Large International Research Project Research Articles

GoPro(blem)s and possibilities: Keeping the child human of colour in play in an interview

In response to the call for papers for this special issue and the questions it poses, the authors show how the ontological posthumanist shift of agential realism does not erase but keeps the child human of colour in play, despite the inclusion of the other-than-(Adult)human in its methodologies. Through a montaging technique, the authors explore the philosophical complexity of ‘decentering without erasure’ by re-turning to data from a large international research project – Children, Technology and Play (2019–2020). Through an agential realist reading of interview data ‘of’ ‘seven-year-old’ Henry when visiting him at home in an informal settlement in Cape Town, they show what else is going on, and the politically radical and subtle philosophical difference this makes for reconfiguring child subjectivity. To do more justice to the complexity of reality, the analysis bounces around like Henry's sack ball and zooms in on the role apparatuses such as GoPros play in research. The authors ‘follow the child’ literally but differently, without excluding or erasing the more-than-(Adult)human. In meeting Henry, they also meet Eshal, who introduces the GoPro(blem). By diffractively reading Karen Barad's scholarship through visual and aural texts, the authors respond to the question of how posthumanist research makes a difference to childhood studies. They show how the agential realist move(ment) from Object and Subject to Phenomenon explodes ageist, ableist, racist, extractive and settler-colonial logics in education research.

Conducting Virtual Qualitative Interviews with International Key Informants: Insights from a Research Project

There is an increasing need for cross-cultural qualitative studies in an era of globalization. A focus group of five researchers, who were involved in a large international research project, identified effective strategies and challenges associated with five key domains of qualitative research with key informants: identification, recruitment, preparation, conducting the interview, and follow-up. Content analysis revealed nuanced tactics related to effective strategies and challenges associated with each domain. Examples of effective strategies include interview preparation to understand the specific expertise of the interviewee and allowing the informant to offer additional information beyond the questions asked. Challenges included technical difficulties with virtual platforms and scheduling interviews in multiple time zones. These findings provide practical guidelines for researchers conducting virtual interviews with international key informants.

Assignment outsourcing: moving beyond contract cheating

The extent and reach of commercial cheating opportunities is ever present; thousands of websites promote differing business models offering assignments in multiple languages and currencies. In addition to commercial companies, students are known to outsource their assignments from friends and family. Assignment outsourcing and contract cheating are not a new problem, yet research to-date has been conducted utilising different survey tools and in different locations, thereby alluding accurate comparisons. This paper reports on a large international research project which utilised the same survey tool across multiple countries. Respondents most commonly reported outsourcing assignments from friends and family, and peer-sharing sites, as compared to essay mills. Large differences were found in the self-reported outsourcing behaviours between countries. Due to the differing outsourcing methods used, a new definition is offered for these behaviours: assignment outsourcing.

Why Study Journalism: Motivation of Future Kazakh Journalists

This paper is part of a large international research project: Journalism Students across the Globe: Professionalization, Identity and Challenges in a Changing Environment. Journalism education in Kazakhstan, like elsewhere, needs to account for changes in the information environment. This project examines the motives to study journalism by students from Kazakhstan. Do today’s student motivations reflect an understanding of new media with its text, images, infographics, data, and new genres; and how should a journalist combine knowledge of the various media fields? Study of the motivations of Kazakh students in this context is important for both national interests and aligning Kazakh journalism education with international expectations. An online survey used open-ended questions to elicit replies. Questions focused on career opportunities for journalism students, aspects of education that motivate students and whether a university degree is necessary to become a professional journalist. Findings were compared to historical journalistic motivations in Kazakhstan. Students now are driven by different motives. In the past journalistic education was a building block for a career in politics or writing. Now students know various fields of journalism and what the fields offer. Journalism students prefer TV, but a high percentage also prefer the increasingly important online environment. The formula for modern education in the age of information and new technologies is an ongoing systematic process of learning for both educators and students, driven by motivations that are important not only within the walls of universities, but in everyday life. Key words: journalism education, motivation, new media, state independence, Kazakhstan.

ANDRILL ARISE: A model for team-based field research immersion for educators

AbstractThe 4thInternational Polar Year featured a range of large international research projects and included a focus on Education and Public Outreach (EPO). ANDRILL (the ANtarctic geological DRILLing Project) was a large international (USA, New Zealand, Italy, Germany) multidisciplinary research project investigating the sedimentary record of Cenozoic ice sheet dynamics that brought approximately 160 scientists to McMurdo Station in the 2006 and 2007 field seasons, during which two > 1000 m sediment cores were successfully retrieved from the floor of the Ross Sea. ARISE (ANDRILL Research Immersion for Science Educators), the EPO arm of ANDRILL, deployed an international team of six to eight educators each season to Antarctica and embedded them with science teams. ARISE was unique in the EPO spectrum because it deployed ateamof international educators together with an EPO coordinator, offered an on-ice geoscience course for the educators, and supported educator participation at both pre-ice and post-ice meetings. Conservative estimates indicate that at least 314,700 individuals have been reached directly through the wide range of ARISE EPO endeavours.Educator field research immersion is a small subset of educator professional development (PD) opportunities, with little quantitative or qualitative evaluation of polar immersion experiences having been reported. Here, surveys of ARISE educators and scientists are used to evaluate the efficacy of the ARISE program as PD in the context of research on educator PD. Persistent and recurring themes emerging from the surveys are: (1) the positive and reinforcing impact of deployment as a team; (2) the importance of access to scientists across an extended period of time and venues; (3) the importance of ‘doing science’ as a means of learning; and (4) recognition of the senses of excitement, engagement and inspiration displayed by both educators and scientists − about drilling progress, core interpretation, and outreach plans – and the EPO audience. Key components of the program are shown to be (1) deployment of a multi-educator team; and (2) guidance and support of the EPO coordinator at all phases of the ARISE experience.

Drivers of the ecosystem services approach in Poland and perception by practitioners

The uptake of the Ecosystem Services (ES) Approach in Poland with emphasis on the drivers stimulating the research and activity of the authorities, as well as the perception of this approach by the practitioners, are presented in this paper. The study focused on the identification of the stimulus for the activities concerning mapping and assessment of ecosystems and their services (MAES). The survey carried out among practitioners allowed to define the main challenges for ES implementation.Two pairs of dichotomic drivers of the MAES process in Poland have been identified: scientific and administrative, as well as international and national. With regard to science, the most important drivers were found to be large international research projects. The inclusion of the ES approach in strategic documents of the European Union was of mobilising importance for the administration.Currently, there is no wider interest in the ES approach at a regional and local level. The results of the survey showed that there is a deficit in knowledge on the practical way of using this approach.In general, it may be said that there is a large potential for the development of ES applications in Poland. Activating it depends on political decisions.

Internationalising Nordic higher education: comparing the imagined with actual worlds of international scholar-practitioners

This comparative case study addresses a timely issue engaging researchers involved in the internationalisation of Nordic Higher Education, in the context of Sweden and Finland. The study examines a hypothetical imaginary in the transition between university international policy statements and their understandings from the position of a globalised episteme. The investigation forms a tag-project as part of a funded large international research project examining ethical internationalism in times of global crises, involving a partnership between more than twenty higher education institutions in excess of ten countries across five continents. The data was collected using a mixed-methods design, whilst being controlled across the matched data collection period in 2013-2014. Data consisted of policy texts, surveys and interviews. The current research inquiry reports on a within and across comparative analyses of certain policy texts and follow-up interviews with university management. The results yield logical support for a global higher education imaginary driving internationalisation in ways which reveal paradoxical associations between the imagined and the real worlds of international scholar-practitioners.

Replication and translation of co-innovation: The influence of institutional context in large international participatory research projects

Stakeholder involvement in research processes is widely seen as essential to enhance the applicability of research. A common conclusion in the extensive body of literature on participatory and transdisciplinary research is the importance of the institutional context for understanding the dynamics and effectiveness of participatory projects. The role of institutional context has become increasingly important in view of large international research projects implementing shared participatory methodologies across countries (for example within Horizon 2020 and within CGIAR programmes), which each have different institutional contexts. Despite the generally accepted importance of the institutional context for understanding the unfolding of participatory and transdisciplinary research projects, surprisingly little research has actually looked into its role in greater detail. This paper aims to fill this gap in the literature by studying how a set of participatory principles and methods in a European project on integrated pest management (denoted as co-innovation in the project under study) was applied by researchers and advisers operating in a single international research project under the institutional conditions of four countries. The principal finding of this study is that, although constraints and enablers of participatory research at the personal level (e.g. researcher identity) were similar across the studied countries, research organisation- and community-based constraints and enablers differed, as well as those at the level of the overall innovation system. The institutions at different levels interact and create country-specific histories and path-dependencies, which lead to different degrees of propensity and preparedness, and hence different starting positions for participatory approaches. Consequently, when participatory research methods and approaches are applied in different contexts following a one-size-fits-all approach they may be less effective if not translated to institutional conditions at different levels. The study suggests that large international participatory research projects make provision in their design for careful selection of project team individuals, the composition of teams, and pay attention to the room for manoeuvre that the project, institute and national contexts provide for participatory research. To support the adjustment of participatory approaches to local institutional conditions, large international projects would benefit from fostering learning spaces that enable reflection on translation to local contexts and are capable of connecting to a wider network of decision makers and influencers that can facilitate institutional change in organisations and innovation systems.

Pharmacogenetics research on chemotherapy resistance in colorectal cancer over the last 20 years.

During the past two decades the first sequencing of the human genome was performed showing its high degree of inter-individual differentiation, as a result of large international research projects (Human Genome Project, the 1000 Genomes Project International HapMap Project, and Programs for Genomic Applications NHLBI-PGA). This period was also a time of intensive development of molecular biology techniques and enormous knowledge growth in the biology of cancer. For clinical use in the treatment of patients with colorectal cancer (CRC), in addition to fluoropyrimidines, another two new cytostatic drugs were allowed: irinotecan and oxaliplatin. Intensive research into new treatment regimens and a new generation of drugs used in targeted therapy has also been conducted. The last 20 years was a time of numerous in vitro and in vivo studies on the molecular basis of drug resistance. One of the most important factors limiting the effectiveness of chemotherapy is the primary and secondary resistance of cancer cells. Understanding the genetic factors and mechanisms that contribute to the lack of or low sensitivity of tumour tissue to cytostatics is a key element in the currently developing trend of personalized medicine. Scientists hope to increase the percentage of positive treatment response in CRC patients due to practical applications of pharmacogenetics/pharmacogenomics. Over the past 20 years the clinical usability of different predictive markers has been tested among which only a few have been confirmed to have high application potential. This review is a synthetic presentation of drug resistance in the context of CRC patient chemotherapy. The multifactorial nature and volume of the issues involved do not allow the author to present a comprehensive study on this subject in one review.

An Exploration of Flexibility/Rigidity as Relational Quality of African Migrants in South Africa as New Cultural and Social Environment

This article attempts to draw attention to the interpersonal interactions of African migrants and to how the relational quality, namely, flexibility/rigidity, could potentially facilitate or limit their acculturation in South Africa. The study on which the article is based is part of a larger international research project on the commonalities and differences in the way that intergenerational relations, citizenship and belonging play out in three countries: The United Kingdom, France and South Africa. Ten families and 24 individual participants (men and women in the age range 18–59) from different African countries who had migrated to South Africa were selected through purposive sampling. The data were obtained through in-depth personal interviews that were thematically analysed using a secondary data analysis approach. Although more relational qualities would provide a comprehensive description of migrants' interpersonal styles, the relational quality of flexibility/rigidity of migrants who participated in this research, ranged on a continuum from being too flexible to being too close and some were in between. Migrants who were flexible could associate themselves with the new cultural and social environment and expand their behavioural repertoire. The migrants in the study, who were too flexible and too close, experienced discomfort. The study findings can be used as baseline for further research to support the adjustment of migrants in South Africa.

The role of the circumarctic forest–tundra ecotone for Arctic biodiversity

The arctic forest–tundra ecotone (FTE), which links species communities of the boreal forest with those of the arctic tundra, is expected to respond swiftly to climate change with a profound reduction of tundra as the dominating scenario. With its circumarctic expanse and up to several hundred kilometres in width, the zone occupies a large part of the vegetated surface at high latitudes. Relocation and structural changes of the ecotone vegetation will affect not only plant but also animal and other biological diversity. A large number of arctic species are dependent on the FTE in terms of food and habitat during parts of their life cycle or annual migration. In the ‘Arctic Species Trend Index’, developed to provide trends in arctic vertebrates, more than half of the species and data are from the FTE. However, in assessments of arctic biodiversity, only the northernmost tundra-dominated areas of the ecotone are included. This is unfortunate and somewhat problematic since the treed part that serves as a source of seeds for new seedlings and saplings in the tundra-dominated part is excluded. This inconsistency hampers monitoring efficiency and biodiversity conservation efforts. During the International Polar Year, a large international research project on the FTE established numerous sites around the circumpolar north where causes and consequences of vegetation change were analysed. This network of sites and data forms an excellent basis for necessary monitoring of the spatial and temporal complexity of forest encroachment into tundra and its relation to arctic biodiversity.

Examining effective and ineffective transformational project leadership

Purpose – Aims to examine effective and ineffective leader behaviors from direct participant observations in several cases of a large multiyear cross-industry international research project to prove the hypothesis that effective team performance management requires strong transformational leadership. Design/methodology/approach – Transformational and charismatic leadership theories are briefly discussed from management science to explain how their principles can apply to and be analyzed in the project domain and other fields. Several popular and proven group leader behavior measurement constructs are discussed to show how they can be applied for assessing group leader behavior in any field. Two flexible taxonomies are built for assisting in quantitatively and qualitatively explaining stakeholder perceptions of group leader behaviors and team performance. Four theoretically sampled case studies are analyzed. The taxonomies are analyzed quantitatively and the results are qualitatively evaluated. Findings – The structured research illuminated that both effective and absent transformational leadership behaviors were practiced (idealized influence, inspirational motivation, individualized consideration, intellectual stimulation), which can go unnoticed and un-reflected in the everyday pandemonium of busy project schedules, competing values, and organizational crises, yet in retrospect, these results show that passive or absent leadership is noticed by the team members and sponsors; moreover it negatively impacts on both project effectiveness and stakeholder satisfaction! Research limitations/implications – Leaders, team members, stakeholders, and managers benefit from understanding transformational leadership, since it supports better human relations and organizational change. These cases show that effective team performance can result in minimal application of transformational leadership behaviors as long as they are not absent when required, and positive (not negative such as micro-management). Originality/value – This research suggests that leader behavior is complex since it is situational, supported by multiple and concurrent leadership and trait theories, as well as partly driven by dominant personality.

‘It could have been so much better’: the aesthetic and social work of theatre

In this paper, the authors consider early results from their ethnographic research in urban drama classrooms by parsing the aesthetic and social imperatives at play in the classroom. Moved by the observation that teachers and students alike seem to be pursuing elusive aesthetic and social ideals, the authors draw on Judith Butler's notion of ‘melancholia’ to explain the feeling of disappointment that sometimes follows difficult drama work – the sense, as a teacher in one of the research sites put it, that ‘it could have been so much better’. Reflecting on a larger international research project, ‘Urban School Performances: The interplay, through live and digital drama, of local–global knowledge about student engagement’ (USP) project, the authors illustrate and theorise this concept of disappointment using qualitative data from two urban Toronto drama classrooms. On the surface, one of these sites was focused on aesthetics and the other on social development, but the authors dig deeper to consider the subtler values and outcomes that are made available by ethnographic research. This partly leads to a consideration of how students, teachers and researchers alike are each burdened with a responsibility to ‘perform’ and ‘advocate’.

Editorial: Enlarging the Focus on the Role of Competencies, Abilities, and Personality in Management Research

Editorial Past research on the role of individual characteristics in management research (e.g., predictive value of personality on job related issues, human resource management practices handling individual competencies) has generated considerable knowledge. However, with an increase in globalization leading to higher complexity of organizations as well as to altered demands on employees, there is a necessity to expand prior knowledge on the role of competencies, abilities, and personality across various contextual features (e.g., other cultures, markets). This special issue contains seven articles that focus on competencies or personality in not yet researched contexts and levels (individual vs. firm level). The special issue incorporates new and interesting outcome variables (e.g., career decisiveness, work council participation) and cross-cultural comparisons in relationships between constructs. In this editorial, we give a short overview over the articles and conclude with a short discussion about some problems of incorporating competence and personality measures into research designs. We suggest that this discussion is especially important if researchers intend to apply modern analytical methods (e.g., structural equation modeling) to management research. The article by Matjaana Gunkel and Christoph Schlaegel (The Influence of Personality on Students' Career Decisiveness - A Comparison between Chinese and German Economics and Management Students) investigates in how far the Big Five personality factors (i.e., conscientiousness, neuroticism, extraversion, agreeableness, and openness to experience) allow to predict career decisiveness of students and its determinants career adaptability, career optimism, and career knowledge. Moreover, the authors' approach is cross-cultural as they compare Chinese and German economics and management students. Results show that three of the Big Five - neuroticism, conscientiousness, and extraversion - are differendy related to the dependent career variables within the two cultures. Thus, these results indicate diat personality factors allows predicting and understanding students' career decisions and their determinants. The study by Susi Stornier (Individual Characteristics of Work Council Members - Empirical Evidence) analyzes the personality profile of work council members. She finds that female council members show a higher extraversion and internal locus of control than female non-council members and male council members can be characterized by a higher conscientiousness than male non-work council members. Hence, her study sheds light on the work council as an institution and should be followed by further analyses to understand functioning of this collective. Joost Bucker and Erik Poutsma (How to Assess Global Management Competencies: An Investigation of Existing Instruments*) focus on the importance of competence measurement and provide a framework that allows assessing the quality of competence measures. Moreover, by means of a review of existing measures, the authors apply the developed framework and propose a number of high quality measures. The article by Erik Doving and Odd Nordhaug (Investing in Human Resource Planning: An International Study) examines the determinants for analyses of competence developments needs and the role of formal HRM strategies on the firm level. By means of a large international research project with 3,877 firms worldwide, they conclude that resources (size, having an HRM department and corporate affiliation) and to some degree cost-benefit considerations are the main determinants of these human resource planning arrangements (p. 263-291). Michael Stephan (Does Outsourcing Result in the Outsourcing of Technological Competencies? An Empirical Analysis of the Effect of Vertical Specialization on the Technological Competence Base of Firms) investigates the effect of vertical specialization on the technological competence of the firm. …

A comparative study on Italian new communities abroad: the cases of Tunisia and South Africa1

This paper presents two case studies about Italian new communities abroad: one Tunisian and one South African. These case studies were conducted – in a larger international research project on 14 countries – with different types of interview: focus interviews, in-depth interviews, focus groups, etc. The mixed interview modes brought to light how – with a different research strategy (methodological triangulation): quantitative and qualitative data – our complex social experience can be inquired into, in particular migration processes. The authors decided to utilise semi-standardised and non-standardised techniques. This paper discusses how the mixed research logic – utilised in both of these cases – is very productive in terms of knowledge. It seems that focus group interviewing techniques (and others) have been used progressively more and more over the past years as both a self-contained method for conducting qualitative research and in combination with other research methods. In the authors’ opinion, mixed-methods research (or multiple research strategies) represents a smaller corpus of literature that is getting increased attention. The essays in our paper are grouped along four themes: (a) economic development and globalisation; (b) perceptions and discourses; (c) the new migration phenomenon; and (d) fragmentation of identity. The authors believe that rebuilding a morceau de vie of Italian emigration helps to better analyse the role of the communities of immigrants in the construction of national processes. As a result of this, their survey introduces reflections on theoretical—methodological logic and concurs with placing such aspects in a global and social structural dimension. However, the universal and social structural dimension can be extended to the specific case. Its contribution in the first part investigates a variety of linkages of migration with broader processes of social–economic development and social globalisation. That global patterns of migration and the processes of globalisation are linked in various ways has long been recognised. The second part of the paper stresses the meaning of perceptions and discourses linked with the migration phenomenon and underlines the importance of an accurate methodological approach in order to provide new sociological points of view and appropriate research strategies.

Measuring Chandler's Impact on European Business Studies since the 1960s

Recently, a number of groups sponsored large international research projects that are concerned with business history. Harm G. Schröter's group investigated the European integration that followed the Treaty of Rome in 1957 in order to discover whether it had led to the appearance of a characteristically “European” corporation. Franco Amatori, Camilla Brautaset, and Youssef Cassis coordinated an analysis with the ambitious title “The Performance of European Business in the Twentieth Century.” The projects shared some common “Chandlerian” features: they were problem-oriented, comparative studies of the long-term development of large enterprises, and their goal was to propose illuminating generalizations. Such Chandler-inspired studies are likely to undergo a renaissance in the next couple of years. Still, as the term “renaissance” implies, Chandler's impact on European business studies has undergone upswings and downturns over the past four decades.

Le projet Welfare Quality : de l’attente des consommateurs à la mise en place de certifications bien-être en élevage

In 1999, AGRIBEA was set up to coordinate animal welfare research conducted by INRA (French Institute for Agronomy Research). Initially made up of some forty researchers, AGRIBEA expanded rapidly both within and outside INRA, to include 128 members, of which less than two thirds are from INRA, the other members coming from universities or technical institutes. AGRIBEA organizes scientific seminars every quarter, on topics of general interest focused around animal welfare : pain, emotions, ethics in human-animal relations, etc. AGRIBEA also stimulated new research avenues to address the question of mental states in animals. AGRIBEA improves the visibility of INRA work within the institution, as well as of all French research, thereby helping exchanges within large international research projects.

Improving National and Homeland Security Through a Proposed Laboratory for Information Globalization and Harmonization Technologies (LIGHT)

A recent National Research Council study found that: there are many private and public databases that contain potentially relevant to counter terrorism programs, they lack the necessary context definitions (i.e., metadata) and access tools to enable interoperation with other databases and the extraction of meaningful and timely information [NRC02, p.304, emphasis added] That sentence succinctly describes the objectives of this project. Improved access and use of are essential to better identify and anticipate threats, protect against and respond to threats, and enhance national and homeland security (NHS), as well as other national priority areas, such as Economic Prosperity and a Vibrant Civil Society (ECS) and Advances in Science and Engineering (ASE). This project focuses on the creation and contributions of a Laboratory for Information Globalization and Harmonization Technologies (LIGHT) with two interrelated goals: (1) Theory and Technologies: To research, design, develop, test, and implement theory and technologies for improving the reliability, quality, and responsiveness of automated mechanisms for reasoning and resolving semantic differences that hinder the rapid and effective integration (int) of systems and data (dmc) across multiple autonomous sources, and the use of that by public and private agencies involved in national and homeland security and the other national priority areas involving complex and interdependent social systems (soc). This work builds on our research on the COntext INterchange (COIN) project, which focused on the integration of diverse distributed heterogeneous sources using ontologies, databases, context mediation algorithms, and wrapper technologies to overcome representational conflicts. The COIN approach makes it substantially easier and more transparent for individual receivers (e.g., applications, users) to access and exploit distributed sources. Receivers specify their desired context to reduce ambiguities in the interpretation of coming from heterogeneous sources. This approach significantly reduces the overhead involved in the integration of multiple sources, improves data quality, increases the speed of integration, and simplifies maintenance in an environment of changing source and receiver context - which will lead to an effective and novel distributed grid infrastructure. This research also builds on our Global System for Sustainable Development (GSSD), an Internet platform for generation, provision, and integration of multiple domains, regions, languages, and epistemologies relevant to international relations and national security. (2) National Priority Studies: To experiment with and test the developed theory and technologies on practical problems of data integration in national priority areas. Particular focus will be on national and homeland security, including data sources about conflict and war, modes of instability and threat, international and regional demographic, economic, and military statistics, money flows, and contextualizing terrorism defense and response. Although LIGHT will leverage the results of our successful prior research projects, this will be the first research effort to simultaneously and effectively address ontological and temporal conflicts as well as dramatically enhance quality. Addressing problems of national priorities in such rapidly changing complex environments requires extraction of observations from disparate sources, using different interpretations, at different points in times, for different purposes, with different biases, and for a wide range of different uses and users. This research will focus on integrating both over individual domains and across multiple domains. Another innovation is the concept and implementation of Collaborative Domain Spaces (CDS), within which applications in a common domain can share, analyze, modify, and develop information. Applications also can span multiple domains via Linked CDSs. The PIs have considerable experience with these research areas and the organization and management of such large scale international and diverse research projects. The PIs come from three different Schools at MIT: Management, Engineering, and Humanities, Arts & Social Sciences. The faculty and graduate students come from about a dozen nationalities and diverse ethnic, racial, and religious backgrounds. The currently identified external collaborators come from over 20 different organizations and many different countries, industrial as well as developing. Specific efforts are proposed to engage even more women, underrepresented minorities, and persons with disabilities. The anticipated results apply to any complex domain that relies on heterogeneous distributed data to address and resolve compelling problems. This initiative is supported by international collaborators from (a) scientific and research institutions, (b) business and industry, and (c) national and international agencies. Research products include: a System for Harmonized Information Processing (SHIP), a software platform, and diverse applications in research and education which are anticipated to significantly impact the way complex organizations, and society in general, understand and manage critical challenges in NHS, ECS, and ASE.

Laboratory for Information Globalization and Harmonization Technologies: A New Research Initiative

The convergence of three distinct but interconnected trends - unrelenting globalization, growing worldwide electronic connectivity, and increasing knowledge intensity of economic activity - is creating powerful new opportunities and challenges for global politics. This rapidly changing environment has information demands that surpass existing capabilities for information access, interpretation, and overall use, thus hindering our abilities to address emergent and complex global challenges, such as terrorism and other security threats. This reality has serious implications for two diverse domains of scholarship: international relations (IR) in political science and information technology (IT). Unless IT advances remain one step ahead of emergent realities and complexities, strategies for better understanding and responding to critical global challenges will be severely impeded. For example, more so now than ever, the U.S. Office of Counter-Terrorism and the newly-created Office of Homeland Security rely on intelligence information from all over the world to develop strategic responses to security threats. However, relevant information is stored in various regions throughout the world and by diverse agencies in different media, formats, and contexts. Intelligent integration of information is fundamental to developing policies to anticipate and strengthen protection against terrorist threats or attacks in the United States. This Project's activities, and relationships with its collaborators, will be coordinated through a newly formed joint Laboratory for Information Globalization and Harmonization Technologies (LIGHT). LIGHT will address information needs in the IR domain, focusing on the conflict realm, which deals with emergent risks, threats, and uncertainties of potentially global scale and scope related to: (a) crises, (b) conflicts and war; and (c) anticipation, monitoring and early warning. The goals of this initiative are to: (1) improve understanding of the types of IR information needs for decision making and institutional performance under varying degrees of risk and uncertainty; (2) design and implement the System for Harmonized Information Processing, to facilitate access to and correct interpretation of essential information that is critical to policy and research in the IR realm, as well as to other similarly complex domains, and (3) advance developments in the use of information technologies to facilitate such interdisciplinary research and to contribute to new education approaches, tools, and methods. Increasingly, addressing problems central to national and global interests in complex domains such as IR requires the use of technologies that easily combine observations from disparate sources, using different interpretations, for different purposes, and by a wide range of users. Critical advances in IT capabilities must span multiple domains (e.g., economic, political, geographic, commercial, and demographic), diverse contexts (i.e., meanings, languages, assumptions), and a multiplicity of contending agents (i.e., states, governments, corporations, international institutions). The technology-related research will focus on acquiring and enhancing information to serve user requirements both over individual domains (i.e., a single shared ontology) and across multiple domains, which are necessary for addressing complex challenges. The core innovation is reflected in the notion of a Collaborative Domain Space (CDS), within which applications in a common domain can share, analyze, modify, and develop information. For applications that span multiple domains we provide for a Collection of CDSs to link shared concepts in distinct domains. Moreover, we will develop the System for Harmonized Information Processing that incorporates CDSs as a basis for knowledge representation and includes all the necessary reasoning algorithms required to support information processing over a range of heterogeneous sources and applications. The development of the system described above builds upon prior work. The political science IR work will draw on an earlier Internet-based experimental platform for exploring forms of information generation, provision, and integration across multiple domains, regions, languages, and epistemologies which are relevant to complex but domain-specific applications, the Global System for Sustainable Development (GSSD). The IT component builds on work on the Context Interchange project (COIN) focused on the integration of a range of distributed heterogeneous information sources (e.g., financial, supply chain, disaster relief) using ontologies, databases, context mediation algorithms, and wrapper technologies. Both groups have considerable experience with the organization and management of large scale, international, distributed, and diverse research projects, including cross-national (e.g., China, Middle East, Europe) and institutional (private, public, national and international) agencies. The anticipated results will apply to any complex domain with multiple entities that rely on heterogeneous distributed data to address and resolve compelling problems. This initiative is supported by a network of international collaborators from (a) scientific and research institutions, (b) business and industry, and (c) national and international agencies. Expected research products include: a software platform, IR-based knowledge repository, and diverse applications in policy, research, and education which are anticipated to significantly impact the way complex organizations, and society in general, understand and manage critical global challenges.

The music in Swedish preschools

This article is a field investigation of the musical memories of preschool teachers and child minders, their experiences and interest in working with music in preschools. It is part of a larger international research project at Mälardalens University, Sweden. The original component of analysis is adults' memories of play. (Sandberg, 2001.) Participants also interpreted their own musical memories and defined music. Under the umbrella entity, WRP (Women's Researchers in Play and Disability) participating project partners were from the USA, Brazil, South Korea, Taiwan and Sweden. Participants reported their memories using an instruction sheet, a drawing sheet and a questionnaire.