Time In Academia Research Articles

What about dual-earner households in jobs–housing balance research? An essential issue in transport geography

Within the last decade considerable concern has been expressed about increasing commuting times and their associated negative effects on traffic congestion and air pollution within metropolitan areas. The links between commuting time and low-density, dispersed urban forms have emerged as culprits, with attention often focused on how to reshape cities in ways that can help reduce these problems. The idea of creating a balance between jobs and housing within different commuting catchment areas of a city has been prominent for some time in academia, as well with policy makers, as an urban and transportation policy for reducing these problems. The concept of jobs–housing balance states that all areas of a city should have sufficient housing for employees near employment concentrations, and vice versa.

Academic Shape Shifting: Gender, Management and Identities in Sweden and England

This article considers gender and managerial identities in organizational life, taking the recent change in higher education in Sweden and England with the coming of the new public management as the context in which to explore these issues. In reviewing the literature on gender identity and organization/management, which has moved from a pre-occupation with difference to an examination of the complex inter-relationship between gender and organization, an attempt is made to operationalize the concept of positionality, using insights from the work of Alcoff and Melucci. It is argued that Academic Shape Shifting is developed by academics during their time in academia, as well as in defensive and proactive response to the recent managerial reforms. A number of indicative responses to the recent changes are identified. These are: the Stressed Professor, the Managerial Advocate, the Administrative Patrician, the Accidental Female, the Academic Chameleon and the Resolute Researcher. As Academic Shape Shifting is used by social individuals in interaction with others, at particular moments in time and in different circumstances, it is concluded that the implications suggest complexity in the changing character of university life, with female academics in middle range positions facing more difficult compromises than their male counterparts.

Ethnobotany: A new discipline

The beginnings of ethnobotanical investigations, viewed through the prism of time, are deemed to belong to the first explorers and adventurers of the Old Con tinent. They were the first to bring, from their voyages, the information about use of plants in native populations. However, the 19 century brings the precision, scrutiny and accuracy in research. It was in 1873 that the term aboriginal botany was used the first time in academia, and only a few years later the new term ethno-botany was introduced and defined. In the course of the twentieth century the interest in ethnobotany begins to rise rapidly and the scientists, besides in the use of plants, are also interested in the manner in which people notice and manage them, as well as in the mutual relation between the human community and plants which they depend on. The major basic focus of this discipline is actually the botanical lore of tra ditional indigenous peoples. Generations of biologists and anthropologists are trying to learn and study various aspects of the ethno-scientific knowledge, and to establish and explain the difference between ethnobotanical evidence and the tradi tional knowledge. Therefore there are nowadays three main approaches in the study of traditional botanical knowledge: utilitarian, cognitive, and ecological approaches. The study of TBK is primarily based on the attempt to understand the traditional use of plants so that in co-operation with scientific knowledge of the Western civilization we could more easily collect and keep the ethnobotanical facts to be realized in various projects as a result of the integration of these Systems. The goals of such projects is to secure the rural development and preserva tion of traditional cultures, as well as the protection of biodiversity while also helping the Western science in discovering new drugs and raw materials invaluable to this world. Ethnobotany is the science in its infancy but it can offer much to the mod em mankind, both in the study of our past and in preservation of its traces in many traditional societies. Our task is to preserve - in co-operation with local populations throughout the world - the precious ethnobotanical material and to make attempts to help the modem man in the eternal struggle for health, time, and life.