Open access scholarly publishing and the problem of networks and intermediaries in the academic commons

Der Vortrag wurde am 5th Frankfurt Scientific Symposium gehalten (22-23 Oktober 2005)

The Tuition Dilemma and the Politics of "Mass" Higher Education

The prospect of tuition fee increases for public sector universities has attracted an enormous amount of attention in recent years as governments in all industrialized countries have responded to the converging pressures of increased demands for higher education and rising costs of competing areas of social spending. I show that this dilemma is fast approaching a critical point in both Canada and the UK. As contemporary society become "knowledge societies," postsecondary systems become "complex," requiring a sensitive political blending of different institutional goals, such as accessibility, diversity of mission, critical thought, relevance, and social usefulness. This article draws upon the policy model of income contingent repayment (ICR) as a touchstone for debates and larger proposals about addressing the future of higher education reform. My hope is to show the partial shortcomings of the traditional alternatives: reliance on state-provided subsidy on the one hand and deregulated and flexible fees on the other. I then argue that changes in the social and political meaning of participation in higher education might warrant taking a second look at the "smart funding" approach represented by ICR proposals.La possibilité d'augmentation des frais de scolarité dans les universités du secteur public a attiré beaucoup d ' attention ces dernières années. Pendant ce temps, les gouvernements des pays industrialisés répondaient aux pressions convergentes suscitées par les demandes accrues d'un enseignement plus élevé et par les coûts croissants de domaines économiquement concurrents. Cette étude montre que ce dilemme devient rapidement critique au Canada et au Royaume-Uni. Alors que la société contemporaine développe ses connaissances, les systèmes post-secondaires deviennent plus complexes, exigeant que l'onsache ménager les sensibilités et prendre en considération de nombreux objectifs institutionnels tels que l'accessibilité et la diversité de la mission. Cet article utilise le modèle du remboursement des revenus contingents (ICR) comme base d'argumentation pour traiter de la réforme de l'enseignement supérieur. Tout d'abord, j'essaie de montrer les imperfections partielles des alternatives traditionnelles : les subventions gouvernementales d'une part et de l'autre, la dérégulation et la flexibilité des frais. Ensuite, je discute de l'idée selon laquelle les changements politiques et sociaux sur le plan de l'éducation supérieure pourraient justifier un second coup d'oeil sur les propositions du ICR (approche smart funding)

Cartan Geometry in Modal Homotopy Type Theory

In this article, some Differential Geometry is developed synthetically in a Modal Homotopy Type Theory. While Homotopy Type Theory is used to reason about general $\infty$-toposes, the "Modal" extension we are using here, is concerned with special $\infty$-toposes with the extra structure of an idempotent monad with some additional properties. On the type theory side, the extension is realized by adding well known axioms of a monadic modality. In the applications we have in mind, this monadic modality corresponds to monads exhibiting infinitesimal information of the objects of special $\infty$-toposes of spaces. There are two main lines of examples of these toposes, one containing smooth manifolds, the other algebraic varieties. Since we use Homotopy Type Theory, stacks from both of these worlds are naturally included in our discussion. We will make use of this in developing some new higher differential geometry. Much of the higher differential geometry in this article is aimed at making our construction of moduli spaces of G-structures and torsionfree G-structures possible in a useful way. As a basic example, this abstract construction of moduli spaces may be instantiated for a topos containing manifolds and the orthogonal group to give a construction of the moduli stack of Riemannian Metrics on a smooth manifold. The G-structures are developed along the lines of Urs Schreiber's Higher Cartan Geometry.Comment: 45 page

Recommendations for Online Training in Hospitality Organizations

Delivering consistent customer experiences is often a key driver of customer satisfaction in the leisure and hospitality industry. However, consistency can be compromised if new and existing employees are not adequately prepared for their roles and duties. The leisure and hospitality industry hires many new staff each year due to general industry growth and employee turnover. Training and development is therefore important for the industry to meet staffing requirements and to deliver consistent customer experiences. The rapid and significant developments in online training and education since mid 1990 have increased the size and knowledge of the candidate pool available to industry. Postsecondary education is more accessible to the masses and topical information is more readily available for lifelong learning (Dykman & Davis, 2008). The developments have also allowed organizations to better ensure consistency of content and delivery while also being able to simultaneously provide training to geographically dispersed employees

Workmen\u27s Compensation, Conflict of Laws, and the Constitution

The choice of law problems encountered in workmen\u27s compensation cases resulting from injuries incurred in the course of an employment extending over state lines and the extraterritorial applicability of workmen\u27s compensation statutes was considered in a previous installment of this article. The purpose of this installment is to discuss the influence of the United States Constitution on the choice of the proper law in workmen\u27s compensation cases and to demonstrate how the Constitution might be further utilized by Congress and the Courts to establish some degree of uniformity in this unsettled field

Historic record of pasture soil water and the influence of the North Atlantic Oscillation in south-west England

The North Wyke Farm Platform is a National Capability funded by the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council in the UK (project number BB/J004308/1). Climate data were measured at the MIDAS Land Surface Station DLY3208 DEVON, UK, a weather station of the UK Meteorological Office. We would especially like to thank Dr Melannie Hartmann, NREL, Colorado State University for the inclusion and use of the DayCent model, and advice on preparation of model parameters.Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Autonomies in a Software Process Landscape

Until now autonomy properties have been mainly discussed in the research area of database management systems, agents and robotic systems. We address these properties to software process models, and distinguish between data autonomy, operation autonomy and communication autonomy. In this paper we develop a classification framework of different granularity levels and different degrees for each of the autonomy types. We analyze the autonomy of an example software process landscape modelled with a Petri based net notation. The example process landscape represents software process models for the development of multimedia applications. Detailed analyses of the example check the classification framework, and consider the impact of autonomy properties on software processes and on software process management