The "Genuine Progress Indicator" or GPI is a better balance sheet of the costs and benefits of grow than the GDP, says Dilip D'Souza.

At an international forum earlier this month, government claims of progress on providing water and sanitation were challenged by a number of NGOs. Darryl D'Monte reports.

The better education and health outcome indicators in the southern states compared to the north, has been acknowledged for a long time. And yet to see it with one’s own eyes really drives home the poin,t say Reetika Khera.

As India moves closer to the deadline for achievement of its Millennium Development Goals, the critical need for effective family planning interventions and greater awareness of the same become more pronounced, writes Anuradha Sahni.

A new legislation aims to bring in a rigorous process of planning, transparency and citizen participation together at the local level in Karnataka, says Vinay Baindur.

School authorities say, and records show, that while enrolment has not been substantially improved as a result of mid-day meal programmes, school attendance has certainly gone up by 10-12%. However, there is still plenty of room for improvement in the management of the scheme. Padmalatha Ravi reports.

The new test called DARC can detect glaucoma progression 18 months earlier than the current gold standard method.

The former left-arm pacer also gave his views on Virat Kohli's captaincy, saying the latter is still a work in progress when it comes to him in the role of a skipper.

Cham : Springer, c2019.

Cham, Switzerland : Springer, 2019.

Barker Library - TA357.5.U57 P76 2014

Signup forms are all too common when building new web applications or social networks. Traction from user signups can really boost your own self-confidence about a project when it comes to launching a new website. But what can you do to help improve the signup experience and hopefully gain more interested users? In this tutorial […]

Online Resource

This Viewpoint attributes improved understanding of the role of autoantibodies and B-cell activity in MS pathogenesis and the development of effective therapies to the ability of physician-scientists to bring clinical insights to laboratory research and it emphasizes the importance of supporting and encouraging these investigators to reinvigorate science at the bedside.

In this narrative medicine essay, an attending physician shares his observations of how the changing nature of electronic medical record (EMR) hospital progress notes—often entered out of sequence and becoming ever longer and more unreadable—can hamper interacting with patients and providing patient care.

Online Resource

Online Resource

Mathematica brought together leaders from a variety of sectors to discuss the challenges of becoming data driven and offer action-oriented, accessible advice on how organizations can take their first steps, or their next steps, to progress together.

Hayden Library - HQ1438.S63 S685 2019

Dewey Library - HT1523.L285 2019

Australia. Parliament. Senate. Legal and Constitutional Affairs Legislation Committee, author, issuing body

Australia, author

Australia. Parliament. Joint Standing Committee on the National Disability Insurance Scheme, author, issuing body

Online Resource

Gain a new respect for the good old pumpkin. Author Mary Miley Theobald traces the history of the venerable gourd.

Swarts, Heidi J

Sometimes it is fun to re-visit very basic HTML things and look what we can do with them nowadays. This is what I will do now with a radio button group. I will progressively enhance it to look great and still work with keyboard and screen readers. As part of my Logo-O-Matic upgrade, I added […]

Hayden Library - T174.7.D53 2018

As India debates environmental health versus economic growth, Rachel Kyte, vice-president and special envoy for climate change at the World Bank Group, feels it is vital to think beyond basic GDP.

Barker Library - TA443.P58 I57 2013

Hayden Library - QH315.C2885 2018

In his The Case for Progressive Web Apps presentation at An Event Apart in Chicago, Jason Grigsby walked through the process of building Progressive Web Apps for your Web experiences and how to go about it. Here's my notes from his talk:

• Progressive Web Apps (PWAs) are getting a lot of attention and positive stories about their impact are coming out. PWA Stats tracks many of these case studies. These sorts of examples are getting noticed by CEOs who demand teams build PWAs today.
• A PWA is a set of technologies designed to make faster, more capable Web sites. They load fast, are available online, are secure, can be accessed from your home screen, have push notifications, and more.
• But how can we define Progressive Web Apps? PWAs are Web sites enhanced by three things: https, service worker, and a manifest file.
• HTTPS is increasingly required for browsers and APIs. Eventually Chrome will highlight sites that are not on https as "insecure".
• Service Workers allow Web sites to declare how network requests and the cache are handled. This ability to cache things allows us to build sites that are much faster. With service workers we can deliver near instant and offline experiences.
• A Web manifest is a JSON file that delivers some attributes about a Web site. Browsers use these files to make decisions on what to do with your site (like add to home page).
• Are PWAs any different than well-built Web sites? Not really, but the term helps get people excited and build toward best practices on the Web.
• PWAs are often trojan horses for performance. They help enforce fast experiences.

Feels Like a Native App

• Does your organization have a Web site? Do you make money off your Web site? If so, you probably need a Progressive Web Site.
• Not every customer will have your native app installed. A better Web experience will help you reach people who don't. For many people this will be their first experience with your company, so you should make it as good as possible.
• Getting people to install and keep using native apps is difficult. App stores can also change their policies and interfaces which could negatively impact your native app.
• The Web can do much more than we think, the Web has APIs to access location, do fast payments using fingerprint identification, push notifications, and more.
• What should we use to design PWAs? Native app styles or Web styles? How much does your design match the platform? You can set up PWAs to use different system fonts for iOS and Android, should you? For now, we should define our own design and be consistent across different OSs.
• What impact does going "chrome-less" have on our PWAs? You loose back buttons, menu controls, system controls. Browsers provide us with a lot of useful features and adding them back is difficult. Especially navigation via the back button is complex. So in most cases, you should avoid going full screen.
• While not every person will add your PWA to their home screen, every person will "install" your PWA via the service worker.
• An app shell model allows you put your common UI (header, footer, nav, etc.) into the app cache. This makes the first loading experience feel a lot faster. Should you app shell or not? If you have architected as a single page app, this is possible but otherwise might not be worth the effort.
• Animating transitions can help with way-finding and polish on the Web. This gives Web sites even more personality.

Installation and Discovery

• Using a Web manifest file, allows you specify a number of declarations for your app. In addition to name, icon, and even theme colors.
• Once you have a PWA built and a manifest file, browsers will being prompting people to install your Web site. Some Browsers have subtle "add" actions. Other use more explicit banner prompts. "Add to home screen" banners are only displayed when they make sense (certain level of use).
• Developers can request these banners to come up when appropriate. You'll want to trigger these where people are mostly likely to install. (like checkout)
• Microsoft is putting (explicitly and implicitly) PWAs within their app store. Search results may also start highlighting PWAs.
• You can use Trusted Web Activity or PhoneGap to wrap native shells around your PWA to put them into Android and iOS app stores.

Offline Mode

• Your Web site would benefit from offline support. Service Workers enable you to cache assets on your device to load PWAs quickly and to decide what should be available offline.
• You can develop offline pages and/or cache pages people viewed before.
• If you do cache pages, make it clear what data hasn't been updated because it is not available offline.
• You can give people control over what gets cached and what doesn't. So they can decide what they want available for offline viewing.
• If you enable offline interactions, be explicit what interactivity is available and what isn't.

Push Notifications

• Push notifications can help you increase engagement. You can send notifications via a Web browser using PWAs.
• Personal push notifications work best but are difficult to do right. Generic notifications won't be as effective.
• Don't immediately ask people for push notification permissions. Find the right time and place to ask people to turn them on. Make sure you give people control, if you'd don't they can kill them using browser controls.
• In the next version of Chrome, Google will make push notification dialogs blocking (can't be dismissed) so people have to decide if they want notifications on or off. This also requires you to ask for permissions at the right time.

Beyond Progressive Web Apps

• Auto-login with credential management APIs allows you to sign into a site using stored credentials. This streamlines the login process.
• Apple Pay on the Web converged with the Web Payment API so there's one way to use stored payment info on the Web.
• These next gen capabilities are not part of PWAs but make sense within PWAs.

How to Implement PWAs

• Building PWAs is a progressive process, it can be a series of incremental updates that all make sense on their own. As a result, you can have an iterative roadmap.
• Benchmark and measure your improvements so you can use that data to get buy-in for further projects.
• Assess your current Web site's technology. If things aren't reasonably fast to begin with, you need to address that first. If your site is not usable on mobile, start there first.
• Begin by building a baseline PWA (manifest, https, etc.) and then add front-end additions and larger initiatives like payment request and credential api later.
• Every step on the path toward a PWAS make sense on their own. You should encrypt your Web sites. You should make your Web site fast. These are all just steps along the way.

Our commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion in all that we do means thinking critically about what diversity means and taking important steps to create a Mathematica where everyone feels welcome and can cultivate a meaningful career.

USCIRF chair Tony Perkins gives CT a behind-the-scenes look at today’s annual report on “systematic, ongoing, and egregious” violations.

A new report aims to “unflinchingly criticize the records of US allies and adversaries alike” on religious freedom.

And there’s a lot to report, with more headlines each month confirming the Pew Research Center’s 10-year analysis that government restrictions and social hostilities involving religion have reached record levels worldwide.

Today’s 21st annual report by the US Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) identifies significant problems in 29 countries—but sees “an upward trajectory overall.”

“Our awareness is going to grow greater, and the problem will appear more pronounced,” USCIRF chair Tony Perkins told CT. “But as we continue to work on it, I think we will see tremendous progress in the next few years if we stay the present course.”

Created as an independent, bipartisan federal commission by the 1998 International Religious Freedom Act, USCIRF casts a wider net than the US State Department, which annually designates Countries of Particular Concern (CPC) for such nations’ violations of religious freedom, or places them on a Special Watch List (SWL) if less severe.

Last December, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced CPC status for Burma, China, Eritrea, Iran, North Korea, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Tajikistan, and Turkmenistan.

USCIRF now recommends adding India, Nigeria, Russia, Syria, and Vietnam.

And where the State Department put only Cuba, Nicaragua, Sudan, and Uzbekistan on the watch list, USCIRF recommends also including Afghanistan, Algeria, Azerbaijan, Bahrain, Central African Republic, Egypt, Indonesia, Iraq, Kazakhstan, Malaysia, and Turkey.

USCIRF’s mandate is to provide oversight and advice to the State Department. ...

Continue reading...

Publisher Oxford ; New York : Pergamon Press, 1977-

Location World Wide Web

Call No. QD921

Publisher [Oxford ; New York] : Pergamon.

Location World Wide Web

Call No. QD506