Resources for Human Development

Type of the article: Research ArticleAbstract Global progress toward universal access to affordable, reliable, and clean energy has stalled, with over two billion people still lacking access to clean cooking, and affordability pressures are rising. AI is emerging as an energy-intensive technology and a potential enabler of more equitable energy systems. This paper assesses whether AI vibrancy contributes to advancing energy equity across countries while accounting for differences in economic capacity. The study employs a balanced panel of 36 countries from 2017 to 2023 (252 observations), drawing on the Global AI Vibrancy Tool, World Bank Open Data, and the World Energy Council’s Energy Trilemma Index. Box–Cox transformations were applied to address skewness, and panel econometric models (fixed and random effects) with robust standard errors were estimated. The FE model shows no significant within-country effect of AI vibrancy on energy equity (R² = 0.012). The RE model indicates a positive association: a one-unit increase in the AI vibrancy score results in an improvement of 0.00165 in the energy equity index (p < 0.01). At the same time, GDP per capita exerts a strong and highly significant effect (p < 0.001). The RE model explains 12.4% of the overall variation in energy equity. After correcting for heteroscedasticity and cross-sectional dependence, GDP per capita remains significant, whereas the effect of AI vibrancy weakens to marginal significance (p ≈ 0.09). Country-specific effects further reveal systematic over- and under-performance beyond what AI vibrancy and income predict, underscoring the critical role of governance and institutional quality in shaping energy equity outcomes.AcknowledgmentThe article was prepared as a part of the MSCA4Ukraine project 06030419, European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme. Views and opinions expressed are, however, those of the authors only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union, the European Research Executive Agency, or the MSCA4Ukraine Consortium. Neither the European Union nor the European Research Executive Agency, nor the MSCA4Ukraine Consortium as a whole, nor any individual member institutions of the MSCA4Ukraine Consortium can be held responsible for them.

Color correction is an important methodology where a digital image’s colors undergo a transformation to more accurately represent their appearance using a predefined set of illumination conditions. Colorimetric measurements in diagnostics are sensitive to very small changes in colors and therefore require consistent, reproducible illumination conditions to produce accurate results, making color correction a necessity. This paper presents an image color correction pipeline developed by HueDx, Inc., using transfer algorithms that improve upon existing methodologies and demonstrates real-world applications of this pipeline in colorimetric clinical chemistry using a smartphone enabled, paper-based total protein diagnostic assay. Our pipeline is able to compensate for a variety of illumination conditions to provide consistent imaging for quantitative colorimetric measurements using white-balancing, multivariate gaussian distributions and histogram regression via dynamic, non-linear interpolating lookup tables. We empirically demonstrate that each point in the color correction pipeline provides a theoretical basis for achieving consistent and precise color correction. To show this, we measure color difference with deltaE (ΔE00), alongside quantifying performance of the HueDx color correction system, including the phone hardware, color sticker manufacturing quality and software correction capabilities. The results show that the HueDx color correction system is capable of restoring images to near-imperceptible levels of difference independent of their original illumination conditions including brightness and color temperature. Comparisons drawn from the paper-based total protein assay calibrated and quantified with and without using the HueDx color correction pipeline show that the coefficient of variation in precision testing is almost twice as high without color-correcting. Limits of blank, detection and quantitation were also higher without color-correction. Overall, we were able to demonstrate the HueDx platform improves reading and outcome of the total protein diagnostic assay and is useful for the development of smartphone-based quantitative colorimetric diagnostic assays for point-of-care testing.

Abstract The journey for students of color (SOC) in predominantly White independent schools (PWIS) is paved with significant educational opportunities and challenging racial conflicts. Little is known about how SOC manage the stress of negotiating these struggles and successes in daily relationships with peers and teachers or within the school climates where the policies and practices often reveal a bracketed commitment to diversity. For decades, programs like Prep for Prep have provided academic and social supports to prepare low‐income SOC for matriculation in PWIS. Using Racial Encounter Coping Appraisal and Socialization Theory, we investigated the racial stress and coping experiences of 593 SOC from the Prep for Prep leadership training program. After measuring development on the racial coping self‐efficacy scale, three factors identified that SOC range in their confidence inreadingor noticing racial microaggressions in their schools,recastingstressful racial conflicts from “impossible” to “manageable,” andresolvingracial tensions by confronting microaggressions. Results found that a moderated mediation model explains that the relationship of SOC school climate perceptions to school belonging and affect toward school are mediated through racial coping stress. SOC with high racial coping self‐efficacy (RCSE) show less negative influence from that stress on their academic and social experiences compared to those low in RCSE. Implications for supporting SOC by buffering racial stress within PWIS are discussed.

Ce chapitre présente le commentaire d'un expert indépendant sur l'avenir de la fonction publique, le professeur Peter Cappelli, directeur du Centre des ressources humaines de Wharton à l'université de Pennsylvanie. Il aborde deux types de prédictions assez différents concernant l'avenir : le premier concerne les prédictions basées sur des données historiques, tandis que le second type de prédiction - l'avis de l'expert - est utilisé lorsque le passé n'est pas un bon moyen de prédire l'avenir. Il prend en compte les deux types de prédictions en vue d'identifier les tendances en matière de gestion des ressources humaines et la manière dont celles-ci sont susceptibles (ou non) d'avoir un impact sur l'avenir de la fonction publique.

This chapter presents independent expert commentary on the Future of the Public Service by Professor Peter Cappelli, Director of Wharton’s Center for Human Resources at the University of Pennsylvania. He discusses two different types of predictions about the future: the first relates to predictions based on historical data, while the second type of prediction, expert judgement, is used when the past is not a good predictor of the future. He considers both types of predictions to identify trends in Human Resource Management and how these are likely (or not) to impact the future of the public service.

Introduction Talent management is the process through which employers anticipate and meet their needs for human capital. It is about getting the right people with the right skills into the right jobs at the right time. It is a lot to get right, and few organizations do. The difficulty in getting it right is a problem for firms insofar as talent-management decisions shape firm competencies and success. It is a problem for workers, because these decisions impact their careers. And it is ultimately a problem for society, because these decisions, in aggregate, ultimately affect economic growth and social stability. If there is an upside to this problem, it is that we can easily identify its cause. The central new aspects of business are uncertainty and change, yet traditional workforce-planning models were based on predictability and stability, which allowed organizations to forecast demand with a relatively high degree of accuracy. The supply of talent was assumed to be under the organization’s control, given the prevalence of internal labor markets and single-firm careers. As the external environment became more difficult to forecast and traditional internal labor markets began to disintegrate, the inability of these strategic workforce planning systems to account for uncertainty in demand and disruptions in supply led many organizations to abandon them altogether.

The analyses below compare the career histories and personal characteristics of the executives in the top ranks of the world's largest and most stable business operations, the Fortune 100, between 1980 and 2001. To our knowledge, there have been no prior studies of contemporary changes in the experience or attributes of executives beyond CEOs. In 2001, these executives were younger, more likely to be women, and less likely to have been Ivy League educated. Most important, they got to the executive suite about four years faster than in 1980 and did so by holding fewer jobs on the way to the top. (In particular, women in 2001 got to their executive jobs faster than their male counterparts --there were no women executives in the Fortune 100 in 1980). Executives in 2001 also spent about five years less in their current organization and were more likely to be hired from the outside than in 1980. Interestingly, the most stable firms -the 26 that were in the Fortune 100 in both periods -had just as much lifetime employment among executives in 2001 as in 1980, although changes in other aspects of careers were similar. Overall, the path to the executive suite and the attributes of the individuals who get there appear to have changed even in the largest and most stable business operations.

Functionally flexible systems for organizing work may reduce job instability and insecurity by reducing employers’ reliance on job cuts or contingent work to respond to changes in their environments. Related arguments hypothesize that contingent work allows firms to adjust labor while “buffering” their core of permanent workers from job instability. We find evidence that internally flexible work systems are associated with reduced involuntary and voluntary turnover in manufacturing but that contingent work and involuntary turnover of the permanent workforce are positively related regardless of sector, in contrast to the prediction of the core‐periphery hypothesis.

Concern about job instability and insecurity has a long history and has generated a considerable body of research across the social sciences, most recently focused on whether job stability and security have declined. Internally flexible systems for organizing work, sometimes called 'functionally flexible' systems, have been proposed as arrangements that can reduce job instability and insecurity by reducing the need for firms to rely on job cuts or contingent work to be able to respond to changes in their environments. Related arguments have been made with regard to contingent work - that it allows firms to adjust labor while 'buffering' their core of permanent workers from instability. We examine these arguments using three measures of instability and insecurity - voluntary and involuntary turnover and the use of contingent work - drawn from a national probability sample of establishments. We find evidence that internally flexible work systems are associated with reduced voluntary and involuntary turnover in manufacturing. But in the rest of the economy and indeed overall, they tend to be positively associated with all three measures. Further, the use of contingent work is, in fact, positively related to involuntary turnover even in manufacturing. The evidence therefore suggests that on net employers seeking flexibility in labor tend to use flexible work practices, contingent work, and turnover as complements, while only in manufacturing is there some evidence of substitutability between internal job flexibility and external job churning.