Relation Discovery from Web Data for Competency Management

This paper describes a technique for automatically discovering associations between people and expertise from an analysis of very large data sources (including web pages, blogs and emails), using a family of algorithms that perform accurate named-entity recognition, assign different weights to terms according to an analysis of document structure, and access distances between terms in a document. My contribution is to add a social networking approach called BuddyFinder which relies on associations within a large enterprise-wide "buddy list" to help delimit the search space and also to provide a form of 'social triangulation' whereby the system can discover documents from your colleagues that contain pertinent information about you. This work has been influential in the information retrieval community generally, as it is the basis of a landmark system that achieved overall first place in every category in the Enterprise Search Track of TREC2006

Sociology and postcolonialism: another 'missing' revolution?

Sociology is usually represented as having emerged alongside European modernity. The latter is frequently understood as sociology's special object with sociology itself a distinctively modern form of explanation. The period of sociology's disciplinary formation was also the heyday of European colonialism, yet the colonial relationship did not figure in the development of sociological understandings. While the recent emergence of postcolonialism appears to have initiated a reconsideration of understandings of modernity, with the development of theories of multiple modernities, I suggest that this engagement is more an attempt at recuperating the transformative aspect of postcolonialism than engaging with its critiques. In setting out the challenge of postcolonialism to dominant sociological accounts, I also address `missing feminist/queer revolutions', suggesting that by engaging with postcolonialism there is the potential to transform sociological understandings by opening up a dialogue beyond the simple pluralism of identity claims

Cosmological Multi-Black Hole Solutions

We present simple, analytic solutions to the Einstein-Maxwell equation, which describe an arbitrary number of charged black holes in a spacetime with positive cosmological constant $\Lambda$. In the limit $\Lambda=0$, these solutions reduce to the well known Majumdar-Papapetrou (MP) solutions. Like the MP solutions, each black hole in a $\Lambda >0$ solution has charge $Q$ equal to its mass $M$, up to a possible overall sign. Unlike the $\Lambda = 0$ limit, however, solutions with $\Lambda >0$ are highly dynamical. The black holes move with respect to one another, following natural trajectories in the background deSitter spacetime. Black holes moving apart eventually go out of causal contact. Black holes on approaching trajectories ultimately merge. To our knowledge, these solutions give the first analytic description of coalescing black holes. Likewise, the thermodynamics of the $\Lambda >0$ solutions is quite interesting. Taken individually, a $|Q|=M$ black hole is in thermal equilibrium with the background deSitter Hawking radiation. With more than one black hole, because the solutions are not static, no global equilibrium temperature can be defined. In appropriate limits, however, when the black holes are either close together or far apart, approximate equilibrium states are established.Comment: 15 pages (phyzzx), UMHEP-380 (minor referencing error corrected

GPs are from Mars, Administrators are from Venus: The Role of Misaligned Occupational Dispositions in Inhibiting Mandated Role Change

Research on mandated occupational role change focuses on jurisdictional conflict to explain change failure. Our study of the English National Health Service highlights the role of occupational dispositions in shaping how mandated role change is implemented by members of multiple occupational groups. We find that tension stemming from misaligned dispositions may emerge as members of different occupations interact during their role change implementation efforts. Depending on dispositional responses to tension, change may fail as members of the different occupations avoid interactions. This suggests that effective role change can be elusive even in the initial absence of conflicting occupational interests

Cambodian Higher Education Governance: The Politics of Global Summitry and Clientelism

This chapter uses the concepts of “global summitry” and “clientelism” to theorize higher education governance in Cambodia. After reviewing the history of higher education since the 1960s, the chapter analyzes the country’s experiences amid regional attempts to harmonize standards, degree structures, quality assurance systems, and credit systems in Southeast Asia. Rather than explicit intervention into Cambodia’s higher education sector as has been historically common, the contemporary order transmits policy and governance practices through various regional and international forums, creating a seemingly homogenous system of higher education. External influence through global summitry, however, must be paired with a recognition of the prevalence of clientelism. By exploring the case of the Accreditation Council of Cambodia, higher education governance is shown to reproduce the engrained system of clientelism, empowering elites and contributing further to systems of informal patronage. The chapter concludes with recent (up to April 2016) developments in higher education governance, offering some observations and obstacles for future development in the sector

Smart, social, flexible and fun: Escaping the flatlands of virtual learning environments

© 2019, Springer Nature Switzerland AG. This paper describes the development of intelligent, social, flexible and game-based pedagogic approaches and their applications in Virtual Learning Environment based Education. Applications of computer science technologies and techniques can enable, facilitate and change educational approaches, allowing scalable approaches that can address both individual student needs whilst managing large – sometimes-massive - cohort sizes. The benefits of these information systems include supporting the wide range of contexts met in education, in terms of individual needs and specific subject and curriculum requirements. Technologies and approaches that are considered range from the representation of knowledge and the use of intelligent systems, the use of social computing, through to the enabling opportunities of ubicomp and the practical application of game mechanics (gamification). This paper concludes with practical illustrations in the context of undergraduate computer science didactics

Entrepreneurial sons, patriarchy and the Colonels' experiment in Thessaly, rural Greece

Existing studies within the field of institutional entrepreneurship explore how entrepreneurs influence change in economic institutions. This paper turns the attention of scholarly inquiry on the antecedents of deinstitutionalization and more specifically, the influence of entrepreneurship in shaping social institutions such as patriarchy. The paper draws from the findings of ethnographic work in two Greek lowland village communities during the military Dictatorship (1967–1974). Paradoxically this era associated with the spread of mechanization, cheap credit, revaluation of labour and clear means-ends relations, signalled entrepreneurial sons’ individuated dissent and activism who were now able to question the Patriarch’s authority, recognize opportunities and act as unintentional agents of deinstitutionalization. A ‘different’ model of institutional change is presented here, where politics intersects with entrepreneurs, in changing social institutions. This model discusses the external drivers of institutional atrophy and how handling dissensus (and its varieties over historical time) is instrumental in enabling institutional entrepreneurship

Comparative historical sociology and the State : problems of method

Historical sociology can be understood both as a specific sub-field of sociology and as providing general conceptual underpinnings of the discipline, to the extent that it provides an understanding of the specificity of the modern state and the perceived emergence of modernity within Europe. The association of modernity with Europe (and with a European history limited to the self-identified boundaries of the continent) is commonplace and pervasive within the social sciences and humanities. What such an understanding fails to take into consideration, however, are the connections between Europe and the rest of the world that constitute the broader context for the emergence of what is understood to be the modern world and its institutions, such as the state and market. In this article, I suggest that integral to this misunderstanding, and its reproduction over time, is the methodology of comparative historical sociology as represented by ideal types. In contrast, I argue for ‘connected sociologies’ as a more appropriate way to understand our shared past and its continuing impact upon the present. I examine these issues in the context of historical sociological understandings of nation-state formation

“I would rather be told than not know” - A qualitative study exploring parental views on identifying the future risk of childhood overweight and obesity during infancy

BACKGROUND: Risk assessment tools provide an opportunity to prevent childhood overweight and obesity through early identification and intervention to influence infant feeding practices. Engaging parents of infants is paramount for success however; the literature suggests there is uncertainty surrounding the use of such tools with concerns about stigmatisation, labelling and expressions of parental guilt. This study explores parents' views on identifying future risk of childhood overweight and obesity during infancy and communicating risk to parents. METHODS: Semi-structured qualitative interviews were conducted with 23 parents and inductive, interpretive and thematic analysis performed. RESULTS: Three main themes emerged from the data: 1) Identification of infant overweight and obesity risk. Parents were hesitant about health professionals identifying infant overweight as believed they would recognise this for themselves, in addition parents feared judgement from health professionals. Identification of future obesity risk during infancy was viewed positively however the use of a non-judgemental communication style was viewed as imperative. 2) Consequences of infant overweight. Parents expressed immediate anxieties about the impact of excess weight on infant ability to start walking. Parents were aware of the progressive nature of childhood obesity however, did not view overweight as a significant problem until the infant could walk as viewed this as a point when any excess weight would be lost due to increased energy expenditure. 3) Parental attributions of causality, responsibility, and control. Parents articulated a high level of personal responsibility for preventing and controlling overweight during infancy, which translated into self-blame. Parents attributed infant overweight to overfeeding however articulated a reluctance to modify infant feeding practices prior to weaning. CONCLUSION: This is the first study to explore the use of obesity risk tools in clinical practice, the findings suggest that identification, and communication of future overweight and obesity risk is acceptable to parents of infants. Despite this positive response, findings suggest that parents' acceptance to identification of risk and implementation of behaviour change is time specific. The apparent level of parental responsibility, fear of judgement and self-blame also highlights the importance of health professionals approach to personalised risk communication so feelings of self-blame are negated and stigmatisation avoided