Restructuring Model Research Articles

Lexical characteristics of words and phonological awareness skills of preschool children

ABSTRACTThe lexical restructuring model (LRM; Metsala & Walley, 1998) can be used to explain the development of phonological awareness (PA). According to LRM, as children's vocabularies increase, children develop a more refined lexical representation of the sounds comprising those words, and in turn children become more sensitive to the detection of specific phonemes. LRM identifies several lexical characteristics of words that influence lexical restructuring: age of acquisition (AoA), word frequency, neighborhood density, and phonotactic probability. In this study, the effects of these lexical characteristics on children's performance on PA tasks were evaluated, as well as moderation of these effects by children's oral language skills and ages, in two independent samples of preschool children who completed measures of PA and oral language. For both samples, AoA and word frequency were negatively related to PA skills, and phonotactic probability was positively related to PA skills. Children's ages and oral language skills were positive predictors of PA skills, and children's ages moderated the relations between AoA and PA skills for children in Sample 2. Children's oral language skills moderated the relations between AoA and PA skills for children in Sample 1. Implications are discussed.

The African Sate Neo-patrimonial Governance in a “Democratic” South Africa

Policy studies demonstrate that reality is complex and is rarely matched by statements of intent. Inevitably, governance of a democratic political system necessarily involves a degree of incoherence. Rather than pioneer a new distinct epoch of African governance, the African National Congress-led (ANC-led) state merely legitimized continuities of Africa’s extraversion and transposition of the Westphalian state model. With regard to its continental reach, the ANC-led nation-state has appeared to emulate an “Empire”, a global capitalist neo-patrimonial state, which was simultaneously reconstituted at a global scale and ruled by proxy through the multilateral organs such as the International Monetary Fund, World Trade Organization and the World Bank. These externalities, together with other ratings as one of the most corrupt states in the world, underscore the ANC-led democratic state’s failure to provide a dependable model of governance and state restructuring in Africa. Twenty years on, it has to be asked if the ANC-led state merely delivers the 54th failed state, reinforcing cultural determinism stereotypes of successive cohorts of African leaders being incapable of “good” governance? This article argues that the ANC-led democratic state too, has quickly deteriorated into a neo-patrimonial state. Just like in most of Africa, the state has increasingly being weakened whilst the governing regimes were made relatively stable, sometimes stronger. It concludes that increasingly the ANC-led neo-patrimonial state incorporates elements of personalized rule, elite subservience to the core and a shadow state, where differentiation between the public and private spheres of governance is disappearing. DOI: 10.5901/mjss.2014.v5n20p947

Reconnecting Self-Organising Institutions to the formal Government Structure for Real Governance Impact in Nigeria

The crisis of democratization in Nigeria has its roots in the centralised planning, monocratic decision making and repressive institutional arrangements the country adopted at independence in 1960, which invariably lack a common thought between the assembly and the electorate. This is because indices of democracy and development have constantly eluded the electorate especially in the last ten years. Most socio-economic and political decisions in Nigeria did not reflect the wishes and aspirations of the poor simply because of the persistent and widening gaps between decision makers (the rich people) and the governed (the poor). Accordingly, the residents have learnt not to rely on governments, instead they have devised several coping strategies through self-organizing arrangements that draw inspirations from their culture and traditions. This paper critically examines how poor people craft shared strategies and problem solving interdependencies from their old traditions to address problems of daily life by providing and maintaining infrastructure such as schools, health facilities, road networks etc. At the same time, the tenets of democracy exhibited by these self-governing institutions as well as their contributions to socio-economic development have made them highly relevant to governance of community affairs. This paper, therefore, suggests polycentric planning and institutional arrangements capable of mainstreaming or reconnecting these self-organising or people-centred institutions into socio-economic and political decision making so that the poor in Nigeria can participate effectively in decisions that concern their lives, thus entrenching self-governance in Nigeria’s democratisation project. It is in the light of this exigency that this paper adopts African Public Sphere Restructuring Model (APSRM) that could help in restructuring the public sphere for synergy and African Electoral Reform and Democratisation (AERD) for inclusive democratisation . Key Words: Democracy, Government structure, Self-governing institutions, Polycentric Planning Normal 0 14 false false false IT X-NONE X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:Tabella normale; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:; mso-padding-alt:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:Calibri,sans-serif; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:Times New Roman; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:Times New Roman; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;}

Restructuring bank networks after mergers and acquisitions: A capacitated delocation model for closing and resizing branches

During restructuring processes, due to mergers and acquisitions, banks frequently face the problem of having redundant branches competing in the same market. In this work, we introduce a new Capacitated Branch Restructuring Model which extends the available literature in delocation models. It considers both closing down and long term operations׳ costs, and addresses the problem of resizing open branches in order to maintain a constant service level. We consider, as well, the presence of competitors and allow for ceding market share whenever the restructuring costs are prohibitively expensive.We test our model in a real life scenario, obtaining a reduction of about 40% of the network size, and annual savings over 45% in operation costs from the second year on. We finally perform a sensitivity analysis on critical parameters. This analysis shows that the final design of the network depends on certain strategic decisions concerning the redundancy of the branches, as well as their proximity to the demand nodes and to the competitor׳s branches. At the same time, this design is quite robust to changes in the parameters associated with the adjustments on service capacity and with the market reaction.

Bank Restructuring–International Perspectives and Vietnam Practices

This paper aims at studying the restructuring of commercial banks which has been started since 2011 in Vietnam. This is considered as an active approach in restructuring the banking system in order to effectively obtain targets in the circumstance of no risk of severe crisis or recession. The paper summarizes the international practices and experiences in bank restructuring including: (i) the concept and goals of restructuring, (ii) the circumstances and conditions of the banking system before the restructuring, (iii) the methods and implementation of restructuring, and (iv) the evaluation of the effectiveness of restructuring. By conducting a survey for bank managers, experts, policy makers and researchers, the authors show that there are still uncovered issues for policy makers currently in Vietnam bank restructure such as: which model of restructuring should be applied to Vietnamese banking system, where to get the resources to implement the restructuring, or what is the role of Debt and Asset Trading Corporation (DATC) and coordination among related parties in the restructuring.

Analytical Model of Fractal Aggregate Stability and Restructuring in Shear Flows

We combine the analytical theory of nonaffine deformations of noncrystalline solids with numerical Stokesian dynamical simulations to obtain analytical closed-form expressions for the shear modulus of fractal aggregates in shear flows. The proposed framework also provides analytical predictions for the evolution of the fractal dimension df of the aggregate during the aggregation process. This leads to a lower bound on df below which aggregates are mechanically unstable (they possess floppy modes) and cannot survive without restructuring into more compact, higher-df configurations. In the limit of large aggregates, the predicted lower bound is df = 2.407. This result provides the long-sought explanation as to why all experimental and simulation studies in the past consistently reported df ≳ 2.4 for shear-induced colloidal aggregation. The analytical expressions derived here can be used within population balance calculations of colloidal aggregation in shear flows whereby until now the fractal dimension evolution was treated as a free parameter. These results may open up the possibility of developing new microscopic mechanical manipulation techniques to control nanoparticle and colloidal aggregates at the nanoscale.

Land consolidation: An indispensable way of spatial restructuring in rural China

The implementation of new type industrialization and urbanization and agricultural modernization strategies lacks of a major hand grip and spatial supporting platform, due to long-term existed “dual-track” structure of rural-urban development in China as well as unstable rural development institution and mechanism. It is necessary to restructure rural production, living and ecological space by carrying out land consolidation, so as to establish a new platform for building new countryside and realizing urban-rural integration development in China. This paper develops the concept and connotation of rural spatial restructuring. Basing on the effects analysis of industrialization and urbanization on rural production, living and ecological space, the mechanism of pushing forward rural spatial restructuring by carrying out land consolidation is probed. A conceptualization of the models of rural production, living and ecological spatial restructuring is analyzed combining with agricultural land consolidation, hollowed villages consolidation and industrial and mining land consolidation. Finally, the author argues that a “bottom-up” restructuring strategy accompanied by a few “top-down” elements is helpful for smoothly pushing forward rural spatial restructuring in China. In addition, the optimization and restructuring of rural production, living and ecological space will rely on the innovations of regional engineering technology, policy and mechanism, and mode of rural land consolidation, and more attentions should be paid to rural space, the foundation base and platform for realizing urban-rural integration development.

Fools Rush In: The Case Against Radical Water and Wastewater Restructuring in Regional New South Wales

In its 2008 Final Report, the Independent Inquiry into Secure and Sustainable Urban Water Supply and Sewerage Services for Non-Metropolitan New South Wales (NSW) recommended that the (then) 106 local water utilities (LWUs) be restructured through regional aggregation into 32 regional entities. This recommendation has been echoed without any further analysis or substantiation in Infrastructure NSW's (2012) First Things First: State Infrastructure Strategy, 2012–2032, with its call for the present 105 entities to be radically reduced to “around 30 authorities.” This paper demonstrates that the case for drastic regional water reorganization along in these lines in country NSW has been fatally weakened by (a) the recent strong performance of NSW LWUs as made plain in the 2010–11 NSW Water Supply and Sewerage Performance Monitoring Report and (b) the failure of the Tasmanian water restructuring strategy on which much of the Independent Inquiry's restructuring model had been based.

Adaptability of the Logistics System in National Economic Mobilization Based on Blocking Flow Theory

In the process of national economic mobilization, the logistics system usually suffers from negative impact and/or threats of such emergency events as wars and accidents, which implies that adaptability of the logistics system directly determines realization of economic mobilization. And where the real-time rescue operation is concerned, heavy traffic congestion is likely to cause a great loss of or damage to human beings and their properties. To deal with this situation, this article constructs a blocking-resistance optimum model and an optimum restructuring model based on blocking flow theories, of which both are illustrated by numerical cases and compared in characteristics and application. The design of these two models is expected to eliminate or alleviate the congestion situation occurring in the logistics system, thus effectively enhancing its adaptability in the national economic mobilization process.

Diagnosis and Revelation in Vsevolod Garshin's "The Red Flower" and Anton Chekhov's "An Attack of Nerves"

This article examines Vsevolod Garshin's 1883 story "The Red Flower" and Chekhov's 1888 story "An Attack of Nerves" in light of contemporaneous work on diagnostic classificatory systems by the German neurologist Paul Julius Möbius and psychiatrist Emil Kraepelin. By situating these Russian stories within a German psychodiagnostic context, rather than seeing them in the tradition of the French experimental novel, it becomes possible to understand these stories not as single instances of illness revealing truth, but as narratives that simultaneously take on diagnosis in its social, medical and legal instantiations. Reading Chekhov's and Garshin's stories in this way opens up a new interpretive possibility: that diagnosis and self-diagnosis could form a model for a creative restructuring concerned less with "proof" than with multiple overlapping narratives of identification. Chekhov's and Garshin's tales illuminate how and when the question of what illness "reveals" can be subordinated to what reveals illness.

In Situ XRD, XPS, TEM, and TPR Study of Highly Active in CO Oxidation CuO Nanopowders

Copper(II) oxide nanopowders exhibit a high catalytic activity in CO oxidation at low temperatures. The combination of in situ XPS, XRD, and HRTEM methods was applied to investigate initial steps of CuO nanoparticles reduction, to identify oxygen and copper species and to revealed structural features in the dependence on reducing power of reaction medium. At the oxygen deficient surface of CuO nanopowders the metastable Cu4O3 oxide was formed under the mild reducing conditions −10–5 mbar CO or CO + O2 mixture with oxygen excess. Destruction of Cu4O3 structures in strong reducing medium (P(CO) ≥ 10–2 mbar) or under UHV conditions resulted in the formation of Cu2O which was epitaxially bounded with initial CuO particle. The reversible bulk reduction of CuO nanopowder to Cu2O at temperatures ∼150 °C can be explained by effortless propagation of Cu2O∥CuO epitaxial front inside the nanoparticle. The model of the surface restructuring along the {−111}CuO → {202}Cu4O3 → {111}Cu2O planes under the reduction of CuO nanopowders is proposed. The initial surface of CuO nanopowders is probably distorted and resembles Cu4O3-like structures that facilitates the CuOx ↔ Cu4O3 transition in mild reducing conditions. Such restructuring results in a unique electronic Cu4O3 structure with high oxygen deficiency and low-valence Cu1+ sites stimulating the formation of highly reactive CO and O2 adsorbed species. It was shown that the most active oxygen species on the surface of CuOx is stabilized as O–, which was previously reported in papers by Roberts and Madix in their study of the copper–oxygen systems.

Fuzzy Comprehensive Evaluation of the Mode of the Mining Urban Economic Transformation

Mining city should be actively planning economic restructuring to guide urban development before the Depletion of mineral resources. How to target and selects transition models to achieve sustainable development in the mining city Future economic development is great significance. In the implementation of economic transformation of different mining town, resources, social, economic and other support to varying degrees, the effectiveness of different models of economic restructuring will be very different. By analyzing modes of the mining economy transformation, establishment of evaluation index, using fuzzy evaluation method to evaluate the effectiveness of different models of economic restructuring, this article provides a new way of thinking for the selection of the mode of the economic transformation.

Looking to the Future of Obstetrics and Gynaecology Training in Canada: A Resident's Perspective

Looking to the Future of Obstetrics and Gynaecology Training in Canada: A Resident's Perspective

Sustainable development-oriented industrial restructuring modeling and analysis: a case study in Leshan

This article proposes a sustainable, low-carbon development-oriented industrial restructuring model for developing countries, which balances of environmental protection and economic growth. A case study for Leshan, a representative traditional industrial city in South West China, is given to illustrate the difficulties in accommodating economic and ecological development needs. Multi-objective planning techniques under a fuzzy random environment are used to calculate optimum industrial structure ratios, and a system dynamics-based industrial restructuring optimal model is designed to predict sustainable relationships between the environment, the economy, and society. The possible paths can take to achieve this target are presented and discussed using scenario analysis, after which the simulation results are discussed. Then, integrated policy proposals are suggested to meet the sustainability demands. This research provides more options for researchers and government policy makers in traditional industrial cities of developing countries.

Restructuring higher education. Ideological Postmodernism, liberal professionalization and educational deregulated market

The key of the implied model of the present educational restructuring is based on the correlation between a postmodern epistemology which questions all of the epistemological roots, the new management of the organizational culture, the reconceptualization of the educational work by means of a new professionalization and at least, by the discourse of the quality and excellence which proportionate an ideological covering for all this process. The funding of the demand which has transformed the Universities in PYME's, which are forced to reduce its costs in order to achieve the self-funding and even to obtain benefits, it closes in neoliberal terms the location of higher universities in an economical model of knowledge which is situated outside of the educational institutions.

Transition of the Health Care System and Sustainable Economy - Case Study for Serbia

This paper deals with the challenges of the health care system transition in the function of establishing a regime of sustainable economy in Serbia. The current system is not able to support this process, because a manipulative transition and a blend of quasy-public, quasy-market and administrative mechanisms of regulation made the existence of both public and private health care meaningless. The basic hypothesis is that the key task of the national health care system is to provide health care to every individual, so that he could cope with the challenges and problems of the development and operation of sustainable economy. Additional hypotheses are:(1) the production of medical goods and services must take place in the administrative hierarchical environment and (2) the main task of the public factors is the removal of barriers that block the adjustment of soft (software) elements of the health care system. In this context, the methodology for determining the transition model of health care can be defined as a process and activities that lead to adjustment of circumstances that cannot be changed, or competently act on those which can be controlled. Restructuring model of the health care system is defined as a mix strategy problems in which we need to solve the problems arising from the interactions of the: (1) health care system, (2) creation of humane conditions for establishing a regime of sustainable economy, (3) system of governance and (4) set of matching elements of education and innovation. A key result is that the solution lies in total re-engineering and in re-defining the justice paradigm. This way, the foreground of public health care system should be in prevention and preservation of health capabilities. Sophisticated and expensive technologies should be left to the private sector, based on the mix of public and private participation.

Mathematical model for strategic planning optimization in the pome fruit industry

This paper presents a strategic planning model for optimal restructuring of a pome (pears and apples) production farm concerning varieties and planting densities. The model decides the optimal investment policy for a given farm, maximizing the net present value of business while dynamically deciding its planting structure along a given time horizon under different financing scenarios. The model constraints impose restrictions on the activities to take into account risks and cultural practices. The mathematical model corresponds to a mixed integer linear programming problem, where integer decisions are related to the minimum reconversion land unit and funding requirements.The model was applied to a realistic case study of a typical farm in the “Alto Valle de Río Negro” Argentine region. The study was conducted over a 20-year time horizon considering four varieties of apples and five of pears. The results showed the optimal investment policy for the replacement of varieties under different scenarios, with and without external financing. A sensitivity analysis was also performed on some of the most influential parameters. The model could be used either by governmental agencies to advise private sectors and to develop strategic economic policies or by companies to optimize the business profit.

A novel power sector restructuring model based on Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA)

This paper evaluates relative performance of the Electric Distribution Divisions (EDDs) of an Indian State, Uttarakhand for the period 2005–2008, through application of Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA). To improve the operational efficiency of EDDs, Uttarakhand Power Corporation Limited (UPCL) disintegrated several divisions into smaller ones over this period. However, microlevel examination revealed the ineffectiveness of this process during the period of analysis. Therefore, in the present work an alternative reorganization model for selecting the EDDs for disintegration and for selecting the optimum scale for disintegration is proposed based on the efficiency analysis of 2007. The model is verified by comparing the mean efficiency score of the EDDs derived using proposed model with that of existing ones. It is found that overall efficiency of proposed model is higher than the existing system. Reliability of the overall efficient EDDs is also examined to check the robustness of the CCR result for the same year. This study gives an assessment of UPCL to monitor and diagnose the changes in the efficiency of EDDs, so it will help regulators to formulate more effective policies on deregulation and disintegration and to determine the appropriate efficiency improvement measures when imposing yardstick competition on electric utilities.

Going for Broke: Optimizing Investments in Distressed Debt

How should governments and financial intermediaries restructure and optimize portfolios of distressed debt? What are the gains from doing so, and where do the gains come from? This paper shows that debt restructuring is Pareto improving and lucrative for borrowers, lenders, and investors in distressed debt. First, the methodological contribution of the paper is a parsimonious model for the pricing and optimal restructuring of distressed debt, i.e., loans that are under-collateralized and are at risk of borrower default, where willingness to pay and ability to pay are at issue. Distressed-debt investing is a unique portfolio problem in that (a) it requires optimization over all moments, not just mean and variance, and (b) with debt restructuring, the investor can endogenously alter the return distribution of the candidate securities before subjecting them to portfolio construction. Second, economically, we show that post-restructuring return distributions of distressed debt portfolios are attractive to fixed-income investors, with risk-adjusted certainty equivalent yield pick-ups in the hundreds of basis points, suggesting the need for more efficient markets for distressed debt, and shedding light on the current debate regarding the use of eminent domain in mitigating real estate failures.

On the reuse and recommendation of model refactoring specifications

Refactorings can be used to improve the structure of software artefacts while preserving the semantics of the encapsulated information. Various types of refactorings have been proposed and implemented for programming languages (e.g., Java or C#). With the advent of (MDSD), a wealth of modelling languages rises and the need for restructuring models similar to programs has emerged. Since parts of these modelling languages are often very similar, we consider it beneficial to reuse the core transformation steps of refactorings across languages. In this sense, reusing the abstract transformation steps and the abstract participating elements suggests itself. Previous work in this field indicates that refactorings can be specified generically to foster their reuse. However, existing approaches can handle certain types of modelling languages only and solely reuse refactorings once per language. In this paper, a novel approach based on role models to specify generic refactorings is presented. Role models are suitable for this problem since they support declaration of roles which have to be played in a certain context. Assigned to generic refactoring, contexts are different refactorings and roles are the participating elements. We discuss how this resolves the limitations of previous works, as well as how specific refactorings can be defined as extensions to generic ones. The approach was implemented in our tool Refactory based on the (EMF) and evaluated using multiple modelling languages and refactorings. In addition, this paper investigates on the recommendation of refactoring specifications. This is motivated by the fact that language designers have many possibilities to enable refactorings in their modelling languages with regard to the language structures. To overcome this problem and to support language designers in deciding which refactorings to enable, we propose a solution and a prototypical implementation.