Legislative strengthening meets party support in international assistance: a closer relationship?

Recent reports recommend that international efforts to help strengthen legislatures in emerging democracies should work more closely with support for building stronger political parties and competitive party systems. This article locates the recommendations within international assistance more generally and reviews the arguments. It explores problems that must be addressed if the recommendations are to be implemented effectively. The article argues that an alternative, issue-based approach to strengthening legislatures and closer links with civil society could gain more traction. However, that is directed more centrally at promoting good governance for the purpose of furthering development than at democratisation goals sought by party aid and legislative strengtheners in the democracy assistance industry

Single Collateral Reconstructions Reveal Distinct Phases of Corticospinal Remodeling after Spinal Cord Injury

Injuries to the spinal cord often result in severe functional deficits that, in case of incomplete injuries, can be partially compensated by axonal remodeling. The corticospinal tract (CST), for example, responds to a thoracic transection with the formation of an intraspinal detour circuit. The key step for the formation of the detour circuit is the sprouting of new CST collaterals in the cervical spinal cord that contact local interneurons. How individual collaterals are formed and refined over time is incompletely understood

How Much Information Do You Need?: Schematic Maps in Wayfinding and Self Localisation

The paper is concerned with the empirical investigation of different types of schematised maps. In two experiments a standard floor plan was compared to three strongly schematised maps providing only route knowledge. With the help of one of the maps, the participants had to localise themselves in two tasks and performed two wayfinding tasks in a multi-level building they didn’t know before. We recorded map usage time and a range of task performance measures. Although the map provided much less information, participants performed better in wayfinding with an unambiguous schematic map than with a floor plan. In the self localisation tasks, participants performed equally well with the detailed floor plan and with the schematised map versions. Like the users of a schematic map, users of a floor map presumably oriented on the network structure rather than on local geometric features. This allows them to limit the otherwise potentially very large search space in map-based self localisation. In both types of tasks participants looked at the schematised maps for a shorter time. Providing less than standard information like in a highly schematised map can lead to better performance. We conclude that providing unambiguous turning information (route knowledge) rather than survey knowledge is most crucial for wayfinding in unknown environments

Up the down staircase: next term Wayfinding strategies in multi-level buildings

The intention of this article is to create a link between human spatial cognition research and architectural design. We conducted an empirical study with human subjects in a complex multi-level building and compared thinking aloud protocols and performance measures of experienced and inexperienced participants in different wayfinding tasks. Three specific strategies for navigation in multi-level buildings were compared. The central point strategy relies on well-known parts of the building; the direction strategy relies on routes that first head towards the horizontal position of the goal, while the floor strategy relies on routes that first head towards the vertical position of the goal. We show that the floor strategy was preferred by experienced participants over the other strategies and was overall tied to better wayfinding performance. Route knowledge showed a greater impact on wayfinding performance compared to survey knowledge. A cognitive-architectural analysis of the building revealed seven possible c auses for navigation problems. Especially the previous termstaircasenext term design was identified as a major wayfinding obstacle. Finally we address the benefits of cognitive approaches for the architectural design process and describe some open issues for further research

Good Boss - Good Salesmen [Guter Chef - gute Verkäufer]

Auch wenn es manche Vertriebsleiter nicht wahrhaben wollen: Ihr Umgang mit den Mitarbeitern wirkt sich unmittelbar auf deren Beziehung zu den Kunden aus. Das zeigt eine gross angelegte Sudie. Die gute Nachricht: Jeder Kann lernen, vorauf es im Alltag ankommt

Wie viel Information brauchen wir? Selbstlokalisation und Wege finden mit schematisierten Karten

Welche Information ist notwendig um sich zu orientieren? In zwei Feldexperimenten wurde ein Grundriss mit drei stark schematisierten Karten verglichen, die nur Routenwissen bereitstellten. Mit Hilfe der Karte bestimmten die 32 Probanden in je zwei Aufgaben ihre Position in einem ihnen unbekannten komplexen mehrstöckigen Gebäude und mussten verschiedene Ziele finden. Kartennutzung und verschiedene Leistungsmaße wurden erhoben. Trotz der spärlicheren Information fanden die Probanden ihr Ziel mit der eindeutigen Schemakarte besser, als mit dem Grundriss. Keine Unterschiede ergaben sich in der Selbstlokalisation. Beide Gruppen orientierten sich vermutlich an der Netzwerkstruktur der Wege und nicht an lokaler Geometrie, was den Suchraum möglicher Standpunkte verkleinert. Die Nutzung der schematisierten Karte erfolgte schneller. Hoch schematisierte Karten mit weniger als der Standardinformation können zu besserer Leistung führen. Die Ergebnisse werden im Kontext von Routen und Überblickswissen interpretiert