How does leadership support the activity of communities of practice ?

the purpose of this paper is to present leadership as an important mechanism underlying the coordination and the cohesion of communities of practice. More precisely, it will be shown that an important factor conditioning the coordination and the cohesion of a community rests on the leaders’ capacity to influence individual behaviors. This capacity of influence is grounded on the high degrees of reputation and trust they enjoy within the community. However, coordination of individual behaviors is not ensured by the mere existence of leadership. A simulation model points out the conditions under which leadership forms an efficient coordinating device.communities of practice, leadership, reputation, exit, loyalty, coordination, social simulation.

Do academic laboratories correspond to scientific communities? Evidence from a large European university.

Although acknowledged as central in the economic literature, the issue of intra academic collaboration has been, insofar, relatively overlooked. This paper fills this gap by stressing the importance of communities in academic research. By analysing the publication behavior of researchers from a large European scientific university, we argue that in certain cases, the community level constitutes a relevant level for analysing the collaborative nature of scientific investigation. Indeed, the reality of research collaborations doesn’t always fit the institutional division of academic work provided by laboratories.Economics of Science, Knowledge Intensive Communities, Academic Collaborations, Social Network Analysis.

Automatic document classification of biological literature

Background: Document classification is a wide-spread problem with many applications, from organizing search engine snippets to spam filtering. We previously described Textpresso, a text-mining system for biological literature, which marks up full text according to a shallow ontology that includes terms of biological interest. This project investigates document classification in the context of biological literature, making use of the Textpresso markup of a corpus of Caenorhabditis elegans literature. Results: We present a two-step text categorization algorithm to classify a corpus of C. elegans papers. Our classification method first uses a support vector machine-trained classifier, followed by a novel, phrase-based clustering algorithm. This clustering step autonomously creates cluster labels that are descriptive and understandable by humans. This clustering engine performed better on a standard test-set (Reuters 21578) compared to previously published results (F-value of 0.55 vs. 0.49), while producing cluster descriptions that appear more useful. A web interface allows researchers to quickly navigate through the hierarchy and look for documents that belong to a specific concept. Conclusions: We have demonstrated a simple method to classify biological documents that embodies an improvement over current methods. While the classification results are currently optimized for Caenorhabditis elegans papers by human-created rules, the classification engine can be adapted to different types of documents. We have demonstrated this by presenting a web interface that allows researchers to quickly navigate through the hierarchy and look for documents that belong to a specific concept

Liquid-Crystal Blazed-Grating Beam Deflector

A transmission-type nonmechanical multiple-angle beam-steering device that uses liquid-crystal blazed grating has been developed. Sixteen steering angles with a contrast ratio of 18 has been demonstrated. A detailed analysis of the liquid-crystal and poly(methyl methacrylate) blazed-grating deflector was carried out to provide guidance during the deflector’s development. A manufacturing offset compensation technique is proposed to improve the device’s performance greatly. A hybrid approach utilizing electrically generated blazed grating combined with the cascading approach described here yields in excess of 500 deflecting angles

Do birds of a feather flock together? Proximities and inter-clusters network

The present contribution develops on the analysis of clusters in terms of proximities by exploring the issue of distant inter-cluster collaborations. We mobilize different forms of proximity (geographic, cognitive, social) discussed in the literature in order to identify their respective influence on intercluster collaboration by taking the example of French Pôles de Compétitivité. Our results echo previous results applied to intra-cluster collaborations since inter-cluster collaboration mostly relies on a form of social capital due to the key roles played by relational and cognitive proximity. Finally, our results exhibit a negative influence of geographic distance on collaboration. JEL: C45, R12, R58 Keywords: clusters, network analysis, proximities, intercluster collaboration

The relative impact of childhood stressor domains on young adult depression and the mediating role of social and personal resources

Numerous studies have documented the harmful effects of childhood exposure to adversity on adult psychopathology. The relative impact of different types of stress, however, is less certain. Moreover, while there is very good evidence that childhood exposure to adversity does increase the likelihood of experiencing psychopathology, less is known about the mechanisms through which this happens. It is my hypothesis that childhood adversity exhibits effects on psychological distress in young adulthood, at least in part, through its damaging impact on the development of social and personal resources---specifically, by affecting a reduction in family support, peer support, self-esteem, and mastery. Further, I expect that the importance of different mediators in explaining the link between stress and depression will vary by stress type. Secondary analyses of data from a sample of 649 individuals attending one of three colleges in the New England area were performed to assess the relative impact of each of several domains of childhood/adolescent adversity, and to identify mechanisms by which different forms of adversity affect psychological distress among young adults. Findings indicate that while both non-violent self-adversity and non-violent family-adversity affect later well-being, adversity experienced indirectly through family hardships has a more severe impact. Also, witnessing the violent victimization of intimates can have effects on depression equal to personally experiencing the same type of victimization. In general, the mediating influences of the resource variables on the relationships to depression of the stressor domains were relatively small. Interesting patterns, however, did emerge. The two most important mediators of the relationship to depression of family-adversity are self-esteem and mastery; of self-adversity , family support and self-esteem; of violence experienced , family support, peer support, and self-esteem; and of violence witnessed, mastery. Further, the combined mediating effect of the resource variables is greater for family-adversity than it is for self-adversity, and greater for violence experienced than it is for violence witnessed. Because different mediators matter more or less depending on the type of stress considered, it is evident that the mechanisms involved in the translation of stress to depression do vary somewhat by stress type. Some implications of these findings are discussed

Oral Noetic and the Communicative Rubric in Beowulf .

Theoretically, this treatise is a study at the nexus of two fields: oral tradition and the philosophy of language. In application, it is a reading of the Anglo-Saxon epic narrative of Beowulf. It proceeds from the hypothesis that in its present, performative moment, the oral traditional narrative instantiates a moment of communicative meaning evincing characteristics of oral, thus speakerly, and thus intention-vitalized meaning, as defined by linguistic philosophers Austin, Grice, Searle, Schiffer, Strawson, and others. In the light of this theoretical perspective, the oral noetic and thus the communicative moment of the Beowulf poem is sought in its most dynamic and most illocutionary sense. In pursuit of these ends, the first chapter reviews the directions and conclusions of the highly contested question regarding the oral or written composition of Beowulf. The second chapter reviews the characteristics of orality as noetic, as articulated primarily by oral traditional theorists Walter Ong and Albert Lord, and develops further evidence of their voice in Beowulf. The third chapter reviews a number of the characteristics of language use and speaker meaning, as articulated primarily by linguistic philosophers J. L. Austin and H. P. Grice, expands upon them in consideration of the characteristics of oral poetry, and examines evidence of characteristics of oral communicative language in oral poetry. The fourth chapter, then, suggests a reading of the Beowulf poem through the paradigm of communicative meaning which grows out of the nexus of these two theoretical perspectives. Implicit in this discussion are several theoretical propositions, among which are these. First, language works. Second, the importance of the forms of orality is that they are the means through which oral peoples think and communicate, through which, in short, orality works. Third, the writing of an oral opus does not in itself or necessarily erase its oral working, its communicative force. Fourth, the reading of an oral work entails first and foremost the search for the ways in which its language works