Improving the competence of construction management consultants to underpin sustainable construction in China

As a vital component of construction professional services (CPS), construction management consultancy is in nature knowledge-intensive and client-tailored. Although recent studies have acknowledged the increasing role of this subsector of CPS in the attainment of sustainable construction, little attention has been given to the education and training of its main body, namely construction management consultants (CMCs). This study investigated the competence and knowledge structure of CMCs by taking China as an example. Using the methods of interview and questionnaire survey, three key competences of CMCs and the underpinned knowledge structure were identified. The identified competences are personnel quality, onsite practical skills, and continuing professional learning. Underpinned these competences are the knowledge structure composed of a number of disciplines including construction cost planning and control, civil engineering and construction, engineering contract and law, and construction project management. The research findings lay a solid foundation for future studies to probe into the role of construction management consultants in the area of sustainable construction.

Multilingualism and speech-language competence in early childhood: Impact on academic and social-emotional outcomes at school

This large-scale longitudinal population study provided a rare opportunity to consider the interface between multilingualism and speech-language competence on children’s academic and social-emotional outcomes and to determine whether differences between groups at 4 to 5 years persist, deepen, or disappear with time and schooling. Four distinct groups were identified from the Kindergarten cohort of the Longitudinal Study of Australian Children (LSAC) (1) English-only + typical speech and language (n = 2,012); (2) multilingual + typical speech and language (n = 476); (3) English-only + speech and language concern (n = 643); and (4) multilingual + speech and language concern (n = 109). Two analytic approaches were used to compare these groups. First, a matched case-control design was used to randomly match multilingual children with speech and language concern (group 4, n = 109) to children in groups 1, 2, and 3 on gender, age, and family socio-economic position in a cross-sectional comparison of vocabulary, school readiness, and behavioral adjustment. Next, analyses were applied to the whole sample to determine longitudinal effects of group membership on teachers’ ratings of literacy, numeracy, and behavioral adjustment at ages 6 to 7 and 8 to 9 years. At 4 to 5 years, multilingual children with speech and language concern did equally well or better than English-only children (with or without speech and language concern) on school readiness tests but performed more poorly on measures of English vocabulary and behavior. At ages 6 to 7 and 8 to 9, the early gap between English-only and multilingual children had closed. Multilingualism was not found to contribute to differences in literacy and numeracy outcomes at school; instead, outcomes were more related to concerns about children’s speech and language in early childhood. There were no group differences for socio-emotional outcomes. Early evidence for the combined risks of multilingualism plus speech and language concern was not upheld into the school years.

An enquiry into the professional competence of inclusive education teachers in Beijing: Attitudes, knowledge, skills, and agency

Attitudes, knowledge, and skills are widely recognised as the three pillars of professional competence of inclusive education teachers. Studies emerging from the Chinese context consider these three pillars important for the practice of Learning in Regular Classrooms—an idiosyncratic Chinese form of inclusive education. Our mixed methods study reveals that agency is the fourth pillar of the professional competence for inclusive education teachers in Beijing, China. Results from comparative analysis indicate that the level of teachers’ agency is significantly lower than that of their attitudes, knowledge, and skills. We offer some implications for policy and practice in inclusive education.

What is shared services?

Purpose This chapter discusses the constitution of Shared Services and the value of a consensual agreement of a definition for academe and practice. It explores the operating principles and services, the concepts of internal customer and internal service, and their importance for the practitioner and research communities. Methodology/approach This chapter employed a broad review of the literature to examine Shared Services. The research team used NVivo as a tool to create a database of key articles and books to analyze the key concepts and topics. Findings There is a lack of consensus on the definition of Shared Services in the research and practitioner community. Additionally, the concept of internal customer requires greater exploration and understanding within the context of Shared Services. How Shared Services provides competitive advantage to organizations is also not well understood. Research limitations/implications This discussion provides a challenge to the research community to focus on the contributions of shared services to business management theory. This requires a consensus that is currently nonexistent, to ensure the correct use of the terminology and model. Practical implications By establishing a clearer understanding of what is Shared Services, the academic and the practitioner community, in particular, will gain greater competencies on Shared Services to support change management programs during the implementation phases and minimize implementation costs by lowering organizational and people resistance. The variants in shared services terminology create confusion which is likely to result in ambiguity during implementation and have practical implications on governance, customers and service, benefits realization and performance. Originality/value of chapter This chapter addresses the lack of agreed definition of the term Shared Services and the role of the internal customer and consequent internal service delivery.

Genome-wide association study of CNVs in 16,000 cases of eight common diseases and 3,000 shared controls

Copy number variants (CNVs) account for a major proportion of human genetic polymorphism and have been predicted to have an important role in genetic susceptibility to common disease. To address this we undertook a large, direct genome-wide study of association between CNVs and eight common human diseases. Using a purpose-designed array we typed 19,000 individuals into distinct copy-number classes at 3,432 polymorphic CNVs, including an estimated 50% of all common CNVs larger than 500 base pairs. We identified several biological artefacts that lead to false-positive associations, including systematic CNV differences between DNAs derived from blood and cell lines. Association testing and follow-up replication analyses confirmed three loci where CNVs were associated with diseaseIRGM for Crohns disease, HLA for Crohns disease, rheumatoid arthritis and type 1 diabetes, and TSPAN8 for type 2 diabetesalthough in each case the locus had previously been identified in single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP)-based studies, reflecting our observation that most common CNVs that are well-typed on our array are well tagged by SNPs and so have been indirectly explored through SNP studies. We conclude that common CNVs that can be typed on existing platforms are unlikely to contribute greatly to the genetic basis of common human diseases. © 2010 Macmillan Publishers Limited. All rights reserved.

LibVM: An architecture for shared library sandboxing

Many software applications extend their functionality by dynamically loading libraries into their allocated address space. However, shared libraries are also often of unknown provenance and quality and may contain accidental bugs or, in some cases, deliberately malicious code. Most sandboxing techniques which address these issues require recompilation of the libraries using custom tool chains, require significant modifications to the libraries, do not retain the benefits of single address-space programming, do not completely isolate guest code, or incur substantial performance overheads. In this paper we present LibVM, a sandboxing architecture for isolating libraries within a host application without requiring any modifications to the shared libraries themselves, while still retaining the benefits of a single address space and also introducing a system call inter-positioning layer that allows complete arbitration over a shared library’s functionality. We show how to utilize contemporary hardware virtualization support towards this end with reasonable performance overheads and, in the absence of such hardware support, our model can also be implemented using a software-based mechanism. We ensure that our implementation conforms as closely as possible to existing shared library manipulation functions, minimizing the amount of effort needed to apply such isolation to existing programs. Our experimental results show that it is easy to gain immediate benefits in scenarios where the goal is to guard the host application against unintentional programming errors when using shared libraries, as well as in more complex scenarios, where a shared library is suspected of being actively hostile. In both cases, no changes are required to the shared libraries themselves.

Shared common variants in prostate cancer and blood lipids

Background Epidemiological and clinical studies suggest comorbidity between prostate cancer (PCA) and cardiovascular disease (CVD) risk factors. However, the relationship between these two phenotypes is still not well understood. Here we sought to identify shared genetic loci between PCA and CVD risk factors. Methods We applied a genetic epidemiology method based on conjunction false discovery rate (FDR) that combines summary statistics from different genome-wide association studies (GWAS), and allows identification of genetic overlap between two phenotypes. We evaluated summary statistics from large, multi-centre GWA studies of PCA (n = 50 000) and CVD risk factors (n = 200 000) [triglycerides (TG), low-density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol and high-density lipoprotein (HDL) cholesterol, systolic blood pressure, body mass index, waist-hip ratio and type 2 diabetes (T2D)]. Enrichment of single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) associated with PCA and CVD risk factors was assessed with conditional quantile-quantile plots and the Anderson-Darling test. Moreover, we pinpointed shared loci using conjunction FDR. Results We found the strongest enrichment of P-values in PCA was conditional on LDL and conditional on TG. In contrast, we found only weak enrichment conditional on HDL or conditional on the other traits investigated. Conjunction FDR identified altogether 17 loci; 10 loci were associated with PCA and LDL, 3 loci were associated with PCA and TG and additionally 4 loci were associated with PCA, LDL and TG jointly (conjunction FDR < 0.01). For T2D, we detected one locus adjacent to HNF1B. Conclusions We found polygenic overlap between PCA predisposition and blood lipids, in particular LDL and TG, and identified 17 pleiotropic gene loci between PCA and LDL, and PCA and TG, respectively. These findings provide novel pathobiological insights and may have implications for trials using targeting lipid-lowering agents in a prevention or cancer setting.

SHAMP: An experimental shared memory multimicroprocessor system for performance evaluation of parallel algorithms

In this paper, the design and implementation of a single shared bus, shared memory multiprocessing system using Intel's single board computers is presented. The hardware configuration and the operating system developed to execute the parallel algorithms are discussed. The performance evaluation studies carried out on Image are outlined.

A design history of design: Complexity, criticality & cultural competence

Les histoires de l’art et du design ont délaissé, au cours desquatre dernières décennies, l’étude canonique des objets, des artistes/concepteurs et des styles et se sont tournées vers des recherches plus interdisciplinaires. Nous soutenons néanmoins que les historiens et historiennes du design doivent continuer de pousser leur utilisation d’approches puisant dans la culturelle matérielle et la criticalité afin de combler des lacunes dans l’histoire du design et de développer des méthodes et des approches pertinentes pour son étude. Puisant dans notre expérience d’enseignement auprès de la génération des « milléniaux », qui sont portés vers un « design militant », nous offrons des exemples pédagogiques qui ont aidé nos étudiants et étudiantes à assimiler des histoires du design responsables, engagées et réflexives et à comprendre la complexité et la criticalité du design.

The impact of private and shared open space on liveability in subtropical apartment buildings

The study explores the relationship between open space design, factors impacting open space provision, and resident satisfaction with open space in multistorey apartment buildings in the context of the subtropical lifestyle and climate of Brisbane Australia. The purpose of the paper is to identify the specific physical and spatial design characteristics residents perceive to be important in open spaces associated with their private dwellings and with shared open spaces. Firsthand resident evaluations of everyday experiences of residing in inner urban high density environments are explored through a survey of 636 residents and interviews with 24 residents. Private balconies are highly valued, but residents’ satisfaction would be enhanced by spaciousness for diverse activities, privacy and climate responsive design. Communal spaces and facilities are used infrequently by many residents who prefer interactions with community outside of the building. This is related to preferences for a level of anonymity in a setting where privacy is difficult to achieve due to physical proximity of neighbours.

Minding the gaps: Disability culture + cultural competence in interior design

Despite the increased attention to the relationship of disability and design, this area still suffers from terminological confusion, oversimplification and a positivist bias that continues to produce ableist space. Here, I am suggesting that space is not a fixed container or a pochéd plan that needs to be ‘altered’ in order to accommodate, but that space is a fundamental element of social life and that space continually reproduces the social and cultural relations of its production. This paper serves as a critical foundation for ongoing explorations into how disability culture is situated within interior design. A shift towards disability as culture is necessary to move our understanding of how to design for those with disabilities out of the objective realm (prescriptive codes and guidelines) and into a subjective realm (the lived experience and embodied know-how of those with disabilities). By framing disability around a cultural model rather than a medical model it allows for epistemological and pedagogical shifts in our ways of knowing in interior design. In defining culture as “a way of life” it is important to look at disability as both a diverse way of living and a diverse way of knowing. Most significant, is that the everyday expertise of people with disabilities is recognized as knowledge that can inform the field of interior design. The urgency for defining disability culture is essential to our understanding of cultural competence in interior design education and practice. The aim of this paper is to challenge our current understanding of how to design for those with disabilities and to shift our ways of knowing in interior design towards a deep understanding of the lived experience, embodied know-how and culture of those with disabilities. This paper will begin by analysing the different models of disability and how interior design education and practice has shifted to reflect these different models. Defining disability culture and all of its complexities is also an essential component of this paper. Finally, this paper will present best practices and case studies of how a cultural model of disability can shape interior environments and interior design pedagogy.

Rotating Beams and Nonrotating Beams With Shared Eigenpair

In this paper, we look for rotating beams whose eigenpair (frequency and mode-shape) is the same as that of uniform nonrotating beams for a particular mode. It is found that, for any given mode, there exist flexural stiffness functions (FSFs) for which the jth mode eigenpair of a rotating beam, with uniform mass distribution, is identical to that of a corresponding nonrotating uniform beam with the same length and mass distribution. By putting the derived FSF in the finite element analysis of a rotating cantilever beam, the frequencies and mode-shapes of a nonrotating cantilever beam are obtained. For the first mode, a physically feasible equivalent rotating beam exists, but for higher modes, the flexural stiffness has internal singularities. Strategies for addressing the singularities in the FSF for finite element analysis are provided. The proposed functions can be used as test-functions for rotating beam codes and for targeted destiffening of rotating beams.

Horsing around – Using equine facilitated learning to support the development of social-emotional competence of students at risk of school failure

The social-emotional issues some students experience can place them at risk of school failure. Traditional methods of support can be ineffective or not sustainable and new alternative approaches need to be attempted to support social-emotional competency, school engagement and success for students at risk. This paper discusses preliminary outcomes of an equine facilitated learning (EFL) programme specifically designed to focus on using horses to improve the resilience and social-emotional competency in students perceived as ‘at risk’ of school failure. This qualitative exploratory study used interviews and observations over a six month period to listen to the voices of the students themselves about their experiences of EFL. Initial findings from the pilot study suggest that EFL programmes can be a novel and motivating way to promote resilience training and social-emotional development of students at risk of failure and, in turn, improve their level of engagement and connection with school environments.

Onnistuneen ikääntymisen ymmärrystä rakentamassa : Fysioterapeuttiopiskelijoiden oppiminen kestävää kehitystä edistävän kasvatuksen kehyksessä

The purpose of the present study was to investigate the possibilities and interconnec-tions that exist concerning the relationship between the University of Applied Sci-ences and the Learning by Developing action model (LbD), on the one hand, and education for sustainable development and high-quality learning as a part of profes-sional competence development on the other. The research and learning environment was the Coping at Home research project and its Caring TV project, which provided the context of the Physiotherapy for Elderly People professional study unit. The re-searcher was a teacher and an evaluator of her own students learning. The aims of the study were to monitor and evaluate learning at the individual and group level using tools of high-quality learning − improved concept maps − related to understanding the projects core concept of successful ageing. Conceptions were evaluated through aspects of sustainable development and a conceptual basis of physiotherapy. As edu-cational research this was a multi-method case study design experiment. The three research questions were as follows. 1. What kind of individual conceptions and conceptual structures do students build concerning the concept of successful ageing? How many and what kind of concepts and propositions do they have a) before the study unit, b) after the study unit, c) after the social-knowledge building? 2. What kind of social-knowledge building exists? a) What kind of social learn-ing process exists? b) What kind of socially created concepts, propositions and conceptual structures do the students possess after the project? c) What kind of meaning does the social-knowledge building have at an individual level? 3. How do physiotherapy competences develop according to the results of the first and second research questions? The subjects were 22 female, third-year Bachelor of Physiotherapy students in Laurea University of Applied Sciences in Finland. Individual learning was evaluated in 12 of the 22 students. The data was collected as a part of the learning exercises of the Physiotherapy for Elderly People study unit, with improved concept maps both at individual and group levels. The students were divided into two social-knowledge building groups: the first group had 15 members and second 7 members. Each group created a group-level concept map on the theme of successful ageing. These face-to-face interactions were recorded with CMapTools and videotaped. The data consists of both individually produced concept maps and group-produced concept maps of the two groups and the videotaped material of these processes. The data analysis was carried out at the intersection of various research traditions. Individually produced data was analysed based on content analysis. Group-produced data was analysed based on content analysis and dialogue analysis. The data was also analysed by simple statistical analysis. In the individually produced improved concept maps the students conceptions were comprehensive, and the first concept maps were found to have many concepts unrelated to each other. The conceptual structures were between spoke structures and chain structures. Only a few professional concepts were evident. In the second indi-vidual improved concept maps the conception was more professional than earlier, particulary from the functional point of view. The conceptual structures mostly re-sembled spoke structures. After the second individual concept mapping social map-ping interventions were made in the two groups. After this, multidisciplinary concrete links were established between all concepts in almost all individual concept maps, and the interconnectedness of the concepts in different subject areas was thus understood. The conceptual structures were mainly net structures. The concepts in these individual concept maps were also found to be more professional and concrete than in the previ-ous concept maps of these subjects. In addition, the wider context dependency of the concepts was recognized in many individual concept maps. This implies a conceptual framework for specialists. The social-knowledge building was similar to a social learning process. Both socio-cultural processes and cognitive processes were found to develop students conceptual awareness and the ability to engage in intentional learning. In the knowl-edge-building process two aspects were found: knowledge creation and pedagogical action. The discussion during the concept-mapping process was similar to a shared thinking process. In visualising the process with CMapTools, students easily comple-mented each others thoughts and words, as if mutually telepathic . Synthesizing, supporting, asking and answering, peer teaching and counselling, tutoring, evaluating and arguing took place, and students were very active, self-directed and creative. It took hundreds of conversations before a common understanding could be found. The use of concept mapping in particular was very effective. The concepts in these group-produced concept maps were found to be professional, and values of sustainable development were observed. The results show the importance of developing the contents and objectives of the European Qualification Framework as well as education for sustainable development, especially in terms of the need for knowledge creation, global responsibility and systemic, holistic and critical thinking in order to develop clinical practice. Keywords: education for sustainable development, learning, knowledge building, improved concept map, conceptual structure, competence, successful ageing

Becoming a teacher: emerging teacher identity in mathematics teacher education

This research examines three aspects of becoming a teacher, teacher identity formation in mathematics teacher education: the cognitive and affective aspect, the image of an ideal teacher directing the developmental process, and as an on-going process. The formation of emerging teacher identity was approached in a social psychological framework, in which individual development takes place in social interaction with the context through various experiences. Formation of teacher identity is seen as a dynamic, on-going developmental process, in which an individual intentionally aspires after the ideal image of being a teacher by developing his/her own competence as a teacher. The starting-point was that it is possible to examine formation of teacher identity through conceptualisation of observations that the individual and others have about teacher identity in different situations. The research uses the qualitative case study approach to formation of emerging teacher identity, the individual developmental process and the socially constructed image of an ideal mathematics teacher. Two student cases, John and Mary, and the collective case of teacher educators representing socially shared views of becoming and being a mathematics teacher are presented. The development of each student was examined based on three semi-structured interviews supplemented with written products. The data-gathering took place during the 2005 2006 academic year. The collective case about the ideal image provided during the programme was composed of separate case displays of each teacher educator, which were mainly based on semi-structured interviews in spring term 2006. The intentions and aims set for students were of special interest in the interviews with teacher educators. The interview data was analysed following the modified idea of analytic induction. The formation of teacher identity is elaborated through three themes emerging from theoretical considerations and the cases. First, the profile of one s present state as a teacher may be scrutinised through separate affective and cognitive aspects associated with the teaching profession. The differences between individuals arise through dif-ferent emphasis on these aspects. Similarly, the socially constructed image of an ideal teacher may be profiled through a combination of aspects associated with the teaching profession. Second, the ideal image directing the individual developmental process is the level at which individual and social processes meet. Third, formation of teacher identity is about becoming a teacher both in the eyes of the individual self as well as of others in the context. It is a challenge in academic mathematics teacher education to support the various cognitive and affective aspects associated with being a teacher in a way that being a professional and further development could have a coherent starting-point that an individual can internalise.