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A risk–return trade‐off or co‐movement? Are food processing firms risk‐averse?
No full textAbstractWe build a two‐moment decision‐theoretic framework to study how firms in the food‐processing industry negotiate between risk and return while relying on imported inputs for production at an intensive margin. Two possibilities emerge: either a co‐movement or a trade‐off in risk and return under various industry and economic conditions. Building on our theoretical setting, we design a testable empirical framework that considers a panel of 316 firms in the Indian food‐processing industry between 1993 and 2009. We find strong evidence of a decrease in the absolute risk aversion preference, although the magnitude varies measurably across firms
Ofsted Research Review - Computing
Get PDFThis inaugural issue of Sapientia is led by Miles Berry, Professor of Computing Education at the University of Roehampton, and a contributor to a wide range of computing projects, including the computing programmes of study in the National Curriculum, Barefoot Computing and Switched On Computing.Berry provides a debrief on the latest Ofsted Research Review on Computing, highlighting its challenges and opportunities, and perhaps most importantly, providing a number of positive conclusions drawn from the review and including Ofsted observations that Computing should be an entitlement for all up to the end of Key Stage 4, deserves the curriculum time needed to do it justice, and that Computing teachers should be entitled to subject specific professional development.This is an Ofsted review, but with the weight of concern carried by the teaching profession about how Computing can be addressed in schools that are frequently short of resources, it could also be a welcome platform for development
Rigorous idiography: Exploring subjective and idiographic data with rigorous methods—The method of derangements
No full textPsychological research often seeks general rules applying across individuals, an aim that is in tension with examining that which is unique to any individual. There are general statistical regularities across individuals’ subjective self-report which enable much psychology and psychotherapy research to combine data from self-report questionnaire responses with statistical and psychometric methods to create a fundamental part of Cronbach and Meehl’s foundational nomological networks of validity. However, these methods only apply when most participants answer the same questions on measures creating nomothetic data and this has led to a neglect of idiographic data. This paper reviews a method of analysis of idiographic data, of “rigorous idiography”: the method of derangements. This is a remarkably simple statistical test of whether purely idiographic data convey reliable information. We show how the method appeared to become stuck in a bibliometric backwater but we expand on its potential for research and practise and hope it will be taken up and used correctly and more widely
The Role of Emotion Regulation and Executive Functioning in the Intervention Outcome of Children with Emotional and Behavioural Problems †
No full textEmotional and behavioural problems are closely associated with impairments in regulating emotions and in executive functions (EF). To examine this further, the aim of the present study was to determine whether EF and emotion regulation at baseline would predict emotional and behavioural problem scores post-intervention, and further explore the extent to which emotion regulation mediates these outcomes. Participants were 41 primary school children who exhibited emotional and/or behavioural problems, aged 8 to 11 years. All the children completed measures of emotional and behavioural problems, cognitive emotion regulation, anxiety symptoms, and performed two experimental tasks to measure working memory and response inhibition before and after participating in a transdiagnostic Cognitive Behaviour Therapy-based programme, “Super Skills for Life” (SSL), and at 3-months follow-up. Results revealed significant reduction in the use of maladaptive emotion regulation strategy catastrophising and other blame following the intervention. Additionally, EF and emotion regulation was associated with outcomes for emotional problems and conduct problems. More specifically maladaptive emotion regulation strategy such as catastrophising and other blame was closely related with self-reports of emotional problems, likewise other blame, was also linked with scores of conduct problems. This study provides preliminary empirical support for EF and emotion regulation in predicting outcomes of emotional and behavioural problems in children following intervention
High Throughput Fluorescence-Based In Vitro Experimental Platform for the Identification of Effective Therapies to Overcome Tumour Microenvironment-Mediated Drug Resistance in AML
No full textThe interactions between Acute Myeloid Leukaemia (AML) leukemic stem cells and the bone marrow (BM) microenvironment play a critical role during AML progression and resistance to drug treatments. Therefore, the identification of novel therapies requires drug-screening methods using in vitro co-culture models that closely recreate the cytoprotective BM setting. We have developed a new fluorescence-based in vitro co-culture system scalable to high throughput for measuring the concomitant effect of drugs on AML cells and the cytoprotective BM microenvironment. eGFP-expressing AML cells are co-cultured in direct contact with mCherry-expressing BM stromal cells for the accurate assessment of proliferation, viability, and signaling in both cell types. This model identified several efficacious compounds that overcome BM stroma-mediated drug resistance against daunorubicin, including the chromosome region maintenance 1 (CRM1/XPO1) inhibitor KPT-330. In silico analysis of genes co-expressed with CRM1, combined with in vitro experiments using our new methodology, also indicates that the combination of KPT-330 with the AURKA pharmacological inhibitor alisertib circumvents the cytoprotection of AML cells mediated by the BM stroma. This new experimental model and analysis provide a more precise screening method for developing improved therapeutics targeting AML cells within the cytoprotective BM microenvironment
Asian Classics on the Victorian Bookshelf:Flights of Translation
No full textThe interest among Victorian readers in classical literature from Asia has been greatly underestimated. The popularity of the Arabian Nights and The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam is well documented. Yet this was also an era in which freethinkers consulted the Quran, in which schoolchildren were given abridgements of the Ramayana to read, in which names like 'Kalidasa' and 'Firdusi' were carved on the façades of public libraries, and in which women's book clubs discussed Japanese poetry. But for the most part, such readers were not consulting the specialist publications of scholarly orientalists. What then were the translations that catalysed these intercultural encounters? Based on a unique methodology marrying translation theory with empirical techniques developed by historians of reading, this book shines light for the first time on the numerous amateur translators or 'popularizers', who were responsible for making these texts accessible and disseminating them to the Victorian general readership.Asian Classics on the Victorian Bookshelf explains the process whereby popular translations were written, published, distributed to bookshops and libraries, and ultimately consumed by readers. It uses the working papers and correspondence of popularizers to demonstrate their techniques and motivations, while the responses of contemporary readers are traced through the pencil marginalia they left behind in dozens of original copies. In spite of their typically limited knowledge of source-languages, Asian Classics argues that popularizers produced versions more respectful of the complexity, cultural difference, and fundamental untranslatability of Asian texts than the professional orientalists whose work they were often adapting. The responses of their readers, likewise, frequently deviated from interpretive norms, and it is proposed that this combination of eccentric translators and unorthodox readers triggered 'flights of translation', whereby historical individuals can be seen to escape the hegemony of orientalist forms of knowledge
Is Daniel a Monster? Reflections on Daniel A. Bell and Wang Pei’s “Subordination without Cruelty” Thesis
No full textDaniel Bell and Wang Pei’s recent monograph, Just Hierarchy, seeks to defend hierarchical relationships against more egalitarian alternatives. This paper addresses their argument, offered in one chapter of the book, in favour of a hierarchical relationship between human and nonhuman animals. This relationship, Bell and Pei argue, should conform to what they call “subordination without cruelty”: it is permissible to subordinate and exploit animals for human ends, provided that we do not treat them cruelly. We focus on three aspects of their view: their argument for a hierarchical view; their understanding of cruelty; and their account of the heightened duties they claim we owe to nonhuman animals who are intelligent, domesticated, and/or “cute.” We argue that the reasons that Bell and Pei offer fail to support their conclusions, and that, even if one accepts a hierarchical view, the conclusions that Bell and Pei draw about the permissibility of practices such as killing animals for food do not follow. We conclude by emphasizing philosophers’ responsibility to thoroughly test their arguments and to engage with existing debates, especially when the practices they seek to justify involve harms of such magnitude
Teacher–Student relationship quality as a barometer of teaching and learning effectiveness: Conceptualization and measurement
No full textBackground: The Teacher–Student relationship (TSR) is instrumental for young children and adolescents' socio‐emotional development and wellbeing as well as academic engagement and progress. Aims: The primary aim of this study was to test the psychometric properties, including reliability and factorial, convergent, and predictive validity, of the Teacher–Student Relationship Quality Questionnaire (TSRQ‐Q) with two samples of students. Sample(s): Participants were 294 students from secondary schools in the East Midlands and the East of England. Participants were separated into two samples; those who completed the TSRQ‐Q with their physical education teacher in mind (n = 150 students) and those who completed it with their mathematics teacher in mind (n = 144 students). Method: A multi‐section questionnaire comprised of the TSRQ‐Q and other validated measures was completed on one occasion by students in both samples to assess their perceptions of the quality of the TSR, positive and negative affect, intrinsic motivation, physical self‐concept, enjoyment, and perceived competence. Results: In both samples, the TSRQ‐Q demonstrated good internal consistency, factorial, convergent, and predictive validity. The quality of the TSR had both direct and indirect effects through positive affect on student outcomes in mathematics and physical education. Conclusions: The TSRQ‐Q is a valid measure for assessing students' perceptions of the quality of the relationship with their teacher. The conceptual and practical significance of this unique relationship was reflected by its dual pathway effect on a range of student outcomes and via influencing students' positive affect in the classroom
The Performativity of AI-powered Protest Detection:How AI Creates a Racialized Protest and Why Looking for ‘Bias’ Is Not a Solution
No full textThis article builds a theoretical framework with which to confront the racializing capabilities of artificial intelligence (AI)-powered real-time Event Detection and Alert Creation (EDAC) software when used for protest detection. It is well-known that many AI-powered systems exacerbate social inequalities by racializing certain groups and individuals. We propose the feminist concept of performativity, as defined by Judith Butler and Karen Barad, as a more comprehensive way to expose and contest the harms wrought by EDAC than that of other “de-biasing” mechanisms. Our use of performativity differs from and complements other Social Studies of Science and Technology (STS) work because of its rigorous approach to how iterative, citational, and material practices produce the effect of race. We focus on Geofeedia and Dataminr, two EDAC companies that claim to be able to “predict” and “recognize” the emergence of dangerous protests, and show how their EDAC tools performatively produce the phenomena which they are supposed to observe. Specifically, we argue that this occurs because these companies and their stakeholders dictate the thresholds of (un)intelligibility, (ab)normality, and (un)certainty by which these tools operate and that this process is oriented toward the production of commercially actionable information