Continuous professional development for our employees and the members of the industries in which we operate is one of MIP’s dominant beliefs and is intrinsically tied to our corporate values. Whether supporting certification initiatives with the Canadian Nurses Association (CNA) or supporting laundry focused initiatives via the Association for Linen Management (ALM) we believe that education, collaboration, and best practices are key to creating a more productive, safe and fulfilling work place while continuously raising the bar and improving the healthcare environment.
MIP recently had the pleasure of hosting a Certified Laundry and Linen Management (CLLM) course in Montreal for both internal and external colleagues throughout North America. Some new (er) employees were taught to decipher the laundry lingo, understand our customers’ businesses, and perhaps most importantly, listen to and learn from key industry leaders in an intimate setting. Our customers had the opportunity to interact with and share experiences with their peers, discuss their realities and possibilities to grow their success, and uncover new avenues to further service their customers. By learning new skills and tools to continue best practice implementation in laundries and health systems, and networking in a friendly, collaborative space, we continue to collectively strengthen our positive impact on our communities.
“It was a really good learning opportunity to understand so many key areas of laundry and linen management that occur each day. With the learning I have a better understanding of how to help my customers.”
Thank you to all who came to Montreal and participated in this intensive, fun, and rewarding session. Congratulations on your tremendous efforts and successful certification!
If you are interested in finding out more about MIP educational events, please contact Nir Guzinski at nguzinski@mip.ca
KLIM is unveiling their newest adventure motorcycle gear at the 2018 INTERMOT expo in Cologne, Germany. The new KLIM product will be featured in Hall 6 at Booth C38 from October 3 – October 7, 2018.
Built from the proven chassis of their Krios helmet, the Krios Pro is the next level of premium adventure helmets. Featuring Transitions®, Pinlock®, Koroyd®, and Karbon Fiber technology with Sena communications compatibility, the Krios Pro offers revolutionary safety and capability.
Engineered from a proven lineage of adventure and touring gear, the new Hardanger is the premier touring one-piece. Featuring full GORE-TEX waterproofing, full D3O vented armor, intuitive ventilation, and the functional practicality that touring riders need.
Engineered from a proven lineage of adventure and touring gear, the redesigned Altitude jacket and pants are refined for the ultimate touring experience. Featuring full GORE-TEX waterproofing, D3O armor, intuitive ventilation, and functional practicality that has been designed for women – by women.
Developed from years of off-road experience in dirt bike and adventure gear, the new Dakar jacket is the ultimate dual-sport riding piece. Featuring removable sleeves, intuitive ventilation and lighter, durable, more comfortable fabrics, the Dakar is for aggressive off-road conditions.
Much has been made of the importance of “dashboards” for business leaders and project managers, and for good reason; in an age when information is becoming increasingly dispersed, it’s becoming more important for managers to have a central place to watch over the status of their projects, products, and personnel.
But for the construction manager, effective dashboards have been elusive. In many ways, construction managers act as a dashboard for owners, developers, contractors, and other project stakeholders. It’s their duty to synthesize information from many sources in many formats and translate it into a continuous understanding of project progress.
However, construction managers who are taking on large, complex projects or managing multiple projects at once would certainly benefit from having a central source of information. BIM came close to filling this gap, and for the design and planning stages, it certainly does an effective job. But once the project moves into construction, BIMs fail to offer answers to many of the construction manager’s most pressing questions.
Enter UAV mapping. By flying UAVs over a project site and processing visual data through a photogrammetry engine, an incredibly accurate 3D model can be generated. These “maps” are like BIMs updated to represent actual project conditions.
Multivista makes 2D orthomosaic and UAV maps available to customers through the cloud-based Multivista platform, and provides tools to annotate these maps and calculate distance, volume, area, and elevation.
UAV mapping opens the door to a new construction management approach. Using the UAV map as a central dashboard, construction managers can improve a variety of processes and drastically reduce the amount of labor required to stay on top of a given project.
Multivista UAV maps are overlaid on satellite imagery, providing a view of the project in the context of its surrounding area. This view enables project managers to effectively plan things like access routes for trucks and heavy equipment.
In addition, with the elevation tool, construction managers have the ability to remotely determine the slope of any part of the job site, something that would never have been possible with standard aerial imagery. This enables CMs to identify, and even virtually measure, the most appropriate areas for staging equipment and materials.
The volume tool gives construction managers the ability to accurately track the progress of several important construction processes, replacing eyeballing and guesswork with quantifiable data. These processes include:
By drawing a border around a dirt pile, for example, the CM is instantly returned a volume that accounts for height variance throughout the pile.
This information can be tracked over time to understand real rates of work (e.g., the excavators are able remove 10% of the required material per week) and analyzed to determine realistic completion dates.
3D UAV maps provide a high-level perspective on project progress. In addition to simply being able to see the state of the overall structure at a glance, these 3D maps can be compared with BIMs to understand the gap between current status and desired outcome.
On the financial side of things, UAV maps can be used to verify completion of work before remitting payment. By aligning the UAV flight schedule with contractor and subcontractor pay application deadlines, a CM can use 2D orthomosaic and UAV maps to review at-a-glance whether or not work has been completed in a satisfactory manner.
Importantly, the CM can accomplish this without going on site, enabling them to remit payment without unnecessary delays.
UAV mapping can also be used to enhance communication up and down the project hierarchy. Multivista customers have reported using their UAV maps as a visual aid during weekly stakeholder meetings to give everyone, even owners and developers who have never stepped foot on the job site, an accurate idea of how a project is progressing.
UAV maps can also be shared with contractors, subcontractors, and tradespeople to help them identify potential hazards and complete their work faster.
Multivista UAV maps can also be exported in a wide range of file formats to create 3D models for the VDC team. These files can be used in BIM verification workflows and for adding realistic elements to existing models.
With UAV mapping, construction managers finally have a central place to view and share an overall perspective of their projects. Used to its full potential, UAV mapping enables CMs to accomplish more in less time, manage more projects simultaneously, minimize errors, and speed up project delivery.
For some people, not being able to prove who you are can be a matter of life or death. – National Geographic Blog
You decide to buy yourself a new mobile phone, so pop down to your friendly mobile phone shop in downtown Washington DC for a browse. After deciding you can’t stretch to over $1,500 for the latest iPhone you plump for a cheaper Android device. The friendly shop assistant asks you for a combination of photo ID, proof of your bank details (and likely your social security number) and a utility bill to confirm your address. Being the organised type you spent a few hours the day before rummaging around getting these things together, so you’re all prepared. You pay your money, take your phone, and walk out of the shop.
For most people, proving who they are is relatively straightforward even if it is a generally painful process pulling all those bits of paper together. We take it for granted that we can prove who we are when we need to, but today that’s not the case for over a billion people in other parts of the world.
Substitute mobile phone for education, financial services, healthcare or social services for you and your family, and substitute Washington DC for rural Uganda, and not being able to prove who you are can have serious consequences. Identity, in particular digital identity, has become big business over recent years as fraud and hacking events go up, and consumers worry about the security of their data. And while we worry about identity theft in many advanced economies, the global development community has turned its attention to those who don’t have an identity to steal at all. Incredibly, 1 in 7 people on the planet don’t officially exist – something well worth addressing.
In recognition of the scale of the problem identity was included within the Social Development Goals (SDGs). SDG 16.9 commits the sector to, by 2030, providing legal identity for all, including free birth registrations. The latter part of the commitment is key. Around the world 250 million children under five didn’t have their birth registered, and in Sub Saharan Africa alone over 50% of children remain unregistered by their 5th birthday. If the tap feeding this unregistered birth epidemic can be turned off, then we can at least stop the problem getting any bigger.
Not having something as straightforward as a birth certificate can have serious consequences. Thirty-two countries in Sub-Saharan Africa require a birth certificate to access education, sixteen require one to access social support, and six to access healthcare. In Indonesia a birth certificate is the only form of legal identity, yet 58% of the poorest children don’t have their births registered. As they get older, how do they claim rights to things like land, inheritance and nationality?
But providing people with a way of proving who they are is only half of the problem. Ensuring that the six billion of us with some form of identity find them simple to use, and useful, is critical, particularly as more and more of us live out more and more of our lives online. How we create good operational digital ID is one of the things we’re committed to tackling at Yoti.
As a company we are guided by seven founding principles, one of which is to make Yoti available to anyone. Our leading product is a smartphone app which allows you to create your own digital identity which lives on your phone, with details verified by scanning official documents such as driving licences and passports. You can then share elements of that identity online, or in person, with whoever you transact with, giving you full control over what you share, how much you share, and who with.
Of course, not everyone has a smartphone, not everyone can get online, and not everyone has a government-issued passport or driving license. This is particularly true for those living in many emerging markets, or living in last-mile or near last-mile environments. To address the balance we recently undertook some research in Africa and South East Asia to better understand what non-profits working in these places might need from an identity solution, with an assumption that smartphones, connectivity and official identity documents would be in short, even non-existent, supply. This research lead to a number of useful insights and opportunities for a digital identity solution to support development efforts in places where most existing digital identity solutions do not work. Key takeaways included
Identification is a unique roadblock to a large number of desirable outcomes. The absence of effective and secure methods for proving identity presents a challenge across a range of sectoral and programmatic outcomes.
Among programme specialists with a range of technical expertise, biometrics are seen as a potentially important area in which identification technology could be well- used.
Privacy is a major concern – in practical terms, both participants and organisations would be concerned about the potential of identification technology to increase their vulnerability through abuse or fraud, and so privacy is a key requirement.
Most organisations showed interest in a solution that could help them in their work but raised concerns about technical capacity both internally and within the government frameworks (where applicable).
The vast majority of identity needs at the local NGO level are straightforward and simple, and providing an easy-to-use, technically-light solution to them has the potential to unlock considerable social impact potential.
The Social Impact Team at Yoti are now leading on the development of an open source, offline version of a product called Yoti Key which will soon be commercially available. Yoti Key is a secure, encrypted NFC-enabled tag which will allow individuals to share aspects of their identity when they interact with a service – a hospital, food programme, refugee registration programme, cash giving initiative and so on. By tapping their key on a reader, much in the same way we do when we make a payment in a shop by tapping our card on a terminal, individual identity credentials can be displayed on a tablet to help confirm who the person is.
The beauty for NGOs working in last-mile environments, or with constituents living in areas without Internet access, or without their own smartphone, is that it enables them to digitally and more efficiently manage interactions with their services, often for the first time. Knowing that the person you’re giving an injection to today, for example, is the same person you gave an injection to last week is critical.
If this sounds like something you’d be interested in piloting when the product is available in a few months time then we’d love to hear from you. We’re open to pilots anywhere, solving any kind of social or environmental problem, and we will provide Keys and technical support for free. Crucially, the software will also be open source, allowing anyone anywhere to build on the back of the base platform we provide. We’re also looking to sign up a small group of potential users to help us develop the product, and carry out early evaluations. If any of this sounds of interest, we’d love to hear from you. You can also find out more about our wider Social Impact efforts here.
The holiday season is a very busy time. We hustle and bustle to buy gifts, bake special goodies, attend parties and visit family and friends. As a result, our bodies might start to let us know that we are getting tense and overworked. What can we do to help reduce this tension and possible pain?
Myfascial release (MFR) is a soft tissue therapy that can reduce or eliminate tension and pain. Myo means muscle. Fascial means fascia. To understand what myofascial release is and how it works, it is important to consider the anatomy of the human body.
The support structure of the human body is a complex interconnected collection of bones, muscles, tendons, and soft tissue. The structures under the skin, when working properly and in synchrony and equilibrium, move us from one point to another, allow us to function in the course of our day and then rest so that we can get a peaceful night’s sleep. Stress, injury, trauma and other such events can disrupt this synchrony and equilibrium. As a result, we develop pain and dysfunction.
Myofascial release is a method of treatment and care that restores the body’s equilibrium and returns a person to painfree function.
Every muscle of the body is surrounded by a smooth fascial sheath. Fascia is a tough connective tissue that spreads throughout the body in a 3-dimensional web from head to foot, functionally without interruption. It is suggested that if every structure of the body were taken out except the fascia, the body would retain its shape.
Think of the fascia as one big sweater woven around every part of the body. Fascia permits the body to retain its normal shape and in so doing, maintains the organs in their correct positions. It allows the body to resist mechanical stresses both internally and externally. Fascia covers our muscles, bones, nerves, organs and vessels. Poor posture, trauma, and inflammation can cause the fascial system to bind down. When the fascia is restricted, we experience pain and limitation in movement.
Myofascial release is a hands-on method of treatment. The therapist applies a three-dimensional sustained pressure and movement deep into the body’s tissues. The therapist pauses while his or her hands are providing this pressure, allowing the therapist to determine where the restriction is located. You may feel a strong pulling feeling, or perhaps discomfort. When the tissue is very restricted, you may even experience some pain. This is called “therapeutic pain” and gives information to the therapist that this is indeed the area that needs the attention.
Myofascial release is not the same as massage. Myofascial release is focused specifically on the tissues that are restricted. The therapist may keep his or her hands on one area for up to 3 to 5 minutes at a time, applying a force deep into the tissues, then slowly moving from one part of the body to the other. The therapist may ask questions about what you are feeling as the pressure is applied. The response is often a feeling of that part becoming longer, more relaxed, and/or becoming lighter. One goal of myofascial release is to improve blood flow to the area that is restricted. This increase in blood flow nourishes the tissues and clears away waste byproducts. This in turn allows release of tension and pain. The therapist will also teach you how to do your own myofascial release. Rolling pins, a firm ball, long dowels and other types of objects that can be pressed or rolled along the body serve to provide myofascial release. We have in our own hands the ability to untie the knots that can develop in our busy days.
If the holiday season is getting you tied up in knots, myofascial release may be an effective approach to untie those knots!
“Today, our pals at the Sunlight Foundation released Scout, a new tool that allows you to create customized keyword alerts to notify you whenever issues you care about are included in legislative or regulatory actions — at both the state and federal level! They’ll also soon release their Open States tool to target the legislative process of all 50 states….” [Link to FGI and Scout at Sunlight.]
The Oregon cell phone bill that became law: House Bill 2377 (or link to the enrolled bill from here): Relating to use of mobile communication device while driving; amending ORS 811.507
When signed, it will show up at the Governor’s webpage and, when given a Chapter number, as an Oregon Law. It will not appear in the ORS until the Oregon Laws are codified by Legislative Counsel, most likely early in 2010. Then, look for the 2009 ORS, online and in print. Until then, you need to read it in its session law form.
Legal research is seldom quick and easy, but it sure is interesting. If you are at all inclined to dip your toe(s) into the Oregon Legislative process, here’s one way to start. Let’s say you want more information about a bill that was mentioned in a recent news story. I use one bill number for an example, but there are thousands more to choose from!