Explicit Effort Research Articles

Innovation policies and sector development in Nigeria's oil palm industry: lessons from Malaysia

Increasingly developing countries are beginning to employ a set of instruments to promote industrialisation that are collectively termed innovation policy. This paper presents the qualitative outcomes of the differential uses of innovation policies to foster firms' innovation and production performance in the oil palm industry in Nigeria and Malaysia. The primary and secondary data used were gathered over a period of two years. The outcomes are different because the efforts and commitments to the policies were different over time. We show that the challenges of industrialisation constitute an evolutionary challenge that requires continuous and explicit effort. Employing a wide variety of factors; Malaysia demonstrate that countries can exploit low-tech traditional agricultural technologies such as oil palm for wealth creation by using a combination of policy instruments and incentives mechanisms to drive the sector whilst the lack of targeted policies might have contributed to the sub-optimal performance of the sector in Nigeria.

The New Contentism

The New Contentism

Design for Change: Five Proxies for Resilience in the Urban Form

The sheer complexity and unpredictability characterising cities challenges the adequacy of existing disciplinary knowledge and tools in urban design and highlights the necessity to incorporate explicitly the element of change and the dimension of time in the understanding of, and intervention on, the form of cities. To this regard the concept of resilience is a powerful lens through which to understand and engage with a changing world. However, resilience is currently only superficially addressed by urban designers, and an explicit effort to relate elements of urban form to resilience principles is still lacking. This represents a great limit for urban designers, as the physical dimension of cities is the matter they work with in the first place. In this paper, we combine established knowledge in urban morphology and resilience theory. We firstly look at resilience theory and consistently define five proxies of resilience in urban form, namely diversity, redundancy, modularity, connectivity and efficiency. Secondly, we discuss the configuration of, and interdependencies between, several constituent elements of the physical city, as defined in urban morphology and design, in light of the mentioned five proxies. Finally, we conduct this exploration at five scales that are relevant to urban morphology and design: plot, street edge, block, street and sanctuary area / district.

Intentional, explicit, systematic: Implementation and scale-up of effective practices for supporting student mental well-being in Ontario schools.

Increasingly, the potential for school mental health programming to enhance the well-being of children and youth is being recognized and realized. When evidence-based practices in mental health promotion and prevention are adopted in a whole school manner, students show positive social emotional and academic benefits. These findings have stimulated a proliferation of mental well-being programming for Canadian schools, with variability across offerings in terms of supporting evidence, costs and ease of implementation. In the absence of coordination and guidance, there has been uneven uptake of high-quality programming, resulting in a patchwork of sometimes competing efforts across our country. In order to build cohesive and sustainable evidence-based programming, intentional, explicit and systematic effort must be afforded to matters of implementation and scale-up. In Canada, School Mental Health ASSIST has been developed to provide leadership, implementation support and embeddable resources to the province of Ontario’s 72 school districts, and 5000 schools, with a view to ensuring long-term sustainability of best-in-class school mental health practices. Key elements for uptake and scale-up are described, with an implementation science lens and an emphasis on aspects that are generalizable across jurisdictions.

Effects of Content-Based Instruction to Non-English-Major Undergraduates English Teaching with Internet-Based Language Laboratory Support

With development of technology of computer and internet, it is a beneficial attempt to the reform of College English Teaching based on the subject content with Internet-Based Language Laboratory support for non-English-majored undergraduate students. Content-Based Instruction (CBI) has been defined as “the teaching of content information in the language being learned with little or no direct or explicit effort to teach the language itself separately from the content being taught”, which can make non-English-majored undergraduate students not only learn subject knowledge but also improve their foreign language (English) ability in learning content in Internet-Based Language Laboratory (IBLL). 90 non-English-majored undergraduate students in Yangtze University participated in this study for one-year experiment to investigate effects of CBI English teaching with IBLL support. Results in this study showed that: 1) Compared with the control group (CG), both CBI English teaching and CBI English teaching with IBLL support could improve the level of English learning motivation of non-English-majored undergraduate students in their English learning, and CBI English teaching with IBLL support is better in enhancing the level of English learning motivation; 2) compared with the control group (CG), both CBI English teaching and CBI English teaching with IBLL support could improve the level of English language applied ability of non-English-majored undergraduate students in their English learning, and CBI English teaching with IBLL support is better in enhancing the level of English language applied ability; 3) both CBI English teaching and CBI English teaching with IBLL support are limited for some non-English- majored undergraduate students with poor foreign language (English) basis.

The Reinvention of General Relativity: A Historiographical Framework for Assessing One Hundred Years of Curved Space-time

The history of the theory of general relativity presents unique features. After its discovery, the theory was immediately confirmed and rapidly changed established notions of space and time. The further implications of general relativity, however, remained largely unexplored until the mid 1950s, when it came into focus as a physical theory and gradually returned to the mainstream of physics. This essay presents a historiographical framework for assessing the history of general relativity by taking into account in an integrated narrative intellectual developments, epistemological problems, and technological advances; the characteristics of post-World War II and Cold War science; and newly emerging institutional settings. It argues that such a framework can help us understand this renaissance of general relativity as a result of two main factors: the recognition of the untapped potential of general relativity and an explicit effort at community building, which allowed this formerly disparate and dispersed field to benefit from the postwar changes in the scientific landscape.

Families, Intergenerational Bonds, and Aging in Sub-Saharan Africa.

This Research Note proposes a rationale, and offers a set of initial parameters, for an explicit effort to forge a policy and scientifically relevant family gerontology for Africa. It builds on a critical appraisal of dominant policy discourses in the region and existing research efforts on families and aging, specifically in sub-Saharan Africa.

Food packaging cues influence taste perception and increase effort provision for a recommended snack product in children.

Food marketing research shows that child-directed marketing cues have pronounced effects on food preferences and consumption, but are most often placed on products with low nutritional quality. Effects of child-directed marketing strategies for healthy food products remain to be studied in more detail. Previous research suggests that effort provision explains additional variance in food choice. This study investigated the effects of packaging cues on explicit preferences and effort provision for healthy food items in elementary school children. Each of 179 children rated three, objectively identical, recommended yogurt-cereal-fruit snacks presented with different packaging cues. Packaging cues included a plain label, a label focusing on health aspects of the product, and a label that additionally included unknown cartoon characters. The children were asked to state the subjective taste-pleasantness of the respective food items. We also used a novel approach to measure effort provision for food items in children, namely handgrip strength. Results show that packaging cues significantly induce a taste-placebo effect in 88% of the children, i.e., differences in taste ratings for objectively identical products. Taste ratings were highest for the child-directed product that included cartoon characters. Also, applied effort to receive the child-directed product was significantly higher. Our results confirm the positive effect of child-directed marketing strategies also for healthy snack food products. Using handgrip strength as a measure to determine the amount of effort children are willing to provide for a product may explain additional variance in food choice and might prove to be a promising additional research tool for field studies and the assessment of public policy interventions.

An Empirical Study of Content-Based Instruction Applied in Non-English-Majored Graduate English Teaching in the Post-Massification

In the post-massification period, it is a beneficial attempt to the reform of English Teaching based on subject content for non-English-majored graduate students. Content-Based Instruction (CBI) has been defined as “the teaching of content information in the language being learned with little or no direct or explicit effort to teach the language itself separately from the content being taught”, which can make non-English-majored graduate students not only learn subject knowledge but also improve their foreign language (English) ability in learning content. Results in this study showed that: in the post-massification period, content-based English teaching could improve the level of motivation and English language ability of students in their English learning, but CBI was not suitable for poor English learners with no good foreign language (English) basis.

Cross-situational word learning is both implicit and strategic.

For decades, implicit learning researchers have examined a variety of cognitive tasks in which people seem to automatically extract structure from the environment. Similarly, recent statistical learning studies have shown that people can learn word-object mappings from the repeated co-occurrence of words and objects in individually ambiguous situations. In light of this, the goal of the present paper is to investigate whether adult cross-situational learners require an explicit effort to learn word-object mappings, or if it may take place incidentally, only requiring attention to the stimuli. In two implicit learning experiments with incidental tasks directing participants' attention to different aspects of the stimuli, we found evidence of learning, suggesting that cross-situational learning mechanisms can operate incidentally, without explicit effort. However, performance was superior under explicit study instructions, indicating that strategic processes also play a role. Moreover, performance under instruction to learn word meanings did not differ from performance at counting co-occurrences, which may indicate these tasks engage similar strategies.

Continue Service Improvement at CERN Computing Centre

Using the framework of ITIL best practises, the service managers within CERN-IT have engaged into a continuous improvement process, mainly focusing on service operation. This implies an explicit effort to understand and improve all service management aspects in order to increase efficiency and effectiveness. We will present the requirements, how they were addressed and share our experiences. We will describe how we measure, report and use the data to continually improve both the processes and the services being provided. The focus is not the tool or the process, but the results of the continuous improvement effort from a large team of IT experts providing services to thousands of users, supported by the tool and its local team. This is not an initiative to address user concerns in the way the services are managed but rather an on-going working habit of continually reviewing, analysing and improving the service management processes and the services themselves, having in mind the currently agreed service levels and whose results also improve the experience of the users about the current services.

The economic geography of the IT industry in the Asia-Pacific region

This edited volume seeks to contribute to the extensive literature on the significance of the IT industry in the Asia-Pacific region. As the editors rightly point out in the preface: in spite of the considerable academic output on the rising significance of the IT industry in general and in Asia-Pacific in particular, there has been relatively little comparative analysis of the associated economic geographies, and this volume essentially attempts to fill (part of) this gap. In addition to a short editorial introduction and a review of the wider significance of the I(C)T sector in economic evolution by Cooke, there are 13 formative chapters. The chapters are principally drawn from presentations to a conference held in April 2011 at the University of Queensland in Brisbane. The chapters are distributed over three parts: there are five chapters on specific national contexts; five chapters on specific sectoral responses to global changes in the IT industry; and three chapters on regional and local responses to these global changes. The lack of a concluding chapter implies that although the book can indeed be described as a ‘comparative analysis’, this comparative component remains largely implicit: no explicit effort is made to link the various contexts and empirical foci or to summarize the main patterns, so that it is largely left to the reader to draw out the main evolutions, challenges and insights.

The evolution of a fundamentally mindfulness-based treatment methodology: From DBT and ACT to MDT and beyond.

THE EXPLICIT EFFORT TO integrate mindfulness into traditional cognitive-behavioral therapy has been one of the central issues in the so-called of cognitive-behavioral therapies (Baer, 2006). (Behavior therapy was the first wave and cognitive therapy was the second.) As summarized by Jennings, Apsche, Blossom, & Bayles (2013), these newer mindfulness-based approaches included, in published chronology, Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction (Kabat-Zinn, 1982); Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (Zettle & Hayes, 1986); Dialectical Behavior Therapy (Linehan, 1993); Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy (Teasdale, Segal, & Williams, 1995); and Mode Deactivation Therapy (Apsche, Evile, & Castonguay, 2002). Of these five mindfulness-based treatments, two were developed specifically to overcome the shortcomings of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) in meeting the needs of particular clinical populations. Marsha Linehan developed Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) for women with borderline personality disorder and suicidality, while Jack Apsche developed Mode Deactivation Therapy (MDT) for conduct disordered adolescents with histories of abuse, neglect and trauma. * Dialectical behavior therapy: Applying mindfulness to borderline women Linehan (1993) found that the traditional CBT procedures for challenging the empirical and logical validity of her borderline clients' beliefs caused them to feel that their emotional pain was discounted as not real, their competency was being attacked, and they were being judged and rejected. Given their clinical characteristics of extreme emotional reactivity, sensitivity to perceived rejection, and inability to self-soothe, Linehan (1993) turned to mindfulness to better serve this population. First, she used direct skills training in meditation to help her borderline clients to learn to self-soothe, regulate their emotional reactivity and manage stress. In fact, this straight-forward training emphasis is reflected in the title of her ground-breaking book, Skills Training Manual for Treating Borderline Personality Disorder. Second, Linehan developed the process of validation. Instead of disputing dysfunctional cognitions and beliefs, she explicitly and strongly acknowledged each client's experience of emotional pain as fully real, and explicitly affirmed that each client's maladaptive and illogical actions--especially suicidality, self-injury and self-destructive behavior--were valid attempts to relieve pain and suffering (Linehan, Cochran & Kehrer, 2001). Linehan's third major innovation was the principle of radical acceptance. Radical means complete and total, while acceptance is acknowledging what is. Linehan directly encouraged her clients to allow themselves to the spontaneous experience of any and all sorts of thoughts, urges, and ideas (even negative or forbidden thoughts like suicide that would otherwise be typically suppressed). The key was empowering her clients to allow the dysfunctional thoughts to be in the present immediate moment, but without making any negative self-judgments. To accept something is not the same as judging it to be good or even tolerable. The reality is neither good nor bad, fair nor unfair. It just is. By first training her borderline clients to use mindful meditation to control emotional over-reactivity, they were better able to manage the experience of allowing and accepting negative thoughts and affect (without losing emotional control) and to stop negative self-judgments for having such thoughts. * Mode deactivation therapy: Applying mindfulness to adolescents In a similar fashion, Jack Apsche found that traditional CBT was failing with his clinical population of severe conduct disordered and aggressive adolescents with histories of abuse and trauma. By adapting Beck's (1996) theory of modes and schema therapy, Apsche argued that severely disordered youth develop habitual, dysfunctional modes as a consequence of their histories of abuse, neglect, and trauma. …

PROTOCOL: The Effects of School‐Based Decision Making on Educational Outcomes in Low and Middle Income Contexts: A Systematic Review

PROTOCOL: The Effects of School‐Based Decision Making on Educational Outcomes in Low and Middle Income Contexts: A Systematic Review

A decadal time-series of recreational fishing effort collected during and after implementation of a multiple use marine park shows high inter-annual but low spatial variability

Recreational fishing is commonly allowed in some areas of multiple-use marine parks but little is known about how fishing effort varies over time. To examine inter-annual and spatial variability, a time-series (1999–2009) of fishing effort was collected at the Jervis Bay Marine Park (JBMP) (Australia). Compared to a previous baseline (1989–1990), effort had doubled to tripled for comparative months, when sampling recommenced during the consultation period for zoning the park. Following the 2002 implementation of the zone plan, effort generally declined, so much so that in February 2009 fishing effort was 88% less than what was observed in February 2000. This decline was not associated with a model, based on the spatially explicit fishing effort data collected during the 1999–2002 consultation period and the pragmatically designed zoning plan, which predicted only 18.5% of fishing effort would be displaced by the ‘no-take’ sanctuary zones. Over the same period of decline in effort at JBMP, statewide recreational fishing licence sales remained steady or increased slightly. Interestingly, the JBMP fisheries’ spatial distribution remained remarkably stable, with no difference in ranked use of the 10 sub-sampled areas used as spatial strata in the study-all of which eventually contained segments of sanctuary zone-either between months, years or pre or post zoning. The time-series suggests that fishing effort can show high inter-annual variable over time at a regional scale, while other aspects of the fishery, such as spatial distributions, remain stable, and that effort can vary significantly even when zoning minimizes impacts on recreational fisheries.

Reimagining the food system, the economy, and urban life: new urban chicken-keepers in US cities

Since the mid-nineteenth century, poultry and livestock animals have increasingly been seen as out of place in, and excluded from, modern United States cities. Yet, since 2000, increasing numbers of urban residents have begun keeping chickens and other small livestock in backyards. Through an analysis of the re-emergence of this practice in Portland, Oregon, and Seattle, Washington, we show that chicken-keepers are not raising chickens simply to save money or to pursue an eccentric hobby, but rather as an explicit effort to promote and enact alternative urban imaginaries. Such imaginaries make possible alternative practices, and in turn, the performance of everyday practices reshapes urban imaginaries. In interviews, participants critique the industrial food system, urban economies and social life, and “think differently” about human-animal relations and productive animals in cities. Through chicken-keeping practices, they establish sustainable backyard agro-ecosystems, build sociability, resist consumerism, and work simultaneously to improve the life and health of animals, humans, and the urban environment.

A spatially explicit methodology for a priori estimation of field survey effort in environmental observation networks

When establishing environmental monitoring programmes, it crucial to make reliable cost estimates, especially where a field survey is involved. This paper presents a methodology for creating a spatial measure of a field survey effort (SE). A set of relevant variables affecting a SE (e.g. areas with rough terrain, or distant from the main road network) was classified using fuzzy sets and then combined to produce spatially explicit effort indicators, which were integrated to a single measure using an analytic hierarchy process (AHP). To evaluate this approach and identify the limits for its application, three spatially nested case studies were used to test the spatial expression of SE and the scalable capacity of the method itself. The presented methodology could cope with variations in the scale and data resolution, retrieving a coherent estimate of SE across the different case studies. The presented methodology is therefore useful for (i) testing the network designs for sampling bias related to SE, (ii) comparing alternative sampling designs, (iii) assessing the sampling costs and (iv) supporting the human and logistical resource management.

Prognosis Critical: Resilience and Multiculturalism in Contemporary Australia

Prognosis Critical: Resilience and Multiculturalism in Contemporary Australia

Species–people correlations and the need to account for survey effort in biodiversity analyses

AbstractAimPositive regional correlations between biodiversity and human population have been detected for several taxonomic groups and geographical regions. Such correlations could have important conservation implications and have been mainly attributed to ecological factors, with little testing for an artefactual explanation: more populated regions may show higher biodiversity because they are more thoroughly surveyed. We tested the hypothesis that the correlation between people and herptile diversity in Europe is influenced by survey effort.LocationEurope.MethodsAlthough no explicit survey effort information is available in our dataset, we can divide Europe into three nested regions that were subjected to different levels of survey coverage. We compared species–people correlations among these regions, both with and without controlling for landscape diversity and latitude (a wrapper for energy‐related variables whose individual effects on species richness were weaker). We also tested for relationships between human population and the distributions of single species.ResultsBoth mean species richness and human population density increased as we restricted the analyses towards better‐surveyed regions. Whether or not accounting for ecological factors, the positive relationship between species richness and human density was significant at the lower survey coverage levels, but faded as the analysis focused on better‐surveyed regions and disappeared in the best‐surveyed level. Single‐species analyses revealed identical patterns, for both human‐avoiding and human‐adapted species.Main conclusionsOur findings suggest an artefactual origin for the herptile–people correlation in Europe. More importantly, they highlight the importance of addressing sampling bias in biodiversity analyses, which may be possible even when survey effort is not recorded. We also emphasize the utility of noting survey effort along with biodiversity records and the need for better surveys of biodiversity in less populated areas. An adequate identification of conservation conflicts requires more rigorous assessments of the effects of survey effort on biodiversity data.

Implementation research to catalyze advances in health systems strengthening in sub-Saharan Africa: the African Health Initiative

Implementation research to catalyze advances in health systems strengthening in sub-Saharan Africa: the African Health Initiative