bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
The Nature of Job Insecurity: Understanding Employment Uncertainty on the Brink of a New Millennium
Authors: Sverke Magnus , Hellgren Johnny 
Published: March 2003

Cet article porte sur la nature de l’insécurité au travail et traite de données aussi bien conceptuelles que méthodologiques en rapport avec notre compréhension de ses conséquences. Une revue de littérature débouche sur le constat qu’il est nécessaire de faire appel à nombre de travaux théoriques et empiriques pour cerner la nature de l’insécurité au travail, développer des mesures psychométriquement valides de ses différents aspects et parvenir à des conclusions pertinentes sur les effets de l’insécurité. L’insécurité au travail est d’abord définit comme une source de stress multidimensionnelle relevant de l’expérience subjective. Ensuite, les nombreux aspects de l’insécurité au travail peuvent avoir des conséquences divergentes ou du moins être différentiellement reliés à des variables dépendantes potentielles telles que les attitudes relatives au travail, la performance professionnelle, la santé physique, le bien‐être mental ou les symptômes de stress induits par le travaìl. Puis, étant donné que la plupart des recherches sur l’insécurité au travail ont été transversales, il reste à effectuer beaucoup d’investigations avant que nous sachions comment, ou si, l’insécurité contribue à modifier ces variables, Enfin, on peut imaginer nombre de facteurs susceptibles d’avoir un impact sur les relations entre l’insécurité au travail et ses retombées possibles. Pour améliorer la compréhenions de ce qu’est l’insécurité au travail et de ce qu’elle peut impliquer pour l’individu, il est indispensable de prendre en compte ces données dans des recherches aussi bien théoriques qu’empiriques.This paper focuses on the nature of job insecurity and addresses conceptual as well as methodological issues affecting our understanding of its consequences. A review of the literature suggests that a great deal of theoretical and empirical work is needed to capture the nature of job insecurity, develop psychometrically sound measures of the different aspects, and arrive at valid conclusions regarding the effects of insecurity. First, job insecurity is defined as a subjectively experienced stressor which may be divided into different dimensions. Second, the multiple aspects of job insecurity may have divergent consequences or at least be differentially related to potential outcomes such as work‐related attitudes, job performance, physical health, mental well‐being, and job‐induced stress symptoms. Third, given that most studies on job insecurity have been cross‐sectional, a lot of work remains before we know how, or if, insecurity contributes to changes in such outcomes. Fourth, there are a number of plausible factors that may moderate the relationships between job insecurity and its potential outcomes. Addressing these issues in theoretical as well as empirical work is necessary, we argue, to improve the understanding of both what job insecurity is and what it may imply for the individual.
Infant categorization of containment, support and tight‐fit spatial relationships
Authors: Casasola Marianella , Cohen Leslie B. 
Published: March 2003

AbstractTwo experiments examined infant categorization of containment, support or tight‐fit spatial relationships. English‐learning infants of 10 months (Experiment 1) and 18 months (Experiment 2) were habituated to four pairs of objects in one of these relationships. They were then tested with one event from habituation, one with novel objects in the familiar relationship, one with familiar objects in a novel relationship and one with novel objects in a novel relationship. Infants at both ages generalized their habituation of the containment relationship to novel objects in this relationship. In the support and tight‐fit conditions, the younger infants responded only to the novel objects in the test while the older infants responded to the novel relationship, but only with familiar objects. The results indicate that infants learn to categorize containment prior to support or tight‐fit relationships and suggest that infants can recognize a relationship between familiar objects prior to novel objects.
Children's understanding of the pretence–reality distinction: a review of current theory and evidence
Authors: Bourchier Alison , Davis Alyson 
Published: March 2003

AbstractThis paper provides an update on the current status of theory and evidence relating to children's understanding of the pretence–reality distinction. The paper starts by highlighting the striking paradox between children's early competence in pretence and their experiences of pretence–reality confusions as late as middle childhood. This is followed by a detailed review of various theories that have been offered to explain this phenomenon. Specifically, theories attributing the paradoxical findings to methodological differences between studies are reviewed and dismissed before considering the transmigration and availability hypotheses (Harris, Brown, Marriott, Whittall & Harmer, 1991; Johnson & Harris, 1994), the role of context and the child's emotional involvement in the pretence, and the pretence continuation account (Golomb & Galasso, 1995). It is argued that none of these theories alone can explain pretence–reality confusions and that these are best explained in terms of the combined influences of cognitive availability, empirical evidence of reality, context, affect and individual differences. Further research is necessary to fully explore the nature, cause and developmental trajectory of individual differences in this domain.
La construction sociale du produit financier postal
Authors: Gallouj F. , Gadrey J. , Ghillebaert E. 
Published: March 2003

This article deals with the financial function of the Postal Service. On the basis of the clientele management modules of financial centres and the post offices as units for the analysis, the authors make a census of the various financial “products” being supported by the analytical pattern of “worlds” (of production).This census voluntarily focusing on the civic world is followed by an attempt to identify the different corresponding overcosts. The authors also examine the contradictions and conflicts opposing the protagonists of service provision when they explicitly or implicitly belong to different worlds.
The Sa Pa marketplace, Lao Cai Province, Vietnam
Authors: Michaud Jean , Turner Sarah 
Published: March 2003

Sa Pa market, in its current shape, is a typical mainland Southeast Asia highland market. Here, highland produce cultivated or gathered by montagnards dispersed in isolated hamlets is sold to, or exchanged with, other montagnards and lowlanders for various commodities and consumer goods. Over the last few years, a fast growing tourist influx has contributed to modifying the architecture and size of the marketplace, while the range of goods on display has increased to fit both direct and indirect tourist demand.Using historical data covering one century, this research shows that despite recent transformations, for most of the montagnards, the market in Sa Pa is still used for the same social purposes as in the past. Unequivocally, it is chiefly for the outside traders and local Kinh authorities and residents that the locally booming economy has opened new opportunities. The numbers of Kinh traders in Sa Pa town have soared to the point that they are now taking over the marketplace, both in a physical and a legal sense, leaving little space for the montagnards. Yet the question as to whether the montagnards actually ever want to carve a position for themselves in the marketplace is still open to debate.
Vulnerable Populations and Morally Tainted Experiments
Authors: Luna Florencia 
Published: March 2003

This article addresses the dilemma facing an editor when he or she has to decide whether or not to publish a manuscript that describes unethical research. I will explore three options the editor may follow: a) publish the unethical research; b) publish it with an explicit condemnation of the methods used; c) reject the article on moral grounds. I will consider the importance of deterring unethical research, why the deterrence argument has been overlooked and the relevance it has in developing countries which seem to be more exposed to morally tainted experiments.I will suggest a combined policy. For cases in which the ethical problems are serious — where basic human rights are not respected, where consent has been given without complete or proper information or voluntary participation by subjects, or where deceit has been practised — I would support the strong policy of rejecting the article on moral grounds. For dubious cases, where the risk assessment can be doubted or where there are suspicions of ethical problems, I argue for a policy under which the article is published along with a serious discussion of the ethical problems suspected, allowing a rebuttal by the authors. In this way, while maintaining a strong deterrent policy, we recognize that sometimes it is not so clear if a research project was unethical, and only in such cases (where the ethical problems are dubious), the article may be published with an editorial.
Public Preferences for Health Care: Prioritisation in the United Kingdom
Authors: Shickle Darren 
Published: March 2003

The Government in the UK is encouraging consumerism within health care and is requiring Health Authorities to consult with the public on prioritisation of resources. Public consultation within the National Health Service (NHS) has had limited success in the past. Many of the techniques used are flawed. Despite the limited scope of the public surveys conducted so far, a number of themes have emerged:— a willingness to pay for experimental, ‘high‐tech’ life‐saving treatments rather than more cost‐effective treatments which will improve quality of life, which are more likely to maximise utility from the scarce resources available;— preference for treating the young rather than the old;— preference for treating patients with dependants (e.g. spouse, children) rather than those who have none;— a willingness to discriminate against those patients who were partially responsible for their illness due to choice of `unhealthy' lifestyle (e.g. smoking cigarettes, drinking excess alcohol).These public preferences raise ethical problems. For example, is it just to spend more on heroic treatments which are likely to fail? Is there a right to health care irrespective of whether you have had ‘a fair innings’ or whether a patient is in part responsible for their illness due to an unhealthy lifestyle? If there are ethical concerns about these preferences, should health authorities consult with the public at all? Is human life and suffering incommensurable, and hence is it impossible to prioritise anyway? Some of the ethical consequences of using empirical data on public preferences are discussed.
Justice and Equal Opportunities in Health Care
Authors: Harris John 
Published: March 2003

The principle that each individual is entitled to an equal opportunity to benefit from any public health care system, and that this entitlement is proportionate neither to the size of their chance of benefitting, nor to the quality of the benefit, nor to the length of lifetime remaining in which that benefit may be enjoyed, runs counter to most current thinking about the allocation of resources for health care. It is my contention that any system of prioritisation of the resources available for healthcare or of rationing such resources must be governed by this principle.This can have apparently paradoxical conclusions in that it can seem wasteful to give someone with a very slim chance of a lifesaving treatment the same priority as someone with a much better chance. In an important and thoughtful recent paper, Julian Savulescu has concentrated on this apparent weakness and has argued for a particular conception of the good or benefit to be achieved by a healthcare system which purports to demonstrate the inadequacies of an equal opportunities approach to prioritisation and to replace it with an altogether better account. This paper will show that a rational ‘reasons based consequentialism’ is more in line with the equal opportunities approach, which I defended some time ago in these pages, than with that of Savulescu. I shall then examine more closely the conception of equal opportunities in health care and show that if we give weight to an individual's reasons, and what is expected to be good for them, we will opt for exactly the equality based account of distributive justice that I have recommended.
Going to the Roots of the Stem Cell Controversy
Authors: Holm Søren 
Published: March 2003

The purpose of this paper is to describe the scientific background to the current ethical and legislative debates about the generation and use of human stem cells, and to give an overview of the ethical issues underlying these debates.The ethical issues discussed are 1) stem cells and the status of the embryo, 2) women as the sources of ova for stem cell production, 3) the use of ova from other species, 4) slippery slopes towards reproductive cloning, 5) the public presentation of stem cell research and 6) the evaluation of scientific uncertainty and its implications for public policy.
An Evaluation of a Multi‐sensory Speaking‐computer based System (Starcross–IDL) Designed to Teach the Literacy Skills of Reading and Spelling
Authors: Scrase Richard 
Published: March 2003

The “Indirect Learning” (IDL) system is a speaking‐computer based multi‐sensory system for teaching literacy skills. The IDL system has several unique features: these are the facility to independently adjust the colour of the monitor screen and the text colour, the masking of incorrect typed responses, the incorporation of a touch‐typing course into a remedial programme, the echoing back of children's spoken responses by the computer, and the integration of all these features into over one thousand carefully graduated exercises.This evaluation describes the system and measures how effectively the system remediated the reading and spelling in a sample of 150 children and adults. The effectiveness of the IDL system for different individuals varied between the extremes of having no significant effect and improving reading age at a rate of 6 months for one month of the programme, and spelling age by 6.6 months/month so that normal reading and spelling abilities were quickly attained. The average rates of improvement for the group in reading and spelling were 2.15 and 2.17 months/month respectively. These results demonstrate that this learning system is effective, especially when it is considered that this sample had previous rates of reading gain of on average 0.58 months/month, and 0.49 months/month for spelling. This shows an average improvement in the rate of learning to read and spell by a factor of about 4 times. The resilience of the system is demonstrated by the fact that the sample group were supervised by different tutors in different teaching centres, and that the sample group had different needs. The variation of responses within the sample group to the IDL programme were found to be correlated to factors that are known to contribute to poor reading skills, eg, having poor phonological skills and/or Meares‐Irlen Syndrome (Wilkins, 1996), the age of the subject, and the quantity of exercises completed.Consideration is given to the IDL system's suitability for inclusion into mainstream educational and training provision. The results demonstrate this system's effectiveness at improving literacy; consequently decisions on its use would be made on the basis of value‐for‐money when compared to other remedial systems.
Students' rating of Speak Out television programme
Authors: Moses Stephen Ogu 
Published: March 2003

This study is an evaluation of Speak Out television programme in Lagos State. A total of 300 junior secondary school students of Lagos State participated in the study: 150 class I and 150 class II students randomly selected from the six secondary schools in the two environment settings (200 urban and 100 rural).Two groups of subjects featured—Experimental: representing students taught using the instructional television programme approach, and Control: representing those taught the same subject matter of the instructional television programme using the group activity (socio‐drama) without the stimulus of the television programme.The research tested three hypotheses. The findings revealed that there were significant differences found in the performance of the Experimental groups that were taught with the instructional television programme approach. In addition, there was a significant difference found between location and instructional method. The classes' performances were not significant. The article discusses the findings and makes some recommendations
Distance learning in a multimedia networks project: main results
Authors: Ruokamo Heli , Pohjolainen Seppo 
Published: March 2003

This paper discusses a goal‐oriented project called Distance Learning in Multimedia Networks (ETÄKAMU) that was a part of the Finnish Multimedia Programme (FMP). The project started in February 1996 and lasted until January 1999. The project combined the efforts of Finnish telecommunication companies, content providers, publishing houses, hardware companies and educational institutions in the field of distance learning.This paper describes the background, the goals and part of the results of the ETÄKAMU project as well as the project's organisation. The main goals of the ETÄKAMU project were to research, develop and evaluate open learning environments using computer networks and computers in learning.The pedagogical background of the project is based on seven qualities of meaningful learning that are applicable to lifelong learning independent of time and place. The ETÄKAMU project arranged teaching experiments and user trials for various learners in different content areas and in different learning environments. Feedback and data were gathered via an investigation of how various pedagogical and technical solutions function in practice. This paper presents some pilot areas of the ETÄKAMU project and main results received in the project.
Teleconferencing tools in enterprises—constraints and opportunities
Authors: Forcheri Paola , Molfino Maria Teresa , Quarati Alfonso 
Published: March 2003

This paper presents an experimental approach for devising training measures to help small and medium enterprises (SMEs) avail themselves of the new opportunities offered by teleconferencing tools.The approach includes 1) an analysis of training needs, carried out by means of interviews, so as to propose methodologies and tools that will encourage SMEs to create the conditions under which they can make the most of the opportunities that tele‐cooperation offers for raising productivity; and 2) a controlled experiment that seeks to analyse the conditions under which the experimental use of teleconferencing systems may become a valuable vehicle for helping SMEs to construct active awareness about the potential of these tools.
The Content of the Psychological Contract
Authors: Herriot Peter , Manning W. E. G. , Kidd Jennifer M. 
Published: March 2003

The perceived obligations of the two parties to the employment relationship, the employee and the organization, were explored using the critical incident technique. Incidents were elicited which exceeded or fell below the treatment which each party might reasonably expect from the other; obligations were then inferred from these incidents. Respondents were a representative sample of UK employees (n=184), and a sample of UK managers (n=184) (the organization group).Twelve categories of organization obligation and seven of employee obligation were inferred from these data. While the two groups identified the same content categories as each other, they did so with different relative frequency. The organization group quoted more relational than transactional forms of organizational obligation, the employee group the reverse. This finding was attributed to a lack of trust of the organization by employees, and to their job insecurity. The groups, however, did not differ in terms of the frequency of the most commonly cited employee obligations; timekeeping, good work and honesty. This was taken to indicate the prevalence of a traditional and input‐oriented view of employee obligations. Examples were discovered of a reciprocal element to the contract. It was concluded that, despite the level of agreement between the two parties regarding the elements of the psychological contract, they were in danger of holding different perceptions of its balance; and that organizations should only expect employee commitment if they themselves have fulfilled their side of the contract.
Physiological Self‐Regulation and Information Processing in Infancy: Cardiac Vagal Tone and Habituation
Authors: Bornstein Marc H. , Suess Patricia E. 
Published: March 2003

This study investigates the role of physiological self‐regulation (cardiac vagal tone) in information processing (habituation) in 81 infants. Nucleus ambiguus vagal tone (Vna, a measure of respiratory sinus arrhythmia) was used to index cardiac vagal tone. Physiological self‐regulation was operationalized as the change in Vna from a baseline period of measurement to habituation. Decreases in Vna consistently related to habituation efficiency, operationalized as accumulated looking time (ALT), in all infants twice at 2 months and twice at 5 months; however, this relation was accounted for by infants who met an habituation criterion on each task. Among habituators, shorter lookers also had greater Vna suppression during habituation. Within‐age and between‐age suppression of vagal tone predicted ALT, but ALT did not predict suppression of vagal tone. Physiological self‐regulation provided by the vagal system appears to play a role in information processing in infancy as indexed by habituation. Les grandes pensées viennent du coeur. —  Vauvenargués (1746), Maxime 127
The 3D Model Acquisition Pipeline
Authors: Bernardini Fausto , Rushmeier Holly 
Published: March 2003

Three‐dimensional (3D) image acquisition systems are rapidly becoming more affordable, especially systems based on commodity electronic cameras. At the same time, personal computers with graphics hardware capable of displaying complex 3D models are also becoming inexpensive enough to be available to a large population. As a result, there is potentially an opportunity to consider new virtual reality applications as diverse as cultural heritage and retail sales that will allow people to view realistic 3D objects on home computers.Although there are many physical techniques for acquiring 3D data—including laser scanners, structured light and time‐of‐flight—there is a basic pipeline of operations for taking the acquired data and producing a usable numerical model. We look at the fundamental problems of range image registration, line‐of‐sight errors, mesh integration, surface detail and color, and texture mapping. In the area of registration we consider both the problems of finding an initial global alignment using manual and automatic means, and refining this alignment with variations of the Iterative Closest Point methods. To account for scanner line‐of‐sight errors we compare several averaging approaches. In the area of mesh integration, that is finding a single mesh joining the data from all scans, we compare various methods for computing interpolating and approximating surfaces. We then look at various ways in which surface properties such as color (more properly, spectral reflectance) can be extracted from acquired imagery. Finally, we examine techniques for producing a final model representation that can be efficiently rendered using graphics hardware.