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Survival analysis: Forecasting lifespans of patients and products

How long will you live? Should you spring for that AppleCare+ warranty for your iPhone? When will your buddy pay you back for that lunch? For centuries, soothsayers have striven to understand the lifespan of things – be they patient longevity, product lifecycles, or even time to loan default. Nowadays, scientists have turned away from reading tea leaves and toward survival analysis – a complex data science method for predicting not only whether an event will happen (the death of a patient, the failure of a product or machine, default on a payment, and so on) but when this event is likely to occur. But it’s problematic. Until now, the tools of survival analysis have only been applicable in certain settings. This is due to the inherent heterogeneity of what is being analyzed: differences in patient lifestyles, demographics, product usage patterns, and so on. New research by Goizueta Business School’s Donald Lee, associate professor of information systems and operations management and of biostatistics and bioinformatics, has yielded a new tool that greatly extends survival analysis to broader use cases. “Historically, scientists have used classic survival analysis tools to predict the lifespan of different things in different fields, from products to patients,” Lee said. “Since the 1950s, the Kaplan-Meier estimator has been the benchmark for analyzing lifetime data, particularly in clinical trials. The next breakthrough came in the 1970s when the Cox proportional hazards model was introduced, which allows researchers to incorporate variables that can affect the predictability of things like patient mortality.” The problem with the existing survival analysis tools, Lee said, is that they make certain assumptions that can skew the predictions if the assumptions are not met. “There are very few existing tools that can incorporate variables without imposing assumptions on how they affect survival, let alone when there are a lot of variables that can also change over time. For example, two iPhones will have different lifespans depending on the temperature at which they are stored, amongst many other factors. But it’s unlikely that storing your phone at 30 degrees will halve its lifespan compared to storing it at 60 degrees. This sort of linear relationship is commonly assumed by existing tools.” Lee’s team developed a new survival methodology based on something called gradient boosting: a machine learning technique that combines decision trees to yield predictions. The method, Lee said, is totally assumption-free (or nonparametric in technical parlance) and can deal with a large number of variables that can change continuously over time, making it significantly more general than existing methods. Nothing like it has been seen until now, he noted. “Calculating the survival rate of anything is super complex because of the variables. Say you want to create an app for a smart watch that monitors the wearer’s vitals and use this information to create a real-time warning indicator for stroke. Doing this accurately is difficult for two reasons,” Lee explained. “First, a large number of variables may be relevant to stroke risk, and the variables can interact in ways that break the assumptions central to existing survival analysis methods. And second, variables like blood pressure vary over time, and it is the recent measurements that are most informative. This introduces an additional time dimension that further complicates things.” The software implementation of Lee’s method, BoXHED, overcomes both issues and allows scientists to develop real-time predictive models for conditions like stroke. The trained model can then be ported to a watch app to tell its wearer if and when they’re likely to have a stroke, a process known as inferencing in machine learning lingo. The implications, Lee said, are huge. “BoXHED now opens the door for modern applications of survival analysis. In previous research, I have looked at the design of early warning mortality indicators for patients with advanced cancer and also for patients in the ICU. These use other methods to make predictions at fixed points in time, but now they can be transformed into real-time warning indicators using BoXHED.” He cited the case of end-stage cancer patients who are often better served by hospice care than by aggressive therapy. “Accurate predictions of survival are absolutely critical for care planning. In previous analyses, we have seen that using existing predictive models to inform end-of-life care planning can potentially avert $1.9 million in medical costs and 1,600 days of unnecessary inpatient care per 1,000 patient visits in the United States. BoXHED is likely to lead to even better results.” Lee’s research paper is forthcoming in the Annals of Statistics. He has also created an open-source software implementation of BoXHED, which can radically improve the accuracy of survival analysis across a breadth of applications. The paper describing BoXHED was published in the International Conference on Machine Learning, and the latest version of the BoXHED software can be found online. If you are a journalist or looking to speak with Donald Lee – simply click on his icon now to arrange an interview or appointment today.

Study of auto recalls shows carmakers delay announcements until they can 'hide in the herd'

BLOOMINGTON, Ind. - Automotive recalls are occurring at record levels, but seem to be announced after inexplicable delays. A research study of 48 years of auto recalls announced in the United States finds carmakers frequently wait to make their announcements until after a competitor issues a recall - even if it is unrelated to similar defects. This suggests that recall announcements may not be triggered solely by individual firms' product quality defect awareness or concern for the public interest, but may also be influenced by competitor recalls, a phenomenon that no prior research had investigated. Researchers analyzed 3,117 auto recalls over a 48-year period -- from 1966 to 2013 -- using a model to investigate recall clustering and categorized recalls as leading or following within a cluster. They found that 73 percent of recalls occurred in clusters that lasted 34 days and had 7.6 following recalls on average. On average, a cluster formed after a 16-day gap in which no recalls were announced. They found 266 such clusters over the period studied. "The implication is that auto firms are either consciously or unconsciously delaying recall announcements until they are able to hide in the herd," said George Ball, assistant professor of operations and decision technologies and Weimer Faculty Fellow at the Indiana University Kelley School of Business. "By doing this, they experience a significantly reduced stock penalty from their recall." Ball is co-author of the study, "Hiding in the Herd: The Product Recall Clustering Phenomenon," recently published online in Manufacturing and Service Operations Management, along with faculty at the University of Illinois, the University of Notre Dame, the University of Minnesota and Michigan State University. Researchers found as much as a 67 percent stock market penalty difference between leading recalls, which initiate the cluster, and following recalls, who follow recalls and hide in the herd to experience a lower stock penalty. This indicates a "meaningful financial incentive for auto firms to cluster following recalls behind a leading recall announcement," researchers said. "This stock market penalty difference dissipates over time within a cluster. Additionally, across clusters, the stock market penalty faced by the leading recall amplifies as the time since the last cluster increases." The authors also found that firms with the highest quality reputation, in particular Toyota, triggered the most recall followers. "Even though Toyota announces some of the fewest recalls, when they do announce a recall, 31 percent of their recalls trigger a cluster and leads to many other following recalls," Ball said. "This number is between 5 and 9 percent for all other firms. This means that firms are likely to hide in the herd when the leading recall is announced by a firm with a stellar quality reputation such as Toyota. "A key recommendation of the study is for the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) to require auto firms to report the specific defect awareness date for each recall, and to make this defect awareness date a searchable and publicly available data field in the auto recall dataset NHTSA provides online," Ball added. "This defect awareness date is required and made available by other federal regulators that oversee recalls in the U.S., such as the Food and Drug Administration. Making this defect awareness date a transparent, searchable and publicly available data field may discourage firms from hiding in the herd and prompt them to make more timely and transparent recall decisions." Co-authors of the study were Ujjal Mukherjee, assistant professor of business administration at the Gies College of Business at the University of Illinois who was the lead author; Kaitlin Wowak, assistant professor of IT, analytics, and operations at the Mendoza College of Business at the University of Notre Dame; Karthik Natarajan, assistant professor of supply chain and operations at the Carlson School of Management at the University of Minnesota; and Jason Miller, associate professor of supply chain management at the Broad College of Business at Michigan State University.

Why are U.S. corporate boards under-diversified?

Research tells us that firms with diverse workforces generally outperform those that do not. And in recent years, corporate America has taken significant strides towards greater heterogeneity in the employee base. But a problem remains at the top. U.S. boardrooms remain overwhelmingly Anglo Saxon and male. No less than 81 percent of the Standard & Poor (S&P) 1500 Index directors in America today are white men. White women account for 11 percent, while ethnic minority men make up 6 percent. Meanwhile, female minority board members account for just 2 percent of the total. For businesses, this is becoming problematic, not least because institutional investors and regulators like the Securities and Exchange Commission have started asking firms to open up about their processes in selecting board members. Where diversity is a criterion, firms are required to be transparent about specifications and frameworks. Shedding light on this issue is new research from Grace Pownall, professor of accounting, and Justin Short, assistant professor of accounting, at Emory University’s Goizueta Business School. Together with Zawadi Lemayian of Washington University, they parsed 12 years of data on gender, ethnicity, and salaries from the S&P 1500 to build a composite picture of who’s who and who’s paid what in U.S. boardrooms. What they found points to a systemic shortage of female and minority executives making it onto shortlists for board appointments. But that’s not all. Once women and minority men do make it onto the board, there’s another roadblock waiting for them: they are not getting promoted at the same rate as their white, male counterparts. There seem to be two complex dynamics at play, said Short: a glass ceiling effect hampering the upward trajectory of Black, female, and other minority executives, and what he and his co-authors call “myopic” bias on the part of corporate America. “We developed two hypotheses that might explain what’s behind the lack of diversity on boards,” explained Short. “The glass ceiling hypothesis comes from what we see as a shortfall of women and ethnic minorities in the workforce relative to white men—so the theory here is that these groups just aren’t getting promoted to the point where they would be considered for board positions.” “The alternative hypothesis we worked on was that there might actually be a plentiful supply, but that companies just don’t see directors from different backgrounds as being as valuable in the same way,” he said. “And we would put this down to some kind of institutional myopia or bias at the very highest echelons of business.” To put these hypotheses to the test, Short and his colleagues first collected demographical data on American board members from a database compiled by Institutional Shareholders Services. Here they were able to determine the gender and ethnicity of individuals. They also ran a simple statistical regression on salaries using data from S&P. Then they compared the two. “Economic theory tells us that if there’s a high demand for diverse directors—women and ethnic minorities—and there’s a low supply of them, then these directors will be able to command higher salaries than others,” said Short. “It’s a simple case of supply and demand, and minorities will come at a greater premium.” Looking at the S&P 1500 data, they found that female and minority directors were indeed getting paid more on average than white male counterparts in other companies. And when they analyzed this more closely, Short and his co-authors found that these salaries were in general being paid by larger, more successful firms. “We can see that women and minorities are commanding higher compensation than the average white male director across the S&P universe of 1500 companies, and it’s the bigger, better paying firms that are hiring them,” Short said. “So that tells us that the top companies are proactively trying to build diversity in their boardrooms. At the same time, it shows there is a deficit of supply in this talent pool—the so-called glass ceiling dynamic.” To understand whether bias or institutional myopia might also be limiting the prospects of Black, female, and ethnic directors, Short et al. also looked at differences in compensation within the same company, and here they found something striking. While they made more on average than the typical white male director in U.S. firms, minority directors were being paid around 3 percent less than their direct counterparts – the white male directors on the same board. All this scrutiny begs the questions: What is going on in the American boardroom? And why is there still such a stark lack of diversity in the upper echelons of business in the U.S. today? “This tells us something important,” said Short. “Once these directors make it to the board, for most of them that’s it. They don’t advance or achieve promotion at the same rate.” This could be due to bias or what Short calls a Rolodex effect: “Maybe it’s because they didn’t go to the same school as the chairman of the board, or weren’t connected socially in the same way, so they don’t appear in the Rolodex of candidates with right or familiar credentials to get promoted within the board,” he said. “We know it’s not about hard skills or aptitudes because the data shows us that women and minority directors typically hold more qualifications than their counterparts. But for whatever reason, once they are on the board, they fail to advance in the same way as white men.” Interestingly, Short and his colleagues found that there was a very small number of women and minority directors sitting on the boards of multiple companies in the U.S. “Pulling it all together, we see that there’s a generalized shortage of women and ethnic group candidates in the U.S.,” Short said. “Successful companies are proactively on the lookout for them and offer higher compensation to attract them. “But there seems to be a glass ceiling effect acting as a bottle neck for talent. We also see that minority directors become a bit stuck once they’re on a board. The upward momentum tails off relative to their white, male colleagues. This could be due to bias or myopic thinking.” All of this should provide rich food for thought for the most senior decision-makers in U.S. enterprises, according to Short and his co-authors. With the pressure on to drive board-level diversity in corporate American, leaders need to be cognizant of the roadblocks or cut-off points to tie to ethnicity and gender. “Diversity is something we urgently need to enable and nurture in the United States. Without diversity, creativity and innovation can stall, and in business you run the risk of deferring to group think—sourcing ideas and perspectives from the same small pool of shared experience or expertise,” said Short. “It’s encouraging to see that diversity has increased over time and the largest companies are proactive. But there are still vast gaps of representation on the board compared to the workforce. There’s still work to be done because diversity in American business should be commonplace.” If you are a journalist looking to cover this research or to learn more about the diversification of corporate boards in America, then let our experts help. Grace Pownall, professor of accounting, and Justin Short, assistant professor of accounting, at Emory University’s Goizueta Business School are both available for interviews; simply click on either expert's icon to arrange a time today.

Japan Society Presents When Practice Becomes Form: Carpentry Tools from Japan

Installation view at the Takenaka Carpentry Tools Museum, Kobe, Japan. On the occasion of the 50th anniversary of Japan Society’s landmark building, the institution is pleased to present the new exhibition, When Practice Becomes Form: Carpentry Tools from Japan. The exhibition celebrates the spirit of architecture and craftsmanship through Japanese woodworking tools as well as architectural patterns and various models. The site-specific installation, conceived by the esteemed contemporary architect Sou Fujimoto in collaboration with Brooklyn-based Popular Architecture, reinterprets major themes from the exhibition and is in dialogue with the gallery’s spaces, highlighting an enduring connection between traditional Japanese wooden construction and modern architecture. Featuring hand tools and joinery techniques that have been used for hundreds of years to build Japan’s wooden architectural masterpieces (from temples and shrines to teahouses and bridges), the exhibition unpacks how the intangible qualities of craftsmanship, such as consummate experience, knowledge, and the honed skills of master carpenters, have been transformed into significant forms of architecture. A diverse array of tools—planes, chisels, saws—have played an important role in the development of architecture in Japan’s history, and this philosophy extends to Japan’s cultural heritage today. Integral to the process of making by master carpenters (tōryo) is their extensive knowledge of the local environment and of wood as a material. Using natural resources and learning from their predecessors’ practices, they construct buildings using a refined methodology. Their philosophy of sustainability—for example, joinery can be restored or repaired as needed by future craftspeople—has been handed down over generations. Themes emerging from the exhibition have been interpreted by the internationally acclaimed architect Sou Fujimoto. His firm, Sou Fujimoto Architects, is based in Paris and Tokyo, and has been selected as site design producer for the 2025 World Exposition in Osaka, Japan. Fujimoto has designed the Serpentine Gallery pavilion in London (2013) among other internationally recognized projects. For this exhibition, Fujimoto has worked with Popular Architecture to explore the coexistence of nature and architecture. “Japan Society has been a home of cultural exchange, and a meeting place of past and present. In this exhibition, traditional Japanese craftsmanship is revealed in a new light by the design of contemporary architect Sou Fujimoto, and it becomes a precious educational opportunity to learn from this history,” says Yukie Kamiya, Japan Society Gallery Director. The building of Japan Society’s headquarters, designed by the architect Junzo Yoshimura (1908–1997), a major figure in 20th century Japanese architecture, opened to the public in 1971, becoming New York City’s first permanent structure designed by a Japanese citizen. It will commemorate its 50th anniversary in 2021. The building resides on land donated by John D. Rockefeller 3rd (1906–1978), former President and Chairman of Japan Society, who sought to revitalize the organization’s activities after World War II. Rockefeller 3rd and Yoshimura first met in Japan in 1951, and their friendship for over two decades resulted in Japan Society’s current building in Manhattan. Since its opening, the building has continued to serve as the central platform for the interexchange of ideas, knowledge, and innovation between the U.S. and Japan within a global context. In 2011, the building was designated landmark status by the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission. When Practice Becomes Form: Carpentry Tools from Japan explores the connections between techniques, tools, and forms from traditional practices in Japanese carpentry and contemporary design perspectives. Paying homage to Japan Society’s building, where the arts and cultures of Japan and the United States intersect, this exhibition delves into the artistry and craftsmanship of architectural practice. Complementing the exhibition is a series of related public programs, including lectures, a hands-on workshop, and gallery tours. A digital publication illustrated and designed by Nathan Antolik further expands upon the exhibition. This exhibition is organized by Japan Society in collaboration with Takenaka Carpentry Tools Museum, Japan. The exhibition design is by Sou Fujimoto, in collaboration with Popular Architecture as local architect. About Sou Fujimoto Born in Hokkaido in 1971, Sou Fujimoto graduated from the Department of Architecture, Faculty of Engineering at Tokyo University and established Sou Fujimoto Architects in 2000. He has won several international competitions, including his recent 1st prize for the 2014 International Competition for the Second Folly of Montpellier, France ("L'Arbre Blanc"). In 2019, he was selected as the master architect for the Tsuda University Kodaira Campus Master Plan development. Among his notable projects are the annual summer pavilion for the Serpentine Gallery in London (2013)—the youngest architect to receive the commission; House NA in Tokyo (2012); Musashino Art University Museum & Library (2010); and House N (2008). In 2012, he was part of the Japanese team that won a Golden Lion award for Best National Participation at the Venice Architecture Biennale for their design of alternative housing concepts for homes destroyed by the 2011 tsunami. Most recently, he was selected as site producer for the 2025 World Exposition in Osaka, Japan. About Popular Architecture Brooklyn-based Popular Architecture combines simplicity with innovation across multiple scales ranging from master plans to buildings, interiors, and products. The firm is directed by Casey Mack, RA, LEED AP. After completing his M.Arch at Columbia, Mack worked with the Office for Metropolitan Architecture in Hong Kong and New York. He has taught urban design at the New York Institute of Technology and Passivhaus housing at Parsons School of Constructed Environments. Currently, with the support of the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts, he is writing the book Digesting Metabolism: Artificial Land in Japan 1954-2202 (Hatje Cantz Verlag, 2021).

Examining the Popularity of the Bernie Sanders Meme

The image is a familiar one to millions across the country: Senator Bernie Sanders sitting with his legs crossed and arms across his chest—wearing a face mask, warm coat and knitted mittens—and watching as Joe Biden was sworn in as the 46th president of the United States on January 20, 2021. Two weeks later, however, the photo looks different. That's because very quickly that inauguration snapshot became an internet sensation, with people photoshopping it to create social media memes—placing Senator Sanders in famous paintings or scenes in movies ranging from the Breakfast Club to Star Trek. But what it is that draws people to these scenes and motivates them to create memes? Charles L. Folk, PhD, a professor of psychological and brain sciences at Villanova University, discusses the psychology behind it all. “Scenes and people activate ‘schemas’ in our memory,” says Dr. Folk. “Schemas are organized structures of knowledge, stored in memory, that are built up through experience. For example, we all have a ‘restaurant’ schema that stores information about the things that are typically in restaurants and the kinds of interactions we can expect in a restaurant.” Research suggests that our attention is drawn to objects that are incongruous with the “context” of a scene, Dr. Folk notes. “Thus, if we see a bedroom scene, our bedroom schema is activated, and our attention would be drawn to an object that is incongruent with that schema—like a toaster in a bedroom scene.” Dr. Folk shares that we have schemas for people as well. “Seeing Bernie Sanders activates our Bernie schema,” he says. “Bernie, in particular, has a very unique schema—so just seeing the picture of Bernie with his Vermont mittens is interesting/humorous because it is quite consistent with our schema of him.” “However, activating our Bernie schema in the context of an incongruent scene schema—like Bernie sitting on the bridge of the Starship Enterprise or a well-known movie set/scene—is particularly alluring precisely because of that incongruity,” continues Dr. Folk. Dr. Folk notes that the development of the app that can place the Bernie meme anywhere in Google Maps motivates people further to create their own versions of outrageous incongruity. “This contributes to the viral nature of the meme,” Dr. Folk says.

A Free App Can Help School and College Administrators Contain COVID-19

With COVID-19 infection rates rising across the country as students return to school for the spring semester, how will schools and colleges control the spread? COVID Back-to-School can help. It’s a free online tool that predicts the outcome of taking specific measures to curtail the spread of the virus. The algorithm powering the app was developed by Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute computer science professor Malik Magdon-Ismail and builds upon the success of COVID War Room, an algorithm that can predict the spread of COVID-19 in smaller cities and counties across the United States and select international locations. Administrators at Rensselaer consulted COVID Back-to-School when devising a COVID-19 management plan that successfully kept the infection rate on campus well below 0.5% during the fall 2020 semester, even with most students attending in-person classes. Magdon-Ismail, an expert in machine learning, designed the algorithm to allow administrators at schools of all levels, as well as ordinary citizens, to quantitatively analyze various strategies for containing the virus. Users can enter details about their institution — like the zip codes students come from, the size of the school, how often students are tested, the number of expected interactions during a class or meal — and COVID Back-to-School will project outcomes like the proportion of students likely to arrive infected, the proportion of students likely to be infected over time, and the number of likely new infections every 14 days. “This is a publicly available tool that we’re hoping schools can use to quantitatively analyze re-opening strategies,” Magdon-Ismail said. “Schools can use it, at least, to evaluate how their current strategy will play out assuming an infection on campus. Better still, COVID Back-to-School allows schools to try out various strategies before actually implementing them, to see what works and what doesn’t.” Magdon-Ismail is available to discuss how the algorithm works and the utility it may provide to colleges and universities across the country in the spring semester.

How the Biden Administration Can Help Save the Planet

With the inauguration of Joseph R. Biden as the 46th president of the United States came a slew of executive orders—and perhaps most notably America's reentry into the Paris Climate Accord. After the Obama administration joined the largest global cooperative agreement to limit the emission of dangerously climate-altering greenhouse gasses in 2015, the U.S. withdrew in 2017 under former president Donald Trump. Villanova University biology professor Samantha Chapman, PhD, studies how "blue carbon" solutions, like the restoration of wetlands, can contribute to slowing the harmful impact of climate change on the planet. Recently, Dr. Chapman broke down the top three things the Biden administration must do to save the planet, since we are, as she puts it, "close to some scary tipping points." #1: Pressure Brazil’s President Bolsonaro to stop the devastation of the Amazon. "The Amazon Rainforest regulates our global climate. It is imperative that through diplomacy and aid, we incentivize developing countries to preserve their intact lands and biodiversity. We can't do this without helping local communities incentivize the people living in these places to save these lands. Road building in forests is a huge cause of our planet's downward slope." #2: Invest in restoration of natural ecosystems. "We must invest resources into coastal wetlands and forests, here and abroad. USAID could be partially retooled in partnership with the United Stated Geological Survey (USGS), which already does this. These natural ecosystems will serve as natural climate solutions and be harbors for threatened species and nice places for humans to recreate. We must restore the opportunity for nature to re-invoke the necessary feedbacks that make the ecosystems work. Sometimes this involves complicated engineering, sometimes it is simpler and means giving nature space to restore. We're trying both." #3: Find ways to make people feel connected to land and nature—and value it. "This is a vague one and not one that I'm sure any administration can do. The pandemic has given me hope on this—I see so many more people out hiking, fishing, walking, and hanging out in parks. When time comes for voting on taxes, people have to remember that these state parks and preserves and even neighborhood parks cost money to staff and preserve. The U.S. has incredible land and nature and yet, in my experience, Americans value and understand it less than other countries. Some of that has to do with our frontier history. We can learn from Native Americans. Appointing Representative Deb Haaland as the secretary of the interior is one good step the Biden administration has taken in this direction." Dr. Chapman emphasizes that despite the uphill battle ahead, she remains hopeful. "Left to heal and helped to heal, the ecosystem processes that sustain our lives and those of the other amazing organisms on our planet can be restored," she notes. "Good things are happening. They just need to happen at a much larger scale."

Why do presidential inaugurations matter? Let our expert explain

All eyes are on Washington on Wednesday as the country, and the world for that matter, tune in to watch the inauguration ceremony of Joe Biden as President of the United States. It’s a formal occasion, and one that comes with pomp and circumstance – but after the speeches and the parties, is it a day that really has significance? It’s a question that’s being asked, and one that Dimitris Xygalatas, an anthropologist and cognitive scientist at the University of Connecticut, decided to answer in a recent contribution to The Conversation. In the piece, he examines the appeal of such special and momentous occasions on society and why rituals have a great impact on the public’s perception on major events. The piece is attached – and if you are a reporter looking to learn more of speak to Professor Xygalatas about the significance of the inauguration, simply click on his icon to arrange an interview now.

Inauguration day - Trump's legacy, Biden's priorities

Speaking this morning on BBC radio, Dr McCrisken said: "President Trump’s legacy is being written right now. He’s ending his presidency under such dark clouds - he’s been impeached, there’s going to be a trial in the Senate that could convict him and prevent him from becoming a candidate again for the Presidency, so he’s leaving with lots of controversy – which of course is something that he’s always cultivated to a large extent, he wants to make everything about him. "Even today, by not showing up at the inauguration, by having a separate departure address, by issuing pardons including to his close former adviser Steve Bannon, he’s still cultivating that attention. That’s going to be the biggest Trump legacy - the degree to which he has attempted to shake up American politics – but the normality of American politics continues, we’re going to have a handover of power today through this inauguration, in the way that it always happens, every 4 years and the pendulum will swing again politically back to the Democrats. "There’s lots of pomp and circumstance around the Inauguration but the main moment is at noon, when Joe Biden will take the oath of office to become President of the United States – place his hand on a bible and say the sacred words with the Supreme Court Chief Justice presiding, and then Kamala Harris, very significantly, will also be sworn in as Vice President. She’s the first woman to become VP and the first VP of Black and South Asian heritage. It’s a really significant moment for both of them. "After the swearing in the next significant moment is the Inaugural Address, the first time Joe Biden speaks to the country as President. He’ll try and set the tone for his presidency – we can expect him to seek unity and healing but also assert his policy positions and his approach and set himself apart from the last four years under Trump. "Biden wants to hit the ground running, as soon as all the ceremonies are over today he’s going to be heading up to the White House and he’ll start business as President. One of the first things he’ll do, which a lot of Presidents do when they take office, is issue a series of Executive Orders – these are orders that are given directly by the President to the rest of the Executive Branch to implement policy in particular ways, and he’s going to use these to very quickly overturn some of the things that Trump did, like re-joining the Paris Climate Agreement, changing policies around immigration, changing policies around COVID-19 as well. "But he’s also putting forward some really significant legislative proposals to Congress, he’s seeking a very quick economic stimulus, another 1.9 trillion dollars of COVID relief, and a new immigration policy is in the offing. COVID-19 particularly is the thing he really wants to challenge as quickly as possible and try to turn around the situation in the United States where the virus is still ripping though the country – from his position as President, he’s going to try and get 100 million vaccinations in his first 100 days, that’s what he’s promising. "There’s a lot of challenges here and it’s going to be very difficult for him - particularly being overshadowed perhaps by the impeachment trial – so it will be an interesting few weeks and months ahead at the start of his Presidency." 20 January 2021

Impeach or impose the 25th Amendment? A closer look at how Democrats could oust President Donald Trump

The U.S. House of Representatives is set to vote Wednesday to impeach President Donald Trump for inciting the deadly insurrection at the United States Capitol last week. Many House Democrats have called for Trump’s resignation and urged Vice President Mike Pence to remove him under the 25th Amendment. However, with those two options looking extremely unlikely, Democrats are preparing to impeach the president for a second time. The question is how quickly will impeachment happen? On Monday, the House introduced a single article for "incitement of insurrection," which could allow a fast-tracked floor vote on impeachment by Wednesday. Upon receiving the article, the Senate must take it up either through a vote to dismiss the charge or, if that fails, moving ahead with a trial to determine whether to convict the 45th president. There’s been a lot of coverage – and a lot of opinions shared. If you are a journalist covering this ongoing story, that’s where our experts on this topic can help. Dr. Martha Ginn, professor of political science at Augusta University, is an expert on the judicial process, constitutional law and the U.S. Supreme Court. If you have questions, let Ginn share her expertise and experience to ensure your coverage is accurate. Ginn is available to speak with media about this topic – simply click on her name to arrange an interview today.