How does globalisation interact with higher education? The continuing lack of consensus:The continuing lack of consensus

This essay attempts to ascertain whether a particular meaning of globalisation, and view on its effects and the appropriate response to it, are becoming standardised across academia. To do so, it content-analyses a representative sample of new scholarship, mapping the various approaches of current researchers towards globalisation. The essay shows how globalisation remains a contested concept within studies of higher education, as in many other fields. Rather than globalisation being taken to refer unambiguously to global flows, pressures or trends, its meaning continues to depend on the particular perspective adopted by contemporary researchers. The same conflict is apparent concerning the impacts which are reputed to globalisation and with regard to the appropriate response to globalisation amongst academics and higher education institutions (HEIs) more generally. Perhaps the only apparent point of consensus amongst contemporary researchers is the claim that globalisation affects HEIs, rather than HEIs themselves being implicated in the promotion of globalisation. This position underplays the often important role of HEIs in encouraging cross-border flows and pressures, and global trends such as marketisation.

Education and racism:a study of the teachers' and the pupils' relations in the schooling of black boys

This thesis examines the teachers' and the pupils' relations in the schooling of black boys. The study using the methodology of participant observation focusses on one school (Kilby) in an area of black population in an English city. The thesis’s intentions are two fold: firstly, in order to examine these relations, two major aspects of their interaction are addressed, that of the absence of teachers from conventional 'race-relations' research, and, the identification and examination of the anti-school pupils' sub-cultures. Two substantive questions are asked: what is the response of the teachers to the schooling of black pupils? and, what is the meaning of the pupils' resistance to schooling? Secondly, in attempting to answer these questions and offer a critique of the dominant 'race-relations' culturalist explanation of black youth's response to schooling, a theoretical framework has been developed which takes account of both the 'economic' and the 'sociological' perspectives. Methodology allowed and pointed to the importance of examining the teachers' ideologies and practices as well as those of the black boys. It is argued that a class analysis of the racially structured British society is more adequate than the conventional ethnic approach in explaining the black boys' location within Kilby School. Hence, it is posited that the major problem in the schooling of black youth is not that of their culture but of racism, which pervasively structures the social reality at Kilby school. Racism is mediated both through the existing institutional framework that discriminates against working-class youth and through the operation of race specific mechanisms, such as the process of racist stereotyping. It is thus further argued that the Kilby school teachers are of central causal significance to the - problems that the boys encounter. Furthermore, it is in response to these racist ideologies and practices that both West Indian and Asian pupils develop specific forms of collective resistance, which are seen to be linked to the wider black community, as legitimate strategies of survival.

Strategies for agricultural change and the UK balance of payments

The world food crisis, Britain's reliance on imported food and feedstuffs and balance of payments difficulties were some of the factors which lent weight to the call for increased self-sufficiency in Britain's agriculture in the 1970s. This project considers two main areas: an investigation of the impact of radical agricultural change, designed to increase self-sufficiency, on the balance of payments; and, an appraisal of the potential role of the food industry within a radically different food system. The study proceeded by: an examination of the principles of agricultural policy and its development in Britain; an overview of the mechanism and meaning of the balance of payments; a consideration of the debate on agricultural import saving; the construction of radical agricultural strategies; the estimation of effects of the strategies, particularly to the balance of. payments; the role of the food industry and possible innovations within the strategies; a case study of textured vegetable proteins; and, the wider implications of implementation of radical agricultural alternatives. Two strategies were considered: a vegan system, involving no livestock; and, an intermediate system, including some livestock and dairy cattle. The study concludes that although agricultural change could in principle make a contribution to the balance of payments, implementation of agricultural change cannot be justified for this purpose alone. First, balance of payments problems can be solved by more appropriate methods. Second, the UK' s balance of payments problem has disappeared for the time being owing to North Sea oil and economic recession. Third, the political and social consequences of the changes investigated would be unacceptable. Progress in UK food policy is likely to be in the form of an integrated food and health policy.

The role of industrial design in technological innovation

This is an exploratory study in a field which previously was virtually unexplored. The aim is to identify, for the benefit of innovators, the influence of industrial design on the commercial success of new science-based products used for professional and industrial purposes. The study is a contribution to the theory of success and failure in industrial innovation. The study begins by defining the terminology. To place the investigation in context, there is then a review of past attempts by official policy-making bodies to improve the competitiveness of British products of manufacture through good design. To elucidate the meaning of good design, attempts to establish a coherent philosophy of style in British products of manufacture during the same period are also reviewed. Following these reviews, empirical evidence is presented to identify what actually takes place in successful firms when industrial design is allocated a role in the process of technological innovation. The evidence comprises seven case studies of new science-based products used for professional or industrial purposes which have received Design Council Awards. To facilitate an objective appraisal, evidence was obtained by conducting separate semi-structured interviews, the detail of which is described, with senior personnel in innovating firms, with industrial design consultants, and with professional users. The study suggests that the likelihood of commercial success in technological innovation is greater when the form, configuration, and the overall appearance of a new product, together with the detail which delineates them, are consciously and expertly controlled. Moreover, uncertainty in innovation is likely to be reduced if the appearance of a new product is consciously designed to facilitate recognition and comprehension. Industrial design is an especially significant factor when a firm innovates against a background of international competition and comparable levels of technological competence in rival firms. The likelihood of success in innovation is enhanced if design is allocated a role closely identified with the total needs of the user and discrete from the engineering function in company organisation. Recent government measures, initiated since this study began, are corroborative of the findings.

Organisational change and safety culture: the impact of communication

This research examines and explains the links between safety culture and communication. Safety culture is a concept that in recent years has gained prominence but there has been little applied research conducted to investigate the meaning of the concept in 'real life' settings. This research focused on a Train Operating Company undergoing change in a move towards privatisation. These changes were evident in the management of safety, the organisation of the industry and internally in their management. The Train Operating Company's management took steps to improve their safety culture and communications through the development of a cascade communication structure. The research framework employed a qualitative methodology in order to investigate the effect of the new system on safety culture. Findings of the research were that communications in the organisation failed to be effective for a number of reasons, including both cultural and logistical problems. The cultural problems related to a lack of trust in the organisation by the management and the workforce, the perception of communications as management propaganda, and asyntonic communications between those involved, whilst logistical problems related to the inherent difficulties of communicating over a geographically distributed network. An organisational learning framework was used to explain the results. It is postulated that one of the principal reasons why change, either to the safety culture or to communications, did not occur was because of the organisation's inability to learn. The research has also shown the crucial importance of trust between the members of the organisation, as this was one of the fundamental reasons why the safety culture did not change, and why safety management systems were not fully implemented. This is consistent with the notion of mutual trust in the HSC (1993) definition of safety culture. This research has highlighted its relevance to safety culture and its importance for organisational change.

Articulating discursive and materialist conceptions of practice in the logics approach to critical policy analysis

In this article it is argued that while Glynos and Howarth’s logics of critical explanation (LCE) offers an important and promising contribution to critical policy analysis, it, along with other approaches that focus on the meaning of social action, faces a growing challenge in the form of a so-called new materialist turn in social and political theory. The article argues that there is much to be gained for the logics approach in paying closer attention to the materiality of practices in terms not only of lending greater clarity to the conception and role of social practices in the logics approach but also in enabling it fully to deliver on its critical ambition. The article explores an alternative materialist approach to the study of social practices, which hails from the post-actor–networktheory tradition and which has ontological affinities with post-structuralism. The article begins with a brief analysis of the new materialist turn in its various guises. It then critically examines the logics approach, and, in particular its conception of practice. It then explores an alternative materialist and ethnographic reading of practice, focusing on medical and care practices. It concludes with an examination of the implications for a more materialist conception of practices for the LCE’s broad deconstructive, psychoanalytic and onto-political ambitions.

What's new pussycat? A genealogy of animal celebrity

Animal celebrity is a human creation informing us about our socially constructed natural world. It is relational, expressive of cultural proclivities, political power plays and the quotidian everyday, as well as serious philosophical reflections on the meaning of being human. This article attempts to outline some key contours in the genealogy of animal celebrity, showing how popular culture, including fairground attractions, public relations, Hollywood movies, documentary films, zoo attractions, commercial sport and mediatised moral panics - particularly those accompanying scientific developments such as cloning - help to order, categorise and license aspects of human understanding and feelings. The nature of [animal] charisma and celebrity are explored with assistance from Jumbo the Elephant, Guy the Gorilla, Paul the clairvoyant octopus, Uggie the film star, Nénette the orang-utan and Dolly the sheep. It argues that the issue of what it is to be human lies beneath the celebritised surface or, as Donna Haraway noted, the issue 'of having to face oneself'. © 2013 Taylor & Francis.

Development and psychometric tests of the Chinese-version low vision quality of life questionnaire

Background/Aims: To develop and assess the psychometric validity of a Chinese language Vision Health related quality-of-life (VRQoL) measurement instrument for the Chinese visually impaired. Methods: The Low Vision Quality of Life Questionnaire (LVQOL) was translated and adapted into the Chinese-version Low Vision Quality of Life Questionnaire (CLVQOL). The CLVQOL was completed by 100 randomly selected people with low vision (primary group) and 100 people with normal vision (control group). Ninety-four participants from the primary group completed the CLVQOL a second time 2 weeks later (test-retest group). The internal consistency reliability, test-retest reliability, item-internal consistency, item-discrimination validity, construct validity and discriminatory power of the CLVQOL were calculated. Results: The review committee agreed that the CLVQOL replicated the meaning of the LVQOL and was sensitive to cultural differences. The Cronbach's α coefficient and the split-half coefficient for the four scales and total CLVQOL scales were 0.75-0.97. The test-retest reliability as estimated by the intraclass correlations coefficient was 0.69-0.95. Item-internal consistency was >0.4 and item-discrimination validity was generally <0.40. The Varimax rotation factor analysis of the CLVQOL identified four principal factors. the quality-of-life rating of four subscales and the total score of the CLVQOL of the primary group were lower than those of the Control group, both in hospital-based subjects and community-based subjects. Conclusion: The CLVQOL Chinese is a culturally specific vision-related quality-of-life measure instrument. It satisfies conventional psychometric criteria, discriminates visually healthy populations from low vision patients and may be valuable in screening the local community as well as for use in clinical practice or research. © Springer 2005.

Collocation, interpretation and explanation:the case of just any

This article discusses the question of compositionality by examining whether the indiscriminacy reading of the collocation of just with any can be shown to be a consequence of the schematic meaning-potential of each of these two items. A comparison of justwith other restrictive focus particles allows its schematic meaning to be defined as that of goodness of fit. Any is defined as representing an indefinite member of a set as extractable from the set in exactly the same way as each of the other members thereof. The collocation just any often gives rise to a scalar reading oriented towards the lowest value on the scale due to the fact that focus on the unconstrained extractability of a random indefinite item brings into consideration even marginal cases and the latter tend to be interpreted as situated on the lower end of the scale. The attention to low-end values also explains why just any is regularly found with the adjective old, the prepositional phrase at all and various devaluating expressions. It is concluded that the meanings of the component parts of this collocation do indeed account for the meaning of the whole, and that an appropriate methodology allows identification of linguistic meanings and their interrelations. © 2011 Elsevier B.V.

Renegotiating sexual intimacy in the context of altered embodiment:the experiences of women with breast cancer and their male partners following mastectomy and reconstruction

OBJECTIVE: Breast cancer diagnosis and treatments can have a profound impact upon women's well-being, body image, and sexual functioning, but less is known about the relational context of their coping and the impact upon their intimate partners. Our study focuses upon couples' experiences of breast cancer surgery, and its impact on body image and sexual intimacy. METHOD: Utilizing a dyadic design, we conducted 8 semistructured individual interviews, with 4 long-term heterosexual couples, after the women had undergone mastectomy with reconstruction. Interviews explored both partners' experiences of diagnosis, decision-making, and experiences of body image and sexual intimacy. Interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA) was adopted; this is a qualitative research approach characterized by in-depth analysis of the personal meaning of experiences. RESULTS: Findings illustrate the positive acceptance that partners may express toward their wives' postsurgical bodies. They illuminate ways in which gendered coping styles and normative sexual scripts may shape couples' negotiations of intimacy around "altered embodiment." Reciprocal communication styles were important for couples' coping. The management of expectations regarding breast reconstruction may also be helpful. CONCLUSIONS: The insights from the dyadic, multiple perspective design suggest that psychologists must situate the meaning of supportive relationships and other protective factors in the context of complex life events and histories, in order to understand and support people's developing responses to distress. (PsycINFO Database Record

Paronyms for Accelerated Correction of Semantic Errors

* Work done under partial support of Mexican Government (CONACyT, SNI), IPN (CGPI, COFAA) and Korean Government (KIPA Professorship for Visiting Faculty Positions). The second author is currently on Sabbatical leave at Chung-Ang University.

Duppying yoots in a dog eat dog world, kmt:determining the senses of slang terms for the Courts

I describe and discuss a series of court cases which focus upon on decoding the meaning of slang terms. Examples include sexual slang used in a description by a child and an Internet Relay Chat containing a conspiracy to murder. I consider the task presented by these cases for the forensic linguist and the roles the linguist may assume in determining the meaning of slang terms for the Courts. These roles are identified as linguist as naïve interpreter, lexicographer, case researcher and cultural mediator. Each of these roles is suggestive of different strategies that might be used from consulting formal slang dictionaries and less formal Internet sources, to collecting case specific corpora and examining all the extraneous material in a particular case. Each strategy is evaluated both in terms of the strength of evidence provided and its applicability to the forensic context.

Lie-szimmetriák egy közgazdasági alkalmazása (An economic application of the Lie symmetries)

Ebben a tanulmányban ismertetjük a Nöther-tétel lényegi vonatkozásait, és kitérünk a Lie-szimmetriák értelmezésére abból a célból, hogy közgazdasági folyamatokra is alkalmazzuk a Lagrange-formalizmuson nyugvó elméletet. A Lie-szimmetriák dinamikai rendszerekre történő feltárása és viselkedésük jellemzése a legújabb kutatások eredményei e területen. Például Sen és Tabor (1990), Edward Lorenz (1963), a komplex kaotikus dinamika vizsgálatában jelent®s szerepet betöltő 3D modelljét, Baumann és Freyberger (1992) a két-dimenziós Lotka-Volterra dinamikai rendszert, és végül Almeida és Moreira (1992) a három-hullám interakciós problémáját vizsgálták a megfelelő Lie-szimmetriák segítségével. Mi most empirikus elemzésre egy közgazdasági dinamikai rendszert választottunk, nevezetesen Goodwin (1967) ciklusmodelljét. Ennek vizsgálatát tűztük ki célul a leírandó rendszer Lie-szimmetriáinak meghatározásán keresztül. / === / The dynamic behavior of a physical system can be frequently described very concisely by the least action principle. In the centre of its mathematical presentation is a specic function of coordinates and velocities, i.e., the Lagrangian. If the integral of the Lagrangian is stationary, then the system is moving along an extremal path through the phase space, and vice versa. It can be seen, that each Lie symmetry of a Lagrangian in general corresponds to a conserved quantity, and the conservation principle is explained by a variational symmetry related to a dynamic or geometrical symmetry. Briey, that is the meaning of Noether's theorem. This paper scrutinizes the substantial characteristics of Noether's theorem, interprets the Lie symmetries by PDE system and calculates the generators (symmetry vectors) on R. H. Goodwin's cyclical economic growth model. At first it will be shown that the Goodwin model also has a Lagrangian structure, therefore Noether's theorem can also be applied here. Then it is proved that the cyclical moving in his model derives from its Lie symmetries, i.e., its dynamic symmetry. All these proofs are based on the investigations of the less complicated Lotka Volterra model and those are extended to Goodwin model, since both models are one-to-one maps of each other. The main achievement of this paper is the following: Noether's theorem is also playing a crucial role in the mechanics of Goodwin model. It also means, that its cyclical moving is optimal. Generalizing this result, we can assert, that all dynamic systems' solutions described by first order nonlinear ODE system are optimal by the least action principle, if they have a Lagrangian.

A tudásérték meghatározása minőségügyi szempontból, hálózatelemzési módszerekkel (The knowledge value in terms of quality with network analysis methods)

A minőségügy egyik kulcsfeladata, hogy azonosítsa az értékteremtés szempontjából kritikus tényezőket, meghatározza ezek értékét, valamint intézkedjen negatív hatásuk megelőzése és csökkentése érdekében. Az értékteremtés sok esetben folyamatokon keresztül történik, amelyek tevékenységekből, elvégzendő feladatokból állnak. Ezekhez megfelelő munkatársak kellenek, akiknek az egyik legfontosabb jellemzője az általuk birtokolt tudás. Mindezek alapján a feladat-tudás-erőforrás kapcsolatrendszer ismerete és kezelése minőségügyi feladat is. A komplex rendszerek elemzésével foglalkozó hálózatkutatás eszközt biztosíthat ehhez, ezért indokolt a minőségügyi területen történő alkalmazhatóságának vizsgálata. Az alkalmazási lehetőségek rendszerezése érdekében a szerzők kategorizálták a minőségügyi hálózatokat az élek (kapcsolatok) és a csúcsok (hálózati pontok) típusai alapján. Ezt követően definiálták a multimodális (több különböző csúcstípusból álló) tudáshálózatot, amely a feladatokból, az erőforrásokból, a tudáselemekből és a közöttük lévő kapcsolatokból épül fel. A hálózat segítségével kategóriákba sorolták a tudáselemeket, valamint a fokszámok alapján meghatározták értéküket. A multimodális hálózatból képzett tudáselem-hálózatban megadták az összefüggő csoportok jelentését, majd megfogalmaztak egy összefüggést a tudáselem-elvesztés kockázatának meghatározására. _______ The aims of quality management are to identify those factors that have significant influence on value production, qualify or quantify them, and make preventive and corrective actions in order to reduce their negative effects. The core elements of value production are processes and tasks, along with workforce having the necessary knowledge to work. For that reason the task-resource-knowledge structure is pertinent to quality management. Network science provides methods to analyze complex systems; therefore it seems reasonable to study the use of tools of network analysis in association with quality management issues. First of all the authors categorized quality networks according to the types of nodes (vertices) and links (edges or arcs). Focusing on knowledge management, they defined the multimodal knowledge network, consisting of tasks, resources, knowledge items and their interconnections. Based on their degree, network nodes can be categorized and their value can be quantified. Derived from the multimodal network knowledge-item network is to be created, where the meaning of cohesive subgroups is defined. Eventually they proposed a formula for determining the risk of knowledge loss.

Unravelling the evolution of autumn colours: an interdisciplinary approach.

Leaf colour change is commonly observed in temperate deciduous forests in autumn. This is not simply a side effect of leaf senescence, and, in the past decade, several hypotheses have emerged to explain the evolution of autumn colours. Yet a lack of crosstalk between plant physiologists and evolutionary ecologists has resulted in slow progress, and so the adaptive value of this colour change remains a mystery. Here we provide an interdisciplinary summary of the current body of knowledge on autumn colours, and discuss unresolved issues and future avenues of research that might help reveal the evolutionary meaning of this spectacle of nature.