bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Entrepreneurship in a Modern Networked Indian Economy
Authors: Baporikar Neeta
Published: February 2014

Entrepreneurship is important in the daily business environment and is plays a crucial role in the world economy. Entrepreneurship is an interesting topic as it deals with the behaviour of the firm entrepreneur and the entrepreneur's main competencies. However, the field of entrepreneurship world over is evolving and so is it in India. The focus of this paper is on entrepreneurship in modern networked economy of India. In this survey paper the literature on entrepreneurship is summarized from the perspective of geographical seedbed conditions and network constellations. Urban areas offer favourable incubator conditions for innovative entrepreneurship, as a result of economies of density and the opportunities created by the city as a nucleus of a broader network. Hence, a modem entrepreneur tends to become increasingly a network operator and manager. The paper focuses on the role that small firms and entrepreneurship would play in the Indian economy as it transforms itself. The current constraints are identified, and the areas that need action are highlighted. It is argued that a better understanding of the process of evolution of the modern entrepreneurship in the late industrializing economies can help India make appropriate policy choices. It is also suggested that in the age of liberalization and globalization, any attempt at creation of a competitive environment in the country would need to explicitly take note of the emerging global production and knowledge networks.
An Empirical Study on China’s Regional Carbon Emissions of Agriculture
Authors: Pang Li , Zhao Jingyuan
Published: February 2014

Based on China’s carbon emissions of agriculture, the authors appraise the area differentiation of carbon emissions of agriculture; examine the influential factors of agricultural carbon emissions in China. The results show that the performance of China’s agricultural carbon emissions is on the rise. The agricultural carbon emissions in the west of China increase rapidly. The area differentiation of agricultural carbon emissions in China decreases. In general, the major driver of carbon emissions is agricultural development level. Industrial structure, energy efficiency and labor transfer have significant effects on the performance of agricultural carbon emissions.
Soft Computing and Learning Techniques in the Modeling of Humanistic Systems
Authors: Lee E. Stanley
Published: February 2014

Although modern computer is the most revolutionary and most powerful tool developed in the twenty’s century, it is almost useless for the application of this tool to the not well defined humanistic systems such as politics, law, or even the many hour-to-hour small decisions people make routinely and daily. This is in spite of the fact that the human action of the cognitive band, which is of the order of seconds, is much slower than the speed of the modern computer. In this paper, the author shall first examine the basic differences between the scientific systems and the humanistic systems. Then based on these resulting differences, the author shall propose a neural-soft-computing combined approach, which is naturally suited for the vague and difficult to define humanistic systems. These combined systems are developed during the last approximately twenty years. Yet, it has not applied to the humanistic systems in a systematic and extensive manner. Some of the neural-soft-computing systems, also known as neural-evolutionary operational systems are the combined use of neural network, or support vector machine, with fuzzy system or fuzzy logic and evolutionary operational techniques such as genetic algorithm. Several of these systems are summarized and discussed as to why these systems seem more promising for the handling of humanistic systems. To illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed approaches, several initial applications in the literature are summarized.
English to Hindi Paraphrase Convention for Translating Homoeopathy Literature
Authors: Dwivedi Sanjay K. , Sukhadeve Pramod P.
Published: February 2014

The rule based approach to machine translation (MT) confines grammatical rules between the source and the target language with the goal of constructing grammatical translation between the language pair. In this paper, we describe the structural representation of English stemmer, POS tagging and design transfer rules which can generate Hindi sentence from the structural representation of the English sentence. Due to the specific terminology of homoeopathic sentences and the linguistic gap between the two languages the translation of these literatures form English to Hindi is a challenging task. The rule sets are used to plug gap between the two languages. Further, rule sets are described for mapping preposition verbs, nouns, etc. Finally, a system architecture has been proposed for the translation of homoeopathy literature from English to Hindi Language.The system accuracy has been evaluated using Bleu score, which is found out to be 0.7501 and the accuracy percentage of the system is 82.23%.
Visual Gnosis and Face Perception
Authors: Tobimatsu Shozo
Published: February 2014

There are two major parallel pathways in humans: the parvocellular (P) and magnocellular (M) pathways. The former has excellent spatial resolution with color selectivity, while the latter shows excellent temporal resolution with high contrast sensitivity. Visual stimuli should be tailored to answer specific clinical and/or research questions. This chapter examines the neural mechanisms of face perception using event-related potentials (ERPs). Face stimuli of different spatial frequencies were used to investigate how low-spatial-frequency (LSF) and high-spatial-frequency (HSF) components of the face contribute to the identification and recognition of the face and facial expressions. The P100 component in the occipital area (Oz), the N170 in the posterior temporal region (T5/T6) and late components peaking at 270-390 ms (T5/T6) were analyzed. LSF enhanced P100, while N170 was augmented by HSF irrespective of facial expressions. This suggested that LSF is important for global processing of facial expressions, whereas HSF handles featural processing. There were significant amplitude differences between positive and negative LSF facial expressions in the early time windows of 270-310 ms. Subsequently, the amplitudes among negative HSF facial expressions differed significantly in the later time windows of 330–390 ms. Discrimination between positive and negative facial expressions precedes discrimination among different negative expressions in a sequential manner based on parallel visual channels. Interestingly, patients with schizophrenia showed decreased spatial frequency sensitivities for face processing. Taken together, the spatially filtered face images are useful for exploring face perception and recognition.
Integrating Technical Advance in Mobile Devices to Enhance the Information Retrieval in Mobile Learning
Authors: Meng Zhaozong , Lu Joan
Published: February 2014

It has been a long time since the wireless technologies are used in learning activities to promote the interaction between teacher and learners. The recent advance in the mobile technologies has created new chances improving the flexibility, efficiency, and functionality of the learning interaction systems. This investigation identifies the weakness of the existing systems, and integrates the emerging mobile technologies to establish an open interaction framework to effectively enhance the interaction using students faced mobile devices and public wireless infrastructure. The main work of this investigation contains: (1) a teacher-learner response model for mobile based interaction is proposed and described with state machine logic; (2) a presentation-content retrieval mechanism is designed to efficiently utilise the limited computation resource; (3) device independence and context-aware techniques are integrated to created cross-platform application with mobile device features; (4) an open media framework is built for flexible learning material distribution and question organization. A lightweight mobile oriented Web-based Wireless Response System (mobile-WRS) is implemented as a case study. In-house testing and classroom application of the mobile-WRS in universities demonstrate that the proposed system outperforms the peer works in usability, interface, operational efficiency, learning material distribution, results presentation, and performance assessment, etc.
Entrepreneurial Intentions among Higher Education Students in Finland and Spain
Authors: Varamäki Elina , Tornikoski Erno , Joensuu Sanna , Ristimäki Kari , Blesa Andreu , Ripolles Maria
Published: February 2014

The purpose of this article is to present the results of a pilot study in which the new instrument was developed and tested to measure the formation of entrepreneurial intentions in multi-country context. The developed instrument was largely based on the Theory of Planned Behavior (Ajzen (1991). In the pilot study, the authors were also paying attention to two issues, namely (i) whether the level of entrepreneurial intentions varies as a function of country of origin, (ii) whether the relative importance of the three antecedents of entrepreneurial intentions varies as a function of country of origin, and (iii) whether the background variables exercise similar effects on the formation of entrepreneurial intentions in different countries. The empirical context of the pilot study is made of two higher education institutions (one in Finland, one in Spain) and concerns their first-year students at undergraduate programs. In the end of this paper, the authors will discuss the implications of the empirical observations of their pilot study.
Decision Making, Dashboard Displays, and Human Performance in Service Systems
Authors: Moundalexis Megan L. , Nag Barin N.
Published: February 2014

Service systems are often characterized by large components of human work and the need to make decisions based on human performance. Human cognitive limitations and the abilities of computers to compensate led to decision support systems (DSS). While a computerized DSS fits the needs of human cognitive limits, the strengths of human cognitive abilities are often overlooked. Human performance is often monitored by task completion in terms of timeliness and accuracy. A failure of this is that cognitive feedback is generally not given to the operator until after the task. Dashboard displays that are already widely used in manufacturing and other operational applications give current performance information and can take advantage of human cognitive capabilities. This paper presents the concept of decision support in human performance by exploring the extension of the dashboard display concept to human performance monitoring as a cognitive feedback mechanism. Examples specific to the service sector are provided in the context of a Help Desk environment.
Learning Enhancement or Headache
Authors: Nicholas Arlene J. , Lewis John K.
Published: February 2014

The availability of e-textbooks is increasing along with the variety of electronic readers. According to the “2010 Horizon Report,” adoption of this technology will be widespread in academia in two to three years as it will “… reduce costs, save students from carrying pounds of textbooks and contribute to the environmental efforts…” (Johnson, Levine, Smith, & Stone, 2010, p.6). Will e-textbooks become favored by faculty in higher education? This paper will examine the benefits and limitations of e-textbooks and the attitudes of faculty and students towards using this radical alternative to the centuries-old standard of education. An exploratory case study of faculty attitudes and usages of e-textbooks at a small liberal arts university was performed.
Optimizing Sample Design for Approximate Query Processing
Authors: Rösch Philipp , Lehner Wolfgang
Published: February 2014

The rapid increase of data volumes makes sampling a crucial component of modern data management systems. Although there is a large body of work on database sampling, the problem of automatically determine the optimal sample for a given query remained (almost) unaddressed. To tackle this problem the authors propose a sample advisor based on a novel cost model. Primarily designed for advising samples of a few queries specified by an expert, the authors additionally propose two extensions of the sample advisor. The first extension enhances the applicability by utilizing recorded workload information and taking memory bounds into account. The second extension increases the effectiveness by merging samples in case of overlapping pieces of sample advice. For both extensions, the authors present exact and heuristic solutions. Within their evaluation, the authors analyze the properties of the cost model and demonstrate the effectiveness and the efficiency of the heuristic solutions with a variety of experiments.
Processing Combinatorial Thinking
Authors: Hayashi Teruaki , Ohsawa Yukio
Published: February 2014

Innovators Market Game is a method for facilitating innovation by helping to create new ideas by combining existent ideas. In this game, participants play roles, think of new ideas and evaluate them. The roles are selected from the real world, e.g., police officers, transportation authority, government and so on. The Role-based Innovators Market Game proposed in this study is designed to lead innovative ideas, based on the defined factors. Its rules, acting roles, and the communication in the Role-based IMG make players more creative and imaginative rather than sheer freedom. This study proposes not only the way of creating new ideas, but also the process for making them practical, by including the step of Action Planning, where players further cultivate ideas to make practical scenario of actions. These two methods form the refined process of Innovators Marketplace, and help in contriving innovative ideas for the human society in discovering and solving practical problems.
Sharing Tacit Knowledge via Chance-Seeking
Authors: Bardone Emanuele
Published: February 2014

According to Polanyi any act of cognition has a tacit component that we cannot fully access or explicitly specify. The author will characterize tacit knowledge by referring to the notion of unknown known. That is, tacit knowledge is that kind of knowledge that people do not know they know, but that nonetheless has an impact on the way people solve problems and make decisions. The problem the author will specifically address in this paper is how tacit knowns as instances of tacit knowledge can be shared. The idea that the author will try to develop is that tacit knowns cannot be communicated, but they can be shared. In illustrating the author’s proposal, the author will refer, first of all, to the idea of docility. The author will describe docility as that disposition enabling people to discover what cannot be told. Secondly, the author will argue that this activity of discovering what one cannot be told is a chance-seeking one. The author will describe chance-seeking as an adaptive process characterized by incremental, hypothetical, and open-ended modifications of the environment, which leads one to his/her goal by means of successive approximations.
Advise, Acknowledge, Grow and Engage
Authors: Ahtinen Aino , Isomursu Minna , Ramiah Shruti , Blom Jan
Published: February 2014

This paper reports the findings of a constructive design research study exploring mobile wellness applications in two different contexts: Finland and India. The study arrived at four design principles for motivating users to engage in physical exercise: 1) Be my advisor, 2) Acknowledge my efforts, 3) Grow with me and 4) Keep me engaged. These design principles were built upon the results of exploratory and participatory field studies. The validation of the design principles was done by adopting them in the design process of a mobile application concept called the “Living Application”, which was evaluated in focus groups. The research process involved the total of 47 participants and 10 design professionals. The results indicate that the four design principles are relevant in the design of wellness applications, but need to be adapted to the local context and individual needs.
Evaluating the Potential of Free and Open Source Software in the Developing World
Authors: van Reijswoud Victor , Mulo Emmanuel
Published: February 2014

Development organizations and international nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) have been emphasizing the high potential of free and open source software (FOSS) for the less developed countries (LDCs). Cost reduction, less vendor dependency, and increased potential for local capacity development have been their main arguments. In spite of its advantages, FOSS is not widely adopted on the African continent. In this article the experiences of one of the largest FOSS migrations in Africa is evaluated. The purpose of the evaluation is to make an on-the-ground assessment of the claims about the development potential of FOSS and draw up a research agenda for a FOSS community concerned with the LDCs.
Curious Exceptions?
Authors: Nuvolari Alessandro , Rullani Francesco
Published: February 2014

The aim of this article is to explore the differences and commonalities between open source software and other cases of open technology. The concept of open technology is used here to indicate various models of innovation based on the participation of a wide range of different actors who freely share the innovations they have produced. The article begins with a review of the problems connected to the production of public goods and explains why open source software seems to be a “curious exception” for traditional economic reasoning. Then it describes the successful operation of similar models of innovation (open technology) in other technological fields. The third section investigates the literature in relation to three fundamental issues in the current open source research agenda, namely, developers’ motivations, performance, and sustainability of the model. Finally, the fourth section provides a final comparison between open source software and the other cases of open technology.
An Overview of Intellectual Capital (IC) Models for SMEs
Authors: Galván Ramón Sanguino , Palacios Tomás M. Bañegil
Published: February 2014

The growing importance of the intangible Economy involves the publication of a growing number of models. Nevertheless, we have observed that there are no generally accepted models for measuring Intellectual Capital in organizations. In recent years, several have been proposed, with a number of similar aspects, but differing with regard to their complexity and adaptability. In this sense, our main original contribution when measuring Intellectual Capital is related to comparing and assessing the different existent Guidelines in SMEs, unlike previous published papers. At the same time, SMEs, as an important part of the business network, should be alert to the political, social, technological and economic changes occurring in their environment. In recent years, these changes have been associated with two key factors for their competitiveness: the information technology and the knowledge. The purpose of this paper is to present and compare some of the most recent and significant contributions from researchers to the field of the measurement and management of intangibles in SMEs.
Relationship between Governance, Performance and Solvency
Authors: Campanella Francesco , Graziano Domenico
Published: February 2014

The Italian manufacturing sector is largely made up of family businesses where the founder- entrepreneur is the main asset to guarantee success. The importance of these corporate categories has led many experts to study the characteristics of governance, especially from the perspective of agency theory. This work belongs to the typical studies that analyze the relationships between governance and economic-financial performance in family businesses, but it differs from the others because: 1) it analyzes a sample of small and medium-sized unlisted companies; 2) businesses are located in a region, Campania, which is suffering the economic crisis more than other regions. In particular, this research aims at demonstrating the critical importance of the resource represented by the founder-entrepreneur, both in terms of profit performance and in terms of solvency: at the time of succession it is therefore necessary that the power of command is given to a descendant who can make specific contributions to the process of value creation.
Corporate Sustainable Growth and the Financing of Innovation
Authors: Kahloul Amani , Zouari Ezzeddine
Published: February 2014

R&D investments are a channel for growth, at the macro and micro levels. However, they are known to be characterized with high adjustment costs, therefore, it is generally admitted in the literature that firms try to smooth their R&D investments in face of shocks to internal finance, and the literature supposes that the observed investment – current cash-flow sensitivities are downward biased because R&D expenses are expected to respond to the permanent component of cash-flow but not to its transitory component. However, very few proofs, if at all, exist on the link between R&D and cash-flow components and its implications in terms of its contribution to the corporate sustainable growth. The authors decompose cash-flow into its permanent and transitory components and provide formal evidence that R&D- current cash-flow sensitivity is downward biased and that R&D- permanent cash-flow sensitivity better informs about the contribution of cash-flow to R&D smoothing, which shows a managerial commitment to sustainability. Unexpectedly, and in spite of the negligible observed sensitivities of R&D to the transitory component of cash-flow, the authors’ regressions reveal that these sensitivities have an asymmetric pattern: they are higher when cash-flow is expanding than when it is declining. This reveals a managerial preference for immediate growth, which jeopardizes sustainable growth, because of the risk of costly liquidation inherent to the reliance on the volatile transitory cash-flows.
Sustainable Enterprise Excellence and the Continuously Relevant and Responsible Organization
Authors: Edgeman Rick , Bøllingtoft Anne , Eskildsen Jacob , Kallehave Pernille , Kjærgaard Thomas
Published: February 2014

Innovation and sustainability are critical to the design, activities, results, and financial viability of organizations. These support one another, with “sustainable innovation” addressing economic sustainability, and “innovating for sustainability” addressing societal and environmental sustainability. These have gained traction as partial means of confronting economic, environmental and societal challenges, but the growth rate of these challenges has thus far exceeded trajectory, scale, and velocity issues surrounding enterprise innovation and sustainability efforts and capabilities. Innovation and sustainability of the necessary trajectory, scale, and velocity are strategically integrated to deliver what we refer to as innovating sustainability. This provides an accelerated means path toward sustainable enterprise excellence, and hence toward the asymptotic aspiration of being a continuously relevant organization. Introduced for the first time are the concepts of innovating sustainability, sustainable enterprise excellence (SEE), and continuously relevant organizations (CRO).
Unexplored Hypotheses on Potency-Magnitude Relations of eWOM Messages with Intensified Comparative Expressions
Authors: Fujimoto Kazunori
Published: February 2014

Electronic word-of-mouth (eWOM) is an important information source that influences consumer product evaluations. The author previously developed a computational model that predicts the potency-magnitude relations of eWOM messages involving subjective rank expressions, which refer to linguistic representations related to the attitude-levels of the benefits of product attributes. This paper extends the typology of message expressions and mathematically investigates potency-magnitude relations with a focus on intensified comparative expressions that involve the “degree” of the differences among two or more objects. The investigations were performed first under the premise of a strict assumption called an interval assumption, and the results were verified under the premise of a conservative assumption called a surjection assumption. These assumptions were introduced to determine the cognitive relationship between attitude-levels and their difference-levels. The investigations include the development of a Q-magnitude Relation Map (Q-Map) that illustrates how the relations change based on the values of two evaluation parameters: evaluation target size and evaluation scale size. Based on the observations of the Q-Maps, five unexplored hypotheses on the potency-magnitude relations were developed with respect to intensified comparative expressions.
Genetic Programming for Robust Text Independent Speaker Verification
Authors: Day Peter , Nandi Asoke K.
Published: February 2014

Robust Automatic Speaker Verification has become increasingly desirable in recent years with the growing trend toward remote security verification procedures for telephone banking, bio-metric security measures and similar applications. While many approaches have been applied to this problem, Genetic Programming offers inherent feature selection and solutions that can be meaningfully analyzed, making it well suited for this task. This article introduces a Genetic Programming system to evolve programs capable of speaker verification and evaluates its performance with the publicly available TIMIT corpora. Also presented are the effects of a simulated telephone network on classification results which highlight the principal advantage, namely robustness to both additive and convolutive noise.
Intention to Adopt a Text Message-based Mobile Coaching Service to Help Stop Smoking
Authors: Cacho-Elizondo Silvia , Shahidi Niousha , Tossan Vesselina
Published: February 2014

Cell phones make it possible to offer coaching services through text/video messages, to support users trying to break addictions. Given that use of such services is still low in France, it is important to have greater understanding of what leads users to adopt them. Therefore, the authors propose and validate an explanatory model for the intention to adopt a mobile coaching service to help people to stop smoking. This article uses the concepts of vicarious innovativeness, social influence, perceived monetary value, perceived enjoyment, and perceived irritation.
Like, Share, Recommend
Authors: Yartey Franklin N. A. , Ha Louisa
Published: February 2014

In this study, the authors examine the use of smart phones for self-broadcasting among college students based on motivation and network externalities theories. The authors propose that smartphones have changed telephones from a point-to-point interpersonal medium to a broadcast medium for individuals to disseminate information to their networks through the use of social media. The authors hypothesized that the more friends and followers a student has on Facebook and Twitter respectively, the more likely the student will use friends and followers as self-broadcasting mediums from their smartphones. The hypothesis was supported based on survey data collected at a public university. The study also discusses the social implications of using smartphones as a broadcast and self-promotion medium.
The Arts as Public Service
Authors: Etim-Ubah Pauline
Published: February 2014

This paper will argue that the arts can contribute to wellbeing by supporting positive mental wellbeing as demonstrated in the breadth and quality of current arts and mental health practice. This practice challenges existing notions of evidence-based policy used to inform the development of public services. The exploration of relationship between arts and mental health highlights the specific interventions that demonstrate effective engagement with people experiencing mental health issues. The paper outlines the contextual background of arts and mental health and makes reference to the ongoing influence of earlier art movements like Outsider art. Then, the following examples of practice: art therapy, social prescribing, community arts projects and art in public spaces, will be brought together in order to classify arts and mental health as a distinct field which can be compared and contrasted to the wider arts and health movement. Finally this paper will deconstruct and analyze what arts and mental health practice means in terms of understanding mental health; challenging what is accepted as artwork and the role of people with mental health needs as artists. This paper asks for new and appropriate ways to measure the outcomes of the arts as a public service that recognize the expertise of the people and communities creating and experiencing the art.
European Collaboration of Healthcare and Art with Focus on Social Inclusion and Wellbeing
Authors: Jensen Anita
Published: February 2014

This article examines the health benefits, for healthcare service users with various disabilities, of participating in a European collaborative art project. The first section describes the organisations involved and the background for the project. The findings – based on evaluations, testimonies and interviews – suggest that the project promoted wellbeing; stimulated a changed notion of social identity; and also contributed to social engagement and inclusion. The second section starts with considering the role of the Community Learning Programme at Tate Modern Gallery in delivering inclusive workshops, and evaluates it with respect to service users’ needs; this section concludes by questioning the social role of galleries and museums and explores how these could contribute significantly to the health and wellbeing of local communities by promoting arts and health programmes.
Using Art Therapy to Address Cognitive Symptoms of Parkinson’s Disease
Authors: Hoffmann Nicole C.
Published: February 2014

Parkinson’s disease affects millions of individuals worldwide. The physical symptoms of PD are devastating. In the same sense, the cognitive symptoms of PD also have a profound effect on afflicted individuals. This study examined the cognitive impairments of Parkinson’s disease and how they can be treated using art therapy. The author of this study met with one individual who suffered from cognitive impairment due to Parkinson’s disease. The two met for eight sessions over a six-week period. During this time, an A-B-A single-subject research design was established, with multiple baselines. Over the course of six weeks, the participant partook in various art therapy directives. The results of this study indicated that art therapy helped decrease the participant’s level of depression and helped maintain the participant’s current level of dementia, partially supporting this research study’s hypothesis. The results of this study underscore the need for further research in this area.
Mentoring in Medical Colleges
Authors: Modi Jyoti Nath , Singh Tejinder
Published: February 2014

Mentoring is known to promote development of professional skills irrespective of the discipline. It is a natural phenomenon that emanates from the desire of a senior and experienced individual to give and the need of an inexperienced novice to grow. Mutual trust, faith and respect while working towards a shared vision of objectives and achievements are the main driving force of a mentoring relationship. It requires the mentor to give selflessly and the mentee to accept graciously while conveying his needs and being an active partner in the process. A mentor is looked upon as a guide, confidante, counselor, teacher, friend, supporter, and much more in professional and career development as well as psychosocial or personal aspects. The mentee is expected to take a proactive role in guiding and managing the process. Despite a clear need for mentoring during and after medical school, very few medical schools in India foster this relationship. Most have student advisor programs or counseling cells that are oriented primarily to problem solving. There is also a lack of full understanding of the roles of a mentor or a mentee even though the terms are used rather frequently. A mentoring relationship could be formally established as a part of an institutional or departmental mentoring program, long term or short term, with a specific purpose; or, for overall career progression, individual or in a small group. Also, the mentees’ requirements at different stages of training and career may decide the type of mentoring relationship. The needs of a first year medical undergraduate student are different from those of a final year student or a postgraduate resident. There is an imminent need to train the medical school faculty in mentoring skills and orient the students to ‘mentor-mentee relationship’.
User Driven Learning
Authors: Chandra Shivika , Price Amy , Biswas Tamoghna , Bera Kaustav , Biswas Rakesh
Published: February 2014

Medical students need to be equipped with knowledge and the attitude to tackle clinical complexity. The transition from classroom to clinical practice can be eased by the application of innovative student-centered learning methods. Through user-driven learning, which is asynchronous conversational learning in the web space between computer users, students can be encouraged to develop a comprehensive fund of experiential knowledge to enable them to quickly build physician-patient rapport and to apply decision-making skills in the face of uncertainty. This process offers medical students the opportunity to develop empathy and to participate in evidence sharing peer support groups. This article explores the concept of user-driven learning and discusses how this approach could be used in current health care settings to address knowledge gaps and inspire students and teachers alike.
Sustainable heritage in Mexico: archaeological solutions for infrastructure planning and building
Authors: López Varela Sandra L.
Published: February 2014

Mexico is a country that requires the construction and expansion of infrastructure to increase the competitiveness of its economy. Building this highly competitive logistic platform has had an impact on Mexico’s cultural and social heritage. In the State of Morelos, the municipalities of Cuernavaca and Jiutepec considered that sustainable development could be integrated with heritage preservation at the time of land use plans’ designing and adoption. Hereby described, a geographic information system-based predictive model, differentiating areas by their potential for different types of resources, is suggested as a solution to protect Mexico’s heritage within a uniform permitting and compliance process.
Unusual Mechanism of Injury Resulting in a Thoracic Chance Fracture in a Rodeo Athlete: A Case Report
Authors: Boham Mikaela , O'Connell Kim
Published: February 2014

Objective:

To introduce the characteristics of a Chance fracture and increase awareness of the mechanism of injury that may occur during athletic activity.

Background:

A T12 Chance fracture was diagnosed in an 18-year-old male rodeo athlete. The rider was forced into extreme lumbothoracic hyperflexion when the horse bucked within the chute, pinning the rider's legs to his chest.

Differential Diagnosis:

Burst fracture, abdominal organ rupture, spinal dislocation, spinal cord injury, disk herniation, pars interarticularis fracture, spinal nerve injury, paralysis.

Treatment:

The patient underwent an open reduction and fixation of the thoracic fracture. Posterior stabilization was obtained with nonsegmental instrumentation. Allograft and autografts were used for posterolateral arthrodesis at T11–T12 and T12–L1.

Uniqueness:

Motor vehicle crashes with occupants wearing lap-type–only restraints account for nearly all previously reported Chance fractures. When only lap seatbelts are worn, the pelvis is stabilized, and the torso continues moving forward with impact. The stabilized body segment for this individual was reversed. Nearly 3 years after the initial surgery, fixation, and infection, the bareback rider has returned to full participation in rodeo.

Conclusions:

To our knowledge, this is the first reported diagnosis of a T12 Chance fracture in a rodeo athlete. When animals buck, athletes can be forced into hyperflexion, exposing them to Chance fractures. Therefore, anyone treating rodeo athletes must suspect possible spinal fracture when this mechanism is present and must treat all athletes with early conservative management and hospital referral.
The relationship between servant leadership, organisational citizenship behaviour and team effectiveness
Authors: Mahembe Bright , Engelbrecht Amos S.
Published: February 2014

Orientation: Team effectiveness and organisational citizenship behaviour (OCB) are outcomes vital for team success. Servant leadership practices also play a critical role in team effectiveness and OCB.Research purpose: The goal of the study was to analyse the relationships between servant leadership, OCB and team effectiveness in the South African school system.Motivation for the study: The changing nature of leadership, coupled with the increased use of teams, necessitates a study on how follower-focused leadership practices enhance team member effectiveness.Research approach, design and method: A non-probability sample of 288 teachers was drawn from 38 schools in the Western Cape in South Africa. Item analysis and confirmatory factor analysis were conducted on the data.Main findings: The team effectiveness and refined servant leadership questionnaires displayed high levels of internal consistency. The organisational citizenship behaviour scale exhibited moderate reliability coefficients. Good fit was found for the structural and measurement models of the latent variables through confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation modelling. Positive relationships were found between servant leadership, team effectiveness and OCB.Practical/managerial implications: The findings emphasise the role played by servant leadership behaviours in promoting positive behaviours and outcomes for teams. Future studies should develop the theoretical model further, by identifying other variables that influence team effectiveness positively and testing the model using revenue-oriented teams.Contribution/value-add: Schools today face the challenge of developing strategies for achieving team effectiveness. The servant leadership style recognises and promotes the one-on-one development of followers likely to promote positive outcomes and team effectiveness.
Comparative Treatment Outcomes of Pre and Post-exercise TENS Application on Knee Osteoarthritis: A Preliminary Report
Authors: Bello Ajediran I. , Crankson Shirley , Adegoke Babatunde O.A.
Published: February 2014

Objective

The effects of TENS before exercise (TBE) and TENS after exercise (TAE) in the management of knee osteoarthritis (OA) were compared.

Methods

Fifteen participants with knee OA were alternatively assigned to either TBE or TAE groups. Participants' pain, active knee flexibility, thigh girth, disability, and activity levels were assessed at baseline and at the end of eight-week study. Mixed design two-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) at P < 0.05 was used to compare the two groups.

Results

The mean age of the participants was 58.1 ± 10.9 years. Post-intervention comparison showed that TAE had significantly lower scores (1.9 ± 0.9) than TBE (4.3 ± 1.5) on Disability Index Questionnaire (DIQ) ( F-ratio = 10.5; P = 0.006), and significantly lower scores (0.8 ± 0.3) than TBE (1.4 ± 0.6) on Patient Assessment Scale (PAS) ( F-ratio = 8.3; P = 0.013). However, both groups did not significantly differ on the selected impairment measures.

Conclusion

TAE was found to be more effective on the primary outcome measures in patients with knee OA.
Distribution of Phenolic Components and Their Antioxidant Capacity in Strawberries
Authors: Wang Ying , Charles Marie Therese , Dong Wen-xuan , Dube Claudine , Khanizade Shahrokh
Published: February 2014

Total phenolic content, phenolic composition, and total antioxidant capacity of neck and bottom parts of two strawberry cultivars, ‘Chambly’ and ‘LL0220-10’, were evaluated using the Folin-Ciocalteu method, high performance liquid chromatography, and ferric reducing/antioxidant power, respectively. A significant interaction (p < 0.05) was observed between examined parts and cultivars. The highest content of phenolics was detected in the bottom part of ‘Chambly’ when compared to its neck, while there was no difference between neck and bottom of ‘LL0220-10’. The most evident group was the anthocyanins accounting for 83.53% of the total phenolic content. These data are a step in establishing a correlation between fruit anatomy and its chemical composition, which could be useful in breeding new strawberry cultivars more resistant to diseases.
Pollination and floral biology of Adonis vernalis L. (Ranunculaceae) – a case study of threatened species
Authors: Denisow Bożena , Wrzesień Małgorzata , Cwener Anna
Published: February 2014

Although the knowledge of pollination systems of rare and threatened species is one of the principles for development of optimal conservation and management strategies, the data about their pollination requirements are scarce or incomplete. Different problems are listed (xerothermic habitat disappearance, overgrowing of patches, plant biology i.e., slow plant growth, problems with seed germination) among the possible causes of Adonis vernalis being threatened, but until now no consideration was given to the flowering biology and pollination.

The observations of flowering biology of A. vernalis (Ranunculaceae), a clonal species, were conducted in an out-of-compact-range population, in the Lublin Upland, Poland (51°18'55" N, 22°38'21" E), in 2011–2013. The reproductive potential of A. vernalis is related to the population age structure, pollination syndrome, and breeding system. The flowers exhibit incomplete protogyny. The dichogamy function is supported by different (biological, morphological) mechanisms. Stigma receptivity occurred about one day before anthers started shedding self-pollen, and pollen viability was increasing gradually during the flower life-span (66.3% in distal anthers vs. 77.3% in proximal). The decrease in pollen production and in pollen viability coincided with the lowest degree of seed set, irrespective of the pollination treatment. Pollen vectors are necessary for efficient pollination, as the proportion of pistils setting fruits after open pollination (41–82.1%) was significantly higher compared to spontaneous self-pollination (only 5.5–12.3%). The pollination requirements together with pollen/ovule ratio (P/O = 501) indicate a facultative xenogamous breeding system in A. vernalis. Therefore, in the conditions of the global lack of pollinators, improper pollination may weaken the population by leading to a decrease in the proportion of recombinants, and in addition to other factors, may accelerate extinction of small A. vernalis populations.
A review of marine mammal records of Cuba
Authors: Whitt Amy Danae , Jefferson Thomas A. , Blanco Miriam , Fertl Dagmar , Rees Deanna
Published: February 2014

There has been very little research on marine mammals in Cuban waters. Much of the information on marine mammals in this region is buried in historical and gray literature. In order to provide a comprehensive account of marine mammal occurrence in Cuba’s Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ), we reviewed and verified 659 published and unpublished sighting, stranding, capture, and tagging records. Eighteen extant species and four genera have confirmed records for Cuban EEZ waters. This includes 17 species of cetaceans (three baleen whales and 14 toothed whales) and one sirenian species. An additional 11 cetacean species and one extant pinniped species have been reported, but not confirmed, or may have the potential to occur in Cuban waters. Historical records of the Caribbean monk seal (Monachus tropicalis) are documented in Cuba; however, this species is now considered extinct. The only two species that are seen regularly and considered common in Cuban nearshore waters are the common bottlenose dolphin (Tursiops truncatus) and the West Indian manatee (Trichechus manatus).
VIOLÊNCIA DOMÉSTICA CONTRA CRIANÇAS E ADOLESCENTES: PREVALÊNCIA EM CIDADE DO SUL DO BRASIL
Authors: Franzin Lucimara Cheles da Silva , Franzin Fernanda Mara , Moysés Simone Tetu
Published: February 2014

The aim of this study was to investigate domestic violence against children and adolescents in Curitiba-Pr. It was realized adescriptive exploratory research, with quantitative approach. It was analyzed the notification register basis of the Protection Network of children and adolescents at risk of violence in Curitiba-Brazil, 2004-2009. The variables included the socio-demographic profile of the victims, types of violence, origin of notification, information about the aggressor, severity of the case, injuries. Thedata had been stored in the software EPI-INFO and analyzed by software SPSS 17.0. It was analyzed the frequency distribution and associations between variables, using chi-square test, with the level of significance of 5%.The 19.316 notifications showed aprevalence of 88.4 of domestic violence, with 17,082 cases, as neglect with 9,742 notifications (57.0%). From the total, 43.9% of the cases were considered serious, the most affected age was 5 to 14 years old, with balance between genders. Among aggressors, the mother was the most important in cases of negligence. The physical sequels (20.2%) mainly reached head, arms and legs, characterized as bruising, cuts, and fractures. It was concluded that, in the studied period, domestic violence had greater visibility in this city, with more notifications of neglect. It is important to increase politics on domestic violence prevention, with continuous violence and family support strategies, supporting victims, family and aggressors
The NCTM Research Presession: A Brief History and Reflection
Authors: Lesh Richard , Chval Kathryn B. , Hollebrands Karen , Konold Clifford , Stephan Michelle , Walker Erica N. , Wanko Jeffrey J.
Published: February 2014

For roughly 35 years, the NCTM Research Presession has been held 1 or 2 days prior to the NCTM Annual Conference—hence the wordpresession. Beginning with the 2014 meeting in New Orleans, the NCTM Research Presession will be rebranded as the NCTM Research Conference. This change of name is intended to emphasize the critical role that research should play in our efforts to improve mathematics education. The NCTM Research Committee thought this an appropriate occasion to invite Richard Lesh, who was instrumental in the founding of the Research Presession, to join the members of the current Research Committee in reflecting on its formation, the hopes he and other kindred spirits had in mind when they started it, and the current state and future of research in our field.
Teacher Characteristics Associated With Mathematics Teachers' Beliefs and Awareness of Their Students' Mathematical Dispositions
Authors: Clark Lawrence M. , Neumayer DePiper Jill , Frank Toya Jones , Nishio Masako , Campbell Patricia F. , Smith Toni M. , Griffin Matthew J. , Rust Amber H. , Conant Darcy L. , Choi Youyoung
Published: February 2014

This study investigates relationships between teacher characteristics and teachers' beliefs about mathematics teaching and learning and the extent to which teachers claim awareness of their students' mathematical dispositions. A professional background survey, a beliefs and awareness survey, and a teacher mathematical knowledge assessment were administered to 259 novice upper-elementary and 184 novice middle-grades teachers. Regression analyses revealed statistically significant relationships between teachers' beliefs and awareness and teachers' mathematical knowledge, special education certification, race, gender, and the percentage of their students with free and reduced meal status. This report offers interpretations of findings and implications for mathematics teacher education.