HyperText Corpus Initiative : how to help researchers sieving the web?

Since its foundation in May 2009, the médialab Sciences Po works to foster the use of digital methods and tools in social sciences. With the help of existing tools and methods, we experienced the use of web mining techniques to extract data on collective phenomena. We also attended the symposiums organised by the two institutions responsible of web archiving in France: BnF and INA where we learnt about the difficulties posed to social scientists by the use of web archives. Actually our own experience in mining the live web wasn’t easier. Such difficulties, we believe, can be explained by the lack of tools allowing scholars to build themselves the highly specialized corpora they need from the wide heterogeneity of the web. The web isn’t a well-known document space for scholars or librarians. Its hyperlinked and heterogeneous nature requires to envision new ways of conceiving and building web corpora. And this notion of web corpus is a necessity for both live and archived web. If methods are not appropriate enough for analysing the live web, the problem will not be easier on an archive where the time dimension adds complexity

Investigating Consumer Perceptions of Purchase Shares for Private-Label Brands and Demographics: A Study of the Great Value Brand

Over the past several decades, private-label brands have emerged to have a strong presence on retailer shelves around the world, being especially prevalent in Europe (Queck 2009) and also becoming increasingly common in the United States (Gerlock 2013). For both retailers and consumers, the reasons behind the success of private-label brands are quite compelling. For retailers, private-label brands offer better margins than national manufacturer brands, greater negotiating power with manufacturer brands, and higher customer loyalty for the retailer (Ailawadi, Pauwels, & Steenkamp 2008). For consumers, these brands offer high quality at very competitive pricing relative to national manufacturer brands. The value benefit became more apparent with the recent economic downturn and recession, and as a consequence, consumers increased purchases of private-label brands (U.S. Grocery Shoppers 2012). Interestingly enough, consumers are continuing to purchase private-label brands even as the economy has begun to recover (U.S. Grocery Shoppers 2012). Given the importance of the topic, it is imperative to understand how various consumer demographic characteristics may influence the preference and purchase proneness of private-label brands. While a few findings from prior research provide insight, questions still exist about the nature of private-label brand shoppers and the impact of their demographic characteristics on private-label proneness and purchase behaviors. The main goal of this study is to examine the proportion or percent of consumers’ grocery and household spending captured by private-label brands and to determine if this purchase behavior is impacted by consumer demographics. It is expected that consumers who purchase more private-label brands would have more favorable perceptions of quality and value, and be more likely to exhibit higher levels of loyalty for the private-label brands. Therefore, the study examines: (1) the proportion or percent (purchase share) of consumers’ monthly purchases for (a) private-label brands and (b) the Great Value brand of products offered by Wal-Mart; (2) if consumer demographic characteristics influence the purchase shares of (a) the Great Value brand of products and (b) private-label brands in general; and (3) if consumer perceptions of risk, quality, and value, and degree of loyalty differ by their purchase behavior (share) of the Great Value brand, as measured by the proportion of their spending for the Great Value brand. In order to accomplish the objectives of this study, the survey questions used deal with (a) consumers’ purchase shares of private-label brands in general and Great Value branded products in particular, (b) consumer demographic characteristics, and (c) consumers’ perceptions of the Great Value brand in relation to risk, quality, and value, and degree of loyalty. The survey also included demographics questions of gender, age, income, family size, and education. Once the survey questions were developed, we conducted a series of pretests in order to fine-tune and purify them, which provided useful input for improving the survey items and in establishing face validity of the constructs. The finalized survey instrument was administered online to potential Wal-Mart shoppers and purchasers of Great Value products in the U.S. market. Following the procedure used by Bitner, Booms, and Tetreault (1990), an email invitation was sent by undergraduate students to a convenience sample of purchasers of Great Value products. We obtained a total of 367 usable surveys. The results show that 91.6% of the 367 respondents shop at Walmart, and that 82.0% (278) of these individuals are purchasers of the Great Value brand. This finding indicates that private-label brands are becoming an important share of consumers’ grocery and household goods purchases, but it seems the Great Value brand is not doing as well as the private-label brand category overall. The other findings are that: (1) the respondents are regular shoppers of the Great Value brand and also regularly purchase private-label brands at retailers other than Wal-Mart, indicating that private-label brands are becoming an important share of consumers’ grocery and household goods purchases; (2) the consumer demographics of gender, age, family size, education and income did not have any significant effect on consumer purchase behavior for either Great Value or private-label brands in general; (3) consumer perceptions of quality, value, and risk, and degree of loyalty are impacted significantly by consumers’ purchase behavior of the Great Value brand, as measured by Great Value brand share of consumers’ monthly grocery and household good purchases. The findings have important implications for Wal-Mart’s management of the Great Value brand, as well as for the management of other private-label brands

Examining Private-Label Brand Equity Dimensions: Do Brand Equity Dimensions Differ for Different PLBs of the Same Store?

Private-label brands (PLB) today are a well-established facet in many product categories worldwide, and as such have increasingly captured the attention of researchers. Even so, the consumer-based brand equity (CBBE) of PLBs (PL-CBBE) has remained largely unexplored (Cuneo et al 2012). To help fll this void, this study examines the CBBE and its underlying dimensions of two different product category PLBs (Great Value, Equate) of the same retailer (Wal-Mart)

The E.A.T. Datascape: An Experiment in Digital Social History of Art

Experiments in Art and Technology (E.A.T.) is an organi- zation co-founded in 1966 by artists Robert Rauschenberg and Robert Whitman, and engineers Billy Klüver and Fred Waldhauer, in order to support collaboration between artists and engineers. The E.A.T. datascape is a digital instrument for analyzing the digitized traces left by its members via many available resources. Its aim is to study as closely as possible the complexity of collaborative interdisciplinary works. The E.A.T. datascape methodology makes it possible, by means of an anthropological action-centred approach, to go beyond the distinction between art history and art sociology and to renew the social history of art by challeng- ing the notion of authorship and by describing the work as constituted by the intersection between heterogeneous trajectories, rather than an object within a context that would influence it, or constitute its environment. In other words, it allows us to reflect on what digital design does, in turn, to the social history of art, and to put forward hypotheses about what a digital social history of art might be or could offer to the study of complex, interdisciplinary projects that are multiplying in the contemporary art world.Experiments in Art and Technology (E.A.T.) organizacija je koju su 1966. zajedno osnovali umjetnici Robert Rausch- enberg i Robert Whitman te inženjeri Billy Klüver i Fred Waldhauer, kako bi podržali suradnju između umjetnika i in- ženjera. E.A.T. datascape digitalni je instrument za analizu digitaliziranih tragova koje su ostavili članovi organizacije putem brojnih dostupnih resursa. Njegov je cilj što je mo- guće detaljnije analizirati složenost kolaborativnih inter- disciplinarnih radova. Zahvaljujući antropološkom pristupu usmjerenom na djelovanje, metodologija E.A.T datascapea omogućuje nadilaženje razlike između povijesti umjetnosti i sociologije umjetnosti te obnavljanje socijalne povijesti um- jetnosti dovođenjem u pitanje pojma autorstva i opisivanjem djela kao sačinjenoga presijecanjem heterogenih trajektorija, a ne kao objekta u kontekstu koji bi na njega utjecao ili tvo- rio njegovo okruženje. Drugim riječima, ona nam omogućuje razmišljanje o tome što digitalni dizajn čini zauzvrat za so- cijalnu povijest umjetnosti i iznošenje hipoteza o tome što bi digitalna socijalna povijest umjetnosti mogla biti ili što bi mogla ponuditi istraživanju složenih interdisciplinarnih pro- jekata, kojih je sve više u svijetu suvremene umjetnosti

Le déploiement des « nouveaux métiers » de la politique de la ville, comparaison franco-britannique

Rapport final LATTS/CRESR (Centre for Regional Economic and Social Research)La présente recherche a pour objet de mieux comprendre le phénomène des « nouveaux métiers » de la ville, avec en particulier diverses atypies sur les formes professionnelles que l'on a pu observer dans le cas français, en déplaçant le regard vers le cas de la Grande Bretagne. Elle repose sur l'analyse approfondie des formes organisationnelles et professionnelles dans le domaine équivalent à la « politique de la ville » française dans deux villes britanniques. Elle a été menée par une équipe binationale. Cette enquête britannique a été complétée de manière plus légère par une enquête française. L'enjeu est de tester si, dans un contexte institutionnel différent, on observe des phénomènes professionnels comparables pour valider la thèse d'une corrélation entre les modalités de l'intervention publique et les formes professionnelles. Si c'est le cas, cela permettra d'approfondir la compréhension de ces mécanismes de corrélation

Internal Services Brand Orientation: Comparing the Perspectives of Managers, Employees, and Customers

Brand orientation plays an important role in creating competitive advantage. The success of a brand depends on the extent of the harmony between managerially advocated brand orientation, effective implementation of the brand orientation by staff, and appreciation of the brand orientation by customers. This requires brand orientation to be implemented during each touch point of the service delivery process, as the delivery of the brand is experienced by consumers in a process of co-creation with the service provider. To have a successful brand orientation, it is necessary to examine the perceptions of management, contact personnel, and consumers to discover if there is a consistent understanding of the brand orientation by these three parties. Perceptions of brand orientation should be aligned among these three groups because inconsistencies might have a negative effect on building a strong brand that would in turn impact brand performance, ultimately leading to a weaker service brand. Drawing from the literature, this research develops scale measurements to examine the relationships among internal brand orientation and its antecedent dimensions from the perspectives of contact personnel, managers, and customers of a service firm. The dimensions included to measure brand orientation are brand commitment, brand citizenship, positive word-of-mouth, affective brand commitment, brand image, attitude toward brand, and customer perceptions of brand performance. A seven-point Likert scale (1=strongly disagree, 7=strongly agree) was utilized. Because the data were collected for a convenience store chain and from its managers, personnel, and customers, the statements were modified accordingly. Positive relationships were hypothesized between the perceptions of brand orientation and its dimensions and perceptions of brand performance and customer outcome. After building a survey instrument and pre-testing it, the researchers administered the final survey to the contact personnel, managers, and customers of the family-owned convenience store chain. The finalized survey for customers was administered online through invitations on the social media channels of the convenience store chain (Facebook and Twitter), which were linked Association of Marketing Theory and Practice Proceedings March 2018 2 Copyright of the Author(s) and published under a Creative Commons License Agreement http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/us/ to the survey. Employees were contacted directly with an e-mail invitation and link. A total of 2,738 customer and 232 employee surveys were appropriately completed and used in the data analysis. The SEM-PLS analyses reveal significant relationships among the brand orientation dimensions. Based on the Three Promises and Services Branding Triangle framework that suggested comparisons of perceptions between managers and contact personnel (internal), managers and customers (external), and contact personnel and customers (interactive), an ANOVA test was utilized. The results revealed that external and interactive brand orientation gaps exist in the perceptions of personnel, managers, and customers, but not between managers and personnel. The study helps to fill an existing void in the brand orientation literature

Continuité ou discontinuité dans la technologie céramique : une analyse comparative des attributs technologiques entre le Sylvicole moyen tardif et le Sylvicole supérieur ancien

La transition entre le Sylvicole moyen tardif (500 à 1000 apr. J.-C.) et le Sylvicole supérieur ancien (1000 à 1200 apr. J.-C.) n’est plus un moment obscur pour les archéologues; cependant, il est toujours vrai que bien des questions demeurent sans réponses. Sur le complexe archéologique de Pointe-du-Buisson, situé au sud-ouest de l’Île de Montréal, la question de l’origine des Iroquoiens du Saint-Laurent fait à nouveau couler de l’encre, cette fois par une perspective tournée vers la technologie céramique. Nous savons, ou croyons savoir, que le montage des vases céramiques passe du colombin vers la méthode du battoir et enclume, mais nous ne savons pas si cette transition technologique s’est faite dans la continuité ou dans la discontinuité. Pour y répondre, 106 tessons de bord provenant de la Station-3 et du site Hector-Trudel de la Pointe-du-Buisson furent sélectionnés, dont 56 datant du Sylvicole moyen tardif et appartenant à la Tradition Melocheville, puis 50 du Sylvicole supérieur ancien et appartenant à la Tradition Saint-Maurice, à l’exception de cinq de culture Pickering. L’échantillon fut soumis au CT-Scan afin de produire des images numériques en trois dimensions qui ont ensuite été étudiées à l’aide du logiciel ImageJ FIJI. Grâce à une approche d’analyse par attributs technologiques, avec un accent sur la comparaison entre mes deux groupes et aussi entre mes données et celles de Guyane Beaulieu (2019), diverses variables contenues dans la fabrique céramique ont été étudiées et quantifiées. D’après les résultats obtenus, et à la lumière d’une rétrospection sur le débat plus large entre les théories migratoires et l’archéologie processuelle, la transition technologique dans la production céramique se serait certes produite graduellement, mais pourrait ne pas être le fruit d’un développement sur place sans aucun apport extérieur. Néanmoins, les technologies céramiques que l’on attribue aux Iroquoiens du Sylvicole supérieur ancien ont été clairement héritées de potières du Sylvicole moyen tardif : par conséquent, l’hypothèse migratoire de Snow ne concorde pas avec les résultats de cette étude.The transition between the late Middle Woodland period (500 – 1000 AD) and the early Late Woodland period (1000 – 1200 AD) is no longer shrouded in mystery for the archaeologist; even so, many unanswered questions remain. For the archaeological complex of Pointe-du-Buisson located to the south-west of Montreal, research is once more tackling the question of the origin of the Northern Iroquoians, this time using a technological perspective of ceramic production. We know that the construction of ceramic vessels using the coiling method was replaced by the paddle-and-anvil during the transition from the Middle to Late Woodland period. What we are less certain of is the pattern of said change: continuous or discontinuous. For this reason, 106 rim sherds from the Station-3 and Hector-Trudel sites ( the Pointe-du-Buisson archaeological complex) were selected, of which 56 belong to the Melocheville Tradition from the late Middle Woodland period, and 50 belong to the St-Maurice Tradition, of which five are actually Pickering, from the early Late Woodland period. The sample was then analyzed by CT-Scan in order to obtain 3D digital images which were later processed and analyzed with the ImageJ FIJI software. With a technological attribute analysis approach, coupled with a focus on a comparison between my two subgroups as well as between my data and those from a previous study by Guyane Beaulieu (2019), diverse variables contained within the fabric of ceramic vessels were studied and quantified. According to the results, and along with a retrospection on the debate between migration theories and the processual archaeology perspectives, the technological transition within ceramic production would appear to have been a gradual process but might not necessarily point to a strict in situ development. It is clear, however, that there is a continuity within the cultural traits of the ceramic technology attributed to the Iroquoians of the Late Woodland Period with those of the previous period, which refutes Snow’s migration hypothesis

Visual network storytelling

We love networks! Networks are powerful conceptual tools, encapsulating in a single item multiple affordances for computation (networks as graphs), visualization (networks as maps) and manipulation of data (networks as interfaces). In the field of mathematics, graph theory has been around since Euler’s walk on Königsberg’s bridges (Euler 1736). But it is not until the end of the last century that networks acquired a multidisciplinary popularity. Graph computation is certainly powerful, but it is also very demanding and for many years its advantages remained the privilege of scholars with solid mathematical fundamentals. In the last few decades, however, networks acquired a new set of affordances and reached a larger audience, thanks to the growing availability of tools to design them. Drawn on paper or screen, networks became easier to handle and obtained properties that calculation could not express. Far from being merely aesthetic, the graphical representation of networks has an intrinsic hermeneutic value. Networks can become maps and be read as such. Combining the computation power of graphs with the visual expressivity of maps and the interactivity of computer interface, networks can be used in Exploratory Data Analysis (Tukey, 1977). Navigating through data becomes so fluid that zooming in on a single data-point and out to a landscape of a million traces is just a click away. Increasingly specialized software has been designed to support the exploration of network data. Tools like Pajek (vlado.fmf.uni-lj.si/pub/networks/pajek), NetDraw (sites.google.com/site/ netdrawsoftware), Ucinet (www.analytictech.com/ucinet), Guess (graphexploration.cond.org) and more recently Gephi (gephi.org) have progressively smoothed out the difficulties of graph mathematics, turning a complex mathematical formalism into a more user-friendly point-and-click interface (1) . If visual exploration of networks can output to confirmatory statistics, what about sharing one network exploration with others? We developed Manylines (https://github.com/medialab/manylines), a tool allowing you to share the visual analysis of a network with a wide audience by publishing it on the web. With Manylines, you can not only easily publish a network on the web but also share its exploration by describing the network’s visual key findings. Through a set of examples, we will illustrate how the narrative opportunities of Manylines can contribute to the enunciation of a visual grammar of networks. (1) A simple look at the URLs of the subsequent tools reveals the efforts deployed to make network-manipulation tools user-friendly and thereby available to a larger public

Biofiltration of bitumen vapours - Operational aspects

[Abstract] This study was carried out in response to odour problems around a bitumen mixing and storage plant. The general objective of this study was to determine the potential of biofiltration for the treatment of air containing bitumen vapours. Two pilot-scale biofilters, a single-stage system and a two-stage system, were operated using a synthetic gas for a period of 106 days. Results demonstrated that a period of about 50 days was necessary to reach a steady state. The two biofilters performed very well in regards to H2S, while VOC treatment was much less efficient. Maximum elimination capacities of 25 g·m-3·h-1 for H2S and 5.3 g·m-3·h-1 for VOCs were obtained with the two-stage system. It was possible to establish certain operating conditions necessary for proper operation and to determine that a two-stage system is more efficient for the simultaneous treatment of H2S and VOCs

The Experiments in Art and Technology Datascape

The Experiments in Art and Technology (E.A.T.) organization was set up in 1966 by the artists Robert Rauschenberg and Robert Whitman, in association with the engineers Billy Klüver and Fred Waldhauer. Its purpose was to facilitate collaboration between artists, engineers, and scientists by producing art systems and projects outside the art sphere in a strictly defined sense. Between 1966 and 1970, E.A.T. was thus at the root of more than 600 joint projects in the United States and abroad, mos..