In Praise of HR: The Soft Stuff Can Actually Lead to Some Hard Competitive Advantage

It’s not easy being an HR executive. Just when you are about to applaud the cultural compatibility of a proposed merger someone starts talking about upstream synergies in the value chain. Or you unveil an innovative executive training programmed and boardroom colleagues question its net present value and pay-back time calculation. Or there is a crisis and the company needs to cut costs, so your desk is their first stop, since surely training, recruitment and work-life programmers are easily expendable?

Such attitudes are common, but they are also evidence of startling business naivety. A company’s real, sustainable competitive advantage is almost always based on the softer, intangible parts that HR executives care about – and very seldom on the hard stuff that’s easier to capture in numbers, such as production capacity, cash reserves or even brand recognition.

The hard stuff is often also the easiest to imitate. Production capacity, stock and sales points are things money can buy. A skilled and motivated workforce, a company culture which draws commitment and loyalty and effective informal networks and processes, are much harder to emulate, no matter how much money you have.

In fact the world of business is full of habits and beliefs which are taken for granted and rarely questioned. As an academic, I like to examine the research evidence about what actually happens in the real world of business – rather than what executives and consultants think should happen. Much of the evidence shows that HR practices do indeed have bottom line value. Here are a few of my favorite examples.

Downsizing (almost) never works. But good HR practices will be one of the success factors

Firms engage in downsizing to boost their profitability. But does it work? It has obvious advantages – waving the hatchet lowers headcount quite effectively and leaves you with lower staff costs. But there are some risky potential disadvantages, such as lower commitment and loyalty among the survivors. Academic studies indicate unwelcome rises in voluntary turnover rates after downsizing, often leaving a company leaner (and lamer) than intended.

Professors Charlie Trevor and Anthony Nyberg from the University of Wisconsin-Madison decided to examine who could get away with a downsizing programmed or, put differently, what sort of companies did not suffer from a surge in voluntary turnover following a downsizing programmed. The answer was pretty clear: companies that had a history of HR practices that were aimed at assuring procedural fairness and justice – such as having an ombudsman who is designated to address employee complaints; confidential hotlines for problem resolution; the existence of grievance or appeal processes for non-union employees, etc. – did not see their turnover heighten after a downsizing effort. Companies with good work-life balance benefits – such as paid sabbaticals, on-site childcare, defined benefit plans, and flexible working patterns – also did much better. The surviving employees were more understanding of the company’s efforts, had higher commitment, and were confident that the downsizing effort had been fair and unavoidable.

So downsizing can work; but only if you have previously taken commitment to your people seriously.

The individual star never outweighs the organizational environment

Another myth which non-HR executives tend to harbor, is that star employees can easily take their virtual Rolodex and join a competitor – where they will make them just as much money as they did for you.

This is a painful underestimation of the value of a well-designed organization, and overplays the supposed portability of many star employees. Professor Boris Groysberg from the Harvard Business School examined top performing security analysts and what happened to their performance when they moved to another firm (for an even higher pay cheque); it pretty much always plummeted.

Even security analysts (who are often thought to be able to take their skills anywhere) were much more dependent on the specifics of the organization in which they were embedded than they, and their employers, realized. Hence, careful, firm-specific HR practices help certain individuals perform better – and they can’t just replicate that business in another company.

Losing a star performer can be a good thing – especially if they go to a client

Many top executives are just as frightened of clients or customers poaching their top employees, as they are of competitors’ advances. And, of course, losing your well-trained, top-performing employees is hardly ideal.

However, there is definitely a potential upside – as Professors Deepak Somaya, Ian Williamson and Natalia Lorinkova discovered. They examined the movement of patent attorneys between 123 US law firms and 109 Fortune 500 companies from a variety of industries. And they found strong evidence that if a client company recruited a patent attorney from a law firm, that law firm would start to get significantly more business from that company.

Hence, your employees leaving for your clients can be a good thing; they bring you valuable business. McKinsey understands and manages this process particularly well; when you leave McKinsey you automatically become an alumnus of the firm (rather than a deserter). The firm carefully nourishes its relationship with alumni, because they subsequently bring a large chunk of their business through the door.

Soft initiatives have real shareholder value

The final persistent myth that HR skeptics favor, is that HR costs money and that shareholders do not appreciate all sorts of soft measures, such as work-life programs. That used to be true in a bygone era, but no more.

For example, Professor Michelle Arthur, from the University of New Mexico, set out to examine stock market reactions to the announcement of Fortune 500 firms adopting such work-family initiatives. The results were very clear. In the early 1980s, the stock market would hardly react at all to such soft and fluffy initiatives; if anything the effect of the announcement on a firm’s share price was slightly negative (-.35%). However, that changed into the 1990s, when announcement of a work-family initiative caused an immediate rise in stock price by, on average, .48%. That may seem peanuts at first sight, but if you are a £5 billion company, it implies that even one such initiative would immediately increase the value of your firm by £24 million.

So executives who question the (shareholder) value of work-life initiatives are simply stuck in the 1980s; nowadays even the stock market recognizes their value.

Why isn’t this HR wisdom more widely accepted?

You may know the story of the inebriated cyclist searching for his bicycle keys under the lamppost, although he knows he lost them somewhere else. He tells a passer-by that he is looking for them under the lamppost because “it is light there, and I will never be able to find them in the dark” (where he had actually lost them). The story reminds me of the executive who is trying to solve a company crisis or gain a competitive advantage by managing the things that can easily be measured (production capacity, headcount, profit & loss). Those things may be easy to observe and influence but they are seldom the real root of the problem, nor do they really harness your competitive advantage.

To do that, you have to look where things are much more difficult to measure and manage – to the loyalty of your workforce, their motivation and job skills. Manage those things well and you are truly entering the light.


Rain, Melting Snow Leads to Flooded Roads, Yards
CARBONDALE TOWNSHIP, Pa. -- All that rain mixing with all the melting snow was a perfect recipe for flooding and it affected a number of area roads Thursday evening. Draining this flooded yard near Carbondale is a cold, wet, slushy mess but somebody's got to do it. For the Miller family, this is something they do multiple times a year when it rains, including this time last year.


Ovechkin hits 500

Ovechkin hits 500

If you are a fan of the NHL, you have been following Alexander Ovechkin from the beginning of his career. The Russian player recently reached 500 goals, making him the first Russian NHL player to reach this number.

The 30 year old player marked his 500th goal in a match against the Ottawa Senators a few days ago. The match stopped and the fans erupted in applause for the milestone.

Alexander is the Captain of the Washington Capitals hockey team and one of the best players that America has ever seen. Before playing in the NHL, Alexander was part of the HC Dynamo Moscow team for 4 seasons, from 2001 to 2005. Ovechkin was injured in 2004 had to take a break for an entire season. When he recovered in 2005, his transfer to the NHL was completely unexpected, and he won the Calder Memorial Trophy for the Beginner of the Year.

Over the years, he has become even more popular as a really tough and talented player. Some say that his talent runs in the family, as his mother won two Olympic gold medals as a player in the Soviet Union’s basketball team in 1976. His father was also a professional soccer player.

Alexander is in the middle of his career and he has already reached an important milestone. Fans believe there are other milestones are in his future.


U.S. Imposes Absurd Precondition Prior to Diplomatic Talks with Jomhuri-ye Eslami-ye Iran (Islamic Republic of Iran)

I am pleased the U.S. administration has agreed to negotiate with Iran over their nuclear energy programme. I think, however, the setting of preconditions and in particular the requirement that Iran suspend its nuclear enrichment efforts is absurd and hardly a confidence building measure. Iran needs to increase the U-235 isotopic mix in order to generate enough fission for energy or weapons purposes. By suspending this uranium activity, it would essentially be abandoning its nuclear ambitions.

I think the American administration is attempting to demand an outcome that negotiations themselves are intended to achieve. After all to ask Iran to cease an activity which is the goal of the negotiations, prior to those negotiations, is not how a great power should conduct diplomacy. The U.S. does not desire diplomacy but war it could be argued. The U.S. is only reluctantly and perhaps, cynically, giving the appearance of a diplomatic track in order to appease the P5 (this refers to the permanent non-rotating members) on the U.N. Security Council. The U.S. knows that sanctions or any invocation of Chapter 7 actions under the U.N. Charter are unlikely without an exhaustion of non-violent remedies. Yet the American press, which had ignored the baby killing in Iraq for three years and generally supported this preemptive war, has essentially ignored the condition for negotiations and merely emphasised the putative change in the Bush administration's approach to Iran.

Iran will not suspend enrichment which is done through spinning centrifuges at great speed and the multilateral talks with the United States will not occur. I simply cannot imagine Iran agreeeing to this deal breaker. I hope I am wrong but without some adjustments in America's diplomatic position, the potential for successful diplomacy is lessened. Iran is entitled by the way to enrich, to conduct fission, to have a nuclear energy programme under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty of 1968. It is not allowed to divert nuclear processes into a weapons programme and is required to accept I.A.E.A. (International Atomic Energy Agency) safeguards, which are really inspections and the implanting of monitor devices at their declared nuclear facilities.


League of Legends: An In-Depth Guide on Splitpushing

Tue 7th May 2019 - 9:29pm

League has historically always been a game of five-versus-five teamfights. The most memorable moments of your League career are most likely from teamfights. However, for those who want to spice up their League of Legends experience, splitpushing can be the perfect way to increase your map awareness while diversifying your skills. Splitpushing is built on the idea of wave management, a topic that I will briefly touch upon. Before splitpushing, it is vital that you practice wave management in your regular games. Once you have a gained a reasonable grasp on wave management, splitpushing will be far easier to execute upon and an even better way to secure the Victory screen.

What is Splitpushing?

Splitpushing is a form of play in which one player, generally the toplaner who has the Teleport summoner spell, will push either the top or bottom wave, taking towers and earning gold for their team in the process. Splitpushing is one of the most difficult skills in League of Legends because of the necessary knowledge you require and the need for proper communication among teammates.  As mentioned beforehand, splitpushing is built upon the principle of wave management.

Wave Management

While wave management deserves a guide of its own, I will go over the basics. If you have more minions on your side than on the enemy side, your wave will push. This follows in the opposite manner. In order to modify the speed in which your wave pushes, you will want to kill specific minions. Killing the backline ranged minions will cause the wave to slowly grow larger and eventually crash into a tower with a large number of minions. Killing the frontline melee minions will cause the wave to move quickly, but with far less minions. For splitpushing, you should practice slow pushing the wave. Before a splitpush, it is necessary to slow push a wave so that you will be ready to immediately apply damage to a tower.

Why Should I Splitpush?

Splitpushing can singlehandedly win the game for your team because of its high-risk/high-reward nature. As a splitpusher, your team will be fighting for objectives with a man disadvantage depending on if an enemy player decides to answer your splitpush. However, while your team engages in a teamfight, you can take down multiple towers, even inhibitors if you play the situation properly. Also, if you develop a good mechanical foundation on your champion, you can also remove the enemy player who may try to answer you. This nets your team a man advantage, and hopefully a teamfight win.

When Should I Splitpush?

There is no single formula for when splitpushing is the most optimal form of play. However, here are a few tips as to when splitpushing will be best for your chance at victory.

Scenario #1:

If your team is engaging an objective

When your team is engaging on an objective, such as Baron or an Elemental Drake, the enemy team is forced to decide between answering your splitpush or contesting the objective. If the enemy team decides to come for you, your team is nearly guaranteed the objective. If the enemy team decides to contest the objective, you can take down towers, gain a gold advantage, and pressure a potential end to the game.

Scenario #2

If your team can stall effectively with poke

If your team is comprised of poke based champions such as Xerath, Zoe, Lux, Jayce, etc., you can stall out the clock and force the enemy team to either make a hasty engage or answer your splitpush. In both scenarios, your team gains an advantage and steps closer to victory.

Scenario #3

If your team is losing extremely hard

“Losing extremely hard” is subject to your interpretation, but in general it should be quite easy to judge whether or not your team is behind beyond repair. In this case, splitpushing may be the last ditch effort to balance the game if you are the only player that has an advantage. In this case, it is very rare that the enemy team to disengage to answer your splitpush. If you can coordinate a stall with your team, you can cause severe damage to the enemy base, and create an opening to end the game.

Who Can Splitpush?

About 90% of the time, splitpushers are toplaners with Teleport, and there is a reason why. The toplane champion pool is comprised of many splitpush champions such as, but not limited to, Fiora, Tryndamere, Darius, Riven, Gnar, and Jax. Also, Teleport is necessary so that you can enter a teamfight in the scenario that you can make a decent impact.

Who Should I Play?

As a beginner, you want to focus on the macro game rather than the mechanics required to pilot the champion you wish to choose. While champions like Fiora and Riven can have a higher ceiling to splitpushing, it is recommended that you test splitpushing with an easier champion like Jax or Tryndamere. Jax has the perfect components to make a good splitpusher with his high attack speed from passive and 1v2 capabilities. Tryndamere has extremely high AD mixed with a high critical strike chance which is deadly towards unprotected towers.

What to Build?

While every splitpushing champion may have their own build path, it is common among most splitpushers that they have a Sheen item to increase damage to towers. If you wish to play Jax as recommended, I recommend starting with Triforce and then following that up with a Sterak’s Gage to increase AD and Health. The combination of these two will be enough to take down towers at a fast rate. For Tryndamere, a mixture of critical strike chance, attack damage, and attack speed is plenty to delete enemy attack damage carries and melt towers. Generally, Ravenous Hydra and Statik Shiv will be plenty to start you off.

Warding and Communication

With the above tips, you are off to a great start to splitpushing. In lower elos, these tips will generate success quite quickly. However, once you start to reach higher ranks, you need to change your habits. A common mistake among lower elo players is to use wards randomly without purpose. You should be timing wards with objectives and placing them in strategic locations to maximize their worth. Control wards are a necessary tool to splitpushing and should be placed in the enemy jungle to warn you of impending danger. Without proper warding, you will notice that your splitpushes generally end in the enemy team ganking you.

A hallmark of poor splitpushing is the lack of prior communication with your team. A large majority of failed splitpushes directly result from your team ignoring the advantage that you are creating. Before executing upon the splitpush, you must inform your teammates of what they should do. Generally, this involves you directing your teammates to attack an objective whether it be Baron, Elemental Drake, or a tower. With your team pressuring an objective, you are generally free from ganks, but warding (as mentioned before) is necessary. And if you are strong enough, you can solo kill the enemy contesting you and apply massive damage to towers. In this case, you have doubled your team’s gains with little-to-no resources exhausted. Eventually, this will win you the game from raw gold and buff advantage.

Splitpushing is arguably the most difficult to execute upon strategy in League of Legends, but with proper practice, experience, and time your rank will steadily rise as you improve your macro play.


Chances are, you are reading this blogpost sitting down, just as I wrote this sitting down. Sitting has become such a norm in the workplace and at home. For example, we spend hours sitting behind a desk and then go home to relax in front of the sofa, sitting down. However, this simple action is doing more harm than good and goes against human beings natural behaviour as moving, agile creatures. Studies have found this sedentary lifestyle to be associated with fat deposition, decreased physical activity but positively associated with liver disease. So perhaps this habit is not as harmless as we all think.

Sitting, is good in small, brief doses as a way to recuperate and recharge the body. However, it is the prolonged lifestyles that many individuals find themselves in today, that the body is not built for – people should not be sitting more than they move in an average day.

In fact, the human body is designed with the specific purpose to move. Structures inside the body, are designed to encourage motion, allowing us to stand up straight and work against gravity. At the same time, blood in our body depends on movement for proper circulation.

However, by sitting at the desk all day, the body is unable to perform in the way it was designed to and at its optimal. The backbone of the problem is the body position that is often adopted when individuals sit at a desk. That is, slumped shoulders and a curved back, leading to uneven pressure and wear and tear on the body. Similarly by hunching over the desk, the chest cavity areas shrinks so the lungs have less space to expand. Alongside the squishing of soft tissue, blood flow to the lungs is reduced. The brain, needs oxygen and blood to stay alert. So accompanied with decreased blood flow is slowed concentration levels. Just like we carefully eat a balanced diet to fuel our body, the way we look after our body, in terms of body positioning, can also impact functioning levels.

Compared to more strenuous physical activity, such as running or biking, sitting at a desk, obviously uses less energy. However, sitting at a desk for prolonged periods does more than just slow energy usage – unhealthy metabolic changes occur too. Normally, the body burns 3 calories per minute when at rest, however, prolonged sitting temporality deactivates the enzyme in blood that breaks down fat so individuals burn a mere 1 calorie per minute.

How to combat prolonged sitting?

In order to alleviate some of the negative effects of sitting, is important to understand the body is not build for stillness, but rather motion. So by treating your body to small walks and breaks of about 5 minutes every hour, we can counteract the detrimental effects of sitting. This may involve setting a reminder on your phone to get up and move every hour. And maybe next time, before you send an email to a colleague in the same office, go and talk to them instead.

It is easy to neglect the impact sitting has on our overall wellbeing, however, when sitting is prolonged, it can be very harmful to the body. By scheduling periods of walking, to break up long periods of sitting, we can remove the negative effects of sitting – our bodies will thank us later.

Further Information:

Why sitting is bad for you – Murat Dalkilinç

Why Sitting is Bad For You? – The Bad Effects of Sitting

9 Tips To Save Your Life

Are You Sitting Too Much?

Relationship of sitting time and physical activity with non-alcoholic fatty liver disease. Available here

Sedentary Behavior, Physical Activity, and Abdominal Adipose Tissue Deposition. Available here


Teal blue graphic

Changing mindsets on energy efficiency at board level

As part of TLT's support for the Energy Storage Alliance we hosted an energy management roundtable in February at our London office. We were joined by a range of expert contributors who shared their views on both the importance of, and challenges facing the energy management sector.

With the ESOS scheme being completed, a key area of discussion was the likelihood of the scheme leading to a wide take-up of energy efficiency measures. The perception is that many in the industry are 'hanging fire' before moving forward to delivery.

Also under discussion, the challenges faced by ‘energy champions’ across all industries. There was unanimous agreement that the perception of energy efficiency within companies across the UK needed to change.

Budgetary constraints and issues surrounding value of payback were seen as two hurdles to be overcome, with many energy managers operating within a limited scope and budget. The majority of companies appear to still view energy efficiency as a business cost rather than an investment where savings can be used to fund further measures.

It would seem that the way in which companies view energy efficiency needs to be changed at board-level. Support for, and the importance of carrying out work, including performance improvement measures, can then be filtered down throughout the company.

Board-level training to highlight the significant savings that can be made has been offered and undertaken, however there is still a lack of appreciation amongst CEOs and CFOs. Unfortunately, without the backing at this level, it is very difficult for energy managers to deliver truly effective measures.

Though the private sector is being hampered by board input, budgets and role scope, the public sector has got behind energy efficiency, something which is evident in the increasing deal sizes. This may be due to local authorities' ability to borrow at low rates, coupled with strong procurement frameworks, meaning that they are able to overcome procurement challenges and inertia. Indeed, for those in the public sector, pay-to-save initiatives are often seen as a way of introducing long term budget savings.

Whilst it is more difficult to accurately measure the savings that energy efficiency measures generate, strong data will identify the difference between actual energy usage and the hypothetical usage of a system with energy efficiency measures introduced. This data will prove key to winning over decision makers and forming a platform where role scope, budget and support will allow energy champions to effectively undertake their roles.

What is clear is that unless UK businesses change their perception of energy efficiency, there will be little scope for technology providers or professionals to implement their ambitious plans.

Contributor: Jack Lewis

Insights & events View all


Home Finance Artificial Intelligence and Big Data is Revolutionising Online Lending

Artificial Intelligence and Big Data is Revolutionising Online Lending

The continuous growth of digital lending has resulted in companies looking for the means to increase the profitability of their services. Big Data and Artificial Intelligence seem to be the solution.

Credit scores are the basis for which a lender considers loan applications. Credit bureaus are responsible for issuing this three-digit number. The score is obtained using payment history, credit line amounts, and credit history length, to know the likelihood of a loan being repaid.
On the other hand, Digital lending platforms think this method does not give comprehensive information on an applicant. The method used by these platforms includes other data and does not necessarily have to do with your finances.

The analysis of these additional data can make the decision-making process more accurate, give a more detailed result of an applicant and also increases the probability of making the entire process automated.

How Lending Startups are Leveraging AI
Upstart is a startup which uses machine learning algorithms in its peer-to-peer online lending. The aim is to filter through a large number of data to find patterns which human analysts may not notice.

The company aims to reduce the interest rates used for low-income earners and borrowers who are still young. They hope to provide this technology to retailers, credit unions, and banks.

Another startup, Avant, uses machine learning to analyze 10,000 data points and also identify fraud.

The Challenges
Currently, 10 percent of loans in the US and Europe are given through Digital lending, and these numbers are expected to rise. CB Insights also reports that there are efficient methods of loan applications currently in use in tech start-ups and this shows that there are advantages in the use of machine learning and analytics.

While it is a welcome development, some people do not think that the issues with online loans can be solved through machine learning. A valid argument is the exposure of a customer to risk as there is the possibility of hackers gaining access to personal information uploaded to the apps required for loan applications.

Algorithmic bias is another problem. It is possible that the decisions from a machine learning algorithm will be a reflection of the test data used to run simulations. This means that it may not produce accurate results for each applicant.

For those in support of machine learning–based loans, they still believe that it will become a key factor in online lending.

Original source CoinTelegraph

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Internet Giant Tencent Pitches its AI Ethics for the World

China’s Tencent is pushing its artificial intelligence ethics vision on the global stage, a move that goes against its traditionally isolated style. In an interview...


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Astrophysics > Earth and Planetary Astrophysics

Title:Planet migration in wind-fed accretion disks in binaries

Authors:O. Kulikova (SAI MSU), S.B. Popov (SAI MSU, HSE), V.V. Zhuravlev (SAI MSU)
Abstract: Planet migration originally refers to protoplanetary disks, which are more massive and dense than typical accretion disks in binary systems. We study planet migration in an accretion disk in a binary system consisting of a solar-like star hosting a planet and a red giant donor star. The accretion disk is fed by a stellar wind. %, disk self-gravity is neglected. We use the $\alpha$-disk model and consider that the stellar wind is time-dependent. Assuming the disk is quasi-stationary we calculate its temperature and surface density profiles. In addition to the standard disk model, when matter is captured by the disk at its outer edge, we study the situation when the stellar wind delivers matter on the whole disc surface inside the accretion radius with the rate depending on distance from the central star. Implying that a planet experiences classical type I/II migration we calculate migration time for a planet on a circular orbit coplanar with the disk. Potentially, rapid inward planet migration can result in a planet-star merger which can be accompanied by an optical or/and UV/X-ray transient. We calculate timescale of migration for different parameters of planets and binaries. Our results demonstrate that planets can fall on their host stars within the lifetime of the late-type donor for realistic sets of parameters.
Comments: 10 pages, 6 figures; Subm. to MNRAS
DOI: 10.1093/mnras/stz1363
Cite as: arXiv:1903.01873 [astro-ph.EP]
  (or arXiv:1903.01873v1 [astro-ph.EP] for this version)

Submission history

From: Sergei Popov B. [view email]
[v1] Mon, 4 Mar 2019 12:30:12 UTC (194 KB)


3D Printing Guide

3D Printing Guide

3D printing is a quickly expanding field, with the popularity and uses for 3D printers growing every day. In this guide, I will attempt to give an introduction to the wide range of technologies in 3D printers, a comparison of the most common 3D printers on the market, an overview of materials that can be used to print, online services and communities that offer 3D models or 3D printing services, and an intro to designing and printing your first model.

3D printing can be used to prototype, create replacement parts, and is even versatile enough to print prostheses and medical implants. It will have a growing impact on our world, as more and more people gain access to these amazing machines.
Step 1: Technologies
While all 3D printers create objects using additive methods (the opposite of a CNC machine), different approaches exist to actually physically depositing the material. The most common methods are:

-Fused Deposition Modeling- A very common method in which the part is printed by extruding molten stings of material that melt together to create the part. This is usually the cheapest method. Examples include: Athorbot

-Selective Laser Sintering -More common in industrial style prototyping settings, a laser melts together powdered plastic, ceramic, or other material, then spreads more powder on top, repeating the process to build the part layer by layer. The main advantage of this is the wide variety of materials that can be printed.

-Powder Bed and Binder- Similar to Laser Sintering, an inkjet head distributes binder to the correct location on a bed of powder. The most notable advantage is the ability to print in many colors.

-Stereolithography- Here, an ultraviolet laser hardens resin in a vat layer by layer until the part is built. It can quickly create high definition parts that can be machined. However, the resin is fairly expensive compared to other 3D printing materials.

Step 2: Materials
Materials vary from technique to technique. The most common for FDM is spooled ABS style plastic filament. However, many other materials can be printed, including ceramic, metal, rubber, clear plastic, glass and others. The materials available are dependent on the method of printing.

Step 3: Online Communities and Services
There are a wide variety of online resources for finding 3D files. As always use discretion when downloading anything from the Internet such as: Thingiverse

Step 4: Design and Print
When it comes to modeling 3D files for a printer, the most commonly accepted format is an STL file, which is essentially a mesh made of triangles. You can use your preferred CADD software to create the model.

All of your models need to be what is called "water-tight." A model being watertight (also called a manifold model) means that there are no holes in the mesh that could cause issues while printing.

Once you have the design, the object is sent to the printer. Most printers have software that lets you convert the STL to the layers that the printer will print in and commands for the printer. Depending on the method of printing, there will likely be some support material (which helps the object print by supporting delicate pieces) that will have to be removed using a vacuum, brush, or water, depending on what type of material it is.

Step 5: Examples
A few examples of what you can do with a 3d printer.

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We conserve birds in their habitats across Belize through on-the-ground scientific research, education, advocacy, and collaborations.

The objectives of the Belize Bird Conservancy shall be to better understand Belize birds through scientific research: provide education outreach: train future conservationists and biologists: provide economic opportunities to Belizeans: provide volunteer and internship programs: and form partnerships with local and international wildlife conservation groups and government bodies to help protect birds in Belize.

We conserve birds in their habitat across Belize through on-the-ground scientific research, education, advocacy, and collaborations. Find out about our organization, mission, who is involved, collaborators and the results of years of conservation.

Check out our multiple projects dedicated to conducting scientific research to learn more about periled species in Belize while giving locals opportunities and educating communities to ultimately conserve the birds of Belize.

2019 Bird-a-thon Fundraising competition (April 1-30)

Go get more information on this event here.


Civil Litigation

Edney Ryan Legal

Civil Litigation and Dispute Resolution

It is our preference to litigate only when all other reasonable avenues have been exhausted.  If court action becomes the only viable way forward, we can represent clients in Local, District, Supreme and Federal Court jurisdictions no matter how acrimonious or complex the disputes.


Getting the most out of your VLE: how to easily add functionality

How much do you and your students get out of your Virtual Learning Environment (VLE)?

Imagine your VLE with the added opportunity to provide real-time feedback to individualised student assessments, test your students on their ability to draw chemical structures, add in complex mathematical notation or introduce engaging and interactive resources to spice up your own content.

With these added functionalities, the opportunities for student engagement and active learning are abundant.


Social Media, Technology and the Modern Age: How Change was Replaced by a Designed Illusion

In the past, we may not have thought of design as the terrain on which the future of democracy would be decided. But that was before we entered into an age in which more and more of the designed objects and interactions we encounter became silently curated, positioned and politicised without our consent.

The great triumph of handheld technology is the lie it conceals. Ever-present and portable, it draws our attention downwards, off-wards, at right-angles to the march of life before us. As long as our heads are bent, we’re captive, placing faith in an impermanent, implied plane of living. We buy into an illusion, seeing ourselves walking upon the plane and shaping history as we pass across it. Our experience is of a real-time slew of apparently consequential events, as opposed to the simulation it is. We find ourselves endlessly, but transitorily, invested in the lives of everyone we know; made into a single, breathing organism of evolutionary progress. And yet, in pandering to this joint surface-life, we belie the true, hidden unchange concealed beneath the visible. While we fiddle, Rome burns.

Unchange is the unwritten mission of modern technology design, its principles slowly solidifying from incidental side-effects into core principles. The ever-repeating clarion call of today’s corporate technologists is the permanent reach for tomorrow: an all-consuming, all-replacing future without a future. The compulsory urgency of this incessant solutionism has become the default setting for vast swathes of our interactions with objects. Thanks to the profit-hungry near-sightedness of today’s big tech companies, unchange holds us at a discombobulated arm’s length from the world we inhabit: we look at it as if through a goldfish bowl. The march of technological innovation, traditionally an endeavour to solve, soothe, improve and revolutionise our path through the world, now lives in a tug-of-war between negligent and malevolent forces, both eager to constantly reinvent and obsolete every aspect of our progress.

First big technology came for our attention, and we did not speak out: then it came for our outrage. In a world of designer indignation, devices and browsers can at best only mimic engagement with the wider society. The last two years of history prove it: for all the digital outrage we can summon, none of it can effect real change without physical action to back it up. But the link between our instinct to express outrage and its practical application is all too often lost beneath unchange. The only thing left to impact the shape of digital discourse is falsehood, bending our interactions beyond recognition. The considered origins of our debates over difference are lost. It is lies that ring loudest, pulling at the oval of our understanding, distorting it like a coat-hanger tugged from every side. Unchange doesn’t simply enable that distortion. It insists on it.

The outrage, of course, is illusory in itself. Our belief in it as righteous, material power extending from our fingertips into a calcifying, three-dimensional reality is the true legacy of unchange. Scrolling through constant, determined outrage galvanises our sense of participation in the improvement of our environment. In truth, we wear our digital opinions like the emperor wears his new clothes, in a collective hallucination of action. Unchange is the naked body beneath: a determined re-versioning of the status quo over and again, each time less tangible, more removed, more in the interests of intractable power. Culture theorist Mark Fisher noted as long ago as 2006 the troll’s claim to ‘speak from nowhere’. As then, the designed insistence on anonymising the voice and place of individual sovereignty continues to uphold the hegemony of corporate power. In endlessly conjuring up a personalised version of autonomy, harvesting the data we submit to it as fodder to monopoly profit, the big tech corporations repeatedly bait-and-switch self-determination away from the user, giving it to the deregulating, authoritarian interests of unchange. In its current form, social media is corporate power. It is power that is stolen from you, withheld from you.

There are exceptions of course. Truly decentralised forms of organising often thrive when accountability is fluid, where anonymity reigns. Technological tools do provide access and engagement with otherwise intangible platforms of power, putting constituents in direct contact with their representatives. But the underlying trends and motives that govern the process of innovation — the real values of unchange — run counter to this.

The way that the social media hive buzzed over recent pronouncements by Elon Musk is a case in point. Tech determinist libertarians like Musk constantly paint themselves, largely with our blessing, as humanist visionaries, grasping the nettle of the future. In the fuzz of indignant response to Musk’s misunderstanding of socialism, the puzzle for me was why anyone would have ever imagined him thinking differently. Technological determinism has nothing to do with the sharing of power. Musk personifies a bigger danger to world peace than Trump: he champions a blinkered pursuit of technology’s possibilities as mandatory race to the prize, stripped of moral and human consequences. Bezos, Jobs, Zuckerberg et al are essentially cut from the same cloth: for them, the accumulation of innovation is about proprietary right, not human benefit. They succeed because they put the interests of their users (let alone their employees) at the bottom of their list of priorities, not simply in spite of it. In fact, the systems which effectively lock users out of the reality of the technology’s effects are hard-designed into the way their products are made. Unchange is the feature, not the bug.

The real-time pernicious trends we see increasingly in interactive and experience design — its so-called ‘dark patterns’ — are microcosmic examples of the contempt for the user that unchange dictates. The ongoing lack of moral attention given to the user is an issue that needs to be addressed on its own terms, but in truth it’s symptomatic of a much larger problem.

As Mark Mazower notes in his Guardian review of David Runciman’s How Democracy Ends, companies like Facebook and Google “encourage instant gratification when democracy presupposes a capacity for frustration and patience”. This is a reversal of how power is supposed to work: we’ve become the subject of technology, rather than it a tool for us. And instead of simply sounding the alarm about a dystopian Terminator-world of robot takeover, I’m arguing that if we don’t trust the picture of the world that technology delivers, we’re already complicit in unchange. The machines don’t need to take over if we can’t agree on basic realities. Subjugating interests are already filling the vacuum.

Design’s great failure in this system is not that it simply overlooks this. Unchange has become the raison d’etre of modern technology. In demanding autonomy, in enabling full anonymity, in the supposed utopian freedom of cultural access and its coital adhesion to data-driven capitalism, today’s digital platforms are designed to steal power from us. The great leaps of miniaturised connectivity, unchecked by ethical considerations, have brought surveillance into our lives, our homes, even our opinions, stealing our privacy and agency in plain, consensual sight. We’ve invited power to leave out of the the doorways we opened on ourselves.

Utopian determinism, technology’s recurring war cry, is the crime that steals from the very people it’s supposed to help. In connecting us so completely, and yet so illusorily, and with so little regard for the consequences, designers graduate from servants of unchange to its determined architects.


Game-changing finding pushes 3D-printing to the molecular limit

(University of Nottingham) New University of Nottingham research proves that advanced materials containing molecules that switch states in response to environmental stimuli such as light can be fabricated using 3D printing.The study findings have the potential to vastly increase the functional capabilities of 3D-printed devices for industries such as electronics, healthcare and quantum computing.