Continuous Process Of Change Research Articles

Pseudocapacitive material with 928 mAh cm−3 particle-level volumetric specific capacity enabled by continuous phase-transition

The low active ratio of traditional (only surface-active) pseudocapacitive materials limits the fabrication of electrochemical energy storage/conversion devices with high volumetric energy densities. This work focuses on the T-Nb2O5 phase that show bulk pseudocapacitance. The capacitor-like electrochemical kinetic of T-Nb2O5 was found to exsit in particles without nano structuring, thus providing possibility to design core@shell T-Nb2O5@C particles with larger core and thinner shell. By scaling the capacity to the volume of the particle, a T-Nb2O5@C with 85 nm core and 1.5 nm shell is able to provide a particle-level volumetric specific capacity of 928 mAh cm−3, which is much larger than any other traditional pseudocapacitive materials that work with only their surfaces. Advanced in situ XRD and in situ TEM tools reveal that the T-Nb2O5 experiences a small and continuous phase change process without phase-separation and energy barrier for the formation of phase boundary. We propose the unique structural behavior of T-Nb2O5 is due to the existance of large amounts of intermediate phases between the original and lithiated state of T-Nb2O5.

Attention to change: A multilevel theory on the process of emergent continuous organizational change.

Increasingly, continuous organizational change is viewed as the new reality for organizations and their members. However, this model of organizational change, which is usually characterized by ongoing, cumulative, and substantive change from the bottom up, remains underexplored in the literature. Taking a multilevel approach, the authors develop a theoretical model to explain the mechanisms behind the amplification and accumulation of valuable, ongoing work-unit level changes over time, which then become substantial changes at the organizational level. Drawing on the concept of emergence, they first focus on the cognitive search mechanisms of work-unit members and managers to illustrate how work-unit level routine changes may be amplified to the organization through 2 unique processes: composition and compilation emergence. The authors then discuss the managers' role in creating a sense of coherence and meaning for the accumulation of these emergent changes over time. They conclude this research by discussing the theoretical implications of their model for the existing literature of organizational change. (PsycINFO Database Record

Scaffolding and working together: a qualitative exploration of strategies for everyday life with dementia.

living with dementia has been described as a process of continual change and adjustment, with people with dementia and their families adopting informal strategies to help manage everyday life. As dementia progresses, families increasingly rely on help from the wider community and formal support. this article reports on a secondary analysis of qualitative data from focus groups and individual interviews with people with dementia and their carers in the North of England. In total, 65 people with dementia and 82 carers took part in the research: 26 in interviews and 121 in focus groups. Focus group and interview audio recordings were transcribed verbatim. A qualitative, inductive, thematic approach was taken for data analysis. the article applies the metaphor of scaffolding to deepen understanding of the strategies used by families. Processes of scaffolding were evident across the data where families, communities, professionals and services worked together to support everyday life for people with dementia. Within this broad theme of scaffolding were three sub-themes characterising the experiences of families living with dementia: doing things together; evolving strategies; and fragility and fear of the future. families with dementia are resourceful but do need increasing support (scaffolding) to continue to live as well as possible as dementia progresses. More integrated, proactive work is required from services that recognises existing scaffolds and provides appropriate support before informal strategies become unsustainable; thus enabling people with dementia to live well for longer.

Zavodi “Crvena Zastava”: Yugoslav Self-Management Socialism and Challenges for the Automobile Industry

This paper explores the experience of the Zavodi “Crvena Zastava” (Red Flag factory) of building the Yugoslav automobile industry between 1950s and 1980s. In 1954 Zastava began to manufacture automobiles based on the FIAT license and became the engine that drove the transformation of Yugoslavia from an agrarian into industrialized, urban and motorized country. However, its own development was hampered by the lack of stability in the Yugoslav socialist system under continual process of change and decentralization. This paper will examine crucial stages in Zastava’s development in the context of the Yugoslav evolving self-management system in order to discuss some theoretical issues and problems of practical applications. The aim is to show that while the concept of self-management was reasonable in the light of Yugoslavia’s break from the Soviet bloc, the net effect of its practices proved problematic for the automobile industry.

The Supreme Court and Parliament: Evolving Roles and Relationships

This article focuses on the Parliament of Canada, with particular emphasis on its role and functions as these have been articulated by the Supreme Court of Canada through its jurisprudence over the years. It paints a picture of Parliament as a key lawmaking institution in the Canadian legal order, being charged with “the grand inquest of the nation”, that has been characterized by a continual process of change and evolution, including in its relationship with the Supreme Court. From the starting point of inheriting a modified form of parliamentary sovereignty, with certain limits imposed on Parliament’s lawmaking powers, Canada’s legal and political system has matured into a liberal democracy premised on constitutional sovereignty, which is, in some important respects, more similar to the United States than to the United Kingdom. One major feature of the contemporary legal order is the significant constraint imposed upon Parliament’s powers by the Constitution Act, 1982, especially fundamental rights guaranteed by the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Parliament’s power is also limited by a series of unwritten constitutional principles and ongoing judicial interpretations of constitutional requirements. Despite these developments, Parliament remains a highly active lawmaking institution, enacting more legislation than ever before in a broad array of subject matters, although many new statutes also delegate extensive lawmaking powers directly to the executive. This article engages in a brief historical reflection of three dimensions of Parliament: (i) Parliament as a lawmaking institution; (ii) parliamentary sovereignty; and (iii) parliamentary privileges. It is hoped that each of these dimensions will contribute to painting a more complete picture of Parliament and its relationship with the Supreme Court and offer some insight as to what might be expected in terms of future trends.

The Concept of the “New Soviet Man” and Its Short History

The concept of the New Soviet Man remains a topic of on-going scholarly interest for a number of reasons: it reflects a vital part of Russian history, it remains associated with positive and negative connotations that still need to be explored, and it functions as a crossroads for different scholarly perspectives. It remains a topic of interest also because there are still a number of unexplored questions about the concept from the perspective of the history of ideas and philosophy. This article focuses on the reconstruction of the ethical concept of a New Soviet Man over time. It argues that there were three periods in the history of this concept: The first period – between the 1900s and 1930s – can be called the period of theoretical reflection on the nature of a New Man. The second period – from the 1930s to the 1950s – can be characterized as the period of the development of norms of Soviet morality. The third period – since the 1960s – is marked by the transition of ethical thought from the ideology propagating socialist morality to moral theory and Marxist scientific ethics. This article argues that the process of forming a new type of man was not a continuous and unilineal process of change throughout the entire period of socialism. On the contrary, this dramatic process can be successfully analyzed with the help of the ethical concept of the New Soviet Man.

Analizando los resultados académicos en la Educación Superior en España

The development of the European Higher Education Area has been a process of modernization in many universities. Teaching methodologies have undergone a process of continuous change to meet the demands for high quality leading to a need for enhancement in the learning assessment methodologies as well. The objective of this study is to analyse student´s academic performance measured through coursework vs. final exam and to ascertain the factors that could explain the difference. Regression and variance analysis are carried out over the grades and responses to a questionnaire on a sample of 298 students of different subjects in a Spanish university. The results show that there are differences between continuous assessment and the final examination marks.

Interactive Refactoring of Web Service Interfaces Using Computational Search

Successful Web services evolve through a process of continuous change due to several reasons such as improving the quality, fixing bugs and adding new features. However, this evolution process may weaken the design of the Web service's interface by aggregating many non-cohesive and semantically unrelated operations. Thus, the service interface becomes unnecessarily complex for users to find relevant operations to be used by their services-based systems. In this paper, we propose an interactive recommendation approach, based on evolutionary algorithms, that dynamically adapts and suggests a possible remodularization of the Web services interface design to users/developers and takes their feedback into consideration. Our approach uses an interactive multi-criteria decision-making algorithm, based on interactive Non-dominated Sorting Genetic Algorithm (NSGA-II), to find a set of good design interface modularization solutions. These solutions provide a trade-off between improving several interface design quality metrics (e.g., coupling, cohesion, number of port types, and number of antipatterns) and fix Web services design antipatterns, maximizing the satisfaction of the interaction constraints learnt from the user feedback during the execution of the algorithm while minimizing the deviation from the initial design. We evaluated our approach on a set of 22 real world Web services, provided by Amazon and Yahoo. Statistical analysis of our experiments shows that our dynamic interactive Web services interface modularization approach performed significantly better than the state-of-the-art modularization techniques in terms of generating well-designed Web services interface for users.

La edición digital de textos literarios: planteamientos y perspectivas de futuro

Digital scholarly edition is conditioned by a continuous and challenging process of change due to the availability of many different technical solutions. However, those theoretical possibilities face with the real situation of editions in Spain, where the so-called “digital gap” grows constantly. This paper deals with the analysis of the international panorama of resources, tools and projects related to digital scholarly editions. Its objective is to study their ways of evolution and other relevant aspects, as open access, friendly interfaces, accessibility, standardization level, interdisciplinary work and interoperability. The final aim of these analysis and reflections is to offer new guidelines and perspectives for the future of the text, taking it further than a simple study object.

Healthcare System Restructuring in New Zealand: problems and proposed solutions

New Zealand’s healthcare system is, like most, in a continual process of restructuring and change. While the country has endured several major system-wide changes in recent decades, more recent change has been incremental and evolutionary. Current changes are in response to a set of challenges, which are not unique to New Zealand. This article overviews the New Zealand healthcare system. It then describes a series of problems facing the system and proposed solutions. These include the need for team care, providing services closer to patients’ homes, focusing on a population of interest, connecting up the system, and engaging patients more closely in care design and delivery.
 Abbreviations: DHS – District Health Board;GP – General Practitioner; PHO – Primary Health Organisation.

E-Voting Solutions for Digital Democracy in Knowledge Society

1 IntroductionThe field of electronic democracy and especially electronic voting is largely unexplored, its dimensions themselves being in a continuous changing process. There are numerous debates on this field, both in practice and literature, most of them on contradicting terms due to security problems and social and political implications. Thus, considering the expansion electronic voting systems built on the development of information and communication technology (ICT), solving the security aspect is crucial. Voting is a critical process of citizen participation to democracy, facilitating the manifestation of general opinion, but most specialists consider designing such a system complex and delicate.Security of electoral process must be perceived on the level of national security, because the legitimacy of a democracy depends on the degree of equitable, open and trustworthy elections [1]. The lack of trust in organization of the electoral process and government actions is a hot subject in democratic countries, thus also in Romania. Therefore a computerized system for electronic voting is a great responsibility, its failure having grave consequences on public trust in the political class. [2]Numerous international studies have been recently organized on international level with the purpose of evaluating the advantages and drawbacks of electronic voting. Worth mentioning is the European project Edemocracy: Technical possibilities of the use of electronic voting and other Internet tools in European elections (IP/A/STOA/FWC/2008096/LOT4/C1/SC2) [3] carried on between January 2010 and September 2011, which highlights in its final report E-public, eparticipation and e-voting in Europe - prospects and challenges the European experience in the field. However, the results and proofs are not conclusive because of the large diversity of existing systems that support a wide range of contexts and requirements. Examination of digital democracy cannot be isolated from other scientific and academic fields. Electronic voting is rather a social and political project then a technical one, a component of the political dimensions of the new media technologies, leading to improvements of social nature through increasing the number of citizens involved in the political decision process.Traditional voting processes seem to lack security. The concept of hiding a piece of paper inside an envelope to protect its confidentiality is more and more contested. In the current technological context, the voter - considered anonymous - can be easily identified using simple technology the reads finger prints or DNA samples, why wouldn't technology replace such a system? Since numerous countries (like Canada, USA, France, Great Britain, India, Estonia, Holland, Romania etc.) have approached the subject, the basic question is no longer if ICT must or must not be involved in the electoral process, but rather what kind of technology must be used in order to build an electronic voting system.Electronic participation must be understood as an interaction, mediated by technology, between the sphere of civil society and the sphere of politics. There are solutions and software systems destined to increase this participation, known as electronic methods or e-methods, like blog, webcast, polls, chats, forums, electronic petitions etc. Still, we must understand from the beginning that there is a major difference between e-shopping (for example) and e-voting.Electronic voting may be analysed from the perspective of a mechanism designed to improve electronic participation, the selection of procedures and technologies being a very important step. The electoral process is different from one nation to another, not only regarding the way to determine the elected candidates (for example proportional or according to majority), but also regarding the procedures and methods used to cast the votes, organizations involved etc.For example, in Europe voting varies from internet voting (in Estonia) [4] to fully manual process (in Greece and Italy). …

Motor development of preterm and term infants in the fundamental movement phase: a cross-sectional study

Abstract Introduction: Motor development is a continuous process of motor behavior changes throughout life, allowing for movement control. Premature birth can affect this process, with a greater risk of delays in acquiring these skills. Objective: Compare motor development during the fundamental movement phase of preterm infants submitted to early stimulation and full-term babies. Methods: An analytical cross-sectional study with convenience sampling, performed with twenty 3-year-old children of both sexes, distributed into two groups: the preterm group (n = 10), which received physical therapy in the first months of life, and the term group (n = 10). Motor development stages were assessed between January and April 2013, using the Motor Development Scale (Escala de Desenvolvimento Motor - EDM) developed by Francisco Rosa Neto, with an average execution time of thirty minutes. Statistical analysis was performed using BioEstat 5.0 software, and the Shapiro-Wilk test was applied to verify data normality. A significance level of p ≤ 0.05 was adopted, analyzed using the Mann-Whitney test. Results: The term group exhibited significant differences in relation to the preterm group for the variables Fine and Gross Motor Skills, and Spatial and Temporal Awareness, with no differences in Balance and Body Scheme. Conclusion: Only the premature infants submitted to early intervention achieved normal levels of Balance and Body Scheme on the EDM Scale.

Energy Crisis of India: In Search of New Alternatives

India’s economic diplomacy partly has been transformed into oil diplomacy. India’s oil diplomacy can be divided into three phases (1) from independence to 1960s, (2) from 1960s to end of the Cold War and (3) since 1991 to present time. In the third phase, especially in 2000s India sought for alternative overseas sources of oil and gas. In the 21st century, oil issue has been key issue in India’s foreign policy. Regarding overseas oil, India started high-level diplomacy. India’s oil diplomacy had changed in 1960s onwards due to domestic policy and changing scenario of international political-economy. Due to rapid growth of oil price and other technical factors India had to tilt towards Soviet Union for its oil support. In 1960, India signed a treaty with USSR and started to import oil. The Western oil refinery firms were not interested to refine India’s imported oil from Moscow. Indian government decided to establish its own oil refinery company with the help of Soviet Union and Rumania government. During 1977-1982 periods, New Delhi was depended on Moscow; approximately, 5-15% of total India’s imported crude oil came from USSR. India’s quest for energy security leads to strengthen the oil diplomacy. India imported 23% of its total oil from USSR in 1984-85, 17% in 1985-86 and 17% in 1989-90 respectively. After end of the collapse of USSR India has stopped to import oil from Moscow and started to extend its dependency on other destinations. India’s shift of oil diplomacy from Cold War period to present world order has been evolved through continuous changing process. India’s Energy security question rose as a big question since 1991. Since 1990s, the suppliers of India’s oil supply have been changed. With the collapse USSR and end of the Cold War Russian oil supply to India has been almost ended. To augment commercial purchases on the world market, India’s government and oil firms sought to secure oilfields in abroad. These assets added 3 to 5 million tons annually to India’s oil supply in the mid-and late 1990s. India’s main sources of energy are coal, oil and gas which is 50% of the reservation of India’s own petroleum is very little. This paper is based on three hypotheses. (1) Energy security is closely related to diplomacy. (2) Oil is indispensable (3) Uncertainty of oil is a negative aspect of a country’s entire growth. In my paper I will critically analyze India’s energy crisis in present and future.

Engagement: Looking beyond the mirror to understand action understanding.

In this paper, we argue that the current focus on mirroring as the route to explaining the development of action understanding is misleading and problematic. It facilitates a fundamentally spectatorial stance, ignoring engagement and dialogue; it focuses on similarity between self and other and neglects difference; and it succumbs to the static terminology of mechanism rather than a dynamic language of process. Contrary to this view, dialogic exchanges are evident from the start of life, revealing infants' ability to engage with and respond appropriately to actions that are outside their own motor repertoire. We suggest that engagement rather than mirroring better accounts for many current findings in action understanding. The neurological evidence to date shows that action perception involves a process of continuous synchronization and change, suggesting that it might be more fruitful for research and theory to look beyond mirroring and instead adopt dynamic processual explanations of action understanding within interaction.

Wood in the modern architectureof small forms

The modern world dictates severe conditions, involving people in a continuous process of changes in the environment. Active building and construction work, urban densification are rapidly transforming environment, creating a new architectural space with intense impact on people. In this regard, there is much tension around the issue of provision of urban amenities, forming comfortable environment for a full human life. The comfort of the urban environment is determined by a set of visual perception of the constituent elements of this environment: architecture, design, landscape and their harmonious unity with nature. A remarkable component of visual perception, making urban space aesthetically appealing, is small architecture.Small architecture in Russia has always played a special role. Being perceived in the context of space, creating at the same time a certain mood and emotions, small forms diversified architectural environment, making it aesthetically appealing. The question about the direction of urban policy in the field of provision of urban amenities was made in 1921, when the first Congress on improvement of populated areas took place. With this legislation originated overall urban development approach as inseparable system layout of the city, its architectural appearance and landscaping. Architectural workshops developed model projects of small forms with recommendations for improvement, which helped to inexpensively create individual features in urban development. At present, the provision of urban amenities have moved to a new level, becoming more grandscale, capital-intensive.The main requirements for small architectural forms are to create a harmonious space, the fusion of architecture with the natural elements. The most harmonious perception of small architectural forms in the environment is achieved through the use of natural building materials. The use of natural materials in urban environment represents nature, creates a comfortable environment psychologically close to a person. Wood, among other natural materials, has an undoubted advantage. Absolute compatibility, unique design quality, expressive possibilities of the material and its ability to form a comfortable living environment, harmoniously combined with other materials, provide greater demand for wood in modern architecture.In the architecture of small forms wood is used everywhere: on the territories of residential quarters, parks and recreation areas, areas of office and commercial development, road environment, etc. A leading role in shaping the public space belongs to small structures for various functional purposes, such as benches, gazebos, sheds, sports facilities, children’s playgrounds.In the modern wooden architecture of small forms two directions are clearly traced. In the first one there is the desire to escape from the boring similar forms, transforming small architectural forms in art objects representing not only material, but also artistic value. The second direction is based on the centuries-old practice of folk art. Having been formed for centuries folk culture and national traditions fully meet the artistic tastes of the modern society. Summing up, it should be noted that the use of wood in architecture of small forms is a universal solution to shape the ecological framework of the urban environment, which is especially important in solving the problems of the modern city.

Sustainable development education, practice, and research: an indigenous model of sustainable development at the College of Menominee Nation, Keshena, WI, USA.

The College of Menominee Nation Sustainable Development Institute’s theoretical model (SDI model) conceptualizes sustainable development as the process of maintaining the balance and reconciling the inherent tensions among six dimensions of sustainability: land and sovereignty; natural environment (including human beings); institutions; technology; economy; and human perception, activity, and behavior. Each dimension is understood to be dynamic, both internally and in relationship to each of the other five dimensions. Change within one dimension will impact other dimensions in a continual process of change. Change can be externally driven or inherent to the dynamic nature of any of the six dimensions. Sustainable development is a continual and iterative process. A central concept of the model is based on the experience of the Menominee Indian Tribe of Wisconsin and their profound sense of place and relationship with the land that has allowed their community to recognize and balance the tensions among model dimensions through time. This paper provides a detailed description of the SDI model and its development and concludes with short examples illustrating how the model has been used for course design and delivery in higher education, interdisciplinary community planning, and participatory research.

Using enactivism as a methodology to characterise algebraic learning

My purpose in this paper is to illustrate the way in which an enactivist methodological approach guided me as I conducted a two-case longitudinal study where the learning of algebra was explored in different contexts throughout time. Three groups of students in two different schools in the city of Puebla, Mexico, were followed from the last year of primary school (Year 6) to the second year of their secondary education (Year 8). Learning was characterised as the ongoing structural change that allows individuals or groups to act effectively in a changing environment [Maturana (GAIA, a way of knowing: political implications of the new biology. Lindisfarne, New York, pp 65–82, 1987)]. An enactivist methodology, which revolves around the idea of research being a form of learning [Reid (Proceedings of the 20th conference of the international group for the psychology of mathematics education. PME, Valencia, pp 203–209, 1996)], implied that, as I carried out the study, what I was doing was learning about how people learn algebra. My initial questions arose from my experiences with the teaching and learning of mathematics, which gave me a sense of the complexity involved in the learning processes. Later, as I became immersed in the process of investigation of the teaching and learning of algebra, my conceptions continually evolved. The meaning of the phrase ‘algebraic learning’, which I used as a way of maintaining a wide perspective that allowed me to explore the events in the classroom in a complex way, arose as I engaged with enactivist ideas about learning, with the research literature on the learning of algebra, in conversations with people and in interactions with the participants of my project. I went through a process of continual development and change which I describe in this paper.

An axiomatic approach to maintaining the consistency of a hypermedia information system based on the SEM-HP model

Maintenance is considered a key issue in hypermedia systems. Common sense indicates that it might be possible to understand the web’s content without any knowledge representation, but not to automatically manage and support it. Assuming that the development and maintenance of hypermedia systems is dynamic and evolutionary, this implies a continuous process of change throughout their life cycles. Here, we review a conceptual hypermedia system model, the Semantic and Evolutionary Model for HyPermedia systems, tomaintain its consistency during its life cycle. Thismodelmakes a semantic representation of the information system, offering an architecture whose components are formally defined by using the underlying semantics. In this article, we focus on formalizing the building of hypermedia information systems. To do so, we propose a novel axiomatic approach based on the graph theory that ensures their consistency. The major objective of this contribution is to describe a computational and mathematical proof that determines the set of axioms that are valid to keep the integrity of the information system. These axioms are able to generate the combinations that are valid by means of logical deduction.

Dynamic effects in inefficiency: Evidence from the Colombian banking sector

Firms face a continuous process of technological and environmental changes that requires them to make managerial decisions in a dynamic context. However, costs and constraints prevent firms from making instant adjustments towards optimal conditions and may cause inefficiency to persist in time. We propose a dynamic inefficiency specification that captures differences in the adjustment costs among firms and non-persistent effects of inefficiency heterogeneity. The model is fitted to a ten year sample of Colombian banks. The new specification improves model fit and have effects on efficiency estimations. Overall, Colombian banks present high inefficiency persistence but important differences between institutions are found. In particular, merged banks present low adjustment costs that allow them to recover rapidly efficiency losses derived from merging processes.

What is traditional acupuncture--exploring goals and processes of treatment in the context of women with early breast cancer.

BackgroundDespite the increasing popularity of acupuncture, there remains uncertainty as to its effectiveness and how it brings about change. Particular questions are posed over whether acupuncture research has sufficient model validity and reflects acupuncture as practised. Exploring traditional acupuncture (TA) in practice should help to expose processes essential to the theory of TA. The aim of this study was to examine what TA practitioners aim to achieve, their rationale and how they follow this through in their practice.MethodsA longitudinal study of TA for women with early breast cancer (EBC) was performed. Study participants comprised 14 women with EBC and two experienced TA practitioners, all taking part in in-depth interviews, conducted before and after receipt of up to 10 treatment sessions, and analysed using grounded theory methods. Additional data came from practitioner treatment logs and diaries.ResultsPractitioners sought long-term goals of increasing strength and enabling coping as well as immediate relief of symptoms. They achieved this through a continuous process of treatment, following through the recursive and individualized nature of TA and adjusted, via differential diagnosis, to the rapidly fluctuating circumstances of individual women. Establishing trust and good rapport with the women aided disclosure which was seen as essential in order to clarify goals during chemotherapy. This process was carefully managed by the practitioners and the resultant therapeutic relationship was highly valued by the women.ConclusionThis study provided insight into the interdependent components of TA helping to demonstrate the multiple causal pathways to change through the continuous process of new information, insights and treatment changes. A good therapeutic relationship was not simply something valued by patients but explicitly used by practitioners to aid disclosure which in turn affected details of the treatment. The therapeutic relationship was therefore a vital and integral part of the treatment process.