Explaining process and performance in the co-production of knowledge:a comparative analysis of collaborative research projects

Despite considerable and growing interest in the subject of academic researchers and practising managers jointly generating knowledge (which we term ‘co-production’), our searches of management literature revealed few articles based on primary data or multiple cases. Given the increasing commitment to co-production by academics, managers and those funding research, it seems important to strengthen the evidence base about practice and performance in co-production. Literature on collaborative research was reviewed to develop a framework to structure the analysis of this data and relate findings to the limited body of prior research on collaborative research practice and performance. This paper presents empirical data from four completed, large scale co-production projects. Despite major differences between the cases, we find that the key success factors and the indicators of performances are remarkably similar. We demonstrate many, complex influences between factors, between outcomes, and between factors and outcomes, and discuss the features that are distinctive to co-production. Our empirical findings are broadly consonant with prior literature, but go further in trying to understand success factors’ consequences for performance. A second contribution of this paper is the development of a conceptually and methodologically rigorous process for investigating collaborative research, linking process and performance. The paper closes with discussion of the study’s limitations and opportunities for further research.

Fatigue crack propagation in nickel-base superalloys:effects of microstructure, load ratio, and temperature

The current state of knowledge and understanding of the long fatigue crack propagation behavior of nickel-base superalloys are reviewed, with particular emphasis on turbine disk materials. The data are presented in the form of crack growth rate versus stress intensity factor range curves, and the effects of such variables as microstructure, load ratio, and temperature in the near-threshold and Paris regimes of the curves, are discussed.

Knowledge-based Robot Control

The paper is related with the problem of developing autonomous intelligent robots for complex environments. In details it outlines a knowledge-based robot control architecture that combines several techniques in order to supply an ability to adapt and act autonomously in complex environments. The described architecture has been implemented as a robotic system that demonstrates its operation in dynamic environment. Although the robotic system demonstrates a certain level of autonomy, the experiments show that there are situation, in which the developed base architecture should be complemented with additional modules. The last few chapters of the paper describe the experimentation results and the current state of further research towards the developed architecture.

Dynamic Distribution Simulation Model Objects Based on Knowledge

This paper presents the process of load balancing in simulation system Triad.Net, the architecture of load balancing subsystem. The main features of static and dynamic load balancing are discussed and new approach, controlled dynamic load balancing, needed for regular mapping of simulation model on the network of computers is proposed. The paper considers linguistic constructions of Triad language for different load balancing algorithms description.

Applications of Nonclassical Logic Methods for Purposes of Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining

* The work is partially supported by Grant no. NIP917 of the Ministry of Science and Education – Republic of Bulgaria.

Emotions and a Prior Knowledge Representation in Artificial General Intelligence

In this paper a prior knowledge representation for Artificial General Intelligence is proposed based on fuzzy rules using linguistic variables. These linguistic variables may be produced by neural network. Rules may be used for generation of basic emotions – positive and negative, which influence on planning and execution of behavior. The representation of Three Laws of Robotics as such prior knowledge is suggested as highest level of motivation in AGI.

Ontology-Based Model of Representation of Knowledge about Language Mappings

The paper presents a short review of some systems for program transformations performed on the basis of the internal intermediate representations of these programs. Many systems try to support several languages of representation of the source texts of programs and solve the task of their translation into the internal representation. This task is still a challenge as it is effort-consuming. To reduce the effort, different systems of translator construction, ready compilers with ready grammars of outside designers are used. Though this approach saves the effort, it has its drawbacks and constraints. The paper presents the general idea of using the mapping approach to solve the task within the framework of program transformations and overcome the disadvantages of the existing systems. The paper demonstrates a fragment of the ontology model of high-level languages mappings onto the single representation and gives the example of how the description of (a fragment) a particular mapping is represented in accordance with the ontology model.

Upgradable Tree Levels Editor of Metaontologies, Ontologies and Knowledge for a Chemistry

* This paper has supported by Far Eastern Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, the project 06-III-A-01-005 and Russian Fund of Fundamental Investigation, the project 06-07-89071-a

Candidate knowledge? Exploring epistemic claims in scientific writing:a corpus-driven approach

In this article I argue that the study of the linguistic aspects of epistemology has become unhelpfully focused on the corpus-based study of hedging and that a corpus-driven approach can help to improve upon this. Through focusing on a corpus of texts from one discourse community (that of genetics) and identifying frequent tri-lexical clusters containing highly frequent lexical items identified as keywords, I undertake an inductive analysis identifying patterns of epistemic significance. Several of these patterns are shown to be hedging devices and the whole corpus frequencies of the most salient of these, candidate and putative, are then compared to the whole corpus frequencies for comparable wordforms and clusters of epistemic significance. Finally I interviewed a ‘friendly geneticist’ in order to check my interpretation of some of the terms used and to get an expert interpretation of the overall findings. In summary I argue that the highly unexpected patterns of hedging found in genetics demonstrate the value of adopting a corpus-driven approach and constitute an advance in our current understanding of how to approach the relationship between language and epistemology.

Adversarial interpreting – a forensic linguistic perspective

Interactions with second language speakers in public service contexts in England are normally conducted with the assistance of one interpreter. Even in situations where team interpreting would be advisable, for example in lengthy courtroom proceedings, financial considerations mean only one interpreter is normally booked. On occasion, however, more than one interpreter, or an individual (or individuals) with knowledge of the languages in question, may be simultaneously present during an interpreted interaction, either monitoring it or indeed volunteering unsolicited input. During police interviews or trials in England this may happen when the interpreter secured by the defence team to interpret during private consultation with the suspect or defendant is present also in the interview room or the courtroom but two independently sourced interpreters need not be limited to legal contexts. In healthcare settings for example, service users sometimes bring friends or relatives along to help them communicate with service providers only to find that the latter have booked an interpreter as a matter of procedure. By analogy to the nature of the English legal system, I refer to contexts where an interpreter’s output is monitored and/or challenged, either during the speech event or subsequently, as ‘adversarial interpreting’. This conceptualisation reflects the fact that interpreters in such encounters are sourced independently, often by opposing parties, and as a result can rarely be considered a team. My main concern in this paper is to throw spotlight on adversarial interpreting as a hitherto rarely discussed problem in its own right. That it is not an anomaly is evidenced by the many cases around the world where the officially recorded interpreted output was challenged, as mentioned in for example Berk-Seligson (2002), Hayes and Hale (2010), and Phelan (2011). This paper reports on the second stage of a research project which has previously involved the analysis of a transcript of an interpreted police interview with a suspect in a murder case. I will mention the findings of the analysis briefly and introduce some new findings based on input from practising interpreters who have shared their experience of adversarial interpreting by completing an online questionnaire. I will try to answer the question of how the presence of two interpreters, or an interpreter and a monitoring participant, in the same speech event impacts on the communication process. I will also address the issue of forensic linguistic arbitration in cases where incompetent interpreting has been identified or an expert opinion is sought in relation to an adversarial interpreting event of significance to a legal dispute. References Berk-Seligson (2002), The Bilingual Courtroom: Court Interpreters in the Judicial Process, University of Chicago Press. Hayes, A. and Hale, S. (2010), "Appeals on incompetent interpreting", Journal of Judicial Administration 20.2, 119-130. Phelan, M. (2011), "Legal Interpreters in the news in Ireland", Translation and Interpreting 3.1, 76-105.

Reviewing the evidence base for the Children and Young People Safety Thermometer (CYPST):a mixed studies review

The objective was to identify evidence to support use of specific harms for the development of a children and young people's safety thermometer (CYPST). We searched PubMed, Web of Knowledge, and Cochrane Library post-1999 for studies in pediatric settings about pain, skin integrity, extravasation injury, and use of pediatric early warning scores (PEWS). Following screening, nine relevant articles were included. Convergent synthesis methods were used drawing on thematic analysis to combine findings from studies using a range of methods (qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods). A review of PEWS was identified so other studies on this issue were excluded. No relevant studies about extravasation injury were identified. The synthesized results therefore focused on pain and skin integrity. Measurement and perception of pain were complex and not always carried out according to best practice. Skin abrasions were common and mostly associated with device related injuries. The findings demonstrate a need for further work on perceptions of pain and effective communication of concerns about pain between parents and nursing staff. Strategies for reducing device-related injuries warrant further research focusing on prevention. Together with the review of PEWS, these synthesized findings support the inclusion of pain, skin integrity, and PEWS in the CYPST.

A formação da habilidade de explicar no contexto do ensino médio: o que dizem os livros? o que pensam os professores?

The discussion about explanation in knowledge has been made for decades. Through this course, we present different ways of understanding about what is to explain the history: the primitive ethnographic description, the chronicler, the positivist construction of a historical science and historiography of the second half of twentieth century. Nowadays this discussion needs to be continued both in the general framework of scientific practice as within educational institutions as cognitive - linguistic ability. The focus of our research is by the second approach, which is the explanation as cognitive - linguistic ability. The formation of skills, among them, the explaining one, has been studied by the authors as: (NÚÑEZ 2012; JORBA et al, 2000; SANMARTÍ and IZQUIERDO 2000). This research had as general purpose: to study the processes of formation of the ability to explain social revolution in history classes in high school, by teachers opinion and by content as this theme among history books, in order to support the continuing education of history teachers for high school. Th e qualitative based research used instruments of data collection and analysis protocol for the books prepared for this study, and interviews with teachers. For this, the techniques of content analysis and discourse referenced in Bardin and Orlandi , respec tively were used. At first, the instruments for data collection were developed and validated, while in the second, the data were collected, organized and analyzed. From the answers to the questions of the study results shows that: a) in the analyzed books - do not express the work with the definition of Social Revolution, considering the processes for the formation of this definition, the predominant type of explanation has characteristics of multicausality; proposals for teaching are characterized as eclec tic; b) while teachers speech - it is important the students know the definition of Social Revolution, the ability to explain is more linked to didactic explanation in the classroom than the explanation through epistemological sense. These results indicate that the formation of the ability to explain Social Revolution based in Cultural History approach, are not expressed in the analyzed books, but they can serve as an important resource for this purpose. The discourse of teachers has a potential pointing to the possibility of teaching organization and learning process, based on training or upgrading the explanation skill from the theory of stepwise formation of mental actions and concepts by P.Ya. Galperin. For this purpose, the research constitutes a contri bution to support the continued education of history teachers in high school.

Classificação de técnicas e auxílio à navegação de busca com base em sua carga cognitiva, precisão e eficiência

Navigation, in both virtual and real environments, is the process of a deliberated movement to a specific place that is usually away from the origin point, and that cannot be perceived from it. Navigation aid techniques (TANs) have as their main objective help finding a path through a virtual environment to a desired location and, are widely used because they ease the navigation on these unknown environments. Tools like maps, GPS (Global Positioning System) or even oral instructions are real world examples of TAN usage. Most of the works which propose new TANs for virtual environments aim to analyze their impact in efficiency gain on navigation tasks from a known place to an unknown place. However, such papers tend to ignore the effect caused by a TAN usage over the route knowledge acquisition process, which is important on virtual to real training transfer, for example. Based on a user study, it was possible to confirm that TANs with different strategies affects the performance of search tasks differently and that the efficiency of the help provided by a TAN is not inversely related to the cognitive load of the technique’s aids. A technique classification formula was created. This formula utilizes three factors instead of only efficiency. The experiment’s data were applied to the formula and we obtained a better refinement of help level provided by TANs.

Resumo de dissertações e teses: a estrutura composicional à luz da Análise Textual dos Discursos

This doctoral dissertationproposes the description, interpretation and analysis of the compositional structure of thesis and dissertation abstracts, with regard to the linguistic mechanisms that evidence text zones of different typological sequences, such as those of the text plan. Along these lines, the research problem was developed from the notion of compositional structure (sequences and text plans), as one of the levels or plans of text analysis, according to the theoretical framework proposed by Jean-Michel Adam (2011a). The main objective of this study was to recognize how the compositional structure, of thesis and dissertation abstracts, is achieved, with respect to text units and the global organization of this text category. The hypothesis posed in this research posits that specific informational text composition categories of abstracts are necessary to process the representation of the original text and the way in which it makes its meaning. Subsequently, this study is based on the theoretical and methodological framework of Text Linguistics (TL) and, above all, Textual Discourse Analysis (TDA), as we endeavor to understand the organizational structure of abstracts from both a linguistic and textual perspective. This structure involves the text plan of abstracts, with respect to their communicative purpose, i.e, the sharing of scientific information in its standard textual form. Thus, the development of this study, from a theoretical and methodological perspective, is based on the theoretical and descriptive premises from TDA (ADAM, 2011a, 2012; PASSEGGI et al., 2010), and also from TL (BEAUGRANDE; DRESSLER, (2012 [1981]); COSERIU; LAMAS (2010); MARCUSCHI, 2009 [1983]; FÁVERO; KOCH, 1994;KOCH, 2006; BENTES, 2004; BENTES; LEITE, 2010), within the field of text studies. The methodology of this study relies on empirical, documental research, which is qualitative, and adopts a descriptive and interpretive approach. From the empirical perspective, our objective is to understand the problems pertaining to the textual composition of abstracts, aiming to elucidate them in light of the theoretical and methodological framework previously mentioned. The corpus of the analysis is comprised of seven abstracts designated for systematic data collection. These texts, written between 2004 and 2011,were selected from Master’s theses and Doctoral dissertations in their electronic version, from the graduate program at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte. A thorough review of the literature reveals a clear fluctuation in the terminology of the concept, ‘abstract’. The results of the analysis revealed that the abstracts, which comprise the corpus of analysis in this study, in general, present typological heterogeneity, while the text plan remains fixed. Finally, the new knowledge gained in this research contributes both to the understanding of the compositional structure of abstracts as well as their production.

Validade científica de conhecimento epidemiológico gerado com base no estudo Saúde Bucal Brasil 2003

Indicators and analyses that used the database from SB Brazil 2003 (the most recent nationwide oral health survey) have been criticized as unreliable due to sampling problems. The current study countered that this critique was based solely on statistical concepts, unsupported by empirical evidence. The critique's essentially epistemic approach leads to peremptory reductionism that denies other forms of knowledge and fails to recognize the multidisciplinary nature of epidemiology. The current study retrieves information on the implementation of the oral health survey and its impact on knowledge output in the field. The article draws an analogy between science and art, demonstrating the multifaceted images obtained by both. Thus, recognition of validity requires a full grasp of the field and appropriate use of value criteria. The current article concludes that use of the SB Brazil 2003 database is a reliable and relevant application of epidemiology to oral health.