholarship on modern archival practices in hip-hop culture, espousing multi-generational collaborations in archives that scale in size from government institutions to bedroom closets.
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Professor’s new book shines light on how architectural works are in constant conversation with the past
With “The Architecture of Influence,” associate professor of architecture Amanda Lawrence explores how architectural copies, imitations, emulations and more interact to create an ongoing conversation between the present and the past.
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Ghuman traces musical intermingling in ‘Resonances of the Raj’
Professor of music Nalini Ghuman’s book “Resonances of the Raj: India in the English Musical Imagination, 1897-1947,” studies the overlooked transmission of musical influences between English and Indian culture “during the last fifty years of the Indo-British encounter,” according to the book’s companion website. “Ghuman reintegrates music into the cultural history of the British Raj, revealing unexpected minglings of peoples, musics and ideas that raise questions about ‘Englishness,’ about the nature of Empire and about the fixedness of identity.”
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Dean Hazel Sive edits volume detailing African frog research and best practices that informed her ‘life’s work’
Dean of the College of Science and professor of biology at Northeastern University Hazel Sive has edited “Xenopus: A Laboratory Manual,” a new textbook that presents “a comprehensive collection of experimental procedures for research using Xenopus.”
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Grassroots journalism promotes democracy and fills the needs of ‘news deserts’
“Local news is essential to democracy,” argue professor of journalism Dan Kennedy and former Boston Globe editor Ellen Clegg in their new book, “What Works in Community News: Media Startups, News Deserts and the Future of the Fourth Estate.” They write that, as news organizations shutter, “it is often marginalized communities of color who have been left without the day-to-day journalism they need to govern themselves in a democracy,” according to the publisher’s webpage. The book describes how “innovative journalism models are popping up across the country to fill news deserts and empower communities.”