Making sense of a transnational merger: Media texts and the (re)construction of power relations

In this study of symbolic power relations in a transnational merger, we suggest that the popular media can provide a significant arena for (re)constructing national identities and power in this kind of dramatic industrial restructuring, and are an under-utilized source of empirical data in research studies. Focusing on the press coverage of a recent Swedish-Finnish merger, we specify and illustrate a particular feature of discursive (re)construction of asymmetric power relations; superior (Swedish) and inferior (Finnish) national identities, which, we argue, are embedded in the history of colonization and domination between the two nations. The findings of the present study lead us to suggest that a lens taken from post-colonial theory is particularly useful in understanding the wider symbolic power implications of international industrial restructuring.

Fuzzy Coherence: Making Sense of Continuity in Hypertext Narratives

Hypertexts are digital texts characterized by interactive hyperlinking and a fragmented textual organization. Increasingly prominent since the early 1990s, hypertexts have become a common text type both on the Internet and in a variety of other digital contexts. Although studied widely in disciplines like hypertext theory and media studies, formal linguistic approaches to hypertext continue to be relatively rare. This study examines coherence negotiation in hypertext with particularly reference to hypertext fiction. Coherence, or the quality of making sense, is a fundamental property of textness. Proceeding from the premise that coherence is a subjectively evaluated property rather than an objective quality arising directly from textual cues, the study focuses on the processes through which readers interact with hyperlinks and negotiate continuity between hypertextual fragments. The study begins with a typological discussion of textuality and an overview of the historical and technological precedents of modern hypertexts. Then, making use of text linguistic, discourse analytical, pragmatic, and narratological approaches to textual coherence, the study takes established models developed for analyzing and describing conventional texts, and examines their applicability to hypertext. Primary data derived from a collection of hyperfictions is used throughout to illustrate the mechanisms in practice. Hypertextual coherence negotiation is shown to require the ability to cognitively operate between local and global coherence by means of processing lexical cohesion, discourse topical continuities, inferences and implications, and shifting cognitive frames. The main conclusion of the study is that the style of reading required by hypertextuality fosters a new paradigm of coherence. Defined as fuzzy coherence, this new approach to textual sensemaking is predicated on an acceptance of the coherence challenges readers experience when the act of reading comes to involve repeated encounters with referentially imprecise hyperlinks and discourse topical shifts. A practical application of fuzzy coherence is shown to be in effect in the way coherence is actively manipulated in hypertext narratives.

Making Sense of Value and Value Co-Creation in Service Logic

In order to further develop the logic of service, value creation, value co-creation and value have to be formally and rigorously defined, so that the nature, content and locus of value and the roles of service providers and customers in value creation can be unambiguously assessed. In the present article, following the underpinning logic of value-in-use, it is demonstrated that in order to achieve this, value creation is best defined as the customer’s creation of value-in-use. The analysis shows that the firm’s and customer’s processes and activities can be divided into a provider sphere, closed for the customer, and a customer sphere, closed for the firm. Value creation occurs in the customer sphere, whereas firms in the provider sphere facilitate value creation by producing resources and processes which represent potential value or expected value-in use for their customers. By getting access to the closed customer sphere, firms can create a joint value sphere and engage in customers’ value creation as co-creators of value with them. This approach establishes a theoretically sound foundation for understanding value creation in service logic, and enables meaningful managerial implications, for example as to what is required for co-creation of value, and also further theoretical elaborations.

Diel variation in fig volatiles across syconium development: making sense of scents

Plants produce volatile organic compounds (VOCs) in a variety of contexts that include response to abiotic and biotic stresses, attraction of pollinators and parasitoids, and repulsion of herbivores. Some of these VOCs may also exhibit diel variation in emission. In Ficus racemosa, we examined variation in VOCs released by fig syconia throughout syconium development and between day and night. Syconia are globular enclosed inflorescences that serve as developing nurseries for pollinating and parasitic fig wasps. Syconia are attacked by gallers early in their development, serviced by pollinators in mid phase, and are attractive to parasitoids in response to the development of gallers at later stages. VOC bouquets of the different development phases of the syconium were distinctive, as were their day and night VOC profiles. VOCs such as alpha-muurolene were characteristic of the pollen-receptive diurnal phase, and may serve to attract the diurnally-active pollinating wasps. Diel patterns of release of volatiles could not be correlated with their predicted volatility as determined by Henry's law constants at ambient temperatures. Therefore, factors other than Henry's law constant such as stomatal conductance or VOC synthesis must explain diel variation in VOC emission. A novel use of weighted gene co-expression network analysis (WGCNA) on the volatilome resulted in seven distinct modules of co-emitted VOCs that could be interpreted on the basis of syconium ecology. Some modules were characterized by the response of fig syconia to early galling by parasitic wasps and consisted largely of green leaf volatiles (GLVs). Other modules, that could be characterized by a combination of syconia response to oviposition and tissue feeding by larvae of herbivorous galler pollinators as well as of parasitized wasps, consisted largely of putative herbivore-induced plant volatiles (HIPVs). We demonstrated the usefulness of WGCNA analysis of the volatilome in making sense of the scents produced by the syconia at different stages and diel phases of their development.

Making sense of health information technology implementation: A qualitative study protocol.

BACKGROUND: Implementing new practices, such as health information technology (HIT), is often difficult due to the disruption of the highly coordinated, interdependent processes (e.g., information exchange, communication, relationships) of providing care in hospitals. Thus, HIT implementation may occur slowly as staff members observe and make sense of unexpected disruptions in care. As a critical organizational function, sensemaking, defined as the social process of searching for answers and meaning which drive action, leads to unified understanding, learning, and effective problem solving -- strategies that studies have linked to successful change. Project teamwork is a change strategy increasingly used by hospitals that facilitates sensemaking by providing a formal mechanism for team members to share ideas, construct the meaning of events, and take next actions. METHODS: In this longitudinal case study, we aim to examine project teams' sensemaking and action as the team prepares to implement new information technology in a tiertiary care hospital. Based on management and healthcare literature on HIT implementation and project teamwork, we chose sensemaking as an alternative to traditional models for understanding organizational change and teamwork. Our methods choices are derived from this conceptual framework. Data on project team interactions will be prospectively collected through direct observation and organizational document review. Through qualitative methods, we will identify sensemaking patterns and explore variation in sensemaking across teams. Participant demographics will be used to explore variation in sensemaking patterns. DISCUSSION: Outcomes of this research will be new knowledge about sensemaking patterns of project teams, such as: the antecedents and consequences of the ongoing, evolutionary, social process of implementing HIT; the internal and external factors that influence the project team, including team composition, team member interaction, and interaction between the project team and the larger organization; the ways in which internal and external factors influence project team processes; and the ways in which project team processes facilitate team task accomplishment. These findings will lead to new methods of implementing HIT in hospitals.

The honest broker; making sense of science in policy and politics

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The honest broker; making sense of science in policy and politics

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Making sense of game based user data: learning analytics in applied games

Digital learning games are useful educational tools with high motivational potential. With the application of games for instruction there comes the need of acknowledging learning game experiences also in the context of educational assessment. Learning analytics provides new opportunities for supporting assessment in and of educational games. We give an overview of current learning analytics methods in this field and reflect on existing challenges. An approach of providing reusable software assets for interaction assessment and evaluation in games is presented. This is part of a broader initiative of making available advanced methodologies and tools for supporting applied game development.

Beyond long-term averages: making biological sense of a rapidly changing world

Biological responses to climate change are typically communicated in generalized terms such as poleward and altitudinal range shifts, but adaptation efforts relevant to management decisions often require forecasts that incorporate the interaction of multiple climatic and nonclimatic stressors at far smaller spatiotemporal scales. We argue that the desire for generalizations has, ironically, contributed to the frequent conflation of weather with climate, even within the scientific community. As a result, current predictions of ecological responses to climate change, and the design of experiments to understand underlying mechanisms, are too often based on broad-scale trends and averages that at a proximate level may have very little to do with the vulnerability of organisms and ecosystems. The creation of biologically relevant metrics of environmental change that incorporate the physical mechanisms by which climate trains patterns of weather, coupled with knowledge of how organisms and ecosystems respond to these changes, can offer insight into which aspects of climate change may be most important to monitor and predict. This approach also has the potential to enhance our ability to communicate impacts of climate change to nonscientists and especially to stakeholders attempting to enact climate change adaptation policies.

Children making sense of science

Abstract This study explored the effects that the incorporation of nature of science (NoS) activities in the primary science classroom had on children’s perceptions and understanding of science. We compared children’s ideas in four classes by inviting them to talk, draw and write about what science meant to them: two of the classes were taught by ‘NoS’ teachers who had completed an elective nature of science (NoS) course in the final year of their Bachelor of Education (B.Ed) degree. The ‘non-NoS’ teachers who did not attend this course taught the other two classes. All four teachers had graduated from the same initial teacher education institution with similar teaching grades and all had carried out the same science methods course during their B.Ed programme. We found that children taught by the teachers who had been NoS-trained developed more elaborate notions of nature of science, as might be expected. More importantly, their reflections on science and their science lessons evidenced a more in-depth and sophisticated articulation of the scientific process in terms of scientists “trying their best” and “sometimes getting it wrong” as well as “getting different answers”. Unlike children from non-NoS classes, those who had engaged in and reflected on NoS activities talked about their own science lessons in the sense of ‘doing science’. These children also expressed more positive attitudes about their science lessons than those from non-NoS classes. We therefore suggest that there is added value in including NoS activities in the primary science curriculum in that they seem to help children make sense of science and the scientific process, which could lead to improved attitudes towards school science. We argue that as opposed to considering the relevance of school science only in terms of children’s experience, relevance should include relevance to the world of science, and NoS activities can help children to link school science to science itself.

Making Sense of Leaving Care: The contribution of Bridges Model of Transition to Understanding the Psycho-social process.

This paper is based on research into the transition of young people leaving public care in Romania. Using this specific country example, the paper aims to contribute to present understandings of the psycho-social transition of young people from care to independent living by introducing the use of Bridges (2002) to build on existing theories and literature. The research discussed involved mixed methods design and was implemented in three phases: semi-structured interviews with 34 care leavers, focus groups with 32 professionals, and a professional-service user working group. The overall findings confirmed that young people experience two different, but interconnected transitions - social and psychological - which take place at different paces. A number of theoretical perpectives are explored to make sense of this transition including attachment theory, focal theory and identity. In addition, a new model for understanding the complex process of transitions was adapted from Bridges’ (2002) to capture the clear complexity of transition which the findings demonstrated in terms of their psycho-social transition. The paper concludes with messages for leaving and after care services with an emphasis on managing the psycho-social transition from care to independent living.