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ABSTRACT: This study extends previous work by combining the effect of cognitive style and the use or non-use of two versions of a hypertext learning aid and their interaction on student performance in advanced financial accounting. One-third of the students did not use a learning aid at all, one-third used a basic version of the learning aid (where only the solution was provided), and one-third used an extended version of the learning aid (where both the solution and derivation of the solution is provided). An additional extension of the prior literature is that these effects were investigated on two different kinds of examination questions. The results demonstrate that for a familiar exam question, only the learning aid was significant, and for an unfamiliar exam question, the learning aid, cognitive style, and the interaction between learning aid and cognitive style were significant. For both types of questions, performance differed based upon cognitive style. These results suggest that educators should be careful when designing and using learning aids.

AbstractOver the past decade there has been an increased focus on the importance of contextual factors in all IT disciplines. At the same time, scholars have heeded the call for investigating the creation of more effective synergies between science and design. For example, the task–artifact (TA) framework was developed to support better utilization of behavioral, cognitive, and social science in Human–Computer Interaction (HCI) design. This framework is based on the general developmental pattern of human activities and technologiesteamed with two analytical tools for design. In this paper, we extend this framework from its original focus on individual and small group HCI to the organizational level utilizing organizational learning theory. This extension will (1) integrate relevant concepts and analysis drawn from the social sciences in order to guide design more effectively; (2) incorporate organizational level analysis, when we study information artifact design and appropriation; and (3) help organizations complete their learning circle. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

The Netherlands and England are near neighbours whose health care systems have much in common and whose health policy communities have also usually been well aware of what is going on in the other country. Nevertheless, for the two decades from 1982, England adopted and repeatedly redeveloped performance indicator (PI) systems in the health care field while the Netherlands virtually shunned them. A broad institutional explanation for this divergence is provided by England's majoritarian and adversarial political system that leaves governments with fewer constraints and compromises than in the more consociational Dutch system. More recently, however, a Dutch national system of health care PIs has appeared, suggesting that this explanation needs to be supplemented. This paper draws on an empirical study of PI systems in the two countries over the period from 1982 to 2007 to suggest that two further factors are at work. Established institutional patterns may be disrupted by 'punctuations', while technical and political factors endogenous to PI systems may exert a logic of their own.

MySpace has received a significant amount of negative attention from the media and many concerned adults, who point to several isolated incidents where predators have contacted, become involved with and even assaulted adolescents whom they met through the popular social networking web site. Furthermore, concerned parents have expressed discontent with the amount and type of personal and private information youth seem to reveal on their profile pages. In 2006, the authors performed an extensive content analysis of approximately 2423 randomly sampled adolescent MySpace profiles, and found that the vast majority of youth were making responsible choices with the information they shared online. In this follow-up study, the authors revisited the profiles one year later to examine the extent to which the content had changed. Though exceptions occur, youth are increasingly exercising discretion in posting personal information on MySpace and more youth are limiting access to their profile. Moreover, a significant number of youth appear to be abandoning their profiles or MySpace altogether.

The Sims is the best selling PC game of all time. It has regularly been stated that its success is partly due to its attraction to a much wider audience than the proverbial male adolescent, yet academic research on its player base is lacking. This article reports on the first ever explorative survey ( N = 760) conducted among players of The Sims2. Our study combined social role theory with gender and games theorizing to enable us to understand gender differences in play. We focused on gender differences in motivation for playing The Sims2, employing uses and gratifications as our guiding theory. Our results revealed that most of our participants were indeed female. The significantly higher score of male players on the challenge motive was anticipated by social role theory, but their higher score on social interaction was unexpected. Accordingly, we discuss the implications of our results for uses and gratifications theory as well as the necessity to investigate actual practices of play in more detail.

Until a few decades ago, most labour histories did not bother to address women as workers in the domestic or public domain who contributed to a household income or the overall economy. Patriarchal spaces of historical discourse rendered women invisible (or effected distortions) that can only be contested by a rigorous study of women's unrecorded presence in the economy of the household and the broader domain of production. This article is an effort to understand the "being" and "doing" of women, and to map the interrelations of women and work over a vast historical span of time, beginning with women's writings on the theme of women and work and going on to plot women's agency historically in labour processes. In order to make the historical evidence more cohesive, it has been written with special reference to Peninsular India, while also drawing comparisons from the regions to the north of the Vindhya mountains that geographically and culturally mark the north–south divide.

This study examined person-centered (gender, work self-esteem) and situational (hierarchical power relations, mistreatment severity, intentionality) variables that determine employee voice to remedy interpersonal mistreatment. Data were collected from graduate business students who responded to a scenario describing exposure to mistreatment by a work colleague. Results suggested that gender, work self-esteem, and relative hierarchical power were most predictive of remedial voice to an internal mediator. Power relations played an important moderating role such that lower power positions seemed to inhibit voice. That is, women would be more likely than men to voice but only when a co-worker (versus supervisor) was the offender. Individuals with low work self-esteem would be less likely to voice than individuals with high work self-esteem when mistreated by a supervisor (versus co-worker). The results support using a social-psychological perspective for identifying determinants of remedial voicing (or hesitation to voice) related to persons, situations, and their interactions.

The aims of the study were to investigate self-esteem levels amongst a sample group of 60 children with Visual Impairment (VI). The group was made up of equal numbers of boys and girls from primary and secondary schools. Each child's self-esteem was measured using the BG STEEM Questionnaire (Maines and Robinson, 1993). The results showed that overall 70 per cent of the children scored within the 'normal' or 'high' levels of self-esteem. Overall scores in self-esteem were similar at both primary and secondary level. Girls displayed higher levels of self-esteem than boys at both primary and secondary level, although this difference was more pronounced at secondary level. The results also suggested that the degree of visual impairment may be a factor in determining self-esteem. Primary school children appear much more likely than secondary school children to score positively for locus of control and at secondary level boys are more likely than girls to display an internal locus of control.

Proceeding of: International Symposium on Evolving Intelligent Systems (EIS'10) in the 36th Annual Convention of the Society for the Study of Artificial Intelligence and Simulation of Behavior, AISB'10. Leicester, United Kingdom, 29th March - 1st April, 2010. ; The idea of clustering computer users is very beneficial for making recommendations to a user based on the histories of other users with similar preferences, detecting changes in the behavior of a user, and so on. However, computer users have different needs as they learn to use a software system or their goals changes. Although there are several approaches for clustering users, most of them do not consider the changes in their behavior. In this paper, we present an approach for clustering automatically the behavior profile of a computer user and an evolving method based on Evolving Systems to keep up to date the created profile clusters. ; This work is partially supported by the Spanish Government under project TRA2007-67374-C02-02 ; No publicado

Among the computational intelligence techniques employed to solve classification problems, Fuzzy Rule Based Classification Systems (FRBCSs) are a popular tool because of their interpretable models based on linguistic variables, which are easier to understand for the experts or end-users. The aim of this paper is to enhance the performance of FRBCSs by extending the Knowledge Base with the application of the concept of IntervalValued Fuzzy Sets (IVFSs). We consider a post-processing genetic tuning step that adjusts the amplitude of the upper bound of the IVFS to contextualize the fuzzy partitions and to obtain a most accurate solution to the problem. We analyze the goodness of this approach using two basic and well-known fuzzy rule learning algorithms, the Chi et al.'s method and the Fuzzy Hybrid Genetics-Based Machine Learning algorithm. We show the improvement achieved by this model through an extensive empirical study with a large collection of data-sets. ; Spanish Government TIN2008-06681-C06-01 TIN2007-65981

We study the efficiency at maximum power, eta*, of engines performing finite-time Carnot cycles between a hot and a cold reservoir at temperatures T-h and T-c, respectively. For engines reaching Carnot efficiency eta(C) = 1 - T-c/T-h in the reversible limit (long cycle time, zero dissipation), we find in the limit of low dissipation that eta* is bounded from above by eta(C)/(2 - eta(C)) and from below by eta(C)/2. These bounds are reached when the ratio of the dissipation during the cold and hot isothermal phases tend, respectively, to zero or infinity. For symmetric dissipation (ratio one) the Curzon-Ahlborn efficiency eta(CA) = 1 - root T-c/T-h is recovered. ; M. E. is supported by the Belgian Federal Government (IAP project "NOSY") and by the European Union Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007-2013) under grant agreement 256251. This research is supported in part by the NSF under Grant No. PHY-0855471.

International audience ; In the paper, we study a model of influence in a social network. It is assumed that each player has an inclination to say YES or NO which, due to influence of other players, may be different from the decision of the player. The point of departure here is the concept of the Hoede-Bakker index - the notion which computes the overall decisional 'power' of a player in a social network. The main drawback of the Hoede-Bakker index is that it hides the actual role of the influence function, analyzing only the final decision in terms of success and failure. In this paper, we separate the influence part from the group decision part, and focus on the description and analysis of the influence part. We propose among other descriptive tools a definition of a (weighted) influence index of a coalition upon an individual. Moreover, we consider different influence functions representative of commonly encountered situations. Finally, we propose a suitable definition of a modified decisional power.

This paper analyses the changes resulting from the use of a new tool in urban policies in Brussels, the schéma directeur (structure plan). We especially examine whether the new procedure has concretely achieved some of its major objectives: firstly, improving coordination of public action at different levels of authority; secondly, building real consensus with private partners; and thirdly, reinforcing democratic participation. Based on a collective empirical study devoted to the first implementations of the new procedure in the cases of four urban projects, this article also integrates some major elements of the theoretical debates about new modes of governance and the development of participatory and deliberative democracy, in order to clarify the meanings of some fuzzy notions frequently used either by researchers or actors. The authors argue that the new practices that characterize the structure plan, including promises of increased participation in a new type of governance, do not actually enhance people's involvement. To conclude, a partial failure is diagnosed with regard to the structure plan's initial ambitions. © 2010 Taylor & Francis.

En este trabajo intentamos explicar el porqué de la oleada de huelgas agrícolas que tuvo lugar en Castilla durante el año 1904, y para ello, nos centraremos en el estudio de lo acontecido en la comarca castellano-leonesa de Tierra de Campos, centro neurálgico de la conflictividad que protagonizó el campesino castellano durante ese año. La investigación se basa en el estudio, aparte de la usada Memoria de Adolfo A. Buylla, de la prensa provincial y documentación militar y judicial.In this paper, we try to explain the reason for the spate of farming strikes, that it took place in Castile during the 1904, and for it, we focus our research in the region of Old Castile called Tierra de Campos, that it was the principal area of the disputes were led by the Castilian peasant during that year. The research is based on the study, besides of the trite Memoria of Adolfo A. Buylla, the provincial press and the military and judicial papers.

Theoretical approaches to constructivism have put learner autonomy into the spotlight of didactic discourse. Apart from the matter of pedagogic actions on how (constructivisticly) organised education might be arranged, this paper focuses on the perspective of didactic reconstruction. Thus, an observation-based research perspective is being adopted in this paper. The epistemic beliefs that have emerged over the course of the global financial and economic depression are reconstructed. The goal of the paper is to provide an insight into these different interpretations. In order to do this, university students were surveyed regarding this topic and the results of this qualitative study on these epistemic beliefs will be represented in this article. The paper tries to give answers on how students, who have been experiencing the financial and economic depression for nearly three years now, define its causes and what subsequent actions they would recommend. The results show that the main issue is not misinterpretation of political and economic knowledge but rather incomplete constructs based on only approximate knowledge.