The role of space as both a conflict trigger and a conflict control mechanism in culturally heterogeneous workgroups

The diversity literature is replete with examples of poor outcomes in Culturally Heterogeneous Workgroups (CHWs) caused by relational difficulties. Although it is widely recognised that culture shapes people's interpretation of behavior and their style of interaction with others in the workplace, what is ill understood is what the specific conflict triggers of these conflicts are. In this paper, we argue that differences in cultural norms and views of physical and psychological space are major triggers of conflict in CHWs. Findings from a field study support the proposition that different viewpoints regarding the use of space, the inability to retreat from exposure to others, decreased interpersonal space, and privacy invasion moderate the relationship between cultural diversity in the workgroup and the type, frequency, and duration of conflict events in CHWs. The paper represents a first step in elucidating the role of space in cross-cultural interactions in the workplace and how space may be a potentially important conflict control mechanism for managers of culturally diverse workgroups.

Modeling diffraction in free-space optical interconnects by the mode expansion method

Free-space optical interconnects (FSOIs), made up of dense arrays of vertical-cavity surface-emitting lasers, photodetectors and microlenses can be used for implementing high-speed and high-density communication links, and hence replace the inferior electrical interconnects. A major concern in the design of FSOIs is minimization of the optical channel cross talk arising from laser beam diffraction. In this article we introduce modifications to the mode expansion method of Tanaka et al. [IEEE Trans. Microwave Theory Tech. MTT-20, 749 (1972)] to make it an efficient tool for modelling and design of FSOIs in the presence of diffraction. We demonstrate that our modified mode expansion method has accuracy similar to the exact solution of the Huygens-Kirchhoff diffraction integral in cases of both weak and strong beam clipping, and that it is much more accurate than the existing approximations. The strength of the method is twofold: first, it is applicable in the region of pronounced diffraction (strong beam clipping) where all other approximations fail and, second, unlike the exact-solution method, it can be efficiently used for modelling diffraction on multiple apertures. These features make the mode expansion method useful for design and optimization of free-space architectures containing multiple optical elements inclusive of optical interconnects and optical clock distribution systems. (C) 2003 Optical Society of America.

Media Convergence's Third Wave Content Streaming

Movies, pieces of music, books, or newspapers can all be expressed in the same binary code. Discrete forms of analogue media are just different dialects of the language of computerese. Content is becoming a very liquid asset. To take Marshall McLuhan's famed dictum a step further: The message is now independent of the medium

Anaphoric choices in Japanese fictional novels: the discourse arrangement of noun phrases, zero and third person pronouns

By examining Japanese fictional novels, this article will discuss how anaphoric devices (noun phrases (NPs), third person pronouns (TPPs), and zero anaphors) are selected and arranged in a given discourse. The traditional view of anaphora considers the co-referential relationship between anaphoric devices to be syntagmatic; that is, a pronoun, for example, refers back to its antecedent. It also declares the hierarchical order of information values between anaphoric devices; NPs are semantically the most informative, indicating an episode boundary, and pronouns less informative. Furthermore, zero anaphora is the most referentially transparent, showing the most accessibility of a topic. However, real text shows the contrary. NPs occur frequently while there is no apparent discourse boundary, and the same episode is continuous. This is because zero anaphors and TPPs (if they occur) break down readily due to the nature of a forthcoming sentence and the NP is reinstated, in order to continue the same topic in a given discourse. Therefore, the article opposes the traditional view of anaphora. Based on the concept of text processing, using ‘mental representations’, this article will determine certain occurrence patterns of the three anaphoric devices.

Interaction of directional, neuromuscular and egocentric constraints on the stability of preferred bimanual coordination patterns

We investigated how the relative direction of limb movements in external space (iso- and non-isodirectionality), muscular constraints (the relative timing of homologous muscle activation) and the egocentric frame of reference (moving simultaneously toward/away the longitudinal axis of the body) contribute to the stability of coordinated movements. In the first experiment, we attempted to determine the respective stability of isodirectional and non-isodirectional movements in between-persons coordination. In a second experiment, we determined the effect of the relative direction in external space, and of muscular constraints, on pattern stability during a within-person bimanual coordination task. In the third experiment we dissociated the effects on pattern stability of the muscular constraints, relative direction and egocentric frame of reference. The results showed that (1) simultaneous activation of homologous muscles resulted in more stable performance than simultaneous activation of non-homologous muscles during within-subject coordination, and that (2) isodirectional movements were more stable than non-isodirectional movements during between-persons coordination, confirming the role of the relative direction of the moving limbs in the stability of bimanual coordination. Moreover, the egocentric constraint was to some extent found distinguishable from the effect of the relative direction of the moving limbs in external space, and from the effect of the relative timing of muscle activation. In summary, the present study showed that relative direction of the moving limbs in external space and muscular constraints may interact either to stabilize or destabilize coordination patterns. (C) 2003 Published by Elsevier B.V.

In search of the ultimate ionosonde deduced equator

A further progress has been made in defining the ionosonde deduced equator (IDE) which characterises a latitudinal transition from the northern to southern hemisphere. It is now possible to define the global IDE location as the locus of the average position between geographic and geomagnetic equators. A more complete insight to the phenomenon of the third equator (i.e. after geographic and geomagnetic equators) was made possible due to availability of ionospheric height (h'F) data from three stations positioned close to the IDE in the American and the far-east sectors. The IDE ionospheric signature (or E-type signature), detected at these stations, consists of bi-annual h'F height increases. This signature however is not consistently observed during solar cycle and at times, particularly at sunspot minimum, a weak hemispheric signature is observed (i.e. the northern or southern hemisphere signature). In general, the height increase at the IDE are considerably smaller (by a factor of 4) than at other equatorial locations, indicating that the ionosphere at the IDE location becomes less disturbed. It is suggested that the equatorial longitudinal regions which can be associated with more consistent E-type signature are located in the central Pacific and at the east coast of America, close to the intersection points of the geographic and geomagnetic equators. (C) 2003 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

O mar não está para peixe : uma etnografia dos conflitos socioambientais em torno da Zona de Proteção Marinha e da comunidade pesqueira do Bugigão – RESEXMAR do Corumbau/Bahia.

A Reserva Extrativista Marinha (RESEXMAR) do Corumbau foi criada no ano de 2000, a partir de uma ação coletiva, iniciada em 1997 por meio das lideranças de pescadores locais, na busca de instrumento jurídico que garantisse o acesso exclusivo dos recursos pesqueiros contra a atividade da pesca comercial de camarão sete-barbas que se instalou na década de 1980. Durante o processo de criação da RESEXMAR do Corumbau, os pescadores obtiveram apoio de órgãos governamentais, como a Coordenação Nacional de Populações Tradicionais (CNPT) e de entidades ambientalistas do terceiro setor – Associação Pradense de Proteção Ambiental (APPA), e posteriormente a Conservation International do Brasil (CI-Brasil). Entretanto, após a criação da RESEXMAR do Corumbau – entre os anos 2000 e 2002 – foi elaborado o Plano de Manejo que orientaria a gestão da Unidade de Conservação (UC). O documento foi capitaneado pela equipe técnica e científica vinculada à CI-Brasil, tendo como ponto de destaque a criação de áreas de exclusão total da atividade da pesca, por meio da Zona de Proteção Marinha (ZPM). A ideia de uma ZPM, para a CI-Brasil, era que de forma indireta e em médio e longo prazo, os pescadores se beneficiariam com o possível aumento de produção de pescado, contanto que 30% de cobertura de recifes tivesse algum tipo de proteção dos processos ecológicos, tais como reprodução e crescimento de espécies. Durante as discussões do Plano de Manejo e atualmente uma parcela de pescadores locais contestaram os limites da ZPM, pois iria restringir o acesso aos recursos pesqueiros. No entanto, tal contestação foi suprimida pelas relações não formais que os membros da CI-Brasil possuíam com o núcleo familiar principal da Vila do Corumbau, forçando os demais em um acordo formal temporário. Tal questionamento evidenciou um conflito de conjunto de normas distintas entre pescadores artesanais em relação à CI-Brasil e IBAMA: a pesca artesanal ‒ um tipo de ação que segue normas específicas das quais elementos humanos e não humanos interagem conjuntamente, evidenciando um conhecimento prático e corporizado constituindo um modelo compreensivo de mundo e de natureza; conceitos modernos e globalizantes de uma natureza totalmente desvinculada das práticas locais artesanais, com forte articulação de uma entidade ambientalista de alcance internacional, guiada pela emergência das questões ambientais, imprimindo no local (o lugar da prática da pesca tradicional) a ideia de um espaço (Áreas Marinhas Protegidas), desencaixado de formas específicas de natureza/culturas.

Economic viability of the third milking in systems of production using closed-circuit mechanical milking

This study aimed to analyze the economic viability of the third milking in production systems using mechanical milking in a closed circuit, aiming to provide technicians and farmers with information to assist them in decision-making. Specifically, it intended: (a) to estimate the cost of one milking; (b) to estimate the cost of the third milking; (c) to develop a mathematical equation to estimate the minimum amount of milk produced with two milkings, from which it would be economically feasible to do the third milking. Data were collected from three dairy farms, from November 2010 to March 2011, keeping a twice-a-day milking frequency, with three data collections in each farm, totalizing nine collections. Considering the average data, it would be feasible to do the third milking if the average milk yield per day of lactating cows in a twice-a-day milking frequency was greater than or equal to 24.43 kg of milk.

“It came from outer space”: jogos de computador invadem programação e serviços de televisão digital

A convergência da televisão digital com os jogos de computador é cada vez mais uma realidade. Neste artigo serão apresentadas três vertentes desta convergência: – a oferta de jogos pelos operadores de televisão digital e pelos canais de televisão; – a oferta de programação baseada em jogos de computador pelos canais de televisão; – a oferta de jogos com interacção via SMS pelo operadores de televisão digital e pelos canais de televisão, Em conclusão, são apresentadas duas linhas de evolução desta convergência no curto-médio prazo: 1) o lançamento de novos formatos de entretenimento, que conjugam diferentes meios (TV, Telemóvel, PC, PDA, etc) na definição de uma experiência de jogo acessível a qualquer hora e em qualquer lugar, 2) o lançamento de novos aparelhos que aliam as funcionalidades de uma consola de jogos à de uma set-top box avançada de televisão digital.

Dynamical behaviour on the parameter space: new populational growth models proportional to beta densities

We present new populational growth models, generalized logistic models which are proportional to beta densities with shape parameters p and 2, where p > 1, with Malthusian parameter r. The complex dynamical behaviour of these models is investigated in the parameter space (r, p), in terms of topological entropy, using explicit methods, when the Malthusian parameter r increases. This parameter space is split into different regions, according to the chaotic behaviour of the models.

IOPT Petri Net State Space Generation Algorithm with Maximal-Step Execution Semantics

This paper presents an algorithm to efficiently generate the state-space of systems specified using the IOPT Petri-net modeling formalism. IOPT nets are a non-autonomous Petri-net class, based on Place-Transition nets with an extended set of features designed to allow the rapid prototyping and synthesis of system controllers through an existing hardware-software co-design framework. To obtain coherent and deterministic operation, IOPT nets use a maximal-step execution semantics where, in a single execution step, all enabled transitions will fire simultaneously. This fact increases the resulting state-space complexity and can cause an arc "explosion" effect. Real-world applications, with several million states, will reach a higher order of magnitude number of arcs, leading to the need for high performance state-space generator algorithms. The proposed algorithm applies a compilation approach to read a PNML file containing one IOPT model and automatically generate an optimized C program to calculate the corresponding state-space.

Short-term Feature Space and Music Genre Classification

In music genre classification, most approaches rely on statistical characteristics of low-level features computed on short audio frames. In these methods, it is implicitly considered that frames carry equally relevant information loads and that either individual frames, or distributions thereof, somehow capture the specificities of each genre. In this paper we study the representation space defined by short-term audio features with respect to class boundaries, and compare different processing techniques to partition this space. These partitions are evaluated in terms of accuracy on two genre classification tasks, with several types of classifiers. Experiments show that a randomized and unsupervised partition of the space, used in conjunction with a Markov Model classifier lead to accuracies comparable to the state of the art. We also show that unsupervised partitions of the space tend to create less hubs.