Motivation in second language acquisition in Chinese research students in the UK

The present study sets out to examine motivation to learn English by Chinese research students in an informal setting. Data were collected, using semi-structured interviews, from four research students at two points in time during their first year in the UK. The main findings are: they believed that learning English was important; their main goal orientations were instrumental and extrinsic; they set learning goals and persisted to attain them; they valued their current learning environment in general and saw it as supportive of their goals; they held both positive and negative attitudes towards the British, which had differential effects on their motivation; their self-perceived support seemed to have a positive impact on their motivation and the development of self-confidence; they tended to attribute their success to stable causes such as the environment and failure to unstable but controllable causes such as effort. It is concluded that qualitative data of this kind may complement insights from quantitative research. Implications for target country institutions in the provision of support are discussed.

Strategies, effectiveness and rationale of vector-borne disease control in the pastoralist system of south-western Uganda

In Uganda, control of vector-borne diseases is mainly in form of vector control, and chemotherapy. There have been reports that acaricides are being misused in the pastoralist systems in Uganda. This is because of the belief by scientists that intensive application of acaricide is uneconomical and unsustainable particularly in the indigenous cattle. The objective of this study was to investigate the strategies, rationale and effectiveness of vector-borne disease control by pastoralists. To systematically carry out these investigations, a combination of qualitative and quantitative research methods was used, in both the collection and the analysis of data. Cattle keepers were found to control tick-borne diseases (TBDs) mainly through spraying, in contrast with the control of trypanosomosis for which the main method of control was by chemotherapy. The majority of herders applied acaricides weekly and used an acaricide of lower strength than recommended by the manufacturers. They used very little acaricide wash, and spraying was preferred to dipping. Furthermore, pastoralists either treated sick animals themselves or did nothing at all, rather than using veterinary personnel. Oxytetracycline (OTC) was the drug commonly used in the treatment of TBDs. Nevertheless, although pastoralists may not have been following recommended practices in their control of ticks and tick-borne diseases, they were neither wasteful nor uneconomical and their methods appeared to be effective. Trypanosomosis was not a problem either in Sembabule or Mbarara district. Those who used trypanocides were found to use more drugs than were necessary.

Customer satisfaction and organisational justice

Applies organisational justice theory to facilities management with the aim of increasing customer satisfaction with the service received. Provides an overview of organisational justice theory, and reviews the numerous different forms that this may take. Although there is strong theoretical support for participative decision making, in practice it often leads to conflict and delays. Two-way communication appears to represent the most effective form. The conclusions are based upon theoretical support as well as semi-structured interviews and observations in an organisational setting. The conclusions drawn do not have the benefits of more objective quantitative research methods. Contributes to practical understanding of how to maintain customer satisfaction in the facilities management industry and the theoretical reasons why the proposed methods will be effective. Argues that the impact of organisational justice on employee satisfaction can be applied to customer satisfaction with specific reference to facilities management.

A framework for graphic description in book design

This project is concerned with the way that illustrations, photographs, diagrams and graphs, and typographic elements interact to convey ideas on the book page. A framework for graphic description is proposed to elucidate this graphic language of ‘complex texts’. The model is built up from three main areas of study, with reference to a corpus of contemporary children’s science books. First, a historical survey puts the subjects for study in context. Then a multidisciplinary discussion of graphic communication provides a theoretical underpinning for the model; this leads to various proposals, such as the central importance of ratios and relationships among parts in creating meaning in graphic communication. Lastly a series of trials in description contribute to the structure of the model itself. At the heart of the framework is an organising principle that integrates descriptive models from fields of design, literary criticism, art history, and linguistics, among others, as well as novel categories designed specifically for book design. Broadly, design features are described in terms of elemental component parts (micro-level), larger groupings of these (macro-level), and finally in terms of overarching, ‘whole book’ qualities (meta-level). Various features of book design emerge at different levels; for instance, the presence of nested discursive structures, a form of graphic recursion in editorial design, is proposed at the macro-level. Across these three levels are the intersecting categories of ‘rule’ and ‘context’, offering different perspectives with which to describe graphic characteristics. Contextbased features are contingent on social and cultural environment, the reader’s previous knowledge, and the actual conditions of reading; rule-based features relate to the systematic or codified aspects of graphic language. The model aims to be a frame of reference for graphic description, of use in different forms of qualitative or quantitative research and as a heuristic tool in practice and teaching.

How Twitter is studied in the medical professions: a classification of Twitter papers indexed in PubMed

Background: Since their inception, Twitter and related microblogging systems have provided a rich source of information for researchers and have attracted interest in their affordances and use. Since 2009 PubMed has included 123 journal articles on medicine and Twitter, but no overview exists as to how the field uses Twitter in research. // Objective: This paper aims to identify published work relating to Twitter indexed by PubMed, and then to classify it. This classification will provide a framework in which future researchers will be able to position their work, and to provide an understanding of the current reach of research using Twitter in medical disciplines. Limiting the study to papers indexed by PubMed ensures the work provides a reproducible benchmark. // Methods: Papers, indexed by PubMed, on Twitter and related topics were identified and reviewed. The papers were then qualitatively classified based on the paper’s title and abstract to determine their focus. The work that was Twitter focused was studied in detail to determine what data, if any, it was based on, and from this a categorization of the data set size used in the studies was developed. Using open coded content analysis additional important categories were also identified, relating to the primary methodology, domain and aspect. // Results: As of 2012, PubMed comprises more than 21 million citations from biomedical literature, and from these a corpus of 134 potentially Twitter related papers were identified, eleven of which were subsequently found not to be relevant. There were no papers prior to 2009 relating to microblogging, a term first used in 2006. Of the remaining 123 papers which mentioned Twitter, thirty were focussed on Twitter (the others referring to it tangentially). The early Twitter focussed papers introduced the topic and highlighted the potential, not carrying out any form of data analysis. The majority of published papers used analytic techniques to sort through thousands, if not millions, of individual tweets, often depending on automated tools to do so. Our analysis demonstrates that researchers are starting to use knowledge discovery methods and data mining techniques to understand vast quantities of tweets: the study of Twitter is becoming quantitative research. // Conclusions: This work is to the best of our knowledge the first overview study of medical related research based on Twitter and related microblogging. We have used five dimensions to categorise published medical related research on Twitter. This classification provides a framework within which researchers studying development and use of Twitter within medical related research, and those undertaking comparative studies of research relating to Twitter in the area of medicine and beyond, can position and ground their work.

Consumers' attitudes, trust and willingness to pay for food information

Market failure can be corrected using different regulatory approaches ranging from high to low intervention. Recently, classic regulations have been criticized as costly and economically irrational and thus policy makers are giving more consideration to soft regulatory techniques such as information remedies. However, despite the plethora of food information conveyed by different media there appears to be a lack of studies exploring how consumers evaluate this information and how trust towards publishers influence their choices for food information. In order to fill such a gap, this study investigates questions related to topics which are more relevant to consumers, who should disseminate trustful food information, and how communication should be conveyed and segmented. Primary data were collected both through qualitative (in depth interviews and focus groups) and quantitative research (web and mail surveys). Attitudes, willingness to pay for food information and trust towards public and private sources conveying information through a new food magazine were assessed using both multivariate statistical methods and econometric analysis. The study shows that consumer attitudes towards food information topics can be summarized along three cognitive-affective dimensions: the agro-food system, enjoyment and wellness. Information related to health risks caused by nutritional disorders and food safety issues caused by bacteria and chemical substances is the most important for about 90% of respondents. Food information related to regulations and traditions is also considered important for more than two thirds of respondents, while information about food production and processing techniques, life style and food fads are considered less important by the majority of respondents. Trust towards food information disseminated by public bodies is higher than that observed for private bodies. This behavior directly affects willingness to pay (WTP) for food information provided by public and private publishers when markets are shocked by a food safety incident. WTP for consumer association (€ 1.80) and the European Food Safety Authority (€ 1.30) are higher than WTP for the independent and food industry publishers which cluster around zero euro. Furthermore, trust towards the type of publisher also plays a key role in food information market segmentation together with socio-demographic and economic variables such as gender, age, presence of children and income. These findings invite policy makers to reflect on the possibility of using information remedies conveyed using trusted sources of information to specific segments of consumers as an interesting soft alternative to the classic way of regulating modern food markets.

A semi-quantitative approach to deriving a model structure for the uptake of organic chemicals by vegetation

An expert elicitation exercise was undertaken to determine those components and processes that are most important for modeling plant uptake of organic chemicals. The state of our knowledge of these processes was also assessed. This semi-quantitative analysis allowed the construction of an idealized model with seven compartments; soil bulk, soil water, roots, stem, leaves, fruit, and air. Three main areas were identified further research: 1) the uptake of organic chemicals by fruit; 2) the internal transfer of organic chemicals between plant structures (e.g., stem and leaves); and 3) the transfer via the soil-air-plant pathway. Until new data becomes available to quantify these processes, it is proposed that an equilibrium partitioning approach is used between plant components other than fruit or that models consist of both an edible and inedible compartment.

Exploring other childhoods through quantitative secondary analyses of large scale surveys: opportunities and challenges for children's geographers

This paper considers the potential contribution of secondary quantitative analyses of large scale surveys to the investigation of 'other' childhoods. Exploring other childhoods involves investigating the experience of young people who are unequally positioned in relation to multiple, embodied, identity locations, such as (dis)ability, 'class', gender, sexuality, ethnicity and race. Despite some possible advantages of utilising extensive databases, the paper outlines a number of methodological problems with existing surveys which tend to reinforce adultist and broader hierarchical social relations. It is contended that scholars of children's geographies could overcome some of these problematic aspects of secondary data sources by endeavouring to transform the research relations of large scale surveys. Such endeavours would present new theoretical, ethical and methodological complexities, which are briefly considered.

Integrating socio-economics and ecology: a taxonomy of quantitative methods and a review of their use in agro-ecology

Answering many of the critical questions in conservation, development and environmental management requires integrating the social and natural sciences. However, understanding the array of available quantitative methods and their associated terminology presents a major barrier to successful collaboration. We provide an overview of quantitative socio-economic methods that distils their complexity into a simple taxonomy. We outline how each has been used in conjunction with ecological models to address questions relating to the management of socio-ecological systems. We review the application of social and ecological quantitative concepts to agro-ecology and classify the approaches used to integrate the two disciplines. Our review included all published integrated models from 2003 to 2008 in 27 journals that publish agricultural modelling research. Although our focus is on agro-ecology, many of the results are broadly applicable to other fields involving an interaction between human activities and ecology. We found 36 papers that integrated social and ecological concepts in a quantitative model. Four different approaches to integration were used, depending on the scale at which human welfare was quantified. Most models viewed humans as pure profit maximizers, both when calculating welfare and predicting behaviour. Synthesis and applications. We reached two main conclusions based on our taxonomy and review. The first is that quantitative methods that extend predictions of behaviour and measurements of welfare beyond a simple market value basis are underutilized by integrated models. The second is that the accuracy of prediction for integrated models remains largely unquantified. Addressing both problems requires researchers to reach a common understanding of modelling goals and data requirements during the early stages of a project.

Heat-shock response in Arabidopsis thaliana explored by multiplexed quantitative proteomics using differential metabolic labeling

We have developed a general method for multiplexed quantitative proteomics using differential metabolic stable isotope labeling and mass spectrometry. The method was successfully used to study the dynamics of heat-shock response in Arabidopsis thaliana. A number of known heat-shock proteins were confirmed, and some proteins not previously associated with heat shock were discovered. The method is applicable in stable isotope labeling and allows for high degrees of multiplexing.

Quantitative thermal imaging analysis of aircraft materials: through skin sensing (Invited Paper)

Thermal non-destructive testing (NDT) is commonly used for assessing aircraft structures. This research work evaluates the potential of pulsed -- transient thermography for locating fixtures beneath aircraft skins in order to facilitate accurate automated assembly operations. Representative aluminium and carbon fibre aircraft skin-fixture assemblies were modelled using thermal modelling software. The assemblies were also experimentally investigated with an integrated pulsed thermographic evaluation system, as well as using a custom built system incorporating a miniature un-cooled camera. Modelling showed that the presence of an air gap between skin and fixture significantly reduced the thermal contrast developed, especially in aluminium. Experimental results show that fixtures can be located to accuracies of 0.5 mm.

Quantitative comparison between the use of 3D vs 2D visualization tools to present building design proposals to non-spatial skilled end users

Information technology in construction (ITC) has been gaining wide acceptance and is being implemented in the construction research domains as a tool to assist decision makers. Most of the research into visualization technologies (VT) has been on the wide range of 3D and simulation applications suitable for construction processes. Despite its development with interoperability and standardization of products, VT usage has remained very low when it comes to communicating and addressing the needs of building end-users (BEU). This paper argues that building end users are a source of experience and expertise that can be brought into the briefing stage for the evaluation of design proposals. It also suggests that the end user is a source of new ideas promoting innovation. In this research a positivistic methodology that includes the comparison of 3D models and the traditional 2D methods is proposed. It will help to identify "how much", if anything, a non-spatial specialist can gain in terms Of "understanding" of a particular design proposal presented, using both methods.

Contextualist research: Iterating between methods while following an empirically grounded approach

An alternative approach to research is described that has been developed through a succession of significant construction management research projects. The approach follows the principles of iterative grounded theory, whereby researchers iterate between alternative theoretical frameworks and emergent empirical data. Of particular importance is an orientation toward mixing methods, thereby overcoming the existing tendency to dichotomize quantitative and qualitative approaches. The approach is positioned against the existing contested literature on grounded theory, and the possibility of engaging with empirical data in a “theory free” manner is discounted. Emphasis instead is given to the way in which researchers must be theoretically sensitive as a result of being steeped in relevant literatures. Knowledge of existing literatures therefore shapes the initial research design; but emergent empirical findings cause fresh theoretical perspectives to be mobilized. The advocated approach is further aligned with notions of knowledge coproduction and the underlying principles of contextualist research. It is this unique combination of ideas which characterizes the paper's contribution to the research methodology literature within the field of construction management. Examples are provided and consideration is given to the extent to which the emergent findings are generalizable beyond the specific context from which they are derived.