“If you don’t want to leave him out, go ahead”: Constructing belonging of non-native animals during Native American parent-child dyad play with a diorama

Thesis (Master's)--University of Washington, 2016-06

Lifestyle still predicts mortality in older men with established vascular disease

Background. It is uncertain whether accepted associations between health behaviors and mortality are pertinent to elderly people. No previous studies have examined the patterns of lifestyle in elderly men with and without clinically evident vascular disease by using a lifestyle score to predict survival. Methods. We measured prevalence of a healthy lifestyle (four or more healthy behaviors out of eight) and examined survival in 11,745 men aged 65-83 years participating in a randomized population-based trial of screening for abdominal aortic aneurysm in Perth, Western Australia. After stratifying participants into five groups according to history and symptoms of vascular disease, we compared survival of men in each subgroup with that of 'healthy' men with no history or symptoms of vascular disease. Results. Invitations to screening produced a corrected response of 70.5%. After adjusting for age and place of birth, having an unhealthy lifestyle was associated with an increase of 20% in the likelihood of death from any cause within 5 years (95% CI: 10-30%). This pattern was consistently evident across subgroups defined by history of vascular disease, but was less evident for deaths from vascular disease. Conclusions. Our results highlight the importance of maintaining a healthy lifestyle through to old age, regardless of history of vascular disease. (c) 2005 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Middle Schooling Teacher Education: Where are we at in Australia?

Commonwealth and State bodies have made substantial investments into curriculum initiatives, research, and reform with a focus on middle schooling. To a considerable degree, the success of middle schooling is dependent upon teachers' preparedness to enact and embrace initiatives and research. Research has shown that the success of school improvement and reform initiatives hinges, in large part, on the qualifications and effectiveness of teachers (Killion, 1999; Garet, Porter, Desimone, Birman, & Yoon, 2001). While some research and professional development in Australia has targeted the school site, pre-service teacher education is clearly a vital yet under-researched area due to its relatively recent introduction. Recent research that includes middle years teacher education (MYTE) (Killion, 1999; Mertens & Flowers, 2004; NCES 2001; NMSA, 2003) and reports from a system that has been working with middle schooling for some time indicates that teachers need specific teacher preparation before they enter the middle level classroom and continuous professional development as they pursue their careers. In Turning Points 2000, one of the seven recommendations is to staff middle grades schools with teachers who are expert at teaching young people in their middle years, and engage teachers in ongoing, targeted professional development opportunities (Jackson & Davis, 2000). Given there are now two dedicated programs towards MYTE (Edith Cowan University and The University of Queensland), other institutions containing elements of MYTE, and others considering MYTE this symposium will summarise current initiatives and research in MYTE, critique the state and place of MYTE in Australia and begin discussions towards teacher education programs that improve the efficacy of middle schooling.

Expert systems for vendor selection

The survival of organisations, especially SMEs, depends, to the greatest extent, on those who supply them with the required material input. This is because if the supplier fails to deliver the right materials at the right time and place, and at the right price, then the recipient organisation is bound to fail in its obligations to satisfy the needs of its customers, and to stay in business. Hence, the task of choosing a supplier(s) from a list of vendors, that an organisation will trust with its very existence, is not an easy one. This project investigated how purchasing personnel in organisations solve the problem of vendor selection. The investigation went further to ascertain whether an Expert Systems model could be developed and used as a plausible solution to the problem. An extensive literature review indicated that very scanty research has been conducted in the area of Expert Systems for Vendor Selection, whereas many research theories in expert systems and in purchasing and supply management chain, respectively, had been reported. A survey questionnaire was designed and circulated to people in the industries who actually perform the vendor selection tasks. Analysis of the collected data confirmed the various factors which are considered during the selection process, and established the order in which those factors are ranked. Five of the factors, namely, Production Methods Used, Vendors Financial Background, Manufacturing Capacity, Size of Vendor Organisations, and Suppliers Position in the Industry; appeared to have similar patterns in the way organisations ranked them. These patterns suggested that the bigger the organisation, the more importantly they regarded the above factors. Further investigations revealed that respondents agreed that the most important factors were: Product Quality, Product Price and Delivery Date. The most apparent pattern was observed for the Vendors Financial Background. This generated curiosity which led to the design and development of a prototype expert system for assessing the financial profile of a potential supplier(s). This prototype was called ESfNS. It determines whether a prospective supplier(s) has good financial background or not. ESNS was tested by the potential users who then confirmed that expert systems have great prospects and commercial viability in the domain for solving vendor selection problems.

A heuristic approach for component scheduling on a high-speed PCB assembly machine

The collect-and-place machine is one of the most widely used placement machines for assembling electronic components on the printed circuit boards (PCBs). Nevertheless, the number of researches concerning the optimisation of the machine performance is very few. This motivates us to study the component scheduling problem for this type of machine with the objective of minimising the total assembly time. The component scheduling problem is an integration of the component sequencing problem, that is, the sequencing of component placements; and the feeder arrangement problem, that is, the assignment of component types to feeders. To solve the component scheduling problem efficiently, a hybrid genetic algorithm is developed in this paper. A numerical example is used to compare the performance of the algorithm with different component grouping approaches and different population sizes.

One-stop health centres:What co-location means for pharmacy

This paper examines the potential for the development of patient services that could arise from the co-location of pharmacies with medical practices in the new "one-stop" centres. A review of the pharmacy-specific literature shows limited understanding of influence of location upon service development and highlights a tension between the professional and commercial drives. The aim of the survey of health centre pharmacists was to describe the current patterns of integration in the primary health care team. The study demonstrates that co-location offers opportunities but that there are barriers linked to the loss of traditional commercial activity. © 2003 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.

A biography:fabrications in the life of an ERP package

This paper provides an account of the way Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems change over time. These changes are conceptualized as a biographical accumulation that gives the specific ERP technology its present character, attributes and historicity. The paper presents empirics from the implementation of an ERP package within an Australasian organization. Changes to the ERP take place as a result of imperatives which arise during the implementation. Our research and evidence then extends to a different time and place where the new release of the ERP software was being 'sold' to client firms in the UK. We theorize our research through a lens based on ideas from actor network theory (ANT) and the concept of biography. The paper seeks to contribute an additional theorization for ANT studies that places the focus on the technological object and frees it from the ties of the implementation setting. The research illustrates the opportunistic and contested fabrication of a technological object and emphasizes the stability as well as the fluidity of its technologic. Copyright © 2007 SAGE.

Interviewing strategies in the face of beauty:a psychophysiological investigation into the job negotiation process

After the application form is submitted, the interview is the most important method of human resource allocation. Previous research has shown that the attractiveness of interviewees can significantly bias interview outcome. We have previously shown that female interviewers give attractive male interviewees higher status job packages compared their average looking counterparts. However, it is not known whether male interviewers exhibit such biases. In the present study, participants were asked to take part in a mock job negotiation scenario where they had to allocate either a high- or low-status job package to attractive or average looking ``interviewees.'' Before each decision was made, the participant's anticipatory electrodermal response (EDR) was recorded. The results supported our previous finding in that female participants allocated a greater number of high-status job packages to attractive men. Additionally, male participants uniformly allocated a greater number of low-status job packages to both attractive men and attractive women. Overall, the average looking interviewees incurred a penalty and received a significantly greater number of low-status job packages. In general, the EDR profile for both male and female participants was significantly greater when allocating the low-status packages to the average looking interviewees. However, the male anticipatory EDR profile showed the greatest change when allocating attractive women with low-status job packages. We discuss these findings in terms of the potential biases that may occur at the job interview and place them within an evolutionary psychology framework.

The economics behind the move to 'localism' in England

This paper explores the economic thinking behind the UK Coalition government’s new framework for achieving local growth and the creation of Local Enterprise Partnerships in England. It does so in the light of recent debates about ‘space-neutral’ and ‘place-based’ policymaking. While the British government states its ambition to achieve greater spatial and industrial balance across England (and by implication the UK), we argue that so far at least there is a mismatch between the ‘rhetoric’ and ‘policies’ of local growth and its limitations. These relate to inconsistencies in the way that the different competing economic ideas in circulation within government have been adopted in practice. As a result, the paper highlights six key disconnects and limitations of the economics behind the move in England to local growth.

Reading before buying - exploring consumer attitudes toward informative function of packaging

Oftentimes, packaging is the first and only marketing tool consumers encounter before a purchase, therefore it is considered to be the most important communication and informative tool (Behaegel, 1991; Peters, 1994). The aim of the research is to better understand food label usage of consumers. To make the identification of behaviour patterns possible and to understand the way consumers use labels on packaging netnography has been chosen as the research method. We identified market factors in our research which result in label use. Based on our results, two large consumer segments were identified: conscious and non-conscious consumer behaviours. Reading information on packaging can be classified in two ways, according to method of use (superficial, conditional, incidental) and place (home, or point of sale).

Online vs. Offline Gossip as a Source of Corporate Communicative Advantage

In a world that may be described by information revolution, it is becoming more and more important to discover the diffusion of information and news in a new technological environment. We are not dependent but, more in control of receiving and forwarding information in this technology driven environment. What we can find is that in today’s interpersonal communications, even corporate communications, gossip-like information gain a more important role. Starting from the psychological notion of gossip we asked the question how gossip occurs, evolves and disperses on the internet, what the main criteria of its diffusion and how these maybe taken into service of a company. The power of gossip derives from its biological basis that is communication advantage. The “newsmonger” maybe described with good memory, being up-to-date even in non-gossip like situations. The spread of info is faster and more precise among people with similar professions or of common interest. The content of the gossip adopts to the intellectual level of its audience. We conducted multiple research methods in order to discover about the nature of gossip of corporate interest: content analyses of blogs (N=10) and forums (N=10); online in-depth interviews (N=10); and individual consumer narratives (N=100). Our research shows that companies may lead and use gossip in an online context for their own communication intentions, however, corporate presence in terms of online gossips has to fulfill requirements in order to remain acceptable: that are specific language and place, openness, being direct about expressing intention and origin. In our paper we are going to present our major results and theoretical model

With the highest ideals: The Florida State Normal College at DeFuniak Springs, 1887--1905

The urgent need for teachers led the Florida legislature in 1887 to establish the Florida State Normal College at DeFuniak Springs. The college closed in 1905 with passage of the Buckman Act, which mandated a complete reorganization of state-supported higher education and ended coeducation for white students. This small college, open for eighteen years, was uniquely situated in time and place to examine larger questions in American educational history as well as contribute to the history of higher education in Florida, which developed differently than in other states.^ This historical case study used archival sources to examine this institution, and contribute to the history of the origins of Florida's system of higher education. Key questions guiding the research were the nature of the students, fundamental aspects of school life, the impact of the school on the students, and the role of the school in the development of higher education in Florida. Original sources included the Catalogs, Register and Minutes of the school. The census of 1900 was used to develop information on the backgrounds of the students. Findings were: DeFuniak Springs was chosen for the school because of the Florida Chautauqua; the school was coeducational and had few rules but the internalized social codes of the students resulted in almost no difficulties with discipline; the students, a majority of whom were women, were from middle-class southern families; the college compared favorably in faculty, facilities and curriculum to institutions elsewhere; although few students graduated, alumni played a key role in shaping Florida's common schools; and, the Buckman Act entirely changed the nature of higher education in Florida.^ Implications were: The coeducational nature of the college a hundred years ago significantly changes the picture of Florida's higher education; the school was small, but its influence far outlasted the institution; and, the school struggled with issues which continue to trouble modern educators such as finances, the legislature, student retention, underpreparedness, and the proper structuring of a curriculum, which indicates the persistence of these issues. ^

In Favor of Hospitality-Management Education

Despite the almost one-hundred-year history of hospitality-management education; the hundreds of well-established two-year, four-year, and graduate programs worldwide; and the hundreds of thousands of graduates those programs have prepared for careers in the industry, hospitality-management education’s merit and place in higher education are still questioned at times, to the dismay of hospitality educators the world over. This article delineates several features of hospitality management that make these programs valuable and unique and provides compelling arguments in its favor. The arguments include: 1) courses tailored to the hospitality industry, the world’s largest industry; 2) focus on small-business management as well as corporate enterprises; 3) emphasis on services and service management, not manufacturing; 4) programs and coursework focused on people management, which it at the core of the hospitality businesses; 5) unique focus on the specific issues of food and beverage management, the largest component of the hospitality industry; and 6) transferability of graduates’ knowledge and skill sets, which are in high demand among other service industries. While business programs focus on the fundamentals of management and production, hospitality- management programs prepare graduates who are aware of general management principles and are particularly well-versed in managing the guest experience and employees in a service environment.

Eyewitness decision -making with showups: Probative or perilous?

Showups are a technique of eyewitness identification in which a single suspect is presented to a witness for identification. Showups are controversial. Defense attorneys argue that they are suggestive and place suspects at undue risk of false identification. Prosecutors and police officers argue that showups are an indispensable investigative tool and are no more suggestive than other identification techniques. Are showups probative or perilous? If so, what can be done to improve their accuracy? This investigation converged on this question by addressing three interrelated goals. The first was to examine the effect of two system variables, retention interval and suspect clothing, on showup accuracy. The second was to determine if showups are more suggestive than lineups. The third goal was to explore carryover effects from showups to subsequent lineup identifications. ^ Eyewitness performance was evaluated with the Eyewitness Identification Paradigm. Approximately 500 undergraduate students at FIU witnesses a staged event (i.e., a "crime") in their classrooms and subsequently participated in a showup and/or lineup identification test. Half of the identification tests contained the target (i.e., the "perpetrator") and half contained a target-substitute (i.e., an "innocent suspect"). ^ The results of this study indicated that, overall, showups are not unusually prejudicial and are no more suggestive than lineups. However this study identified two specific conditions under which showups are likely to lead to false identifications of an innocent suspect. First, false identification are likely to occur in showups that are conducted shortly after a crime when the suspect is wearing clothing similar to that worn by the perpetrator. Second, placing an innocent suspect in both a showup and then a lineup substantially increases the chances that the suspect will be falsely identified in the lineup. The implications of these findings for the conduct of eyewitness investigations are discussed. ^

The international legal thought of Carl Schmitt : towards a critique of the contemporary international order

The aim of the thesis is to develop a critique of current liberal conceptualizations of international order. In order to conduct this critique, this thesis revisits the arguments first put forth by the German legal and political theorist Carl Schmitt. Schmitt conceptualizes a tripartite unity between law, order, and place. This unity, established at the constituent moment of land-appropriation, forms a concrete nomos, which subsequently creates the contours of the legal and political order. The establishment of the concrete order is necessarily the construction of a territorial boundary that designates an inside and an outside of the polity. By speaking of a nomos of the earth, Schmitt globalized this understanding of concrete order by looking at the various historical developments that created a "line" between the concrete applicability of interstate norms and a region where the exceptional situation prevails. The critique presented in this thesis is concerned with the lack of concrete boundary conditions within the current international legal order. It is argued that this lack of a well-defined boundary condition is what results in extreme forms of violence that were traditionally bracketed.