Thai Food in Taiwan: Tracing the Contours of Transnational Taste

This essay examines the recent proliferation of Thai restaurants in Taiwan, relating their development to different streams of transnational migration from Thailand, Myanmar and mainland China. Thai restaurants in Taiwan take many forms from low-cost 'ethnic' restaurants around the Taoyuan train station and in more peripheral areas, catering mainly to migrant workers from Thailand, to upmarket restaurants in city centre locations, catering to a 'cosmopolitan' clientele with high levels of economic and cultural capital. The paper traces the contours of transnational taste in Taiwan where Thai food has been adapted to suit local demand. In this context, as elsewhere, notions of culinary authenticity are contested, revolving around specific ingredients, recipes and dishes as well as notions of provenance, décor and other aspects of material culture. The paper examines the process of authentication, focusing on the culinary claims made by differently-located stakeholders. It also considers the material as well as the symbolic construction of 'taste', a term whose multiple meanings provide a valuable way of rethinking transnationality. As well as providing a case study of the evolution of culinary culture in a non-Western context, the paper sheds light on the role of food in defining Taiwan's contemporary political culture through notions of cosmopolitanism and modernity

Adaptive learning program for developing employability skills

The paper aims to demonstrate the benefits of adaptive learning technologies as a viable alternative to time consuming tutor led individual support. It proposes to reveal how adaptive learning interventions can be effective in enriching student learning while targeting precise areas of development. This review will compile evidence on the nature and extent of Adaptive Learning tools used to develop employability skills among Higher Education institutions. This will be specifically for students undergoing studies at the graduate level. Given the short time available, a scoping study framework will be used to examine the scope of carrying out a full systematic review or identifying gaps in existing literature (Arksey and O’Malley, 2005). This design follows the general principles of a systematic review by following pre‐specified methods to reduce the risk of bias by selecting favourable studies, and extracting and analysing data that backs a particular hypothesis. That is, the methods are determined a priori, and are transparent and replicable

The number of ramified coverings of the sphere by the double torus, and a general form for higher genera

An explicit expression is obtained for the generating series for the number of ramified coverings of the sphere by the double torus, with elementary branch points and prescribed ramification type over infinity. Thus we are able to prove a conjecture of Graber and Pandharipande, giving a linear recurrence equation for the number of these coverings with no ramification over infinity. The general form of the series is conjectured for the number of these coverings by a surface of arbitrary genus that is at least two.Comment: 14pp.; revised version has two additional results in Section

A proof of a conjecture for the number of ramified coverings of the sphere by the torus

An explicit expression is obtained for the generating series for the number of ramified coverings of the sphere by the torus, with elementary branch points and prescribed ramification type over infinity. This proves a conjecture of Goulden, Jackson and Vainshtein for the explicit number of such coverings.Comment: 10 page

Developing the egovernment research agenda

This paper presents an exploratory research project to determine the needs for future eGovernment research. The project aimed particularly at getting relevant stakeholder views as a contrast to the received academic wisdom or political rhetoric. This paper outlines the need for such fieldwork and discusses the methodology adopted to elicit the stakeholders’ views without influencing the debate. The VIEGO workshops have shown that an eGovernment research agenda will require a multi-disciplinary approach involving a combination of social, technological and organisational issues. The primary concerns of stakeholders are not to develop more novel IT but to acquire the means to cope with constant change, coordinate development and extend participation.UK’s Engineering Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC)-(grant EP/ D043840/1

Search for nonpointing photons in the diphoton and ETmiss final state in root s=7 TeV proton-proton collisions using the ATLAS detector

A search has been performed for photons originating in the decay of a neutral long-lived particle, exploiting the capabilities of the ATLAS electromagnetic calorimeter to make precise measurements of the flight direction of photons, as well as the calorimeter's excellent time resolution. The search has been made in the diphoton plus missing transverse energy final state, using the full data sample of 4.8 fb⁻¹ of 7 TeV proton-proton collisions collected in 2011 with the ATLAS detector at the LHC. No excess is observed above the background expected from Standard Model processes. The results are used to set exclusion limits in the context of gauge mediated supersymmetry breaking models, with the lightest neutralino being the next-to-lightest supersymmetric particle and decaying with a lifetime in excess of 0.25 ns into a photon and a gravitino.G. Aad ... P. Jackson ... N. Soni ... M. J. White ... et al. (ATLAS Collaboration

Transitive factorizations of permutations and geometry

We give an account of our work on transitive factorizations of permutations. The work has had impact upon other areas of mathematics such as the enumeration of graph embeddings, random matrices, branched covers, and the moduli spaces of curves. Aspects of these seemingly unrelated areas are seen to be related in a unifying view from the perspective of algebraic combinatorics. At several points this work has intertwined with Richard Stanley's in significant ways.Comment: 12 pages, dedicated to Richard Stanley on the occasion of his 70th birthda