Student Engagement in an Ottawa French Immersion High School Program

This article makes a contribution to the field of French immersion studies by examining the engagement realities of two groups of students in an Ottawa French immersion high school program: those with and without a parent who makes them eligible for minority French language instruction as outlined by Section 23 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Free‐ doms. Findings indicate that students from both official language groups, who came from varying class backgrounds, similarly demonstrated the ability and willingness to follow the secondary French immersion program offered at the university level. Although students with Anglophone parents were found to benefit from cultural capital such as family sup‐ port and “voluntary minority” belief systems, students with a parent eligible for minority French language instruction benefited from French language capital acquired with family, in social contexts and sometimes in French school. At times, students also had overlapping and cross‐cutting realities depending whether they came from EFI or LFI programs. To conclude, this article suggests that French immersion programming and related policies should take into consideration the multifaceted engagement realities of secondary student populations from the two official language communities. Key words: French immersion studies, student engagement, official‐language communities, immigration Les résultats de la recherche démontrent que les étudiants issus des deux groupes linguistiques officielles et ayant diverses profils sociaux font état d’un intérêt similaire dans leurs habiletés et leurs désirs de poursuivre leurs études au sein du programme d’immersion française offert au niveau universitaire. Bien que les élèves ayant des parents anglophones semblent bénéficier du capital culturel (tel que le support de la famille, les systèmes de croyances associés aux «minorités volontaires»), ceux qui sont issus de familles dont l’un des parents est admissible à l’instruction dans la langue de la minorité française ont également pu bénéficier du capital associé à la langue fran‐ çaise par le biais de la famille, dans les contextes sociaux et parfois dans les écoles françaises. Les élèves provenant des programmes d’immersion tardifs et précoces peuvent parfois vivre des réalités transversales ou qui se chevauchent. En conclusion cet article suggère que la programmation de l’immersion française ainsi que les politi‐ ques y afférant doivent tenir compte des multiples facettes des réalités que vivent les élèves du secondaire issus des deux communautés de langue officielle.Mots‐clés : Études des programmes d’immersion, engagement des élèves, commu‐ nautés de langues officielles, immigration

Firm failure processes and determinants of failure in EU countries and UK regions: a quantitative analysis of SMEs.

This thesis is motivated by the fact that small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) are of vital importance to most European countries collectively, and to each country individually. For these reasons, understanding SME failure is an integral part of decision and policy making. Firm failure can be regarded as a multi-year process that develops over time. Yet there has been limited work in the area of quantitatively identifying and analysing SME failure processes. In particular, despite evidence from the qualitative firm failure process literature on the importance that non-financial, firm-specific characteristics have on firm failure processes, the quantitative firm failure process literature has largely ignored this aspect. Likewise, the determinants of firms' transition to failure within potential alternative firm failure processes and the importance of geographical location are often overlooked in the firm failure process literature, despite evidence in the wider firm failure literature for the contrary. For these reasons, the current evidence in the quantitative firm failure process literature is quite isolated from wider firm failure studies. This thesis aims to investigate alternative SME failure processes, the determinants of firms' transition towards failure and the importance of firms' geographical location by bringing evidence from other parts of the firm failure literature in the quantitative study of firm failure processes. The sample analysed consists of SMEs in eight EU countries, covering the period from 2004-2013. In addition to analysing the whole sample, the failure processes and failure determinants of UK failed SMEs are also investigated. The dataset of this study covers firm-specific characteristics - such as financial ratios and directors' characteristics - and information about the macroeconomic and business environment. In addition, the impact of geographical location is considered. The key results of the analysis identify the existence of four alternative firm failure processes (new firms with inexperienced boards, high growth firms, old firms, firms without board diversity) which apply across EU countries and UK regions. A number of other characteristics are also present in the alternative firm failure processes: directors characteristics are of primary importance for firm failure processes as well as firms' transition to failure. So are the age of the firm, the legal tradition of the country, the levels of business growth and the intensity of competition due to new business entrants in an area and the geographical location of firms. There are a number of contributions that this thesis makes to the quantitative firm failure process literature. First, given that the different failure processes were found to have differing determinants, the results show the importance of looking at individual firm failure processes rather than simply analysing all failed firms together. Second, this thesis is the first to quantitatively analyse the impact of directors' characteristics in the identification of the alternative firm failure processes in EU and UK firms. Third, it is the first study to investigate the determinants of firms' transition to failure within the alternative firm failure processes context where both financial distress and liquidations are considered in the definition of failure. Fourth, this thesis identifies the importance of geographical location and the existence of spatial interactions in some parts of firms' transition to failure. As such, this thesis consolidates and analyses evidence from qualitative firm failure process studies and from wider firm failure studies in the context of quantitative firm failure process. In doing so, it applies spatial panel data analysis for first time in a firm failure process study. A number of policy implications result from these findings. Given the differences in firm-specific characteristics, the differences in the determinants of transition to failure and the geographic sensitivities that the alternative firm failure processes have, policies and decisions designed to support SMEs to avoid failure should be more targeted according to the characteristics of the firm and the process towards failure with which it is mostly associated

Aligning Business And Learning: Competency Based Learning Management In Organisations

The value of human capital strongly influences competitiveness, making the alignment of training and business objectives a key priority for organisations in today’s turbulent markets. This entails integrating learning into daily working tasks and putting in place mechanisms for the effective management of business processes, organisational roles, competencies and learning processes, to reduce the time to fill competency gaps and to build proficiency according to evolving business needs. In this paper we discuss competency-based learning management and a practical implementation of this approach in the context of the PROLIX project for business process oriented learning

Urban hydroinformatics: past, present and future

This is the author accepted manuscriptHydroinformatics, as an interdisciplinary domain that blurs boundaries between water science, data science and computer science, is constantly evolving and reinventing itself. At the heart of this evolution, lies a continuous process of critical (self) appraisal of the discipline’s past, present and potential for further evolution, that creates a positive feedback loop between legacy, reality and aspirations. The power of this process is attested by the successful story of hydroinformatics thus far, which has arguably been able to mobilize wide ranging research and development and get the water sector more in tune with the digital revolution of the past 30 years. In this context, this paper attempts to trace the evolution of the discipline, from its computational hydraulics origins to its present focus on the complete socio-technical system, by providing at the same time, a functional framework to improve the understanding and highlight the links between different strands of the state-of-art hydroinformatic research and innovation. Building on this state-of-art landscape, the paper then attempts to provide an overview of key developments that are coming up, on the discipline’s horizon, focusing on developments relevant to urban water management, while at the same time, highlighting important legal, ethical and technical challenges that need to be addressed to ensure that the brightest aspects of this potential future are realized. Despite obvious limitations imposed by a single paper’s ability to report on such a diverse and dynamic field, it is hoped that this work contributes to a better understanding of both the current state of hydroinformatics and to a shared vision on the most exciting prospects for the future evolution of the discipline and the water sector it serves

Satellite-enabled interactive education: scenarios and systems architectures

There are specific sectors of the economy that can benefit from satellite-based tele-education. Areas, such as maritime and agriculture, share common needs for both broadband connectivity at remote geographical areas that cannot otherwise be covered, and for innovative content for tele-education purposes. Furthermore, each area has special requirements with regard to the type of content to be delivered. In this paper we propose a set of architectural designs and case scenarios that will realise such interactive end-to-end education systems based on satellite communications. Services requirements in this setting are also identified and discussed

Historical earthquake investigations in Greece

The active tectonics of the area of Greece and its seismic activity have always been present in the country’s history. Many researchers, tempted to work on Greek historical earthquakes, have realized that this is a task not easily fulfilled. The existing catalogues of strong historical earthquakes are useful tools to perform general SHA studies. However, a variety of supporting datasets, non-uniformly distributed in space and time, need to be further investigated. In the present paper, a review of historical earthquake studies in Greece is attempted. The seismic history of the country is divided into four main periods. In each one of them, characteristic examples, studies and approaches are presented

An integrated system dynamics - Cellular automata model for distributed water-infrastructure planning

PublishedJournal ArticleThis is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from IWA Publishing via the DOI in this record.© IWA Publishing 2016.Modern distributed water-Aware technologies (including, for example, greywater recycling and rainwater harvesting) enable water reuse at the scale of household or neighbourhood. Nevertheless, even though these technologies are, in some cases, economically advantageous, they have a significant handicap compared to the centralized urban water management options: It is not easy to estimate a priori the extent and the rate of the technology spread. This disadvantage is amplified in the case of additional uncertainty due to expansion of an urban area. This overall incertitude is one of the basic reasons the stakeholders involved in urban water are sceptical about the distributed technologies, even in the cases where these appear to have lower cost. In this study, we suggest a methodology that attempts to cope with this uncertainty by coupling a cellular automata (CA) and a system dynamics (SD) model. The CA model is used to create scenarios of urban expansion including the suitability of installing water-Aware technologies for each new urban area. Then, the SD model is used to estimate the adoption rate of the technologies. Various scenarios based on different economic conditions and water prices are assessed. The suggested methodology is applied to an urban area in Attica, Greece.This research has been co-financed by the European Union (European Social Fund– ESF) and Greek national funds through the Operational Program "Education and Lifelong Learning" of the National Strategic Reference Framework (NSRF) - Research Funding Program: THALES. Investing in knowledge society through the European Social Fund. Hydropolis: Urban development and water infrastructure - Towards innovative decentralized urban water management

Case report: hydroquinone and/or glutaraldehyde induced acute myeloid leukaemia?

BACKGROUND: Exposures to high doses of irradiation, to chemotherapy, benzene, petroleum products, paints, embalming fluids, ethylene oxide, herbicides, pesticides, and smoking have been associated with an increased risk of acute myelogenous leukemia (AML). Although there in no epidemiological evidence of relation between X-ray developer, fixer and replenisher liquids and AML, these included glutaraldehyde which has weakly associated with lymphocytic leukemia in rats and hydroquinone has been increasingly implicated in producing leukemia, causing DNA and chromosomal damage, inhibits topo-isomerase II, alter hematopoiesis and inhibit apoptosis of neoplastic cells. CASE PRESENTATION: Two white females (A and B) hired in 1985 as medical radiation technologists in a primary care center, in Greece. In July 2001, woman A, 38-years-old, was diagnosed as having acute monocytic leukaemia (FAB M5). The patient did not respond to therapy and died threeweeks later. In August 2001, woman B, 35-year-old, was diagnosed with acute promyelocytic leukaemia (FAB M3). Since discharge, she is in continuous complete remission. Both women were non smokers without any medical history. Shortly after these incidents official inspectors and experts inspected workplace, examined equipment, archives of repairs, notes, interviewed and monitored employees. They concluded that shielding was inadequate for balcony's door but personal monitoring did not show any exceeding of TLV of 20 mSv yearly and cytogenetics analysis did not reveal findings considered to be characteristics of ionizing exposure. Equipment for developing photos had a long list of repairs, mainly leakages of liquids and increases of temperature. On several occasions the floor has been flooded especially during 1987–1993 and 1997–2001. Inspection confirmed a complete lack of ventilation and many spoiled medical x-ray films. Employees reported that an "osmic" level was continuously evident and frequently developed symptoms of respiratory irritation and dizziness. CONCLUSION: The findings support the hypothesis that the specific AML cases might have originated from exposure to chemicals, especially hydroquinone and/or glutaraldehyde. The report also emphasises the crucial role of inspection of facilities and enforcement of compliance with regulations in order to prevent similar incidents