New influencing dimensions to creating a climate for innovation – case of the Egyptian telecommunications industry

The interest in leading and managing for innovation is growing among practitioners and academics (Isaksen and Akkermans, 2011). The aim of this research is to investigate and identify further dimensions of climate for innovation within the Egyptian telecommunications industry. This study contributes to the innovation management literature by identifying further dimensions of climate for innovation that foster organisation innovativeness in a real-life setting. This study pinpoints dimensions of climate for innovation that were not identified in previous climate for innovation frameworks. This study contributes to the climate for innovation by adding insights from the Egyptian telecommunications sector

Individual Private Retirement Insurances: holding behaviours among pensioners

International audienceIn the current context of demographic pressures, reforms of PAYG pension systems increase the extent to which individuals are responsible for their own retirement planning. The French pension system offered high replacement rates. The population used to consider that the State scheme had to provide them with an adequat level of pension. In 2003, the pension reform implemented individual and professional pension plans. These retirement savings contracts are not well developed. However, we observed that individuals prefer contracting life endowment contracts, which are long term savings supports, to prepare retirement. Using econometric specifications, we intend to put into perspective the households and individual characteristics which explain the holding behaviours of life endowment contracts and retirement savings plans. We conclude that the highest professional categories and the most educated individuals hold more frequently and simultanesously both types of contracts

TCP throughput guarantee in the DiffServ Assured Forwarding service: what about the results?

Since the proposition of Quality of Service architectures by the IETF, the interaction between TCP and the QoS services has been intensively studied. This paper proposes to look forward to the results obtained in terms of TCP throughput guarantee in the DiffServ Assured Forwarding (DiffServ/AF) service and to present an overview of the different proposals to solve the problem. It has been demonstrated that the standardized IETF DiffServ conditioners such as the token bucket color marker and the time sliding window color maker were not good TCP traffic descriptors. Starting with this point, several propositions have been made and most of them presents new marking schemes in order to replace or improve the traditional token bucket color marker. The main problem is that TCP congestion control is not designed to work with the AF service. Indeed, both mechanisms are antagonists. TCP has the property to share in a fair manner the bottleneck bandwidth between flows while DiffServ network provides a level of service controllable and predictable. In this paper, we build a classification of all the propositions made during these last years and compare them. As a result, we will see that these conditioning schemes can be separated in three sets of action level and that the conditioning at the network edge level is the most accepted one. We conclude that the problem is still unsolved and that TCP, conditioned or not conditioned, remains inappropriate to the DiffServ/AF service

Preparing adolescents attending progressive and no-excuses urban charter schools to analyze, navigate, and challenge race and class inequality

Background/Context: Sociopolitical development (SPD) refers to the processes by which an individual acquires the knowledge, skills, emotional faculties, and commitment to recognize and resist oppressive social forces. A growing body of scholarship has found that such sociopolitical capabilities are predictive in marginalized adolescents of a number of key outcomes, including resilience, academic achievement, and civic engagement. Many scholars have long argued that schools and educators have a central role to play in fostering the sociopolitical development of marginalized adolescents around issues of race and class inequality. Other scholars have investigated school-based practices for highlighting race and class inequality that include youth participatory-action research, critical literacy, and critical service-learning. Objective of Study: The present study sought to add to the existing scholarship on schools as opportunity structures for sociopolitical development. Specifically, this study considered the role of two different schooling models in fostering adolescents' ability to analyze, navigate, and challenge the social forces and institutions contributing to race and class inequality. Setting: The six high schools participating in the present study were all urban charter public high schools located in five northeastern cities. All six schools served primarily low-income youth of color and articulated explicit goals around fostering students' sociopolitical development. Three of these high schools were guided by progressive pedagogy and principles, and three were guided by no-excuses pedagogy and principles. Research Design: The present study compared the sociopolitical development of adolescents attending progressive and no-excuses charter high schools through a mixed methods research design involving pre-post surveys, qualitative interviews with participating adolescents and teachers, and ethnographic field notes collected during observations at participating schools. Results: On average, adolescents attending progressive high schools demonstrated more significant shifts in their ability to analyze the causes of racial inequality, but adolescents attending no-excuses high schools demonstrated more significant shifts in their sense of efficacy around navigating settings in which race and class inequality are prominent. Neither set of adolescents demonstrated significant shifts in their commitment to challenging the social forces or institutions contributing to race and class inequality. Conclusions: Both progressive and no-excuses schools sought to foster adolescents' commitment to challenging race and class inequality, but focused on different building blocks to do so. Further research is necessary to understand the pedagogy and practices that show promise in catalyzing adolescents' analytic and navigational abilities into a powerful commitment to collective social action-the ultimate goal of sociopolitical development

Liberal outcomes through undemocratic means: the reform of the Code de statut personnel in Morocco

The 2004 reform of the family code in Morocco has been held as one of the most significant liberal reforms undertaken in the country, and has led scholars and policy makers to argue that this demonstrates the democratic progress Morocco and the King are making. At the same time, the role of the women's movement in getting the reform approved has seemingly confirmed that associational life is crucial in promoting democratisation. This paper, building on theoretical work questioning the linkage between a strong civil society and democratic outcomes, argues that civil society activism does not necessarily lead to democratisation, and may reinforce authoritarian practices. Far from demonstrating the centrality of civil society, the process through which the new family code was passed highlights the crucial institutional role of the monarch, whose individual decision-making power has driven the whole process. Authoritarianism finds itself strengthened in Morocco despite the liberal nature and outcome of the reform

Lights, camera, active! Appreciation of active learning predicts positive attitudes towards lecture capture

Much has been written about instructor attitudes towards lecture capture, particularly concerning political issues such as opt-out policies and the use of recordings by management. Additionally, the pedagogical concerns of lecturers have been extensively described and focus on the belief that recording lectures will impact on attendance and will reduce interactivity and active learning activities in lectures. However, little work has looked at the relationship between attitudes towards lecture capture and broader conceptions of learning and teaching. In this pre-registered study, we administered the Conceptions of Learning and Teaching scale and a novel lecture capture attitude scale to 159 higher education teachers. We found that appreciation of active learning predicted more positive attitudes towards lecture recordings as an educational support tool, whilst higher teacher-centred scores predicted greater concern about the negative educational impact of recordings. The effects observed were small; however, they are strong evidence against the view that it is instructors who value participatory and active learning that are opposed to lecture capture. Exploratory analyses also suggested that those who did not view recordings as an essential educational resource record fewer of their lectures, highlighting the real-world impact that attitudes can have, and further strengthening the need for staff to be provided with evidence-based guidance upon which to base their teaching practice. Data, analysis code, and the pre-registration are available at https://osf.io/uzs3t/

Ultrafast Excited-State Dynamics of Rhenium(I) Photosensitizers [Re(Cl)(CO)_(3)(N,N)] and [Re(imidazole)(CO)_(3)(N,N)]^+: Diimine Effects

Femto- to picosecond excited-state dynamics of the complexes [Re(L)(CO)_(3)(N,N)]^n (N,N = bpy, phen, 4,7-dimethyl-phen (dmp); L = Cl, n = 0; L = imidazole, n = 1+) were investigated using fluorescence up-conversion, transient absorption in the 650−285 nm range (using broad-band UV probe pulses around 300 nm) and picosecond time-resolved IR (TRIR) spectroscopy in the region of CO stretching vibrations. Optically populated singlet charge-transfer (CT) state(s) undergo femtosecond intersystem crossing to at least two hot triplet states with a rate that is faster in Cl (~100 fs)^(−1) than in imidazole (~150 fs)^(−1) complexes but essentially independent of the N,N ligand. TRIR spectra indicate the presence of two long-lived triplet states that are populated simultaneously and equilibrate in a few picoseconds. The minor state accounts for less than 20% of the relaxed excited population. UV−vis transient spectra were assigned using open-shell time-dependent density functional theory calculations on the lowest triplet CT state. Visible excited-state absorption originates mostly from mixed L;N,N^(•−) → Re^(II) ligand-to-metal CT transitions. Excited bpy complexes show the characteristic sharp near-UV band (Cl, 373 nm; imH, 365 nm) due to two predominantly ππ*(bpy^(•−)) transitions. For phen and dmp, the UV excited-state absorption occurs at 305 nm, originating from a series of mixed ππ* and Re → CO;N,N•− MLCT transitions. UV−vis transient absorption features exhibit small intensity- and band-shape changes occurring with several lifetimes in the 1−5 ps range, while TRIR bands show small intensity changes (≤5 ps) and shifts (~1 and 6−10 ps) to higher wavenumbers. These spectral changes are attributable to convoluted electronic and vibrational relaxation steps and equilibration between the two lowest triplets. Still slower changes (≥15 ps), manifested mostly by the excited-state UV band, probably involve local-solvent restructuring. Implications of the observed excited-state behavior for the development and use of Re-based sensitizers and probes are discussed

The trauma film paradigm as an experimental psychopathology model of psychological trauma: intrusive memories and beyond

A better understanding of psychological trauma is fundamental to clinical psychology. Following traumatic event(s), a clinically significant number of people develop symptoms, including those of Acute Stress Disorder and/or Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. The trauma film paradigm offers an experimental psychopathology model to study both exposure and reactions to psychological trauma, including the hallmark symptom of intrusive memories. We reviewed 74 articles that have used this paradigm since the earliest review (Holmes & Bourne, 2008) until July 2014. Highlighting the different stages of trauma processing, i.e. pre-, peri- and post-trauma, the studies are divided according to manipulations before, during and after film viewing, for experimental as well as correlational designs. While the majority of studies focussed on the frequency of intrusive memories, other reactions to trauma were also modelled. We discuss the strengths and weaknesses of the trauma film paradigm as an experimental psychopathology model of trauma, consider ethical issues, and suggest future directions. By understanding the basic mechanisms underlying trauma symptom development, we can begin to translate findings from the laboratory to the clinic, test innovative science-driven interventions, and in the future reduce the debilitating effects of psychopathology following stressful and/or traumatic events