Introduction : towards an ethnography of meeting

This introductory essay describes a novel approach to meetings in relation to broader literatures within and beyond anthropology. We suggest that notwithstanding many accounts in which meetings figure, little attention has been given to the mundane forms through which these work. Seeking to develop a distinctively ethnographic focus on the forms, actions and aesthetics of meeting, we describe how the negotiation of relationships ‘within’ meetings is germane to the organization of ‘external’ contexts. This, includiincludes reflections on how time, space, organizational structure and society are situated by the institutional practices that they are often taken to frame. The essay offers a set of provocations for rethinking approaches to bureaucracy, organizational process and ethos via the ethnographic lens of meeting.PostprintPeer reviewe

Vocational higher education - does it meet employers’ needs?

This report is the outcome of a study funded by the Learning and Skills Council, the Department for Education and Skills, the Higher Education Funding Council for England and the Council for Industry and Higher Education. The study was undertaken at a time when government policies for higher education included a new ‘push’ towards work-related higher education, and educational policies more generally were seeking to redress the balance between academic and vocational qualifications at various levels within the compulsory and post-compulsory education and training systems in England. One part of the study re-analysed existing data sources to explore the size and nature of vocational higher education provision in England. The main part of the study was an exploration of employers’ views (in a limited number of employment sectors) on the value of vocational higher education for recruitment and workforce development purposes. To complement the ‘employer view’ a limited investigation of the ‘direct consumer’ view (i.e. students on vocational higher education programmes) was also undertaken. The report highlights a series of key issues for policymakers, and also makes recommendations for improvements to data collection

A global database of Holocene paleotemperature records

A comprehensive database of paleoclimate records is needed to place recent warming into the longer-term context of natural climate variability. We present a global compilation of quality-controlled, published, temperature-sensitive proxy records extending back 12,000 years through the Holocene. Data were compiled from 679 sites where time series cover at least 4000 years, are resolved at sub-millennial scale (median spacing of 400 years or finer) and have at least one age control point every 3000 years, with cut-off values slackened in data-sparse regions. The data derive from lake sediment (51%), marine sediment (31%), peat (11%), glacier ice (3%), and other natural archives. The database contains 1319 records, including 157 from the Southern Hemisphere. The multi-proxy database comprises paleotemperature time series based on ecological assemblages, as well as biophysical and geochemical indicators that reflect mean annual or seasonal temperatures, as encoded in the database. This database can be used to reconstruct the spatiotemporal evolution of Holocene temperature at global to regional scales, and is publicly available in Linked Paleo Data (LiPD) format.Fil: Kaufman, Darrell. Northern Arizona University.; Estados UnidosFil: McKay, Nicholas. Northern Arizona University.; Estados UnidosFil: Routson, Cody. Northern Arizona University.; Estados UnidosFil: Erb, Michael. Northern Arizona University.; Estados UnidosFil: Davis, Basil. University Of Lausanne; SuizaFil: Heiri, Oliver. University Of Basel; SuizaFil: Jaccard, Samuel. University Of Bern; SuizaFil: Tierney, Jessica. University of Arizona; Estados UnidosFil: Dätwyler, Christoph. University Of Bern; SuizaFil: Axford, Yarrow. Northwestern University; Estados UnidosFil: Brussel, Thomas. University of Utah; Estados UnidosFil: Cartapanis, Olivier. University Of Bern; SuizaFil: Chase, Brian. Universite de Montpellier; FranciaFil: Dawson, Andria. Mount Royal University; CanadáFil: de Vernal, Anne. Université du Québec a Montreal; CanadáFil: Engels, Stefan. University of London; Reino UnidoFil: Jonkers, Lukas. University Of Bremen; AlemaniaFil: Marsicek, Jeremiah. University of Wisconsin-Madison; Estados UnidosFil: Moffa Sánchez, Paola. University of Durham; Reino UnidoFil: Morrill, Carrie. University of Colorado; Estados UnidosFil: Orsi, Anais. Université Paris-Saclay; FranciaFil: Rehfeld, Kira. Heidelberg University; AlemaniaFil: Saunders, Krystyna. Australian Nuclear Science And Technology Organisation; AustraliaFil: Sommer, Philipp. University Of Lausanne; SuizaFil: Thomas, Elizabeth. University At Buffalo; Estados UnidosFil: Tonello, Marcela Sandra. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Mar del Plata. Instituto de Investigaciones Marinas y Costeras. Universidad Nacional de Mar del Plata. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales. Instituto de Investigaciones Marinas y Costeras; ArgentinaFil: Tóth, Mónika. Balaton Limnological Institute; HungríaFil: Vachula, Richard. Brown University; Estados UnidosFil: Andreev, Andrei. Alfred Wegener Institut Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research; AlemaniaFil: Bertrand, Sebastien. Ghent University; BélgicaFil: Massaferro, Julieta. Administración de Parques Nacionales. Parque Nacional "Nahuel Huapi"; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; Argentin

Intergenerational Transmission of Multiple Problem Behaviors: Prospective Relationships between Mothers and Daughters

Much of the research examining intergenerational continuity of problems from mother to offspring has focused on homotypic continuity (e.g., depression), despite the fact that different types of mental health problems tend to cluster in both adults and children. It remains unclear whether mothers with multiple mental health problems compared to mothers with fewer or no problems are more likely to have daughters with multiple mental health problems during middle childhood (ages 7 to 11). Six waves of maternal and child data from the Pittsburgh Girls Study (n = 2,451) were used to examine the specificity of effects of maternal psychopathology on child adjustment. Child multiple mental health problems comprised disruptive behavior, ADHD symptoms, depressed mood, anxiety symptoms and somatic complaints, while maternal multiple mental health problems consisted of depression, prior conduct problems and somatic complaints. Generalized Estimating Equations (GEE) was used to examine the prospective relationships between mother’s single and multiple mental health problems and their daughter’s single and multiple mental health problems across the elementary school-aged period (ages 7–11 years). The results show that multiple mental health problems in the mothers predicted multiple mental health problems in the daughters even when earlier mental health problem of the daughters, demographic factors, and childrearing practices were controlled. Maternal low parental warmth and harsh punishment independently contributed to the prediction of multiple mental health problems in their daughter, but mediation analyses showed that the contribution of parenting behaviors to the explanation of girls’ mental health problems was small

Disruption of Yarrowia lipolytica TPS1 Gene Encoding Trehalose-6-P Synthase Does Not Affect Growth in Glucose but Impairs Growth at High Temperature

We have cloned the Yarrowia lipolytica TPS1 gene encoding trehalose-6-P synthase by complementation of the lack of growth in glucose of a Saccharomyces cerevisiae tps1 mutant. Disruption of YlTPS1 could only be achieved with a cassette placed in the 3′half of its coding region due to the overlap of its sequence with the promoter of the essential gene YlTFC1. The Yltps1 mutant grew in glucose although the Y. lipolytica hexokinase is extremely sensitive to inhibition by trehalose-6-P. The presence of a glucokinase, insensitive to trehalose-6-P, that constitutes about 80% of the glucose phosphorylating capacity during growth in glucose may account for the growth phenotype. Trehalose content was below 1 nmol/mg dry weight in Y. lipolytica, but it increased in strains expressing YlTPS1 under the control of the YlTEF1promoter or with a disruption of YALI0D15598 encoding a putative trehalase. mRNA levels of YlTPS1 were low and did not respond to thermal stresses, but that of YlTPS2 (YALI0D14476) and YlTPS3 (YALI0E31086) increased 4 and 6 times, repectively, by heat treatment. Disruption of YlTPS1 drastically slowed growth at 35°C. Homozygous Yltps1 diploids showed a decreased sporulation frequency that was ascribed to the low level of YALI0D20966 mRNA an homolog of the S. cerevisiae MCK1 which encodes a protein kinase that activates early meiotic gene expression

Temporal regularity of the environment drives time perception

It’s reasonable to assume that a regularly paced sequence should be perceived as regular, but here we show that perceived regularity depends on the context in which the sequence is embedded. We presented one group of participants with perceptually regularly paced sequences, and another group of participants with mostly irregularly paced sequences (75% irregular, 25% regular). The timing of the final stimulus in each sequence could be varied. In one experiment, we asked whether the last stimulus was regular or not. We found that participants exposed to an irregular environment frequently reported perfectly regularly paced stimuli to be irregular. In a second experiment, we asked participants to judge whether the final stimulus was presented before or after a flash. In this way, we were able to determine distortions in temporal perception as changes in the timing necessary for the sound and the flash to be perceived synchronous. We found that within a regular context, the perceived timing of deviant last stimuli changed so that the relative anisochrony appeared to be perceptually decreased. In the irregular context, the perceived timing of irregular stimuli following a regular sequence was not affected. These observations suggest that humans use temporal expectations to evaluate the regularity of sequences and that expectations are combined with sensory stimuli to adapt perceived timing to follow the statistics of the environment. Expectations can be seen as a-priori probabilities on which perceived timing of stimuli depend

The Psychological Science Accelerator: Advancing Psychology Through a Distributed Collaborative Network

Source at https://doi.org/10.1177/2515245918797607.Concerns about the veracity of psychological research have been growing. Many findings in psychological science are based on studies with insufficient statistical power and nonrepresentative samples, or may otherwise be limited to specific, ungeneralizable settings or populations. Crowdsourced research, a type of large-scale collaboration in which one or more research projects are conducted across multiple lab sites, offers a pragmatic solution to these and other current methodological challenges. The Psychological Science Accelerator (PSA) is a distributed network of laboratories designed to enable and support crowdsourced research projects. These projects can focus on novel research questions or replicate prior research in large, diverse samples. The PSA’s mission is to accelerate the accumulation of reliable and generalizable evidence in psychological science. Here, we describe the background, structure, principles, procedures, benefits, and challenges of the PSA. In contrast to other crowdsourced research networks, the PSA is ongoing (as opposed to time limited), efficient (in that structures and principles are reused for different projects), decentralized, diverse (in both subjects and researchers), and inclusive (of proposals, contributions, and other relevant input from anyone inside or outside the network). The PSA and other approaches to crowdsourced psychological science will advance understanding of mental processes and behaviors by enabling rigorous research and systematic examination of its generalizability

Explaining Partial Privatization of Public Service Provision: The Emergence of Mixed Ownership Water Firms in Italy (1994-2009)

Within the area of study of privatization, some attention has been placed on the emergence of mixed public-private ownership firms for the provision of public services. Mixed ownership firms pose an important theoretical issue, i.e., why do governments open up part of their ownership of public service providers to private operators and investors rather than giving up full ownership of public service providers or establishing a contractual relationship with the private partner? This paper aims to address this issue by analyzing the case of the emergence of mixed ownership firms for the provision of water services in Italy. The analysis of the case shows that partial privatization of public service providers is especially related to characteristics of the historical and institutional context as well as to features of the privatization policy process