5,826 research outputs found

    Greater return on women's enterprise (GROWE) : final report and recommendations of the women's enterprise task force. SEEDA, women’s enterprise task force.

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    This Women’s Enterprise Task Force (WETF) report, Greater Return On Women’s Enterprise (GROWE), sets out the economic case for women’s enterprise and advises partners and stakeholders how to achieve a greater economic return from investment in women’s enterprise. The Task Force has framed its recommendations to maximise existing investment and resources. We are mindful of the Government’s Business Support Simplification Programme and the effect the recession will continue to have on public spending, and so suggest that relevant Government departments and private sector organisations work together to streamline support and make best use of existing investment. In providing thought leadership to increase the quantity, scalability and success of women’s enterprise in the UK, the WETF has informed the national agenda on women’s enterprise for the last three years, concentrating its efforts on five specific Pillars: 1. gender-disaggregated business data 2. female-friendly business support 3. access to finance and technology 4. supplier diversity and procurement 5. strategic influencing and awareness raising. WETF highlights of the past three years include paving the way for a Business Link national data disaggregation methodology whilst influencing and shaping the establishment, direction and implementation of Aspire, a £12.5m women’s co-investment fund to support high-growth women-owned businesses. Alongside this, the WETF has played an important role in raising awareness of the economic case for women’s enterprise and the potential of female entrepreneurs in aiding the UK’s economic recovery. Perhaps most importantly, the WETF met with the Prime Minister and saw important policy developments taken forward in the Government’s Enterprise Strategy of March 2008. In 2009 the WETF contributed to the enterprise knowledge bank by producing two research reports into women’s enterprise: Impact of the Recession on Women’s Enterprise and Myths and Realities of Women’s Access to Finance. The Task Force welcomes progress made by the Ethnic Minority Business Task Force (EMBTF) in the advocacy of complementary areas which include the need for access to finance, disaggregated data and supplier diversity. Much of the groundwork for the WETF’s work was laid out in the Government’s 2003 publication, A Strategic Framework for Women’s Enterprise. In 2003, it was estimated that women constituted around 27% of self-employed people in the UK, and that only 12-14% of businesses were majority-owned by women (compared to 28% in the USA). From the Strategic Framework for Women’s Enterprise, to the establishment of the WETF and the Enterprise Strategy, Government has shown the importance that it attaches to women in enterprise and its recognition of the increased economic benefits women can contribute to UK plc. This must be even more important in emerging from recession. Recently, Government has a produced a policy statement, Building Britain’s Future: New Industry, New Jobs (NINJ), which sets out Government’s vision for economic recovery and growth by targeted intervention aimed at hightech, high-growth firms. The WETF has several recommendations for how enterprising women can take advantage of these interventions. Enterprise has a significant role to help women remain economically active and increase the productivity and international competitiveness of the UK. Recent figures from 2009 show that women, who make up 46% of the workforce, now constitute nearly 29% of the self-employed in the UK (up 2 percentage points). 15% of the 4.8 million enterprises in the UK are now majority-led by women. The longer-term quantitative targets outlined in the Framework included women accounting for 40% of customers using Government sponsored business support services; and women-owned businesses accounting for 18-20% of the UK total. Government has gone some way towards achieving these targets. Today, women-owned businesses account for around one third of Business Link customers, a major increase on the 22.3% or nearly 150,000 women customers in Q1 of 2005/6. However, overall progress has been very slow and neither of the Framework targets set for completion by 2006 has yet been met. More work needs to be done to address this and the other issues facing women’s enterprise today. This report examines how to further increase the current £70 billion Gross Value Added (GVA) and £130 billion turnover annual contribution made by women’s enterprise to the UK economy. Recent figures suggest that 900,000 more businesses would be created if the UK achieved the same levels of female entrepreneurship as in the US, resulting in an additional £23 billion GVA to the UK economy, thus largely closing the productivity gap with the US.1 In Britain alone, 150,000 extra businesses would be created per annum if women started businesses at the same rate as men.2 This is especially pertinent in this time of recession. With effective, targeted support, increasing the number of women entrepreneurs will be an important factor in driving economic recovery

    Two units in general mathematics

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    Thesis (M.A.)--Boston University, 1946. This item was digitized by the Internet Archive

    “Friendship with a Brand”: Parasocial Interaction with Burger Brands on Social Media

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    The present study represents a content analysis of the efforts of real-world brands to facilitate parasocial interaction with their followers. The researcher examined these social media exchanges through the scope of parasocial interaction theory, uncertainty reduction theory, and social response theory. The researcher examined posts in mid to late August 2017 and utilized a code sheet to find confirmed parasocial interaction triggers by brands, and examples of parasocial interaction in the posts of those brands’ followers. The researcher looked to see if the utilization of previous research in controlled environments could provide the framework for studying the non-controlled conditions of a real social media page. He hypothesized that the brands he studied that properly utilized methods and triggers to facilitate parasocial interaction would in fact see higher rates of parasocial interaction. The data, while mostly not statistically significant does provide information that deserves further investigation

    Textual Entanglements: A Performative Approach towards Digital Literature

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    This thesis conducts a critical investigation into digital literature—a genre of literary expression that is integrated with, and articulated using, digital computing systems and infrastructures. Specifically, it presents a framework for evaluating the expressive capacities of this genre as it relates to particular conceptions of knowledge-making in the contemporary technocultural environment. This framework reveals how the generation of critical knowledge concerning digital literature, as crystallised through a reader’s material engagements with specific works, enacts a ‘performative’ conception of knowing and being, in which the observable world is treated as emerging in the real time of practice—as being articulated through the entanglement of human and nonhuman agencies, rather than existing as a fixed array of passive, unchanging primitives. Digital literature is presented subsequently as a model of this greater performative vision—as a means of evaluating the structures and processes that manifest it, particularly within digital systems, and for assessing its practical and political implications for art and culture more broadly. In so doing, this thesis aims to justify the value of engaging digital literature from a standpoint that is more expressly political, contending not only that these texts are revealing of key processes shaping digital activities, artefacts, and environments, but are enacting alternative vectors of thought and practice concerning them.AHR

    SMALL CRAFT HARDENING FOR ARCTIC OPERATIONS

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    The need for a sustained Naval presence in the Arctic Region has been rapidly increasing due to heightened accessibility caused by melting ice. However, the unforgiving Arctic climate poses various operational hazards that must be addressed to accomplish this. This thesis seeks to identify the key threats posed to ships by the Arctic climate and the best methods to overcome them. This will be carried out through the analysis of military and commercial shipping reports, which outline the critical systems and components that are most at risk. In addition to explaining some solutions discovered by these reports, a deeper investigation into both ship stability and heat transfer will be performed. These studies will utilize modern computational tools to fill gaps in knowledge such as how exactly ice accumulation affects ship stability based on size and if one-dimensional heat transfer calculations are sufficient in defining three-dimensional problems. The implementation of solutions found in this study can enhance the U.S. Navy’s presence and effectiveness in the Arctic region.Approved for public release. Distribution is unlimited.Ensign, United States Nav

    We\u27re all friends here: Examining Transparasocial Interaction on Twitch and its Effects on Strategic Communications

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    In this paper, the author examines advertising on the video game live streaming platform, Twitch. Using a 2 (presence/absence of Transparasocial Interaction) x 2 (presence/absence of self-disclosure by the streamer), this study seeks to gain a better understanding of community perceptions of influencers, and advertising on the Twitch platform, a subject that is only recently becoming a topic of interest for advertising scholars

    Observation of Mammalian Similarity Through Allometric Scaling Laws

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    We discuss the problem of observation of natural similarity in skeletal evolution of terrestrial mammals. Analysis is given by means of testing of the power scaling laws established in long bone allometry, which describe development of bones (of length LL and diameter DD) with body mass in terms of the growth exponents, \QTR{it}{e.g.} λ=dlog⁥L/dlog⁥D\lambda =d\log L/d\log D. The bone-size evolution scenario given three decades ago by McMahon was quiet explicit on the geometrical-shape and mechanical-force constraints that predicted λ=2/3\lambda =2/3. This remains too far from the mammalian allometric exponent λ(exp⁥)=0.80±0.2\lambda ^{(\exp)}=0.80\pm 0.2, recently revised by Christiansen, that is a chief puzzle in long bone allometry. We give therefore new insights into McMahon's constraints and report on the first observation of the critical-elastic-force, bending-deformation, muscle-induced mechanism that underlies the allometric law with estimated λ=0.80±0.3\lambda =0.80\pm 0.3. This mechanism governs the bone-size evolution with avoiding skeletal fracture caused by muscle-induced peak stresses and is expected to be unique for small and large mammals.Comment: Keywords: allometric scaling, long bones, muscles, mammals 21 pages, 1 Table, 2 Figure

    Experiments in the application of pragmatic principles to the teaching of English composition

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    TypescriptM.A. University of Missouri 1908Composition, in the sense of meaning the organization and expression in language of one's thoughts, was an important activity of man at a very early time, for the reason that it was necessary to him in his struggle for existence; indeed, without it he could scarcely have outdistanced the other animals against whom he had to contend. It arose long before there were any schools and it would have continued and probably have improved greatly if they had never come into existence. So when schools did arise, it was very natural tor man to introduce into them some form of study which should represent the valuable composition experience he had accumulated in previous times. The need for the composition activity has increased with man's progress and consequently he has ever found more and more need for keeping a corresponding subject in his school curriculum, until now this branch is one of our most important school studies. If this study in our schools at the present time is to represent truly the experience for which it stands, it must conform to the basic principles underlying that experience and any true method of teaching the subject just take these principles into account.Includes bibliographical reference

    The 21st Century Activist\u27s Dilemma: Social Media\u27s Impact on the Occupy and Tea Party Movements

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    This paper examines the influence of social media on political participation in American social movements, focusing on the cases of the Occupy and Tea Party movements during their heyday in the period from 2009 to 2012 as a framework for analysis. Users of these social networks have access to instantaneous information dissemination, broad new political networks, and a wealth of radical thought; but also can be diverted from real-world participation by the appeal of low-cost online activism. Using a foundation of strong-tie/weak-tie activism theory, demographics surveys, and media coverage this paper argues that social media has reshaped the process by which certain privileged demographic subgroups are drawn to participate in political social movements, and thereby suggests possible preconditions to convert social media activism into real-world participation

    A Participatory Mapping and Agent-Based Approach to Promote Coexistence Between Idaho Ranchers and Gray Wolves

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    This poster was presented at the 2016 Idaho EPSCoR Annual Meeting, October 19-21, in Couer d\u27Alene Idaho
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