Beyond human and intellectual capital: Profiling the value of knowledge, skills and experience

The concept of human capital is associated mainly with the Nobel Laureate Gary Becker and, in his usage, has a clear conceptual basis as investment in the costs of formal education. By contrast, this paper suggests that ‘intellectual capital’ is a re-branding of knowledge, skills and experience rather than re-conceptualisation of resource based learning. Becker also chose not to include informal knowledge, skills or experience within his concept of human capital, which remains limited by its constrained premises. This paper submits that both human capital and intellectual capital advocates fail to identify or measure the tacit knowledge and implicit learning which increasingly is recognised as a key to the competitive advantage of organisations. It first focuses on the conceptual basis of claims made for human capital and intellectual capital, outlines limits in their methodology, and contrasts these with insights from theories of tacit knowledge and implicit learning and the central role within them of informal or non-formal skill acquisition. It develops and illustrates instances of interfacing tacit and explicit knowledge before introducing a methodology for profiling the acquisition of knowledge, ability and skills. It does so by introducing the concepts of non-formal learningfrom- work (LfW) and informal learning-from-life (LfL), with evidence from a four country EU case study commissioned within the lifelong learning remit of the Lisbon Agenda.

Public and private initiatives for regional development : an investigation of knowledge transfer and social entrepreneurship

Otto-von-Guericke-Universität Magdeburg, Fakultät für Wirtschaftswissenschaft, Dissertation, 2016

Prototype and proof of concept for a display system in retail stores

Selling devices on retail stores comes with the big challenge of grabbing the customer’s attention. Nowadays people have a lot of offers at their disposal and new marketing techniques must emerge to differentiate the products. When it comes to smartphones and tablets, those devices can make the difference by themselves, if we use their computing power and capabilities to create something unique and interactive. With that in mind, three prototypes were developed during an internship: a face recognition based Customer Detection, a face tracking solution with an Avatar and interactive cross-app Guides. All three revealed to have potential to be differentiating solutions in a retail store, not only raising the chance of a customer taking notice of the device but also of interacting with them to learn more about their features. The results were meant to be only proof of concepts and therefore were not tested in the real world.

Principles of knowledge organization: analysis and structures in the networked environment

Knowledge organization in the networked environment is guided by standards. Standards in knowledge organization are built on principles. For example, NISO Z39.19-1993 Guide to the Construction of Monolingual Thesauri (now undergoing revision) and NISO Z39.85- 2001 Dublin Core Metadata Element Set are two standards used in many implementations. Both of these standards were crafted with knowledge organization principles in mind. Therefore it is standards work guided by knowledge organization principles which can affect design of information services and technologies. This poster outlines five threads of thought that inform knowledge organization principles in the networked environment. An understanding of each of these five threads informs system evaluation. The evaluation of knowledge organization systems should be tightly linked to a rigorous understanding of the principles of construction. Thus some foundational evaluation questions grow from an understanding of stan dard s and pr inciples: on what pr inciples is this know ledge organization system built? How well does this implementation meet the ideal conceptualization of those principles? How does this tool compare to others built on the same principles?

Ethos and Ideology of Knowledge Organization: Toward Precepts for and Engaged Knowledge Organization Drawing on The Arts and Crafts Movement, Critical Theory, and Žižek

Ethos is the spirit that motivates ideas and practices. When we talk casually about the ethos of a town, state, or country we are describing the fundamental or at least underlying rationale for action, as we see it. Ideology is a way of looking at things.It is the set of ideas that constitute one’s goals, expectations, and actions. In this brief essay I want to create a space where we might talk about the ethos and ideology in knowledge organization from a particular point of view; combining ideas and inspiration from the Arts and Crafts movement of the early Twentieth Century, critical theory in extant knowledge organization work, the work of Slavoj Žižek, and the work of Thich Nhat Hahn on Engaged Buddhism.I will expand more below, but we can say here and now that there are many open questions about ethos and ideology in and of knowledge organization, both its practice and products. Many of them in classification, positioned as they are around identity politics of race, gender, and other marginalized groups, ask the classificationist to be mindful of the choice of terms and relationships between terms. From this work we understand that race and gender requires special consideration, which manifests as a particular concern for the form of representation inside extant schemes. Even with these advances in our understanding there are still other categories about which we must make decisions and take action. For example, there are ethical decisions about fiduciary resource allocation, political decisions about standards adoption, and even broader zeitgeist considerations like the question of Fordist conceptions (Day, 2001; Tennis 2006) of the mechanics of description and representation present in much of today’s practice.Just as taking action in a particular way is an ethical concern, so too is avoiding a lack of action. Scholars in Knowledge Organization have also looked at the absence of what we might call right action in the context of cataloguing and classification. This leads to some problems above, and hints at larger ethical concerns of watching a subtle semantic violence go on without intervention (Bowker and Star, 2001; Bade 2006).The problem is not to act or not act, but how to act or not act in an ethical way, or at least with ethical considerations. The action advocated by an ethical consideration for knowledge organization is an engaged one, and it is here where we can take a nod from contemporary ethical theory advanced by Engaged Buddhism. In this context we can see the manifestation of fourteen precepts that guide ethical action, and warn against lack of action.

Ethos and Ideology of Knowledge Organization: Toward Precepts for anEngaged Knowledge Organization

This paper provides rationale for considering precepts for an engaged knowledge organization based on a Buddhist conception of intentional action. Casting knowledge organization work as craft, this paper employs Žižek’s conception of vio- lence in language as a call to action. The paper closes with a listing of precepts for an engaged knowledge organization.

Fringe Types and KOS Systematics: Examining the Limits of the Population Perspective of Knowledge Organization Systems

We find ourselves, after the close of the twentieth century, looking back at a mass of responses to the knowledge organization problem. Many institutions, such as the Dewey Decimal Classification (Furner, 2007), have grown up to address it. Increasingly, many diverse discourses are appropriating the problem and crafting a wide variety of responses. This includes many artistic interpretations of the act and products of knowledge organization. These surface as responses to the expressive power or limits of the Library and Information Studies institutions (e.g., DDC) and their often primarily utilitarian gaze.One way to make sense of this diversity is to approach the study from a descriptive stance, inventorying the population of types of KOS. This population perspective approaches the phenomenon of types and boundaries of Knowledge Organization Systems (KOS) as one that develops out of particular discourses, for particular purposes. For example, both DDC and Martianus Capella, a 5th Century encyclopedist, are KOS in this worldview. Both are part of the population of KOS. Approaching the study of KOS from the population perspective allows the researcher a systematic look at the diversity emergent at the constellation of different factors of design and implementation. However, it is not enough to render a model of core types, but we have to also consider the borders of KOS. Fringe types of KOS inform research, specifically to the basic principles of design and implementation used by others outside of the scholarly and professional discourse of Library and Information Studies.Four examples of fringe types of KOS are presented in this paper. Applying a rubric developed in previous papers, our aim here is to show how the conceptual anatomy of these fringe types relates to more established KOS, thereby laying bare the definitions of domain, purpose, structure, and practice. Fringe types, like Beghtol’s examples (2003), are drawn from areas outside of Library and Information Studies proper, and reflect the reinvention of structures to fit particular purposes in particular domains. The four fringe types discussed in this paper are (1) Roland Barthes’ text S/Z which “indexes” a text of an essay with particular “codes” that are meant to expose the literary rhythm of the work; (2) Mary Daly’s Wickedary, a reference work crafted for radical liberation theology – and specifically designed to remove patriarchy from the language used by what the author calls “wild women”; (3) Luigi Serafini’s Codex Seraphinianus a work of book art that plays on the trope of universal encyclopedia and back-of- the book index; and (4) Martinaus Capella – and his Marriage of Mercury and Philology, a fifth century encyclopedia. We compared these using previous analytic taxonomies (Wright, 2008; Tennis, 2006; Tudhope, 2006, Soergel, 2001, Hodge, 2000).

Integrated soil fertility management in eastern and western Africa: The role of knowledge and innovation systems, its adoption and impact

The rise in population growth, as well as nutrient mining, has contributed to low agricultural productivity in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). A plethora of technologies to boost agricultural production have been developed but the dissemination of these agricultural innovations and subsequent uptake by smallholder farmers has remained a challenge. Scientists and philanthropists have adopted the Integrated Soil Fertility Management (ISFM) paradigm as a means to promote sustainable intensification of African farming systems. This comparative study aimed: 1) To assess the efficacy of Agricultural Knowledge and Innovation Systems (AKIS) in East (Kenya) and West (Ghana) Africa in the communication and dissemination of ISFM (Study I); 2) To investigate how specifically soil quality, and more broadly socio-economic status and institutional factors, influence farmer adoption of ISFM (Study II); and 3) To assess the effect of ISFM on maize yield and total household income of smallholder farmers (Study III). To address these aims, a mixed methodology approach was employed for study I. AKIS actors were subjected to social network analysis methods and in-depth interviews. Structured questionnaires were administered to 285 farming households in Tamale and 300 households in Kakamega selected using a stratified random sampling approach. There was a positive relationship between complete ISFM awareness among farmers and weak knowledge ties to both formal and informal actors at both research locations. The Kakamega AKIS revealed a relationship between complete ISFM awareness among farmers and them having strong knowledge ties to formal actors implying that further integration of formal actors with farmers’ local knowledge is crucial for the agricultural development progress. The structured questionnaire was also utilized to answer the query pertaining to study II. Soil samples (0-20 cm depth) were drawn from 322 (Tamale, Ghana) and 459 (Kakamega, Kenya) maize plots and analysed non-destructively for various soil fertility indicators. Ordinal regression modeling was applied to assess the cumulative adoption of ISFM. According to model estimates, soil carbon seemed to preclude farmers from intensifying input use in Tamale, whereas in Kakamega it spurred complete adoption. This varied response by farmers to soil quality conditions is multifaceted. From the Tamale perspective, it is consistent with farmers’ tendency to judiciously allocate scarce resources. Viewed from the Kakamega perspective, it points to a need for farmers here to intensify agricultural production in order to foster food security. In Kakamega, farmers with more acidic soils were more likely to adopt ISFM. Other household and farm-level factors necessary for ISFM adoption included off-farm income, livestock ownership, farmer associations, and market inter-linkages. Finally, in study III a counterfactual model was used to calculate the difference in outcomes (yield and household income) of the treatment (ISFM adoption) in order to estimate causal effects of ISFM adoption. Adoption of ISFM contributed to a yield increase of 16% in both Tamale and Kakamega. The innovation affected total household income only in Tamale, where ISFM adopters had an income gain of 20%. This may be attributable to the different policy contexts under which the two sets of farmers operate. The main recommendations underscored the need to: (1) improve the functioning of AKIS, (2) enhance farmer access to hybrid maize seed and credit, (3) and conduct additional multi-locational studies as farmers operate under varying contexts.

The Decent Work Questionnaire (DWQ): Development and validation in two samples of knowledge workers

This research aimed to develop a questionnaire measure of workers’ perceptions of decent work. The initial pool of 72 items covered the substantive elements used by the International Labour Organization to characterize decent work. It was administered to workers from Portugal (N = 636) and Brazil (N = 1039) and submitted to exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis. The final 31-item version yields seven factor scores in addition to the global decent work score. With good reliability, convergent and discriminant validity indices, the DWQ could open new avenues for empirical studies of the decent work concept.

纯公钥模型下对NP语言的高效并发零知识证明系统

提出了一种从3轮公开掷币的对任何NP语言的诚实验证者零知识证明系统到纯公钥模型下4轮f轮最优）对同一语言的具有并发合理性的并发零知识证明系统．该转化方法有如下优点：1）它只引起D（1）（常数个）额外的模指数运算，相比DiCrescenzo等人在ICALP05上提出的需要qn）个额外的模指数运算的转化方法孩系统在效率上有着本质上的提高，而所需的困难性假设不变；2）在离散对数假设下，该转化方法产生一个完美零知识证明系统．注意到DiCrescenzo等人提出的系统只具有计算零知识性质．该转化方法依赖于一个特殊的对承诺中的离散对数的3轮诚实验证者零知识的证明系统．构造了两个基于不同承诺方案的只需要常数个模指数运算的系统这种系统可能有着独立价值．

评一种高效的群签名

群签名是对一般数字签名的一种扩展，有很多重要应用．最近提出的一种高效的群签名，被声称没有采用知识签名，从而签名和验证的计算量远远少于著名的ACJT方案．在本文中，我们指出该方案其实采用了知识签名，但是由于使用上的不当，使得该方案完全不安全，即两个群成员合谋就可以伪造出对任意消息的群签名，且打开算法是无效的．[第一段]

Relações entre os conhecimentos, as atitudes e a confiança dos alunos do curso de licenciatura em Matemática em resolução de problemas geométricos

Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES)

Phylotastic! Making tree-of-life knowledge accessible, reusable and convenient.

BACKGROUND: Scientists rarely reuse expert knowledge of phylogeny, in spite of years of effort to assemble a great "Tree of Life" (ToL). A notable exception involves the use of Phylomatic, which provides tools to generate custom phylogenies from a large, pre-computed, expert phylogeny of plant taxa. This suggests great potential for a more generalized system that, starting with a query consisting of a list of any known species, would rectify non-standard names, identify expert phylogenies containing the implicated taxa, prune away unneeded parts, and supply branch lengths and annotations, resulting in a custom phylogeny suited to the user's needs. Such a system could become a sustainable community resource if implemented as a distributed system of loosely coupled parts that interact through clearly defined interfaces. RESULTS: With the aim of building such a "phylotastic" system, the NESCent Hackathons, Interoperability, Phylogenies (HIP) working group recruited 2 dozen scientist-programmers to a weeklong programming hackathon in June 2012. During the hackathon (and a three-month follow-up period), 5 teams produced designs, implementations, documentation, presentations, and tests including: (1) a generalized scheme for integrating components; (2) proof-of-concept pruners and controllers; (3) a meta-API for taxonomic name resolution services; (4) a system for storing, finding, and retrieving phylogenies using semantic web technologies for data exchange, storage, and querying; (5) an innovative new service, DateLife.org, which synthesizes pre-computed, time-calibrated phylogenies to assign ages to nodes; and (6) demonstration projects. These outcomes are accessible via a public code repository (GitHub.com), a website (http://www.phylotastic.org), and a server image. CONCLUSIONS: Approximately 9 person-months of effort (centered on a software development hackathon) resulted in the design and implementation of proof-of-concept software for 4 core phylotastic components, 3 controllers, and 3 end-user demonstration tools. While these products have substantial limitations, they suggest considerable potential for a distributed system that makes phylogenetic knowledge readily accessible in computable form. Widespread use of phylotastic systems will create an electronic marketplace for sharing phylogenetic knowledge that will spur innovation in other areas of the ToL enterprise, such as annotation of sources and methods and third-party methods of quality assessment.

The Productive use of Failure to Generate Witnesses from Divergent Proof Attempts for Coinduction

Coinduction is a proof rule. It is the dual of induction. It allows reasoning about non--well--founded structures such as lazy lists or streams and is of particular use for reasoning about equivalences. A central difficulty in the automation of coinductive proof is the choice of a relation (called a bisimulation). We present an automation of coinductive theorem proving. This automation is based on the idea of proof planning. Proof planning constructs the higher level steps in a proof, using knowledge of the general structure of a family of proofs and exploiting this knowledge to control the proof search. Part of proof planning involves the use of failure information to modify the plan by the use of a proof critic which exploits the information gained from the failed proof attempt. Our approach to the problem was to develop a strategy that makes an initial simple guess at a bisimulation and then uses generalisation techniques, motivated by a critic, to refine this guess, so that a larger class of coinductive problems can be automatically verified. The implementation of this strategy has focused on the use of coinduction to prove the equivalence of programs in a small lazy functional language which is similar to Haskell. We have developed a proof plan for coinduction and a critic associated with this proof plan. These have been implemented in CoClam, an extended version of Clam with encouraging results. The planner has been successfully tested on a number of theorems.