Measuring lexical diversity among L2 learners of French: an exploration of the validity of D, MTLD and HD-D as measures of language ability

In this study two new measures of lexical diversity are tested for the first time on French. The usefulness of these measures, MTLD (McCarthy and Jarvis (2010 and this volume) ) and HD-D (McCarthy and Jarvis 2007), in predicting different aspects of language proficiency is assessed and compared with D (Malvern and Richards 1997; Malvern, Richards, Chipere and Durán 2004) and Maas (1972) in analyses of stories told by two groups of learners (n=41) of two different proficiency levels and one group of native speakers of French (n=23). The importance of careful lemmatization in studies of lexical diversity which involve highly inflected languages is also demonstrated. The paper shows that the measures of lexical diversity under study are valid proxies for language ability in that they explain up to 62 percent of the variance in French C-test scores, and up to 33 percent of the variance in a measure of complexity. The paper also provides evidence that dependence on segment size continues to be a problem for the measures of lexical diversity discussed in this paper. The paper concludes that limiting the range of text lengths or even keeping text length constant is the safest option in analysing lexical diversity.

Transaction based indices for the UK commercial real estate market: an exploration using IPD transaction data

The nature of private commercial real estate markets presents difficulties for monitoring market performance. Assets are heterogeneous and spatially dispersed, trading is infrequent and there is no central marketplace in which prices and cash flows of properties can be easily observed. Appraisal based indices represent one response to these issues. However, these have been criticised on a number of grounds: that they may understate volatility, lag turning points and be affected by client influence issues. Thus, this paper reports econometrically derived transaction based indices of the UK commercial real estate market using Investment Property Databank (IPD) data, comparing them with published appraisal based indices. The method is similar to that presented by Fisher, Geltner, and Pollakowski (2007) and used by Massachusett, Institute of Technology (MIT) on National Council of Real Estate Investment Fiduciaries (NCREIF) data, although it employs value rather than equal weighting. The results show stronger growth from the transaction based indices in the run up to the peak in the UK market in 2007. They also show that returns from these series are more volatile and less autocorrelated than their appraisal based counterparts, but, surprisingly, differences in turning points were not found. The conclusion then debates the applications and limitations these series have as measures of market performance.

Enterprise pedagogy in music: an exploration of multiple pedagogies

This article investigates the nature of enterprise pedagogy in music. It presents the results of a research project that applied the practices of enterprise learning developed in the post-compulsory music curriculum in England to the teaching of the National Curriculum for music for 11-to-14-year-olds. In doing so, the article explores the nature of enterprise learning and the nature of pedagogy, in order to consider whether enterprise pedagogy offers an effective way to teach the National Curriculum. Enterprise pedagogy was found to have a positive effect on the motivation of students and on the potential to match learning to the needs of students of different abilities. Crucially, it was found that, to be effective, not only did the teacher’s practice need to be congruent with the beliefs and theories on which it rests, but that the students also needed to share in these underlying assumptions through their learning. The study has implications for the way in which teachers work multiple pedagogies in the process of developing their pedagogical identity.

Malonato complexes of oxidovanadium(IV): synthesis, structural characterization and exploration of their insulin mimetic properties

Several bis-malonatooxidovanadium(IV) complexes of the general type [M(2)(H2(O))(n)][VO(mal)(2)(H(2)O)] (where M = Li(1), Na(2), K(3), Cs(4) and NH4(5); n = 3.5, 1, 3, 1 and 1, respectively) were isolated in good yield and high purity. These complexes were fully characterized by various physicochemical techniques (elemental analysis, UV- Vis, IR, EPR, CV, etc.) complexes 1, 2 and 3 were structurally characterized by single crystal X- ray diffraction technique. In vivo antidiabetic properties of bis- malonato complexes 1, 2, 3 and 5 have been studied using Streptozotocin induced diabetic rats. Significant lowering of blood sugar level has been noticed. At the same time these complexes were found to regulate secondary pathophysiological complications like liver damage and lowering of the total antioxidant status (TAS) in diabetic rats. Results of these study are expected to a expand the possibility of designing new oxidovanadium(IV) complexes of O, O chelating ligands with significant antidiabetic properties

An exploration of the equivalent weights particle filter

Particle filters are fully non-linear data assimilation techniques that aim to represent the probability distribution of the model state given the observations (the posterior) by a number of particles. In high-dimensional geophysical applications the number of particles required by the sequential importance resampling (SIR) particle filter in order to capture the high probability region of the posterior, is too large to make them usable. However particle filters can be formulated using proposal densities, which gives greater freedom in how particles are sampled and allows for a much smaller number of particles. Here a particle filter is presented which uses the proposal density to ensure that all particles end up in the high probability region of the posterior probability density function. This gives rise to the possibility of non-linear data assimilation in large dimensional systems. The particle filter formulation is compared to the optimal proposal density particle filter and the implicit particle filter, both of which also utilise a proposal density. We show that when observations are available every time step, both schemes will be degenerate when the number of independent observations is large, unlike the new scheme. The sensitivity of the new scheme to its parameter values is explored theoretically and demonstrated using the Lorenz (1963) model.

Fire history and the Global Charcoal Database: a new tool for hypothesis testing and data exploration

Version 1 of the Global Charcoal Database is now available for regional fire history reconstructions, data exploration, hypothesis testing, and evaluation of coupled climate–vegetation–fire model simulations. The charcoal database contains over 400 radiocarbon-dated records that document changes in charcoal abundance during the Late Quaternary. The aim of this public database is to stimulate cross-disciplinary research in fire sciences targeted at an increased understanding of the controls and impacts of natural and anthropogenic fire regimes on centennial-to-orbital timescales. We describe here the data standardization techniques for comparing multiple types of sedimentary charcoal records. Version 1 of the Global Charcoal Database has been used to characterize global and regional patterns in fire activity since the last glacial maximum. Recent studies using the charcoal database have explored the relation between climate and fire during periods of rapid climate change, including evidence of fire activity during the Younger Dryas Chronozone, and during the past two millennia.

An integrated multi-stage model of knowledge management in international joint ventures: identifying a trigger for knowledge exploration and knowledge harvest

This paper examines the evolution of knowledge management from the initial knowledge migration stage, through adaptation and creation, to the reverse knowledge migration stage in international joint ventures (IJVs). While many studies have analyzed these stages (mostly focusing on knowledge transfer), we investigated the path-dependent nature of knowledge flow in IJVs. The results from the empirical analysis based on a survey of 136 Korean parent companies of IJVs reveal that knowledge management in IJVs follows a sequential, multi-stage process, and that the knowledge transferred from parents to IJVs must first be adapted within its new environment before it reaches the creation stage. We also found that only created knowledge is transferred back to parents.

Attribution of extreme weather events in Africa: A preliminary exploration of the science and policy implications

At the most recent session of the Conference of the Parties (COP19) in Warsaw (November 2013) the Warsaw international mechanism for loss and damage associated with climate change impacts was established under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). The mechanism aims at promoting the implementation of approaches to address loss and damage associated with the adverse effects of climate change. Specifically, it aims to enhance understanding of risk management approaches to address loss and damage. Understanding risks associated with impacts due to highly predictable (slow onset) events like sea-level rise is relatively straightforward whereas assessing the effects of climate change on extreme weather events and their impacts is much more difficult. However, extreme weather events are a significant cause of loss of life and livelihoods, particularly in vulnerable countries and communities in Africa. The emerging science of probabilistic event attribution is relevant as it provides scientific evidence on the contribution of anthropogenic climate change to changes in risk of extreme events. It thus provides the opportunity to explore scientifically-backed assessments of the human influence on such events. However, different ways of framing attribution questions can lead to very different assessments of change in risk. Here we explain the methods of, and implications of different approaches to attributing extreme weather events with a focus on Africa. Crucially, it demonstrates that defining the most appropriate attribution question to ask is not a science decision but needs to be made in dialogue with those stakeholders who will use the answers.

The BioDICE Taverna plugin for clustering and visualization of biological data: a workflow for molecular compounds exploration

Background: In many experimental pipelines, clustering of multidimensional biological datasets is used to detect hidden structures in unlabelled input data. Taverna is a popular workflow management system that is used to design and execute scientific workflows and aid in silico experimentation. The availability of fast unsupervised methods for clustering and visualization in the Taverna platform is important to support a data-driven scientific discovery in complex and explorative bioinformatics applications. Results: This work presents a Taverna plugin, the Biological Data Interactive Clustering Explorer (BioDICE), that performs clustering of high-dimensional biological data and provides a nonlinear, topology preserving projection for the visualization of the input data and their similarities. The core algorithm in the BioDICE plugin is Fast Learning Self Organizing Map (FLSOM), which is an improved variant of the Self Organizing Map (SOM) algorithm. The plugin generates an interactive 2D map that allows the visual exploration of multidimensional data and the identification of groups of similar objects. The effectiveness of the plugin is demonstrated on a case study related to chemical compounds. Conclusions: The number and variety of available tools and its extensibility have made Taverna a popular choice for the development of scientific data workflows. This work presents a novel plugin, BioDICE, which adds a data-driven knowledge discovery component to Taverna. BioDICE provides an effective and powerful clustering tool, which can be adopted for the explorative analysis of biological datasets.

Exploration of the neural correlates of cerebral palsy for sensorimotor BCI control

Cerebral palsy (CP) includes a broad range of disorders, which can result in impairment of posture and movement control. Brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) have been proposed as assistive devices for individuals with CP. Better understanding of the neural processing underlying motor control in affected individuals could lead to more targeted BCI rehabilitation and treatment options. We have explored well-known neural correlates of movement, including event-related desynchronization (ERD), phase synchrony, and a recently-introduced measure of phase dynamics, in participants with CP and healthy control participants. Although present, significantly less ERD and phase locking were found in the group with CP. Additionally, inter-group differences in phase dynamics were also significant. Taken together these findings suggest that users with CP exhibit lower levels of motor cortex activation during motor imagery, as reflected in lower levels of ongoing mu suppression and less functional connectivity. These differences indicate that development of BCIs for individuals with CP may pose additional challenges beyond those faced in providing BCIs to healthy individuals.

Exploration of relational factors: Sino-foreign joint-venture partnering

Purpose – Despite recent threats of economic contraction, China still offers attractive opportunities for foreign companies seeking to expand their business activities through joint venturing (JV) partnering entry strategies. Recent research has indicated a growing recognition of the importance of relational factors in JV partnering. The purpose of this paper is to build on recent research findings that identify critical relation success factors in JVs and explores these in the context of a Hong Kong-based civil aviation services company seeking to expand business activities in Greater China. Design/methodology/approach – While the extant management literature focuses primarily on factors relevant to the inter-partner relationship between partners in the formation stage of a joint venture, this research takes a dynamic stakeholder perspective in respect of the relevant relational factors over the evolution of a partnership. The research described in this paper is based on a case-based study that identifies and examines the relevance and importance of uniquely Chinese factors such as guanxi, renqing and mianzi in the specific context of a strategic partnering relationship. Findings – This phenomenological study provides empirical evidence of critical linkages of these to intrinsically Chinese notions of guanxi, mianzi and renqing – it links these to key strategic partnering success factors identified to be trust, conflict resolution, commitment and cooperation. This study thereby reinforces the importance of the uniquely Chinese relational context in cross-border JVs. Moreover, the research findings suggest that these factors underpin the dynamic bi-directional stakeholder relationship in a Sino-foreign strategic partnership. Originality/value – This study conceptually links the uniquely Chinese relational factors (guanxi, mianzi and renqing) to key success factors supporting the establishment of a strategic partnership in a Sino-foreign context; moreover, it contributes empirical evidence substantiating the proposed conceptual linkage.

An exploration of the role duality experienced by HR professionals as both implementers and recipients of HR practices: evidence from the Indian railways

This study provides an innovative perspective on empirically assessing HR by focusing on the duality of HR professionals’ experiences as both implementers and recipients or internal customers of HR practices given that they are also employees of the organization. We hypothesize that HR professionals experience HR practices more favorably from an implementer perspective as compared to an internal customer perspective. These differences in experiences are likely to be influenced by HR professionals’ hierarchical position in the HR department. Our analyses of 1,271 HR professionals employed by Indian Railways revealed a number of differences between the two types of experience. Some practices (recruitment and selection, training, and employee welfare) were viewed more negatively from the implementer perspective, whereas others (compensation, benefits, and employment relations) were rated more negatively from the internal customer perspective. Those holding more senior HR positions reported more positive experiences of training and employment relations from an internal customer perspective. Overall our contributions draw on the attribution theory and concepts of intraorganizational power and voice, and have implications concerning the effectiveness of HR practices. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.