New Strand Of Research Research Articles

Agile methodologies between software development and music production: an empirical study

Over the past 20 years agile methodologies revolutionized Information Technology, offering tremendous opportunities for the development of Software Engineering as an independent discipline. More specifically, agile methodologies contributed to enhancing the effectiveness and the speed of the production process as well as to improving the productivity and motivations of software developers organized in high performing teams. The agile philosophy can be and has been applied in different contexts and across several domains. This work analyses the relationship between Agile methodologies used by software engineers and the practices pursued by musicians in their daily lives. Our findings suggests that collaborative, strongly planned software development life cycle models (such as Waterfall, V-model, iterative, and Spiral) are not adequate models to describe the daily practices of musical composers. This is because their work requires a lot of flexibility, which such models intrinsically lack, because they are oriented to ensuring some form of monitorable progress. Interestingly, our findings also show that nine out of 12 Agile Principles are consciously or unconsciously followed by musicians in their practices. This suggests that there are some deep connections between these twoprima faciedifferent fields, which are both very creative. Even though our findings await replication, possibly with larger statistical samples, they contribute to open up a new strand of research in the field.

Knowledge and knowledge gaps in semantic memory of technical artifacts

Two hypotheses have been considered regarding the relation between knowledge and semantic knowledge gaps: a “knowledge clash” hypothesis predicting more awareness of knowledge gaps with increasing knowledge, and a “knowledge deficit” hypothesis whereby the relation is the opposite. In order to examine these hypotheses, graduate and undergraduate students were asked to state what they knew and what they did not know about a sample of familiar and unfamiliar artifacts. None of the above hypotheses accounted for the results. Instead, knowledge was found to be differently related to various types of unknown features: increasing knowledge was related to less unknown features of the artifacts' function and to more unknown features about contingency relations. Unknown features of the artifacts’ behaviors were frequently reported in the two knowledge conditions. The results suggest new strands of research on the metacognition of “not knowing.”

A study of Michelangelo's David from an accountability perspective: Antecedents of dialogic accounting in the early Florentine Renaissance

This article contributes to the accounting history literature through an investigation of the realisation and placement of Michelangelo's David from an accountability perspective. Using a contextual approach to thematic archival research, we explore whether and how early dialogic accounting (DA) tools were adopted by a hybrid organisation – the Opera of Santa Maria del Fiore in Florence – during the period of the statute of David's realisation (1501−1504). Through our analysis of primary and secondary sources, this study sheds light on an early Renaissance accountability system that was based on consensus building and DA. The novel contribution of this study is thus threefold. First, this article adds an early Renaissance analysis to the literature concerning DA. Second, we reveal a new strand of research for accounting historians in regard to the historical period and context of this study. Third, we extend the literature's focus to a hybrid organisation that was financed by the Republic of Florence, associated with the Church and managed by commercial guilds.

A Survey on Design of Pavement Blocks Made from Waste of Plastic, Glass & Aluminum Foil

Abstract: The aim of the project is to recycle the plastic waste into a paver block and to reduce the cost of the paver block when compared to that of a convention concrete paver block. Plastic waste has become a major problem these days. As plastic is non bio degradable material it blocks drains, pollutes rivers and wreaks havoc on the environment. At present nearly 56lakhs tones of plastic waste is produced in India per year. As the degradation of the plastic waste is a very slow process so here is an idea of mixing sand into melted salvaged plastic to make a solid, durable material as a paving slab. Hence, we have a “eco-friendly” paving block. Unlike other processes of making porous blocks, which usually involve incineration to burn combustible materials in order to form pores with implication of high carbon emission, the proposed process is non-destructive in that the blocks are merely baked at low temperature, sufficient to melt the waste plastic that gets diffused within the body of the blocks. The compressive strengths after addition of waste plastic are same as normal block strength. And also reduce the water absorption capacity of block is reduced compare with nominal block. Efflorescence values were low than the normal block. The blocks are likely to add energy efficiency in buildings and help create economic value to manufacturers, thereby, encouraging the ecosystem of plastic waste management involving all actors in the value chain. A mathematical model is developed to predict compressive strength of blocks at varying plastic contents. The study introduces a new strand of research on sustainable thermoplastic waste management. Keywords: Plastic waste, plastic pavement block, eco-friendly paver block, aluminum foil, glass waste

Rethinking Associations between Distal Factors and Learning: Attachment, Approaches to Learning and the Mediating Role of Academic Emotions

The present study belongs to a new strand of research in learning in higher education focusing on distal and emotional factors that contribute to learning. The purpose of the study was to explore the mediating role of academic emotions in the relationship between adult attachment styles and approaches to learning. The sample consists of 527 Greek university students (72 were men and 455 were women) attending a fourth-year full degree program. They completed the following questionnaires: The Experiences in Close Relationships-Relationship Structure Questionnaire, the Achievement Emotions Questionnaire, and the Approaches to Learning and Studying Inventory. Results revealed the mediating role of academic emotions in the relationship between both types of attachment and approaches to learning. Avoidant and anxious individuals seem to keep the same pattern of behavior in their studying as they do in their interpersonal relationships. It is suggested that attachment can function as an innate emotion regulation system that modulates students’ emotions. Findings are discussed in the context of recent literature. Future implications for higher education students regarding close relationships are also discussed.

A Multivariate Approach to Lexical Diversity in Constrained Language

Empirical Translation Studies have recently extended the scope of research to other forms of constrained and mediated communication, including bilingual communication, editing, and intralingual translation. Despite the diversity of factors accounted for so far, this new strand of research is yet to take the leap into intermodal comparisons. In this paper we look at Lexical Diversity (LD), which under different guises, has been studied both within Translation Studies (TS) and Second Language Acquisition (SLA). LD refers to the rate of word repetition, and vocabulary size and depth, and previous research indicates that translated and non-native language tends to be less lexically diverse. There is, however, no study that would investigate both varieties within a unified methodological framework. The study reported here looks at LD in spoken and written modes of constrained and non-constrained language. In a two-step analysis involving Exploratory Factor Analysis and linear mixed-effects regression models we find interpretations to be least lexically diverse and written non-constrained texts to be most diverse. Speeches delivered impromptu are less diverse than those read out loud and the non-constrained texts are more sensitive to such delivery-related differences than the constrained ones.

The rationale of Brexit and the theories of European integration

Research background: Recent developments have raised doubts on future sustainability of the EU as successful political and economic organization. Many phenomena ? from euro and sovereign debt crisis to the emergence of right-wing, populist and anti-liberal movements ? have brought into question the actual foundations of European integration, be it economic cooperation or a community of values. This problem became even more topical after the Brexit referendum. For this very reason a new strand of research on European disintegration has lately began to appear. It was supposed to fill in a serious gap in the body of literature, which had so far optimistically focused on integration processes.
 Purpose of the article: The aim of our work is to reflect on Brexit ? which is an exemplification of disintegration tendencies ? through the lenses of theories of European integration in order to find out how well the two match each other. We also try to identify the dynamics Brexit may provoke in theoretical research and in the future of European integration.
 Methods: We take three most influential theories of integration, i.e. neofunctionalism, intergovernmentalism and post-functionalism, and attempt to analyze Brexit by means of their main assumptions and internal logic.
 Findings & Value added: We believe that only post-functionalism is able to satisfactorily explain Brexit by turning to mass politics and questions of identity instead of economic rationality. We also suggest that analysis of such issues will become more important in future research on European integration.

Overcoming pathological IT use: How and why IT addicts terminate their use of games and social media

IT addiction scholarship indicates that pathological use of IT such as games or social media is on the rise. While pathological IT use, such as addictive behavior, can negatively affect private, social and work life, individuals displaying addictive behavior toward an IT are challenged to overcome their addiction. In this study, we aim to offer insights into how and why IT addicts stop their pathological IT use by terminating to use the IT. We interview individuals who have overcome their IT addiction to games and social media, finding that some IT addicts terminate their use of the IT without external support because they had a strong intrinsic or extrinsic motivation or because they felt stressed, frustrated or guilty. Other IT addicts required external support, contacting a therapist after unsuccessful attempts to quit or after experiencing a shocking event. This study establishes a new strand of research into ending pathological IT use and becoming an ex-user. We theorize IT addiction as part of the IT lifecycle alongside adoption, usage and discontinuation. We also offer practical insights into why some individuals can terminate pathological IT use on their own, while others require external support.

The Mediating Role of Implicit and Explicit Emotion Regulation in the Relationship Between Academic Emotions and Approaches to Learning: Do Defense Styles Matter?

The present study belongs to a new strand of research in learning in higher education focusing on emotions and emotion regulation, including defense mechanisms. The purpose of the study was to investigate the mediating role of implicit and explicit emotion regulation in the relationship between academic emotions and approaches to learning. Participants were composed of 226 undergraduates (40 males and 186 females studying in a social science department). They completed the following questionnaires: Emotion Regulation Questionnaire, Student Experience of Emotions Inventory, Defense Style Questionnaire, and Approaches to Learning and Studying Inventory. Both the moderating (interaction) and the mediational (indirect) effects were examined using the PROCESS program. Results failed to indicate the moderating role of emotion regulation in the association between academic emotions and approaches to learning. Instead, results revealed the dominant mediating role of emotion regulation and particularly the role of immature defense style in the relationship between negative emotions and approaches to learning. Moreover, reappraisal and suppression seemed to act as mediators in the relationship between positive and negative emotions with deep and surface approaches, respectively. The results of the study are discussed in the context of the recent literature. Implications for higher-education institutions regarding the role of unconscious cognitive processes are also discussed.

Students’ Practiced Language Policies:

Language policy research has traditionally focused on macro-level policies while language practices have been studied vis-à-vis macro policies to ascertain the success or failure of the policies. Policy as practice has only recently been conceptualized. This new strand of research argues that the real language policy of a community or institution resides in its practice. Language-in-education policies have traditionally advocated keeping learners’ first language separate from the target language fearing cross-contamination and hoping that this makes learning more effective. This “two solitudes” approach largely ignores what really happens in the classroom. Ethnographic research, however, shows that learners switch codes fluidly. The term “translanguaging” has been coined to describe such usual and normal practice of bilingualism without diglossic functional separation. Drawing upon the theories of practiced language policy and translanguaging, and adopting linguistic ethnography as method, I explored the “implicit and deducible” rules of language preference, that is, the practiced language policies of students in two language classes at the University of Dhaka. The findings show that students orient to a practiced language policy in which translanguaging is the norm and boundaries between languages become permeable.

A Stochastic Model with Penalized Coefficients for Spatial Price Comparisons: An Application to Regional Price Indexes in Italy

This paper focuses on a new strand of research that uses stochastic approach for making spatial price comparisons. We propose a novel method to account for the presence of spatial dependencies in consumer prices and consequently in price indexes by imposing penalization conditions on the estimation of traditional CPD models leading to the spatially‐penalized country‐product‐dummy (SP‐CPD) model. The paper proposes an appropriate estimation strategy, which enables us to simultaneously estimate all the parameters in the model, including the smoothing parameter of the penalization term instead of determining it externally. In order to estimate spatial price indexes for areas lacking in price data, we suggest applying the kriging methodology to the price indexes obtained from the SP‐CPD model. This new approach is applied to official Italian CPI data for constructing regional spatial price indexes for 2014. The results show that price levels are higher in the Northern‐Central regions than in the South.

Recycling waste thermoplastic for energy efficient construction materials: An experimental investigation

A large stream of research has studied the performance of waste plastics impregnated concrete, reporting multiple benefits and advocating its use in construction works. But no study has reported the merits of bricks impregnated with waste plastics. The present paper reports the results of experiments done on bricks made up of varying percentages of waste thermoplastics (0 – 10% by weight) and sand (60 – 70% by weight), holding percentages of fly ash and ordinary Portland cement constant at 15% (by weight) each. Three types of waste thermoplastics were used, forming three separate batches of bricks. The plastics were polycarbonates, polystyrenes, and mixed plastics. The bricks were cured under water for 28 days. Some of the batches were baked at temperatures ranging from 90 °C to 110 °C for 2 hours in order to melt the plastics to form voids. The bricks made with the above-stated compositions were found to possess low thermal conductivity and adequately high compressive strength. The compressive strength of these bricks is observed to be more than 17 MPa, which lies within the upper half of the range of strengths specified for bricks in the IS 1077:1992 standard. The waste plastics impregnated bricks display high thermal resistance, a feature that can add economic value to the brick manufacturers, motivating them to establish the necessary logistics for collection and use of all types of waste thermoplastics. The paper also presents a regression model to predict the compressive strength of bricks at varying plastic contents. The study, thus, introduces a new strand of research on sustainable recycling of waste thermoplastics in the context of the circular economy.

Die Iberische Halbinsel im frühen Mittelalter: Ausgangspunkt für interkulturelle Kontakte zwischen den Ottonen und den andalusischen Muslimen

Abstract In light of two new strands of research, this study’s focus on the contacts between the world of the Iberian Peninsula in the premodern world, and the interest in Christian-Muslim relations globally, brings together two related texts from the early Middle Ages that illustrate a significant proximity between both cultures. Hrotsvit von Gandersheim’s “Pelagius” and the contemporary vita of the abbot Johannes of Gorze demonstrate that 10th-century Christian audiences north of the Alps were considerably informed about the situation in the Iberian Peninsula and made significant efforts to learn about the political and religious conditions there. Together, the literary account and the biographical narrative confirm a much more open exchange between both worlds than has previously been assumed.

Crossing languages – crossing discourses

AbstractRecent studies concerned with historical Germanisms have shown that public discourses in other languages often appropriate German loanwords as frames of reference to interpret political realities and influence collective attitudes. This paper intends to contribute to this new strand of research by investigating discursive transpositions of the historical GermanismKulturkampfin the donor language, German, and two host languages, Polish and English. Originally used mainly in reference to government attempts to reduce the influence of the Catholic Church in Prussia/Germany in the 1870s, this term has come to be used in German and other languages to signify conflicts in various political and cultural contexts. Adopting a triangulated and trilateral approach and the method of corpus-assisted discourse study (CADS), this paper examines the use ofKulturkampfin large collections of Internet and newspaper data in German, English and Polish. The results show how the meaning ofKulturkampfhas been discursively re-contextualised and appropriated to perform local ideological work in public discourses in the three different cultural contexts.

Institutional Logics of Funding Partners and New Venture Survival in an Emerging Market Context

A new strand of research within the entrepreneurial approach to entrepreneurship shifts focus away from broad field-level institutional logics, and their effect on new venture performance, towards an analysis of the performance advantages of logics carried by organizational partners (Pahnke et al., 2015). Drawing on contingency theory, we build on this theoretical argument by demonstrating that the performance advantages of funding partner logics could vary across economic and social jolts in the new venture’s environment. The economic jolt under consideration in this study is inflows of FDI, and the social jolt under consideration in this study is inflows of refugees. We analyze the likelihood of venture failure within the first two years of operation across family, bank, and government funded ventures. We use a sample of 9565 businesses from Jordan founded between 2003 and 2013. Our findings indicate that bank and government funded new ventures tend to perform better overall, but family funded new ventures tend to perform better during economic jolts, and bank funded new ventures tend to perform better during social jolts. The implications of our findings are discussed.

Mapping the operations and supply chain management field: a journal governance perspective

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to address the following research question: how do the interlocking editorial advisory boards (EABs) of operations and supply chain management (OSCM) journals map out the field’s diverse academic communities and how demographically diverse is the field and its communities?Design/methodology/approachThe study applies social network analysis (SNA) to web-based EAB data for 38 journals listed under operations management (OM) in the 2010 ABS Academic Journal Quality Guide.FindingsThe members of EABs of the 38 journals are divided into seven distinct communities which are mapped to the field’s knowledge structures and further aggregated into a core and periphery of the network. A burgeoning community of supply chain management academics forms the core along with those with more traditional interests. Male academics affiliated to the US institutions and to business schools predominate in the sample.Research limitations/implicationsA new strand of research is opened up connecting journal governance networks to knowledge structures in the OSCM field. OM is studied separately from its reference and associated disciplines. The use of the ABS list might attract comments that the study has an implicit European perspective – however the authors do not believe this to be the case.Practical implicationsThe study addresses the implications of the lack of diversity for the practice of OM as an academic discipline.Social implicationsThe confirmation of the dominance of particular characteristics such as male and US-based academics has implications for social diversity of the field.Originality/valueAs the first study of its kind, i.e. SNA of EAB members of OSCM journals, this study marks out a new perspective and acts as a benchmark for the future.

The New Case for Migration Restrictions: An Assessment

For decades, migration economics has stressed the effects of migration restrictions on income distribution in the host country. Recently the literature has taken a new direction by estimating the costs of migration restrictions to global economic efficiency. In contrast, a new strand of research posits that migration restrictions could be not only desirably redistributive, but in fact globally efficient. This is the new economic case for migration restrictions. The case rests on the possibility that without tight restrictions on migration, migrants from poor countries could transmit low productivity (A or Total Factor Productivity) to rich countries--offsetting efficiency gains from the spatial reallocation of labor from low to high-productivity places. We provide a novel assessment, proposing a simple model of dynamically efficient migration under productivity transmission and calibrating it with new macro and micro data. In this model, the case for efficiency-enhancing migration barriers rests on three parameters: transmission, the degree to which origin-country total factor productivity is embodied in migrants; assimilation, the degree to which migrants' productivity determinants become like natives' over time in the host country; and congestion, the degree to which transmission and assimilation change at higher migrant stocks. On current evidence about the magnitudes of these parameters, dynamically efficient policy would not imply open borders but would imply relaxations on current restrictions. That is, the new efficiency case for some migration restrictions is empirically a case against the stringency of current restrictions.

Adaptive cultural transmission biases in children and nonhuman primates

Comparative and evolutionary developmental analyses seek to discover the similarities and differences between humans and non-human species that might illuminate both the evolutionary foundations of our nature that we share with other animals, and the distinctive characteristics that make human development unique. As our closest animal relatives, with whom we last shared common ancestry, non-human primates have been particularly important in this endeavour. Such studies have focused on social learning, traditions, and culture, and have discovered much about the ‘how’ of social learning, concerned with key underlying processes such as imitation and emulation. One of the core discoveries is that the adaptive adjustment of social learning options to different contexts is not unique to human, therefore multiple new strands of research have begun to focus on more subtle questions about when, from whom, and why such learning occurs. Here we review illustrative studies on both human infants and young children and on non-human primates to identify the similarities shared more broadly across the primate order, and the apparent specialisms that distinguish human development. Adaptive biases in social learning discussed include those modulated by task comprehension, experience, conformity to majorities, and the age, skill, proficiency and familiarity of potential alternative cultural models.

The New Economic Case for Migration Restrictions: An Assessment

For decades, migration economics has stressed the effects of migration restrictions on income distribution in the host country. Recently the literature has taken a new direction by estimating the costs of migration restrictions to global economic efficiency. In contrast, a new strand of research posits that migration restrictions could be not only desirably redistributive, but in fact globally efficient. This is the new economic case for migration restrictions. The case rests on the possibility that without tight restrictions on migration, migrants from poor countries could transmit low productivity (A or Total Factor Productivity) to rich countries – offsetting efficiency gains from the spatial reallocation of labor from low to high-productivity places.We provide a novel assessment, proposing a simple model of dynamically efficient migration under productivity transmission and calibrating it with new macro and micro data. In this model, the case for efficiency-enhancing migration barriers rests on three parameters: transmission, the degree to which origin-country total factor productivity is embodied in migrants; assimilation, the degree to which migrants' productivity determinants become like natives' over time in the host country; and congestion, the degree to which transmission and assimilation change at higher migrant stocks. On current evidence about the magnitudes of these parameters, dynamically efficient policy would not imply open borders but would imply relaxations on current restrictions. That is, the new efficiency case for some migration restrictions is empirically a case against the stringency of current restrictions.

Revisiting the Idea of “Critical Aspects”

ABSTRACTOver the years, two new strands of research have evolved from the phenomenographic research tradition: the first concerns advancement of the variation theory of learning, whilst the second involves development of the learning study approach. In this paper, the conceptual frameworks of phenomenography, variation theory, and learning studies are critically examined, and we revisit the notion of “critical aspects,” one of the running threads connecting the three research strands. More specifically, we highlight the notion’s relational nature and its relationship with so-called irrelevant aspects. We further argue that we must take care not to lose sight of its connection to the basic tenets of the wider phenomenographic research paradigm to ensure that learning studies make a powerful contribution to education.