Semantic browsing of digital collections

Visiting museums is an increasingly popular pastime. Studies have shown that visitors can draw on their museum experience, long after their visit, to learn new things in practical situations. Rather than viewing a visit as a single learning event, we are interested in ways of extending the experience to allow visitors to access online resources tailored to their interests. Museums typically have extensive archives that can be made available online, the challenge is to match these resources to the visitor’s interests and present them in a manner that facilitates exploration and engages the visitor. We propose the use of knowledge level resource descriptions to identify relevant resources and create structured presentations. A system that embodies this approach, which is in use in a UK museum, is presented and the applicability of the approach to the broader semantic web is discussed

Being Different Yet Feeling Similar: The Influence Of Demographic Composition And Organizational Culture On Work Processes And Outcomes

Drawing from self-categorization theory, we tested hypotheses on the effects of an organization's demographic composition and cultural emphasis on work processes and outcomes. Using an organizational simulation, we found that the extent to which an organization emphasized individualistic or collectivistic values interacted with demographic composition to influence social interaction, conflict, productivity, and perceptions of creativity among 258 MBA students. Our findings suggest that the purported benefits of demographic diversity are more likely to emerge in organizations that, through their culture, make organizational membership salient and encourage people to categorize one another as having the organization's interests in common, rather than those that emphasize individualism and distinctiveness among members.(.)Managemen

Federalizing \u3cem\u3eCaremark\u3c/em\u3e

When corporations misbehave, the normal government response is to saddle the industry with more federal oversight requirements. But reactive policies fail to curb corporate misconduct and can incentivize corporations to ignore or break the law due to the ever-increasing cost of compliance. Even though shareholders have to foot the bill when the corporations get caught ignoring or breaking the law, it is extremely difficult for shareholder plaintiffs with genuinely meritorious claims to recover for damages because, under Caremark’s requirements, it is nigh-impossible to demonstrate the bad faith necessary to survive a motion to dismiss using conventionally available information; of the seventeen Caremark claims that have been brought in Delaware since the case was decided, only five have survived a motion to dismiss. Therefore, this Article proposes “federalizing Caremark.” That is, the Delaware Court of Chancery, being the extremely influential metonymy of American corporate law that it is, should formally recognize and adopt the holdings common to the five successful cases. All of those cases were able to show the officers exhibited per se bad faith by leveraging agency-developed information regarding red flags that were ignored, breaches of the duty of oversight, and knowing violations of the law for profit. If Delaware courts chose to effectively federalize Caremark, then the per se bad faith standard would enable shareholder derivative suits to survive the dreaded motion to dismiss and possibly even win as a matter of law upon a motion for summary judgment. Federalizing Caremark would also more effectively prevent corporate misbehavior than would continually increasing oversight and regulatory requirements because it merely utilizes mechanisms already in place (i.e., agencies, regulations, shareholder claims, state courts). Corporate law scholarship rarely acknowledges its intersection with administrative law. In doing so, however, this Article establishes a bright line administrative remedy to the overwhelmingly steep hurdle shareholders face in derivative litigation

A cross-national study on the antecedents of work–life balance from the fit and balance perspective

Drawing on the perceived work–family fit and balance perspective, this study investigates demands and resources as antecedents of work–life balance (WLB) across four countries (New Zealand, France, Italy and Spain), so as to provide empirical cross-national evidence. Using structural equation modelling analysis on a sample of 870 full time employees, we found that work demands, hours worked and family demands were negatively related to WLB, while job autonomy and supervisor support were positively related to WLB. We also found evidence that resources (job autonomy and supervisor support) moderated the relationships between demands and work–life balance, with high resources consistently buffering any detrimental influence of demands on WLB. Furthermore, our study identified additional predictors of WLB that were unique to some national contexts. For example, in France and Italy, overtime hours worked were negatively associated with WLB, while parental status was positively associated with WLB. Overall, the implications for theory and practice are discussed.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

Travel to school and housing markets: a case study of Sheffield, England

How children travel to school is at the centre of a complex set of interrelated issues with significant policy implications. This paper reviews the relation of patterns of travel to school to concerns about public health, school choice, urban form, and residential housing markets. The spatial relations between pupils’ homes and the schools that they attend provides the basis of an analytical framework that links local neighbourhood characteristics, school performance, and house prices to the distance and mode of travel to school and the level of ‘excess commuting’ in the urban system. A unique analysis of several integrated micro-datasets from Sheffield, UK, suggests that, while there are high levels of excess commuting, there remains a complex interrelationship between housing and neighbourhood characteristics, school performance, and commuting patterns. There are differences between the pictures for primary schools and secondary schools. Policies aimed at promoting transport efficiency and those promoting school choice are likely to remain in tension

Collaborative writing with young people with disabilities: raising new questions of authorship and agency

The process of communication between author and reader is a critical issue in examining any text. When considering the communication of ideas from young people whose voices are seldom heard, the journey from author to audience has particular significance. The construction of children and young people as ‘authors’ is important, especially for those with learning difficulties or who struggle to comply with the current emphasis on spelling, punctuation and grammar. This article relates to a UK Research-Council-funded three-year collaborative research project involving the co-creation of fictional stories with young people with disabilities to represent aspects of their lives. Drawing on frameworks from narratology, I analyse the co-creation of one of the stories, and present an interpretation and elaboration of the discourse structure of narrative fiction to illustrate the complexities of the relationship between the multi-faceted ‘author’ and community ‘reader’ of these stories. The combination of qualitative research and fictional prose has particular characteristics and implications for the dissemination and communication of research findings; while extending feminist critique of Barthes’ claim for the death of the author provides new insights for engaging children in writing with their own voice

Towards an approach for analysing external representations created during sensemaking using generative grammar

During sensemaking, users often create external representations to help them make sense of what they know, and what they need to know. In doing so, they necessarily adopt or construct some form of representational language using the tools at hand. By describing such languages implicit in representations we believe that we are better able to describe and differentiate what users do and better able to describe and differentiate interfaces that might support them. Drawing on approaches to the analysis of language, and in particular, Mann and Thompson’s Rhetorical Structure Theory, we analyse the representations that users create to expose their underlying ‘visual grammar’. We do this in the context of a user study involving evidential reasoning. Participants were asked to address an adapted version of IEEE VAST 2011 mini challenge 3 (interpret a potential terrorist plot implicit in a set of news reports). We show how our approach enables the unpacking of the heterogeneous and embedded nature of user-generated representations and allows us to show how visual grammars evolve and become more complex over time in response to evolving sensemaking needs

A model of management academics' intentions to influence values

Business schools face increased criticism for failing in the teaching of management studies to nurture their students’ values. Assuming that individual academics play an important role in shaping the value-related influence of business schools, I model management academics’ intentions to influence values. The suggested model encompasses academics’ economic and social values as internal variables, as well as perceived support for attempting to influence values and academic tenure as social and structural variables. A test with empirical data from 1,254 management academics worldwide reveals that perceived external support is most relevant for explaining intentions. Moreover, academics’ social values, but not their economic ones, contribute to an explanation of their intentions to influence values. The results reveal how important it is for academics to believe that their colleagues, higher education institutions, and other stakeholders support their value-related behavioral intentions

Spontaneous Water Oxidation at Hematite (α-Fe_2O_3) Crystal Faces

Hematite (α-Fe_2O_3) persists as a promising candidate for photoelectrochemical water splitting, but a slow oxygen evolution reaction (OER) at its surfaces remains a limitation. Here we extend a series of studies that examine pH-dependent surface potentials and electron-transfer properties of effectively perfect low-index crystal faces of hematite in contact with simple electrolyte. Zero-resistance amperometry (ZRA) was performed in a two electrode configuration to quantify spontaneous dark current between hematite crystal face pairs (001)/(012), (001)/(113), and (012)/(113) at pH 3. Exponentially decaying currents initially of up to 200 nA were reported between faces over 4 min experiments. Fourth-order ZRA kinetics indicated rate limitation by the OER for current that flows between (001)/(012) and (001)/(113) face pairs, with the (012) and (113) faces serving as the anodes when paired with (001). The cathodic partner reaction is reductive dissolution of the (001) face, converting surface Fe^(3+) to solubilized aqueous Fe^(2+), at a rate maintained by the OER at the anode. In contrast, OER rate limitation does not manifest for the (012)/(113) pair. The uniqueness of the (001) face is established in terms of a faster intrinsic ability to accept the protons required for the reductive dissolution reaction. OER rate limitation inversely may thus arise from sluggish kinetics of hematite surfaces to dispense with the protons that accompany the four-electron OER. The results are explained in terms of semiquantitative energy band diagrams. The finding may be useful as a consideration for tailoring the design of polycrystalline hematite photoanodes that present multiple terminations to the interface with electrolyte