Construction management research: a field of application

Research in construction management is diverse in content and in quality. There is much to be learned from more fundamental disciplines. Construction is a sub-set of human experience rather than a completely separate phenomenon. Therefore, it is likely that there are few problems in construction requiring the invention of a completely new theory. If construction researchers base their work only on that of other construction researchers, our academic community will become less relevant to the world at large. The theories that we develop or test must be of wider applicability to be of any real interest. In undertaking research, researchers learn a lot about themselves. Perhaps the only difference between research and education is that if we are learning about something which no-one else knows, then it is research, otherwise it is education. Self-awareness of this will help to reduce the chances of publishing work which only reveals a researcher’s own learning curve. Scientific method is not as simplistic as non-scientists claim and is the only real way of overcoming methodological weaknesses in our work. The reporting of research may convey the false impression that it is undertaken in the sequence in which it is written. Construction is not so unique and special as to require a completely different set of methods from other fields of enquiry. Until our research is reported in mainstream journals and conferences, there is little chance that we will influence the wider academic community and a concomitant danger that it will become irrelevant. The most useful insights will come from research which challenges the current orthodoxy rather than research which merely reports it.

Construction research: a field of application

Research in construction management is diverse in content and in quality. There is much to be learned from more fundamental disciplines. Construction is a sub-set of human experience rather than a completely separate phenomenon. Therefore, it is likely that there are few problems in construction requiring the invention of a completely new theory. If construction researchers base their work only on that of other construction researchers, our academic community will become less relevant to the world at large. The theories that we develop or test must be of wider applicability to be of any real interest. In undertaking research, researchers learn a lot about themselves. Perhaps the only difference between research and education is that if we are learning about something which no-one else knows, then it is research, otherwise it is education. Self-awareness of this will help to reduce the chances of publishing work which only reveals a researcher’s own learning curve. Scientific method is not as simplistic as non-scientists claim and is the only real way of overcoming methodological weaknesses in our work. The reporting of research may convey the false impression that it is undertaken in the sequence in which it is written. Construction is not so unique and special as to require a completely different set of methods from other fields of enquiry. Until our research is reported in mainstream journals and conferences, there is little chance that we will influence the wider academic community and a concomitant danger that it will become irrelevant. The most useful insights will come from research which challenges the current orthodoxy rather than research which merely reports it.

Watching the infant brain learn words: Effects of vocabulary size and experience

Previous investigations comparing auditory event-related potentials (ERPs) to words whose meanings infants did or did not comprehend, found bilateral differences in brain activity to known versus unknown words in 13-month-old infants, in contrast with unilateral, left hemisphere, differences in activity in 20-month-old infants. We explore two alternative explanations for these findings. Changes in hemispheric specialization may result from a qualitative shift in the way infants process known words between 13 and 20 months. Alternatively, hemispheric specialization may arise from increased familiarity with the individual words tested. We contrasted these two explanations by measuring ERPs from 20-month-old infants with high and low production scores, for novel words they had just learned. A bilateral distribution of ERP differences was observed in both groups of infants, though the difference was larger in the left hemisphere for the high producers. These findings suggest that word familiarity is an important factor in determining the distribution of brain regions involved in word learning. An emerging left hemispheric specialization may reflect increased efficiency in the manner in which infants process familiar and novel words. (c) 2004 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Implicit and explicit processes in a second-language learning task

Two experiments examined the learning of a set of Greek pronunciation rules through explicit and implicit modes of rule presentation. Experiment 1 compared the effectiveness of implicit and explicit modes of presentation in two modalities, visual and auditory. Subjects in the explicit or rule group were presented with the rule set, and those in the implicit or natural group were shown a set of Greek words, composed of letters from the rule set, linked to their pronunciations. Subjects learned the Greek words to criterion and were then given a series of tests which aimed to tap different types of knowledge. The results showed an advantage of explicit study of the rules. In addition, an interaction was found between mode of presentation and modality. Explicit instruction was more effective in the visual than in the auditory modality, whereas there was no modality effect for implicit instruction. Experiment 2 examined a possible reason for the advantage of the rule groups by comparing different combinations of explicit and implicit presentation in the study and learning phases. The results suggested that explicit presentation of the rules is only beneficial when it is followed by practice at applying them.

Involving users in expert system development

The ultimate criterion of success for interactive expert systems is that they will be used, and used to effect, by individuals other than the system developers. A key ingredient of success in most systems is involving users in the specification and development of systems as they are being built. However, until recently, system designers have paid little attention to ascertaining user needs and to developing systems with corresponding functionality and appropriate interfaces to match those requirements. Although the situation is beginning to change, many developers do not know how to go about involving users, or else tackle the problem in an inadequate way. This paper discusses the need for user involvement and considers why many developers are still not involving users in an optimal way. It looks at the different ways in which users can be involved in the development process and describes how to select appropriate techniques and methods for studying users. Finally, it discusses some of the problems inherent in involving users in expert system development, and recommends an approach which incorporates both ethnographic analysis and formal user testing.

Introduction

Lying at its core, antiquity has saturated Western culture so thoroughly as to be present everywhere, and it is continually revealing itself in new ways. The aspects of the ancient world which we imitate, ridicule, fantasise about, shudder at or privilege tell us who we are—as they always have. As long as our culture continues to evolve, there will always be new things to be learned about its ancient Greek and Roman heritage. Classics For All invites both academic (from a variety of disciplines) and non-academic readers to take a fresh look at the ancient world as inspiration in mass culture.

Regional response differences across the human amygdaloid complex during social conditioning

The amygdala is consistently implicated in biologically relevant learning tasks such as Pavlovian conditioning. In humans, the ability to identify individual faces based on the social outcomes they have predicted in the past constitutes a critical form of associative learning that can be likened to “social conditioning.” To capture such learning in a laboratory setting, participants learned about faces that predicted negative, positive, or neutral social outcomes. Participants reported liking or disliking the faces in accordance with their learned social value. During acquisition, we observed differential functional magnetic resonance imaging activation across the human amygdaloid complex consistent with previous lesion, electrophysiological, and functional neuroimaging data. A region of the medial ventral amygdala and a region of the dorsal amygdala/substantia innominata showed signal increases to both Negative and Positive faces, whereas a lateral ventral region displayed a linear representation of the valence of faces such that Negative > Positive > Neutral. This lateral ventral locus also differed from the dorsal and medial loci in that the magnitude of these responses was more resistant to habituation. These findings document a role for the human amygdala in social learning and reveal coarse regional dissociations in amygdala activity that are consistent with previous human and nonhuman animal data.

The effects of different knowledge-dissemination interventions on the mastitis knowledge of Tanzanian smallholder dairy farmers

We developed three different knowledge-dissemination methods for educating Tanzanian smallholder farmers about mastitis in their dairy cattle. The effectiveness of these methods (and their combinations) was evaluated and quantified using a randomised controlled trial and multilevel statistical modelling. To our knowledge, this is the first study that has used such techniques to evaluate the effectiveness of different knowledge-dissemination interventions for adult learning in developing countries. Five different combinations of knowledge-dissemination method were compared: 'diagrammatic handout' ('HO'), 'village meeting' ('VM'), 'village meeting and video' ('VM + V), 'village meeting and diagrammatic handout' ('VM + HO') and 'village meeting, video and diagrammatic handout' ('VM + V + HO'). Smallholder dairy farmers were exposed to only one of these interventions, and the effectiveness of each was compared to a control ('C') group, who received no intervention. The mastitis knowledge of each farmer (n = 256) was evaluated by questionnaire both pre- and post-dissemination. Generalised linear mixed models were used to evaluate the effectiveness of the different interventions. The outcome variable considered was the probability of volunteering correct responses to mastitis questions post-dissemination, with 'village' and 'farmer' considered as random effects in the model. Results showed that all five interventions, 'HO' (odds ratio (OR) = 3.50, 95% confidence intervals (CI) = 3.10, 3.96), 'VM + V + HO' (OR = 3.34, 95% CI = 2.94, 3.78), 'VM + HO, (OR=3.28, 95% CI=2.90, 3.71), WM+V (OR=3.22, 95% CI=2.84, 3.64) and 'VM' (OR = 2.61, 95% CI = 2.31, 2.95), were significantly (p < 0.0001) more effective at disseminating mastitis knowledge than no intervention. In addition, the 'VM' method was less effective at disseminating mastitis knowledge than other interventions. Combinations of methods showed no advantage over the diagrammatic handout alone. Other explanatory variables with significant positive associations on mastitis knowledge included education to secondary school level or higher, and having previously learned about mastitis by reading pamphlets or attendance at an animal-health course. (c) 2005 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Orphan worms and, homeless parasites enhance bilaterian diversity

Microscopic endoparasites belonging to the Phylum Myxozoa provide a striking example of how much there is still to be learned about the diversity of the Metazoa. Recent research on myxozoans has provided new insights into evolution within the Bilateria, revealing unparalleled levels of morphological simplification associated with parasitism, a home for an orphan worm, and a hypothesis of the endosymbiotic origin(s) for extrusible intracellular organelles in myxozoans and cnidarians. In addition, discovery of the source of a devastating disease of salmonid fish has enabled researchers to identify two ancient clades within the Myxozoa, and has exposed new mysteries concerning myxozoan life-cycle evolution and evolutionary diversification. This plethora of new insights exemplifies the fundamental value of studying obscure organisms.

Learning from risks: A tool for post-project risk assessment

Risk management (RM) comprises of risk identification, risk analysis, response planning, monitoring and action planning tasks that are carried out throughout the life cycle of a project in order to ensure that project objectives are met. Although the methodological aspects of RM are well-defined, the philosophical background is rather vague. In this paper, a learning-based approach is proposed. In order to implement this approach in practice, a tool has been developed to facilitate construction of a lessons learned database that contains risk-related information and risk assessment throughout the life cycle of a project. The tool is tested on a real construction project. The case study findings demonstrate that it can be used for storing as well as updating risk-related information and finally, carrying out a post-project appraisal. The major weaknesses of the tool are identified as, subjectivity of the risk rating process and unwillingness of people to enter information about reasons of failure.

The relationship between phonological awareness and word reading accuracy in Oriya and English: A Study of Oriya-speaking fifth-graders

This study investigated the relationships between phonological awareness and reading in Oriya and English. Oriya is the official language of Orissa, an eastern state of India. The writing system is an alphasyllabary. Ninety-nine fifth grade children (mean age 9 years 7 months) were assessed on measures of phonological awareness, word reading and pseudo-word reading in both languages. Forty-eight of the children attended Oriya-medium schools where they received literacy instruction in Oriya from grade 1 and learned English from grade 2. Fifty-one children attended English-medium schools where they received literacy instruction in English from grade 1 and in Oriya from grade 2. The results showed that phonological awareness in Oriya contributed significantly to reading Oriya and English words and pseudo-words for the children in the Oriya-medium schools. However, it only contributed to Oriya pseudo-word reading and English word reading for children in the English-medium schools. Phonological awareness in English contributed to English word and pseudo-word reading for both groups. Further analyses investigated the contribution of awareness of large phonological units (syllable, onsets and rimes) and small phonological units (phonemes) to reading in each language. The data suggest that cross-language transfer and facilitation of phonological awareness to word reading is not symmetrical across languages and may depend both on the characteristics of the different orthographies of the languages being learned and whether the first literacy language is also the first spoken language.

Sex differences in common marmosets (Callithrix jacchus) in response to an unfamiliar food task

There is a growing body of information on sex differences In callitrichid behaviour that includes the animals' performance in food tasks. For example, both reproductive and non-reproductive adult females have been found to be more successful than adult males in solving food tasks. In this study ten adult male and ten adult female common marmosets (Callithrix jacchus), housed individually, were tested with an unfamiliar task that involved the extraction of an embedded food. The task was to open a plastic canister that contained a raisin; the open end was covered with parchment paper. Each marmoset was given 15 trials in three blocks of 5 consecutive days. We measured the latency for each animal to open the lid and get the raisin-by one of five strategies that spontaneously emerged. The females learned the task faster and more efficiently than males; all the females opened the canister on day 1, for instance, in contrast to seven of the males on the same day. Females also progressively decreased the time that they took to open the tube. The final latency on day 15, for instance, was significantly shorter for the females. These results are consistent with relevant literature for callitrichids and cannot be accounted for in terms of differences in mental abilities, strength, hand morphology, or energy requirements. Further investigation is necessary to clarify the reasons for these differences.

Training conditional and cumulative risk judgements: the role of frequencies, problem-structure and Einstellung

Two experiments implement and evaluate a training scheme for learning to apply frequency formats to probability judgements couched in terms of percentages. Results indicate that both conditional and cumulative probability judgements can be improved in this manner, however the scheme is insufficient to promote any deeper understanding of the problem structure. In both experiments, training on one problem type only (either conditional or cumulative risk judgements) resulted in an inappropriate transfer of a learned method at test. The obstacles facing a frequency-based training programme for teaching appropriate use of probability data are discussed. Copyright (c) 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Learning associations between places and visual cues without learning to navigate: neither fornix nor entorhinal cortex is required

Rats with fornix transection, or with cytotoxic retrohippocampal lesions that removed entorhinal cortex plus ventral subiculum, performed a task that permits incidental learning about either allocentric (Allo) or egocentric (Ego) spatial cues without the need to navigate by them. Rats learned eight visual discriminations among computer-displayed scenes in a Y-maze, using the constant-negative paradigm. Every discrimination problem included two familiar scenes (constants) and many less familiar scenes (variables). On each trial, the rats chose between a constant and a variable scene, with the choice of the variable rewarded. In six problems, the two constant scenes had correlated spatial properties, either Alto (each constant appeared always in the same maze arm) or Ego (each constant always appeared in a fixed direction from the start arm) or both (Allo + Ego). In two No-Cue (NC) problems, the two constants appeared in randomly determined arms and directions. Intact rats learn problems with an added Allo or Ego cue faster than NC problems; this facilitation provides indirect evidence that they learn the associations between scenes and spatial cues, even though that is not required for problem solution. Fornix and retrohippocampal-lesioned groups learned NC problems at a similar rate to sham-operated controls and showed as much facilitation of learning by added spatial cues as did the controls; therefore, both lesion groups must have encoded the spatial cues and have incidentally learned their associations with particular constant scenes. Similar facilitation was seen in subgroups that had short or long prior experience with the apparatus and task. Therefore, neither major hippocampal input-output system is crucial for learning about allocentric or egocentric cues in this paradigm, which does not require rats to control their choices or navigation directly by spatial cues.

The role of perirhinal cortex in visual discrimination learning for visual secondary reinforcement in rats

Perirhinal cortex in monkeys has been thought to be involved in visual associative learning. The authors examined rats' ability to make associations between visual stimuli in a visual secondary reinforcement task. Rats learned 2-choice visual discriminations for secondary visual reinforcement. They showed significant learning of discriminations before any primary reinforcement. Following bilateral perirhinal cortex lesions, rats continued to learn visual discriminations for visual secondary reinforcement at the same rate as before surgery. Thus, this study does not support a critical role of perirhinal cortex in learning for visual secondary reinforcement. Contrasting this result with other positive results, the authors suggest that the role of perirhinal cortex is in "within-object" associations and that it plays a much lesser role in stimulus-stimulus associations between objects.