A Historical Perspective on the Development of an Ethnic Minority Consciousness in the Spanish-Language Press of the Southwest

Various scholars have treated ethnic newspapers in the United States as if they all have evolved from an immigrant press.(i) While one may accept their analysis of the functions of the ethnic press, there is a substantial and qualitative difference between newspapers that were built on an immigration base and those that developed from the experience of colonialism and racial oppression. Hispanics were subjected to racialization (ii) for more than a century through such doctrines as the Spanish Black Legend and Manifest Destiny during the nineteenth and early twentieth century. They were conquered and incorporated into the United States and then treated as colonial subjects as is the case of Mexicans in the Southwest and the Puerto Ricans in the Caribbean. Some were incorporated through territorial purchase as was the case of the Hispanics in Florida and Louisiana. (I would also make a case that, in many ways, Cubans and Dominicans also developed under United States domination in the twentieth century.) The subsequent migration and immigration of these peoples to the United States was often directly related to the domination of their homelands by the United States. Their immigration and subsequent cultural perspective on life in the United States, of course, has been substantially different from that of European immigrant groups. Hispanic native or ethnic minority perspective has manifested itself in the political realm, often as an attitude of entitlement to civil and political rights

Typographical Experimental Research in Audiovisual Spaces [T.E.R.A.S. lab]

Emmanouil Kanellos and Anastasios Maragiannis, PhD researchers, are co-founders of TERASlab; an online virtual project that demonstrates how the amalgamation of virtual typography and visual sound, influences the process of design communication, within creative media practices. One of the key roles of typography is to visually communicate spoken language. In this project letterforms are employed as visual elements to represent the sounds. The sounds that are utilized for the experimental projects are mainly real world recordings, electro-acoustic or vocal

Corporate Governance and Firm Performance: Results from Greek Firms

In this paper, we construct a Governance Index for a sample of Greek companies quoted on the Athens Stock Exchange. We then classify firms, using each firm governance index, into three governance portfolios. Furthermore, the Fama and French model, extended to include a momentum variable, is tested for each of the three governance portfolios. Our findings suggest that most of the firms in our sample are semi-democracies followed by democracies and dictatorships respectively. Good governance appears to be of value in as much as we found higher Tobin’s q ratios for democracies followed by semi-democracies and dictatorships. We, also, report significant negative abnormal returns for shareholder-friendly and manager-friendly firms. The findings of significant negative abnormal returns are consistent with inefficient capital markets. At a practitioner level, the results imply that firms should practice vigorously good governance, as it is a policy of value to shareholders and possibly to other stakeholders.Corporate Governance, Firm Performance, Democratic and Dictatorship Firms

What International Accounting Standards (IAS) bring about to the financial statements of Greek Listed Companies? The case of the Athens Stock Exchange

The aim of the present study is to investigate the repercussions of the accounting changeover from the Greek Accounting Standards (GAS) to the International Accounting Standards (IAS) in relation to the published financial statements of Greek listed companies for the year 2004. The results show that tangible assets, fixed assets, and total liabilities record significantly higher prices under the IAS. Furthermore, it was recorded that, in opposition to the net income after taxes, the book value appears to play a more significant role under the IAS, compared to that under the GAS. There is also evidence that the adjustments of GAS to net income improve incremental value relevance, while the adjustments of GAS to book value do not improve it.International Accounting Standards (IAS), Greek Accounting Standards (GAS), Value relevance, Incremental value relevance, Accounting Standards, Fair value

Secondary students' proof schemes during the first encounters with formal mathematical reasoning: appreciation, fluency and readiness.

The topic of the thesis is proof. At Year 9 Greek students encounter proof for the first time in Algebra and Geometry. Thus the principal research question of the thesis is: How do students’ perceive proof when they first encounter it? The analysis tool in order to obtain an image of students’ perception of proof, the Harel and Sowder’s taxonomy, is itself a research question in what concerns its applicability under Greek conditions. Its applicability, of which there is strong evidence, provides the space to shape an image of students’ proof fluency, proof appreciation, proof readiness etc. In order to collect data with regard to answering the research questions in collaboration principally with the class teacher I constructed the two tests on proof that are presented in this thesis. The first test was administered to the students of Year 9 at the beginning of the school year 2010-2011 before the teaching of proof. The second was administered after the teaching of proof of the same school year. Students’ answers were analyzed and provided strong evidence that the Harel and Sowder’s taxonomy is applicable on them. Thus every answer was characterized in terms of the taxonomy. As a result every individual student but also the whole sample is depicted by proof schemes. The major findings of the analysis are the two following: • Students’ proof fluency is higher in simple proof issues. Although they face difficulties when the issues are more demanding, they show high proof appreciation. • There is strong evidence of the applicability of the Harel and Sowder’s taxonomy in a completely different socio-cultural and educational environment in comparison to that of its original invention and application. In the same vein the research proposes the mixture of proof schemes within one proof as theoretical and methodological contribution. Finally from the findings emerge new research questions as e.g. • How teaching and curriculum affect students’ proof schemes? • What is the origin of mixed proof schemes

Topological Self-Organisation: Using a particle-spring system simulation to generate structural space-filling lattices

The problem being addressed relates to the filling of a certain volume with a structural space frame network lattice consisting of a given number of nodes. A method is proposed that comprises a generative algorithm including a physical dynamic simulation of particle-spring system. The algorithm is able to arrange nodes in space and establish connections among them through local rules of self-organisation, thus producing space frame topologies. In order to determine the appropriateness of the method, an experiment is conducted that involves testing the algorithm in the case of filling the volume of a cube with multiple numbers of nodes. The geometrical, topological and structural aspects of the generated lattices are analysed and discussed. The results indicate that the method is capable of generating efficient space frame topologies that fill spatial envelopes