Selective incentives and the formation of interest groups: The case of the Canadian Federation of Students (CFS)

This study focuses on the factors that motivate individuals to participate in the affairs of collective action organizations and ultimately take up leadership responsibilities. The leadership of the Canadian Federation of Students (CFS) is used as a case study because it is an organization that purports to represent the interest of students in post-secondary institutions in Canada. The study employed personal interviews as the main method of data collection. The interviews were semi-structured since certain questions were asked as a result of the responses given to questions in the interview schedule. The interviews enabled the researcher to probe into the minds of the respondents and also get a better understanding of their viewpoints and perspectives. Twelve executive members of the CFS were interviewed for this study. In order not to accept at face value the responses of the leadership of CFS, six representatives of the Ontario Undergraduates Students’ Alliance (OUSA) were also interviewed. As a rival organization, OUSA has been very critical of CFS. By interviewing OUSA representatives, the study aimed at critically examining the responses of CFS respondents. This enabled the researcher to get a balanced understanding of the factors that motivated the formation of student organizations. The study was designed to examine the role selective incentives and inducements play in the decision to be part of the leadership of CFS. In so doing, the study examined the evolution of student movements in Canada which resulted in CFS’ formation. Following the work of other researchers, this study categorized the incentives and motives for the participation of the CFS’ leadership into social, purposive and economic factors. Social incentives and motives include friendship, status, and prestige; purposive incentives and motives include the efforts to influence government policies to obtain broader goals; and economic incentives go to enhance job and career prospects. The findings of the study showed that although economic benefits and incentives are important in influencing the decision to join the leadership of CFS, non-economic reasons should also be considered before any conclusion can be made about the decision-making process of individuals. It came to light that social and purposive incentives are important factors that motivate participation in CFS’ affairs. In this vein, any attempt at understanding the internal dynamics of interest groups and social movement organizations should adopt an integrative approach. Such an approach provides a better framework that enhances our understanding and perspective of the internal dynamics of interest groups and social movement organizations

Energiediskurse in der Schweiz : anwendungsorientierte Erforschung eines mehrsprachigen Kommunikationsfelds mittels digitaler Daten

Öffentliche Diskurse über Energiepolitik spielen eine entscheidende Rolle, wenn es darum geht, die «Energiestrategie 2050» der Schweizer Regierung erfolgreich umzusetzen. Das interdisziplinäre Forschungsprojekt «Energiediskurse in der Schweiz» untersucht Muster des öffentlichen Sprachgebrauchs zum Thema. Solche Muster bilden die Grundlage für das öffentliche Verständnis der Themen und Kontroversen im demokratischen Dialog und in der vernetzten Innovation. Das vorliegende «Working Paper» präsentiert das dreijährige Projekt in seinen theoretischen und methodischen Grundzügen ebenso wie ausgewählte Ergebnisse des ersten Projektjahrs. Dazu gehören der Aufbau und die Annotation des digitalen Swiss-AL-Textkorpus ebenso wie Vergleiche zwischen dem Sprachgebrauch in den drei Landessprachen Deutsch, Französisch und Italienisch. So kann beispielsweise der Einfluss von Ereignissen wie der Nuklearkatastrophe in Fukushima Daiichi nachgezeichnet werden, in dem die Hinweise auf das Ereignis über die Jahre hinweg gemessen werden. Zudem gibt es erste Hinweise und Belege dafür, dass die verschiedenen Sprachen den öffentlichen Diskurs über Energiefragen auch unterschiedlich gestalten. Bestimmte Wortkombinationen stehen für Konzepte wie «erneuerbare», «Wind-», «Solar-», «Nuklear-» oder «fossile» Energien, wobei diese Konzepte in den verschiedenen Sprachen unterschiedlich gewichtet sind. Argumentationsstrategien beispielsweise in Bezug auf die «erneuerbaren Energien» scheinen sich ebenfalls zu unterscheiden, so dass es angezeigt ist, in der Fortsetzung des Projekts die nationalen und regionalen Diskurse je für sich und detaillierter zu untersuchen. Im Fokus der nächsten Projektphasen werden systematische Analysen zu diskursiven Kontroversen und Koalitionen stehen, um Diskursnetzwerke zwischen relevanten Akteuren zu identifizieren.Public discourse about energy policies plays a key role in the successful implementation of the Swiss energy strategy. The interdisciplinary research project Energy Discourses in Switzerland focuses on the patterns of language use related to energy policy. Patterns of language use are understood and analyzed as drivers or constraints of democratic dialogue and collective innovation in the field. This working paper outlines exemplary results of the project work in the first year of the 3-year project, including exploratory analyses of the Swiss-AL corpus and comparisons of the discourses typical of actors whose public communication is in one of the Swiss national languages or some combination of them. The influence of events such as the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster on public discourse were traced by mapping the frequency of references to that event in texts. The changes over time of terms associated with energy issues also provided indications of the development of public discourses. Initial analyses of the multilingual Swiss-AL corpus indicate that the way that energy in its various forms is discussed seems to differ depending on the language of the texts. The most frequent word combinations represent concepts such as renewable, hydro, wind, solar, nuclear, and fossil-fueled energy but the order of importance differs for German, French, Italian, and English. Argumentation strategies also seem to vary not only between languages but also between multilingual and monolingual sources in the Swiss-AL corpus, suggesting that national and local discourses need to be examined separately and in more detail. The focus of the next phase of the project will be on systematically analysing discourse controversies and coalitions in order to identify discursively linked actor networks

Science, Schooling, and Society: Toward an Integrated Curriculum

Those of us who have participated in the curriculum movement over the past decade have seen a profound change in the orientation of curriculum makers during this period. In the wave of science-based curriculum projects that followed the launching of Sputnik in 1957 there was little explicit attention given to the social purposes of instruction. The emphasis in those years was on the transmission of knowledge in the most economical form through the identification of central ideas, and on the invention of pedagogical techniques that supported and reinforced the child\u27s natural curiosity and desire to learn. One of the most influential thinkers of the period, Jean Piaget, turned the attention of curriculum makers almost exclusively to the child\u27s processes of cognitive growth, and to individual differences in learning style. Another, Jerome Bruner, wrote an immensely popular book, The Process of Education, that stressed the most effective ways of organizing the transmission of knowledge, while making only passing reference to the social purposes of instruction

Insights from translation process research in the workplace

Translation process research is moving out of controlled settings, such as classrooms and laboratories, into the reality of professional workplaces. Some of the inherent challenges can be partly addressed with multi-method approaches, but ecologically valid investigations of practice demand flexibility from both researchers and practitioners. We argue that the insights gained from such ventures into the wild are well worth the additional effort and can inform translation studies as well as other areas of applied linguistics and neighbouring disciplines. These insights can and should feed back into training and professional development

Using pressure pulse seismology to examine basal criticality and the influence of sticky spots on glacial flow

Here we report results of water pressure pulse studies conducted at Storglaciären (Sweden) and West Washmawapta Glacier (British Columbia, Canada). Comparison of pressure pulse records with meteorological conditions at Storglaciären indicates that several periods of increased basal slip activity observed during a 10 day interval of summer 2008 were due to precipitation loading of the glacier surface, rather than to infiltration of surface water to the glacier bed; this indicates that the glacier bed was close to the failure strength for much of this interval. Pressure pulse magnitudes for the two glaciers were well-fit by power law distributions similar to those earlier observed at Trapridge Glacier (and similar in form to the Gutenberg-Richter relationship commonly used in seismology), suggesting that the mechanical processes that give rise to these distributions are robust features of soft-bedded glaciers. In contrast, interevent time distributions for both glaciers diverge from those observed at Trapridge Glacier for short recurrence intervals, suggesting that the factors that govern the rate at which these processes occur differ between glaciers. An examination of pressure pulse characteristics at West Washmawapta Glacier indicates that the establishment of a basal drainage system in summer 2008 resulted in increased stability and reduced sensitivity to meltwater input, suggesting that common assumptions about the relationship between meltwater production and ice flow are oversimplified. These results demonstrate that water pressure pulse observations can provide valuable insight into the dynamics of soft-bedded glaciers

Inertia and managerial intentionality: extending the Uppsala model

The Uppsala Internationalization Process Model is the most cited model within the field of international business. However, even with its most recent formulation, the model is predicated on a key set of assumptions about the limiting and releasing mechanisms in a ‘change of state’ decision. The model assumes that uncertainty, risk, lack of trust, and lack of awareness of opportunities are the main constraints, and that the accumulation of experiential knowledge, trust, and market commitment are the main releasing factors that allow a firm to overcome those constraints and progress to a higher state of commitment. We argue that the preceding view may be excessively narrow, and that inertia and managerial intentionality may also play a role as critical limiting and releasing mechanisms, respectively. This development implies that the passage of time and experiential learning may not always have a positive impact on firm internationalization. The extended model proposed in this paper highlights the role of the manager, and brings a contingent element to the model, thus broadening its applicability by providing new insights on issues typically considered outside the realm of the Uppsala model, such as rapidly internationalizing firms, regionalization, mode inertia and mode skipping

Nontraditional-Hour Child Care in Austin/Travis County: Insights from Interviews, Focus Groups, and Analyses of Supply and Demand

This report presents findings from interviews, focus groups, and analyses of survey and administrative data to describe nontraditional-hour (before 7:00 a.m. and after 6:00 p.m. during the traditional workweek and anytime on weekends) child care demand, supply, and preferences. Findings are based on analyses of data from the American Community Survey, the Survey of Income and Program Participation, Texas Workforce Commission administrative data, and analyses of data collected through interviews and focus groups with Austin/Travis County community leaders, employers, child care providers, and parents

Enabling the Participation of People with Parkinson's and Their Caregivers in Co-Inquiry around Collectivist Health Technologies

While user participation is central to HCI, co-inquiry takes this further by having participants direct and control research from conceptualisation to completion. We describe a co-inquiry, conducted over 16 months with a Parkinson's support group. We explored how the participation of members might be enabled across multiple stages of a research project, from the generation of research questions to the development of a prototype. Participants directed the research into developing alternative modes of information provision, resulting in ‘Parkinson’s Radio’ — a collectivist health information service produced and edited by members of the support group. We reflect on how we supported participation at different stages of the project and the successes and challenges faced by the team. We contribute insights into the design of collectivist health technologies for this group, and discuss opportunities and tensions for conducting co-inquiry in HCI research

Influence of the algal microbiome on biofouling during industrial cultivation of Nannochloropsis sp. in closed photobioreactors

Industrial cultivation of microalgae is becoming increasingly important, yet the process is still hampered by many factors, including contamination and biofouling of the algal reactors. We characterized a subset of microorganisms occurring in the broth and different biofilm stages of industrial scale photobioreactors applied for the cultivation of Nannochloropsis sp. A total of 69 bacterial strains were isolated, belonging to at least 24 different species. In addition, a green microalga was isolated and identified as Chlamydomonas hedleyi. The effect of C. hedleyi and 24 of the bacterial isolates on the productivity of Nannochloropsis was evaluated through growth and biofilm assays. C. hedleyi was shown to reduce growth and induce biofilm formation in Nannochloropsis. These effects were however indirect as they could be attributed to the bacteria associated to C. hedleyi and not C. hedleyi itself. Although most bacterial strains reported no effect, several were able to induce biofilm formation