Supporting Innovative Co-operative Development: The Case of the Nova Scotia Co-operative Development System

The research was initiated in order to contribute to one of the central research goals of BALTA – namely, to highlight “the scope and characteristics of social economy innovations that are achieving demonstrable social and economic results in other regions” in order to provide lessons and insights for strengthening the social economy in BC and Alberta. This research was subsequently used to inform further action research on how to strengthen the co-operative development systems in the provinces of Alberta and British Columbia. The NS-CDS case study looks at 6 main areas of the co-operative development system including: 1. Development Finance 2. Human Resource Development 3. Planning, Advocacy and Research 4. Policy and Governance 5. Community Economic Development 6. Accountability and EvaluationThis research report documents a case study of the recent history of successful innovation and development in the co-operative sector in the province of Nova Scotia, Canada, that has been unparalleled in other parts of Anglophone Canada. The case study looks at the Nova Scotia Co-operative Development System from a systems perspective in order to encompass a wide range of interacting processes that are involved in the Nova Scotia experience. The research identifies success factors in the Nova Scotia experience that might be relevant to co-operative development in other regions.BC-Alberta Social Economy Research Alliance (BALTA) ; Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) ; Nova Scotia Co-operative Council (NSCC); Canadian Centre for Community Renewal (CCCR

Debbie, the Debate Bot of the Future

Chatbots are a rapidly expanding application of dialogue systems with companies switching to bot services for customer support, and new applications for users interested in casual conversation. One style of casual conversation is argument, many people love nothing more than a good argument. Moreover, there are a number of existing corpora of argumentative dialogues, annotated for agreement and disagreement, stance, sarcasm and argument quality. This paper introduces Debbie, a novel arguing bot, that selects arguments from conversational corpora, and aims to use them appropriately in context. We present an initial working prototype of Debbie, with some preliminary evaluation and describe future work.Comment: IWSDS 201

Are all things created equal? The incidental in archaeology

Archaeologists evince a strong tendency to impute significance to the material traces they study, a propensity that has been especially marked since the post-processual emphasis on meaning and that has taken on renewed vigour with the turn to materiality. But are there not situations in which things are rather incidental or insignificant? This set of essays emerged from a workshop held in Berlin in April 2018, in which a group of scholars was invited to discuss the place of the incidental in social life in general and in archaeology in particular. Rather than lengthy formal papers, we offer an introduction that presents a general set of reflections on the issue of the incidentalness of things, followed by essays that pursue particular directions raised by that introduction as well as our discussions in Berlin. It is our hope that these brief forays into a complex topic will stimulate further work on this subject

Exploring the Work of K-12 Interpreters at One School for the Deaf

Emergent signers are Deaf students with a spoken language foundation who are learning within educational environments where ASL is the shared and dominant language. Emergent signers’ growing presence within Deaf school classrooms has created a new opportunity in educational interpreting research because they require spoken language interpreting services while learning within these settings. Interpreting is produced primarily from ASL to spoken English. This pilot case study illuminates the factors that influence interpreters’ decision-making in an ASL-dominant K-12 educational setting, at one school for the Deaf. Furthermore, the study documents strategies used by interpreters in response to those factors. This project’s methodology includes observations and field notes, video footage of interpreters at work, and filmed video elicitation interviews. Three interpreters participated, whose voices were prioritized in the quantitative data. Results are categorized with Smith’s (2013) three overarching aims of educational interpreters. Findings indicate that the highly visual nature of ASL-dominant classroom, particularly during ‘question and answer’ times generate unique factors that influence interpreters’ strategic decision-making. Implications of the study suggest that educational interpreters must be trained to evaluate and prioritize in their moment-to-moment decisions

How to Explain to Your Twins Why Only One Can Be American: The Right to Citizenship of Children Born to Same-Sex Couples Through Assisted Reproductive Technology

Sections 301 and 309 of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) govern birthright citizenship by descent. Per the U.S. Department of State’s (DOS) interpretation of these sections, to transmit citizenship to a child, the U.S. citizen-parent must have a biological connection with the child. For couples who use assisted reproductive technology (ART) to have children, however, this means that one parent will always be barred from transmitting citizenship to their own child. This is because in ART families, at least one parent will always lack the biological connection that the DOS requires to transmit citizenship pursuant to the INA. This policy disproportionately affects same-sex couples since same-sex couples who choose not to adopt rely almost exclusively on ART to have children. Further, even if the citizen-parent is able to establish a biological connection, the children of married same-sex couples are categorically considered born out of wedlock and therefore subjected to significantly harsher citizenship requirements. The DOS’s interpretation of the INA raises serious concerns about the protection of same-sex couples’ constitutional rights. It also prompts policy questions about the importance of biology versus intent in determining parentage. This Note argues that the effects of the DOS’s interpretation on same-sex couples can be counteracted through a dual approach. First, Congress must amend the INA to recognize intent-based parentage. Second, until Congress passes such an amendment, federal courts and state legislators must collaborate to protect the rights of same-sex parents

Research activity summary and final report for Project B2

The purpose of the B2 work is to contribute to the overall SERC 2 project on the social economy and sustainable rural development. The objective is to provide a theoretical and conceptual discussion of the similarities, differences and points of convergence between traditional sustainability and sustainable communities frameworks and the social economy. The B2 project will point to areas where the two fields of thought can actually inform and mutually support one another in the movement towards a more just and sustainable society. The project will provide a theoretical framework and context for the more sector-specific work being done in SERC 2 (food security, land tenure, energy, etc). In order to achieve this objective, we decided to focus the project outputs on academic publications and conferences that would take the discussion to a broader academic audience as well as contribute to BALTA’s student learning and publication objectives. The intention of this work, then is to provide the theoretical and conceptual understanding upon which the more specific SERC 2 work could be built.The following is a research activity summary and final report for Project B2 – Sustainability and the Social Economy – completed June 30th, 2008. The overall project timeline is May 2007 – April 2009. This report covers research activities and outcomes for the period June 2007 – June 2008

A Deeper Insight into Strain for the Sila-bi[6]prismane (Si\u3csub\u3e18\u3c/sub\u3eH\u3csub\u3e12\u3c/sub\u3e) Cluster with its Endohedrally Trapped Silicon Atom, Si\u3csub\u3e19\u3c/sub\u3eH\u3csub\u3e12\u3c/sub\u3e

A new family of over-coordinated hydrogenated silicon nanoclusters with outstanding optical and mechanical properties has recently been proposed. For one member of this family, namely the highly symmetric Si19H12 nanocrystal, strain calculations have been presented with the goal to question its thermal stability and the underlying mechanism of ultrastability and electron-deficiency aromaticity. Here, the invalidity of these strain energy (SE) calculations is demonstrated mainly based on a fundamentally wrong usage of homodesmotic reactions, the miscounting of atomic bonds, and arithmetic errors. Since the article in question is entirely anchored on those erroneous SE values, all of its conclusions and predictions become without meaning. We provide evidence here that the nanocrystal in question suffers from such low levels of strain that its thermodynamical stability should be largely sufficient for device fabrication in a realistic plasma reactor. Most remarkably, the two “alternative,” irregular isomers explicitly proposed in the aforementioned article are also electron-deficient, nontetrahedral, ultrastable, and aromatic nicely underlining the universality of the ultrastability concept for nanometric hydrogenated silicon clusters. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc

Sustainability, the Social Economy, and the Eco-social Crisis: Traveling Concepts and Bridging Fields

Current global issues such as climate change and peak oil have brought attention to the severity and complexity of our eco-social crisis and called for local action and community-based solutions. There is a need for middle level analytical concepts and tools that engage the organizational and operational forms and practices of mutuality and trust needed for a conversion to eco-social sustainability. The purpose of this paper is to explore how the social economy can help to address local issues in this context and contribute to the transition to a more sustainable society. The paper compares the historical and ideological foundations of the social economy with those of the sustainability movement, identifying both theoretical similarities and ‘traveling concepts’ used by practitioners in the two fields. We argue that effective community responses to current socio-ecological crises would benefit from some bridging and building between the two schools of thought and fields of practice. As part of the British Columbia-Alberta Social Economy Research Alliance (BALTA) our paper presents some early analysis from three sectors in BC and Alberta (farmers markets, land trusts and built environments). Using these examples, we highlight how practitioners in both the social economy and sustainability fields can understand the eco-social crisis and compare how each organizes its alternatives around notions of trust, mutuality and sensitivity to community locale

A Bose gas in a single-beam optical dipole trap

We study an ultracold Bose gas in an optical dipole trap consisting of one single focused laser beam. An analytical expression for the corresponding density of states beyond the usual harmonic approximation is obtained. We are thus able to discuss the existence of a critical temperature for Bose-Einstein condensation and find that the phase transition must be enabled by a cutoff near the threshold. Moreover, we study the dynamics of evaporative cooling and observe significant deviations from the findings for the well-established harmonic approximation. Furthermore, we investigate Bose-Einstein condensates in such a trap in Thomas-Fermi approximation and determine analytical expressions for chemical potential, internal energy and Thomas-Fermi radii beyond the usual harmonic approximation