From Short-Term to Long-Term Orientation - Political Economy of the Policy Reform Process

Despite the fact that policymakers often have a short-term horizon and prefer discretionary over rule bound policy, one can observe policy reform with a focus on rules and long-term orientation. Sometimes reforms are driven by crisis, sometimes they are pursued in times of relative prosperity. The paper analyses reform processes theoretically under the assumption of imperfect knowledge. After the introduction, the second section of the paper shows that rule bound policy encourages a long-term orientation of policymakers, resulting in higher economic dynamics as compared with discretionary policy. In the third section, the political economy of the reform process, i.e. replacing discretionary by rule-bound policy, is analysed in an evolutionary setting. The basic hypothesis is that a policy reform is triggered in a feedback-process determined by four key factors: (1) an emerging shadow economy and growing corruption, (2) external, in particular international pressure, (3) increasing knowledge of policymakers with respect to the effectiveness of policy paradigms and (4) improved economic knowledge of the public. In a fourth section, we draw conclusions and present some preliminary empirical evidence.Dynamic Learning Process, Long-Term-Orientation, Rules, Consistency, Political Business Cycles, Policy Reform

The Teaching of Vocabulary through the Multisensory Approach to EFL Third Age Adults in a Public Nursing Home in Pereira, Colombia

El aprendizaje del idioma inglés es un proceso que conlleva beneficios cognitivos, personales, sociales y de crecimiento. Esta investigación cualitativa tuvo como objetivo integrar a una población de adultos mayores en lecciones de vocabulario en inglés basadas en los principios de la teoría de la andragogía

Laminar fMRI: applications for cognitive neuroscience

The cortex is a massively recurrent network, characterized by feedforward and feedback connections between brain areas as well as lateral connections within an area. Feedforward, horizontal and feedback responses largely activate separate layers of a cortical unit, meaning they can be dissociated by lamina-resolved neurophysiological techniques. Such techniques are invasive and are therefore rarely used in humans. However, recent developments in high spatial resolution fMRI allow for non-invasive, in vivo measurements of brain responses specific to separate cortical layers. This provides an important opportunity to dissociate between feedforward and feedback brain responses, and investigate communication between brain areas at a more fine- grained level than previously possible in the human species. In this review, we highlight recent studies that successfully used laminar fMRI to isolate layer-specific feedback responses in human sensory cortex. In addition, we review several areas of cognitive neuroscience that stand to benefit from this new technological development, highlighting contemporary hypotheses that yield testable predictions for laminar fMRI. We hope to encourage researchers with the opportunity to embrace this development in fMRI research, as we expect that many future advancements in our current understanding of human brain function will be gained from measuring lamina-specific brain responses

Change blindness: eradication of gestalt strategies

Arrays of eight, texture-defined rectangles were used as stimuli in a one-shot change blindness (CB) task where there was a 50% chance that one rectangle would change orientation between two successive presentations separated by an interval. CB was eliminated by cueing the target rectangle in the first stimulus, reduced by cueing in the interval and unaffected by cueing in the second presentation. This supports the idea that a representation was formed that persisted through the interval before being 'overwritten' by the second presentation (Landman et al, 2003 Vision Research 43149–164]. Another possibility is that participants used some kind of grouping or Gestalt strategy. To test this we changed the spatial position of the rectangles in the second presentation by shifting them along imaginary spokes (by ±1 degree) emanating from the central fixation point. There was no significant difference seen in performance between this and the standard task [F(1,4)=2.565, p=0.185]. This may suggest two things: (i) Gestalt grouping is not used as a strategy in these tasks, and (ii) it gives further weight to the argument that objects may be stored and retrieved from a pre-attentional store during this task

Delineation of line patterns in images using B-COSFIRE filters

Delineation of line patterns in images is a basic step required in various applications such as blood vessel detection in medical images, segmentation of rivers or roads in aerial images, detection of cracks in walls or pavements, etc. In this paper we present trainable B-COSFIRE filters, which are a model of some neurons in area V1 of the primary visual cortex, and apply it to the delineation of line patterns in different kinds of images. B-COSFIRE filters are trainable as their selectivity is determined in an automatic configuration process given a prototype pattern of interest. They are configurable to detect any preferred line structure (e.g. segments, corners, cross-overs, etc.), so usable for automatic data representation learning. We carried out experiments on two data sets, namely a line-network data set from INRIA and a data set of retinal fundus images named IOSTAR. The results that we achieved confirm the robustness of the proposed approach and its effectiveness in the delineation of line structures in different kinds of images.Comment: International Work Conference on Bioinspired Intelligence, July 10-13, 201

Bridging Sales and Services Quality Functions in Retailing of High Technology Consumer Products

High technology product sales are positively associated with performance of retailers and distributors in terms of customer service quality, growth in sales and increase in market share. This paper aims at analyzing the impact of retail sales strategies and performance of customer services on customer acquisition, retention and sales growth of high technology consumer products of the high technology consumer products retailers and distributors in Mexico. This paper discusses the triadic relationship of customer- retailer-distributor in the high technology consumer products market segment in reference to the SERVQUAL factors which establish services quality encompassing tangibility, responsiveness, trust, accuracy and empathy. Results of the study reveal that the customers perceive better quality of the relationship in a given frame of functions that are performed effectively by the distributor lowering the extent of conflicts thereof. The discussions in the paper argue that high conformance of quality services delivered by the distributors and value added customer relationship is instrumental for retailers in acquiring new customers and retaining existing customer by augmenting the customer life time value.High technology products sales, customer services, SERVQUAL, customer-distributor relationship, customer value, distributor performance

Embedding knowledge and value of a brand into sustainability for differentiation

This is the post-print version of the final paper published in the Journal of World Business (under the provisional title "Embedding sustainability into brand knowledge and brand value for brand differentiation"). The published article is available from the link below. Changes resulting from the publishing process, such as peer review, editing, corrections, structural formatting, and other quality control mechanisms may not be reflected in this document. Changes may have been made to this work since it was submitted for publication. Copyright @ 2012 Elsevier B.V.Organisations offer products to consumers, buyers often question if the product or its production process are linked to the environmental, social or economic challenges being faced by mankind. Inquisitiveness of customers in this direction points towards an opportunity for marketers to create differentiation based on the concerns of brand towards overall issue of sustainability. The authors have synthesized knowledge from various domains with a positivistic approach to understand sustainability from the perspective of branding. Using empirical knowledge this study recommends embedding sustainability into brand knowledge and brand value for creating a differentiation for the brand in a competitive market

The ontogenetic development of orientation capabilities

The effects of celestial references on the navigation ability of birds are discussed. Tests were conducted in a planetarium with indigo buntings to determine the amount of stellar pattern which could be removed before disorientation occurred. It was determined that young birds have a predisposition to respond to the apparent rotational motion of the night sky. It was concluded that the peak in responsiveness to rotational information is presented during the first summer of life, prior to the first migration season

Hirschmann Mobility Among Academics of Highly Ranked EU Research Universities

European universities have lost--and partially regained--key research academics to North American and other attractive university systems. EU efforts to reverse the cycle revolve around the establishment of an attractive European Research Area, within which future academic mobility--and commercial knowledge transmission--might be confined. This paper draws upon a survey of 1800 academics in 200 of Europe's most research-intensive universities to understand the principal reasons that underlie contemporary academic mobility. Mobility is conceptualised in Hirschmann terms as 'exit' from an inadequately performing university, rather than remaining 'loyal' to its existing regime or staying to exercise 'voice' in bringing about necessary improvements. The results from logit modeling of choices and options indicate clearly that academics who evidence either 'loyalty' or 'voice' are significantly less likely to be mobile. Moreover, those who are mobile refuse to restrict possible destinations to the ERA if they value better material conditions or better quality of colleagues, students or university reputation.