676,404 research outputs found
Defining Trust as Action: An Example from Hungary
No full textThe paper begins with the account of a focus group discussion of Hungarian female managers who demonstrated high level of trust. Drawing on the discussion the author explores the nature of trust and looks at works and research findings in different disciplines. In psychology Erikson’s findings on human growth and development are discussed. Representatives of Eastern and Western philosophy are quoted to highlight the underlying differences of thinking in relation to trust. The impact of cultural heritage and the influence of the environment on trust add further dimensions to the argument. In conclusion it is suggested that management education could be a platform for further research and exploration of trust in individuals and organisations
RoMEO Studies 4: An analysis of Journal publishers' Copyright Agreements
No full textThis article is the fourth in a series of six emanating from the UK JISC-funded RoMEO Project (Rights Metadata for Open archiving). It describes an analysis of 80 scholarly journal publishers’ copyright agreements with a particular view to their effect on author self-archiving. 90% of agreements asked for copyright transfer and 69% asked for it prior to refereeing the paper. 75% asked authors to warrant that their work had not been previously published although only two explicitly stated that they viewed self-archiving as prior publication. 28.5% of agreements provided authors with no usage rights over their own paper. Although 42.5% allowed self-archiving in some format, there was no consensus on the conditions under which self-archiving could take place. The article concludes that author-publisher copyright agreements should be reconsidered by a working party representing the needs of both partie
The impacts of urban landscape pattern on urban land surface temperature - taking Urumqi as an example
No full textUrbanization has become an important contributor for global warming and urban air temperature is rising gradually in all the cities. It means that urban land use and land cover (LULC) changed became critical in determining the urban environment quality. This paper presents an integrated study to investigate and identify landscape pattern which have the influence to increase of land surface temperature, using Geographical Information Systems (GIS) and remote sensing. In this paper, an oasis city-Urumqi as an example, which explores the temporal and spatial characteristics of land use and land cover change from 1990 to 2004, and the land surface temperature variation from 1990 to 2004. Results shows that land use of Urumqi appeared a dramatic variation during the last 15 years. The mean annul temperatures of the land surface in Urumqi were 21.41 °C in 1990 and 31.12 °C in 2004, respectively. In particular, the land surface temperature and landscape pattern index had shown the close relationship. To sum up, integration of remote sensing and GIS was an effective way to monitor and analyze urban LULC, and evaluate the landscape pattern impact on land surface temperature. ©2009 IEEE. (16 refs.
Organizational Change As An Example Of Socio-Technical Design
No full textThis study focuses on Organizational Change as an example of Socio-Technical Design (STD). STD is an approach that aims to give equal weight to social and technical issues when new work systems are being designed [8]. It is widely acknowledged that implementing a socio-technical design approach leads to systems that are more acceptable by stakeholders during organizational change. Despite this, STD is not often used or not correctly practiced in organizations. Baxter and Sommerville noted that even though many managers realize that socio-technical issues are important, socio-technical design methods are rarely used [1]. The study data was derived from the preliminary work done on the case study in a telecommunication company adopting an Action Research (AR) approach. It is based on the researcher and participants' experience together with reflection, a collaboration between the researcher and the employees’. Action research in an organizational setting draws the researcher and the employees involved into a joint process aimed at solving organizational problems and creating new ideas. According to Schurman et al action research is a co-learning process, employees’ are involved in most aspects of the research and action, and the problems addressed are generated by the employees themselves and not theories by the researcher [2]. This study recommends that to realize the goals of organizational changes, the objective of socio-technical which has always been joint optimization of the social and technical systems should be observed. The technical system covering technology and the social system covering the individuals in the chosen boundary
Basement and climate controls on proximal depositional systems in continental settings
No full textThis doctoral dissertation discusses the sedimentology and dynamics of selected, modern and ancient clastic depositional systems (alluvial fans and colluvial aprons) at continental basin margins. The focus on single depositional systems gave the opportunity to devote particular attention to sedimentary processes and interactions on the basis of detailed field observations. The recent emphasis on modelling, remote sensing and basin-scale analysis in sedimentary geology provides large amounts of raw and conceptual data, but to the cost of gradually losing touch with the complexity of real natural processes. In view of the many long-standing misconceptions and generalizations in the literature on terrestrial proximal depositional systems, the work presented herein demonstrates that a field-based approach is the most reliable answer to still open questions. The Neogene intermontane Teruel Basin (central Spain) was chosen to investigate ancient alluvial-fan successions because of its exceptional outcrops, the complete preservation of sedimentary events in an endorheic setting, and the high-resolution chronologies and paleoclimatic context available from previous cyclostratigraphic research on mudflat and ephemeral lacustrine deposits. Detailed correlations between these and alluvial-fan strata sourced by the adjacent basin margin show that orbitally forced climate change could regulate sedimentation not only in low-energy basinal settings, but also in a high-energy, high-gradient alluvial fan. Phase relationships between interfingering fan-mudflat strata and insolation curves demonstrate that, during the last stages of fan development, debris-flow events with the highest sediment loads took place during transitions from relatively arid to humid climate. Such events were probably related to adjustments in catchment hydrology and sediment yield under increasing seasonality and precipitation, which destabilized highland slopes but before the widespread establishment of a vegetation mantle. However, facies analysis of the entire extent of the fan succession shows a longer-term control of basement geology on processes and architecture. In particular, the availability of carbonate versus clay-rich clastic source rocks in the catchment was fundamental in determining the dominance of hyperconcentrated sheetfloods or cohesive debris-flows during different phases of fan aggradation. Analysis of an extensive colluvial depositional system along the coast of the Atacama Desert (northern Chile) shows an even stronger dependence of processes and depositional architectures on the morphology and geographic orientation of different piedmont sectors. However, the strike-oriented variability in the relative importance of different mass-flow processes and the influence of aeolian deposition over active slope surfaces are not always perfectly reflected in the corresponding stratigraphic products, because the preservation of local colluvium is strongly tied to the surface hydrology of the slopes, which also varies with piedmont morphology. General stratigraphic models of proximal deposystems in terrestrial settings have not yet been satisfactorily developed, probably owing to the extraordinary spatial and especially temporal variability of basement and catchment controls exerted on sedimentary processes and architectural evolution. Nonetheless, it is clear that prediction of subsurface stratigraphic patterns in the rock record, and geohazard prediction in modern settings, can be significantly enhanced by careful consideration of the geologic context in which these depositional systems form
Big Data, Big Libraries, Big Problems?: the 2014 LibTech Anti-talk?
No full textThe desire to create automatons is a familiar theme in human history, and during the age of the Enlightenment mechanical automatons became not only an “emblem of the cosmos”, but a symbol of man’s confidence that he would unlock nature’s greatest mysteries and fully harness her power. And yet only a century later, automatons had begun to represent human repression and servitude, a theme later picked up by writers of science fiction. Man’s confidence undeterred, the endgame of the modern scientific and technological mindset, or MSTM, seems to be increasingly coming into view with the rise of “information technology” in general and “Big data” in particular. Along with those who wield them, these can be seen as functioning together as a “mechanical muse” of sorts – surprisingly alluring – and, like a physical automaton can serve as a symbol – a microcosm – of what the MSTM sees (at the very least in practice) as the cosmic machine, our “final frontier”. And yet, individuals who unreflectively participate in these things – giving themselves over to them and seeking the powers afforded by the technology apart from technology’s rightful purposes – in fact yield to the same pragmatism and reductionism those wielding them are captive to. Thus, they ultimately nullify themselves philosophically, politically, and economically – their value increasingly being only the data concerning their persons, and its perceived usefulness. Likewise libraries, the time-honored place of, and symbol for, the intellectual flowering of the individual, will, insofar as they spurn the classical liberal arts (with the idea that things are intrinsically good, and in the case of humans, special as well) in favor of the alluring embrace of MSTM-driven “information technology” and Big data - unwittingly contribute to their irrelevance and demise as they find themselves increasingly less needed, valued, wanted. Likewise for the liberal arts as a whole, and in fact history itself, if the acid of a “science” untethered from what is, in fact, good (intrinsically), continues to gain strengt
Example-Tracing Tutors: A New Paradigm for Intelligent Tutoring Systems
No full textThe Cognitive Tutor Authoring Tools (CTAT) support creation of a novel type of tutors called example-tracing tutors. Unlike other types of ITSs (e.g., model-tracing tutors, constraint-based tutors), example-tracing tutors evaluate student behavior by flexibly comparing it against generalized examples of problem-solving behavior. Example-tracing tutors are capable of sophisticated tutoring behaviors; they provide step-by-step guidance on complex problems while recognizing multiple student strategies and (where needed) maintaining multiple interpretations of student behavior. They therefore go well beyond VanLehn’s (2006) minimum criterion for ITS status, namely, that the system has an inner loop (i.e., provides within-problem guidance, not just end-of-problem feedback). Using CTAT, example-tracing tutors can be created without programming. An author creates a tutor interface through drag-and-drop techniques, and then demonstrates the problem-solving behaviors to be tutored. These behaviors are recorded in a “behavior graph,” which can be easily edited and generalized. Compared to other approaches to programming by demonstration for ITS development, CTAT implements a simpler method (no machine learning is used) that is currently more pragmatic and proven for widespread, real-world use by non-programmers. Development time estimates from a large number of real-world ITS projects that have used CTAT suggest that example-tracing tutors reduce development cost by a factor of 4 to 8, compared to “historical” estimates of ITS development time and cost. The main contributions of the work are a novel ITS technology, based on the use of generalized behavioral examples to guide students in problem-solving exercises, as well as a suite of mature and robust tools for efficiently building real-world ITSs without programming.</p
Localising a spreadsheet: an Iban example
No full textPresents an example of the localisation of a spreadsheet
from English to Iban. The process by which the
localisation has been carried out can be used as a
framework for the localisation of software to languages of
small ethnic minorities. Some problems faced during the
localisation process are also discusse
The development of work-integrated learning ecosystems: an Australian example of cooperative education
No full textCooperative education and principles associated with learning ecosystems appear throughout the literature. However, the application of cooperative education and learning ecosystems to work-integrated learning has not been fully examined.Furthermore, the applicability of learning ecosystems within work-integrated learning to specific professional practice domains has similarly not previously been examined.The development of domain-specific work-integrated learning ecosystems and an explanation of how they might apply to cooperative education in higher education, the purpose of this paper,are explored from three sequentially related conceptual levels:Level 1),a proto-theoretical model of cooperative education>Level 2),a functional model of a work-integrated learning ecosystem>Level 3),an example of an applied model of a work-integrated learning ecosystem.Specifically, the paper explores how policing,presented here as a working example of a socially important practice domain, has been developed into a work-integrated learning ecosystem within the Australian higher education context
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