Search

This article examines the effect upon damages for personal injury of methods used in the United States of America to calculate loss of future earnings. The work of lawyers is examined from the perspective of labour economists. The damages calculated by using these alternative methods are compared with those actually awarded in over a hundred cases determined by courts in England and Wales. This interdisciplinary and comparative study reveals that the tort system fails to satisfy one of its main objectives in that it does not provide recipients of damages with ‘full’ compensation.

Trustworthiness is the core feature of the most productive and effective organizations. While the market value of an economic or business entity would mostly correspond to its trust-equity, however, an erosion of trust-equity will cause the market-value to nose dive. Studies have demonstrated that the ‘distrust’ or a ‘lack of trustworthiness’ can cost a business or government billions of dollars. Lack of trust within an organization can result in employee disengagement and organizational atrophy. An untrustworthy organization will not only alienate its employees, it will also cause damage to customer interests. In this article, we postulate how trustworthiness can act as a dialectical fulcrum between the diametrically opposing market/social forces within an economic/political organization—such as self-interest versus public good, cooperation versus competition, freedom versus control, labor versus capital, and production versus consumption.

Acquiring information from outside firms is crucial for a firms’ innovation output. According to the transaction cost perspective, firms can increase the information flow between them by integratin...

PurposeThe paper aims to clarify some of the most important issues pertinent to the emerging field of Islamic branding (IB). Namely, it answers the following questions: what does IB mean? Why is it important and what makes it different from conventional branding? What are its types? What is the future of IB?Design/methodology/approachThis is a conceptual research paper that builds on the author's vast expertise and knowledge of the Islamic market and Islamic marketing and branding practices, ethics, and motivations to answer the various research questions.FindingsAlthough IB is qualitatively different from conventional branding, international branding experts still view it from the same perspective and, therefore, use conventional branding techniques when branding to Muslims. The motivations to underlying IB are not fully appreciated and the concept remains bound by an abstract understanding of Halal and Haram.Research limitations/implicationsThis is a conceptual paper and, as such, it is subject to the same limitations surrounding similar conceptual academic works.Practical implicationsThe paper will be of great value to marketers because it will help them improve their branding strategies when targeting the Muslim consumer and engaging the Islamic market.Social implicationsThe IB practices have the potential to add a human touch to the exploitive conventional branding practices common among today's marketers.Originality/valueThis is the first paper of its kind that conceptualizes and clarifies the various facets of IB.

In this paper we critically review the extant literature on outrage to show that some of the assumptions of the working definitions on outrage are not widely shared, hindering thus cumulative progress of research on this topic. We identify the issue of the disinterestedness of the experiencer of the emotion as a key barrier to understand the moral character of outrage and other emotions. By examining the challenges that this requirement brings, we show that a different characterization of moral emotion is needed. We propose an alternative analysis of outrage, based on a socio-constructionist perspective on emotions. The social norms that underpin the expression, negotiation and prognosis of moral anger allow a richer characterization of the moral character of emotions in general. The constitutive role of social norms is highlighted to show how these ideas can help advance the empirical research on outrage.

Research at the intersection of feminist organizational theory and techno-science scholarship notes the important role that gender plays in technology design, adoption, implementation, and use and how technology shapes and is shaped by gender and gendered work life. While governments are committed to advancing gender equity, feminist theory is rarely applied to the study of technology in government, thus limiting our ability to fully understand gendered outcomes of e-government. In this paper, we argue that e-government research and practice can benefit from drawing from three streams of feminist research: 1) studying gender as social construction, 2) researching gender bias in data, technology use and design, and 3) assessing gendered representation in technology management. Drawing from feminist research, we offer six propositions and several research questions for advancing research on e-government and gender. We contribute to research on gender and e-government by advocating for a feminist approach to the analysis of the adoption and implementation of technology in government settings from the perspective of public managers and employees.

This paper argues that in the United States, at all levels of government, agencies charged with enforcing legislation that prohibits invidious discrimination have interpreted their mandates in ways that threaten Americans’ First Amendment and due process rights. This is not surprising, given that agencies’ current cultures and incentive structures incline them strongly toward enhancing enforcement and ignoring countervailing considerations. Legal scholars should heed these examples and think twice before wholeheartedly embracing administrative constitutionalism.

Previous research on the Bullwhip Effect shows that information visibility—Point-Of-Sale (POS) data or supply-chain partner-inventory data—can reduce the amplification of orders in a supply chain. This study compiles and analyzes the data from two previous experiments with the beer game (Croson and Donohue, 2003, 2006) to gain insight on the specific mechanisms that decrease order amplification. By structuring the data as a panel and using a fixed-effects estimation model, we find that additional supply-chain-level information (e.g., POS and inventory data) leads subjects to react less aggressively to changes in their own inventory and to pay more attention to the supply line of orders placed. Furthermore, our analysis shows that such effects are more pronounced for upstream subjects. Our findings provide insight into the role that additional supply-chain information play on subjects' orders in the beer game. publishedVersion

The COVID -19 forced the education sector to go online, it has started in Jan 2020 in Nepal; Since then the schools, colleges, and universities have adopted online teaching. How far the parents are ready for the preparation of online classes, availability of internet connection, power supply problems, and so on was not considered and the involvement of the parent was also highly accepted. The research intended to find out the view of students, parents, and teachers in online teaching and learning. How far it is effective on education system also looked into. Will it be useful for a longer period or just for a short duration to keep busy with the children? What could be the backdrops of online education? what level of people will have enough benefit from the online study? The questionnaire was distributed among the teachers, parents, and students of schools of Kathmandu. The SPSS statistical tool used to analyze their views, it was identified that both teachers, students, and parents are not satisfied with the online teaching and learning, 64.3 percent of the student did not like the online learning but interestingly they have also given some view to conducting online classes. Parents said this is only for higher education and for the short term. The research has come up with recommendations when conducting online classes, physical facilities, trained teachers, and flexibility in curriculum construction and competency-based learning will serve to some extent of its objectives.

Scholars have examined the persistent heterogeneity of firm performance from the entry-order effect perspective. In the international business literature, this perspective has been highlighted in research on early internationalization (i.e., the born global strategy). While prior work has focused on the heterogeneity of firm characteristics and capabilities, we present a demand-side view of early internationalization by focusing on network effects. Prior theoretical work on network effects has predicted that when network effects are prominent, survival is challenging for latecomers because of the installed bases of first movers in the global market. However, we see many cases, such as the mobile instant messenger (MIM) market, where no single winner dominates the global market and where many latecomers have survived by implementing early internationalization. We build upon Brian Arthur’s model of demand-side dynamics. The findings suggest that latecomers may overcome their disadvantages by pursuing early internationalization, especially when the direct network effects (i.e., social network effects) are stronger than the indirect network effects (i.e., installed base effects). The underlying rationale is that country borders often demarcate the reach of the direct network effect, limiting the power of installed bases.

We establish a mapping between the Chinese domestic agency ratings and S&P global ratings by matching firms' expected default probabilities (PDs) estimated using a dynamic logit model with the actual default rates of S&P ratings. The Chinese agency ratings are inflated by ten notches in light of the S&P rating standard. For example, the domestic AAA, AA, and A correspond to S&P BB+, BB, and BB- by median default probability. The PD-implied S&P ratings outperform the domestic agency ratings in predicting default and complement the latter explaining credit spread. Their superior default predictive power originates from using dynamic operating efficiency-related information. In contrast, the agency ratings give more weight to scale-based firm characteristics.

This chapter discusses the synergy between leadership, unity and self-determination using the Cross River State’s experience. It argues that one of the most important symbols that can ignite unity or disunity is leadership, understood in this context as a two-way process that motivates leaders and followers to identify and pursue common goals and general aspirations. It is argued here that only a synergy between leaders and followers that can harness and optimize the fortunes and developmental strides of a people. As the analysis here shows, unity of action and purpose was crucial for the creation, growth and development of Cross River State. The reflections and introspections in this study are expected to serve as the anvil for the people of Cross River State to rededicate themselves to the ideals of their past heroes, whose successes in the face of seemingly insurmountable odds should serve as testament to the fact that any people, united in purpose, vision, mission and action will always overcome the obstacles on their way, however daunting. We begin with the birth and early history of Cross River State.

Consumers with multicultural experiences are increasingly involved in the process of value creation, yet there is a lack of understanding of how multiculturalism affects consumer creativity. Based on the dual perspectives of multiculturalism and loose-tight culture, this paper illustrates the mechanism of multicultural experience on consumer creativity and the moderating effect of loose-tight culture on this relationship. Two studies were conducted to validate the theoretical model. The results revealed that multicultural experiences enhance consumer creativity, cognitive complexity mediates the relationship between the two, and loose-tight culture moderates the relationship between multicultural experiences and consumer creativity. The results provide a new perspective about culture and consumer creativity, expanding the study of culture and consumer creativity from the cultural value dimension to the social norm dimension, enriching the research on creativity as a cognitive process at the consumer level, providing guidance and reference for companies to better stimulate and utilize consumer creativity.

This paper explores the interplay of feature-based explainable AI (XAI) techniques, information processing, and human beliefs. Using a novel experimental protocol, we study the impact of providing users with explanations about how an AI system weighs inputted information to produce individual predictions (LIME) on users' weighting of information and beliefs about the task-relevance of information. On the one hand, we find that feature-based explanations cause users to alter their mental weighting of available information according to observed explanations. On the other hand, explanations lead to asymmetric belief adjustments that we interpret as a manifestation of the confirmation bias. Trust in the prediction accuracy plays an important moderating role for XAI-enabled belief adjustments. Our results show that feature-based XAI does not only superficially influence decisions but really change internal cognitive processes, bearing the potential to manipulate human beliefs and reinforce stereotypes. Hence, the current regulatory efforts that aim at enhancing algorithmic transparency may benefit from going hand in hand with measures ensuring the exclusion of sensitive personal information in XAI systems. Overall, our findings put assertions that XAI is the silver bullet solving all of AI systems' (black box) problems into perspective.

In the European Union, the algorithmic trading regime introduced by MiFID II requires firms to test and simulate their algorithms before deploying them on the market. While there have been important contributions to the overall scope of the EU algorithmic trading regime, the new testing requirements have remained largely untested by scholars. Against this background, the first half of this paper examines the algo testing framework from a legal perspective. This includes the way algorithms must be tested, the testing environments, the responsibilities of the market participants and the role of the supervisory authorities. It is showed that although being generally quite prescriptive, the crucial elements for the control of algorithms remain too vague. Subsequently, the paper seeks to evaluate whether testing can help to control algorithms in securities trading from a regulatory policy perspective. To do this, three issues are explored: firstly, the possibility of firms to choose the testing process themselves (including in-house testing), leading to questions regarding self-regulation; secondly, the overall effectiveness of the testing regime, in light of the interactions algorithms have with the market; finally, implications of the use of algorithmic trading systems based on AI or ML. The central findings suggest that clearer rules regarding (self-)testing are desirable and that only network-sensitive market simulations can help to control algorithms in securities trading.

This article analyzes the exclamation point (and the overuse of it) from a legal writing professor’s perspective. First, it traces the history of the exclamation point. Second, it addresses how both grammarians and legal writing experts have suggested using the exclamation point on a limited basis. Third, it discusses studies showing that women use the point more than men to live up to society’s expectation of friendliness and that, according to one study, use of an exclamation point can lead to impaired judgments. Finally, the article addresses advocates of the use of the point who believe it can help lighten the tone when it comes to digital communication.

There is broad international consensus that ex ante regulation is needed to address the market dominance of the very largest digital platforms and that there are benefits to having broadly coherent regulatory approaches across jurisdictions. Regulation in any one jurisdiction will have extra-territorial effects, and inconsistent regulation will create unnecessary costs, reduce service quality, and dampen innovation. Greater coherency in the regulation of digital markets should make regulation more effective, more proportionate, and better able to limit any negative consequences. This article considers current US and EU proposals. We compare and contrast these two proposals through an economic lens, with a focus on substance rather than legal process and enforcement. We find substantial similarity of intent and approach between the US and EU proposals but also some important divergences, which highlight areas for further consideration by the EU and the US. We note in particular that the EU proposal does not include a provision analogous to a US proposal for strengthening the merger test applicable to acquisitions by large platforms, but that it should. More generally, the more the two sets of proposals can learn from each other, the better and more coherent the final regulations are likely to be.

Public celebrations and discussions about International Women’s Day on social media give an opportunity to investigate how citizens engage with the event and the effect that it may have. This study examines English #InternationalWomensDay tweets from the UK and USA, focusing on differences between tweets from males and females. Whilst males mainly tweeted to appreciate the achievements of all or specified women, aligning with the United Nations perspective, females were more likely to draw upon postfeminist concepts of individual empowerment and femininity, although there were also some fourth wave feminism tweets. Females also called for women to support women and tweeted just to celebrate the day. The results suggest that different waves of feminism coexist within International Women’s Day tweets and the event is a celebration more than a campaign.

Military expenditure shares significantly affect the relationship between the risk of civil conflict outbreak and natural resources. We show that a significant positive correlation between the risk of civil conflict outbreak and resource rents is limited to countries with low military expenditure shares. In countries with high military expenditure shares there is no significant relationship between the risk of civil conflict outbreak and rents from natural resources. An important message is thus that a conflict resource curse is absent in countries with sufficiently large military expenditure shares. However, there is a trade-off: the larger military expenditure shares, the smaller is the effect that resource rents have on economic growth and democracy.

The high number of educated unemployment is partly due to the gap in the learning process with the world of work. To reduce this gap, higher education institutions in the health sector need to work together with hospitals in providing education, as a program to align education with industry and the world of work. This study aims to analyze the effectiveness of measuring education performance in hospitals based on the Balanced Scorecard, by examining the indirect effect of the learning and growth perspective on the customer perspective. This research is a quantitative inferential study, with a cross-sectional study approach. The data used to measure performance consists of primary data and secondary data, which are sourced from apprentices, assistants, heads of installations, employees, events, and documents of the Lung Hospital dr. Ario Wirawan, Salatiga. This research analysis method used Partial Least Square Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM) with SmartPLS version 3.2.9. The results showed positive influence from the learning and growth perspective on the internal business process perspective, the internal business process perspective on the financial perspective, and the customer's financial perspective. The research conclusion explains that there is an indirect effect of learning and growth perspectives on customer perspectives. The results of this study are expected to be useful as an evaluation material for management for strategic planning of education in hospitals.

The purpose of the study is to spot the explanations for corporate implementation of environmental data in their inner decision-making processes. The main focuses on the explanations helps perceive manager practices and examine the role vie by cost management in resolution environmental issues.The study adopts associate degree exploratory analysis approach. The analysis technique is predicated on field studies of nine mining industries of Jordan. This study is braced by the eco-efficiency theory, so as to unravel intricacy in interviewing the managers, so the study adopted the theme of a structured form and extra phone interviews were also conducted. The findings divulge that environmental cost accounting data is quite qualified to shore up internal decision-making processes as well as external communication. It inveterate the gap between company headquarters communication and concern perspective. The findings show somewhat poor awareness of the connection between environmental and economic performance nevertheless growing awareness of the positive relation among environmental stance and company image cannot be neglected. The research is targeted on nine business organizations thus the results don't seem to be extended on the far side the respondents. The study highlights why environmental data is employed and why environmental prices area unit measured thus on investigate the explanations for his or her adoption at intervals business organizations, to boost the effectiveness of environmental data and facilitate the diffusion of environmental accounting practices. The research identifies the explanations for the adoption of environmental data in internal decision-making processes, the gaps within the logical adoption of environmental criteria and highlights components supportive in tracing the pathways for additional analysis on environmental accounting practices.

In an ideal world every single meeting between law students and professors, or between beginning lawyers and their supervisors, should leave supervisors impressed by their charges and junior lawyers/students with a clear sense of direction for their work. We do not live in that ideal world. This Article seeks to improve those supervisory meetings, and to do so from the perspective of the ones under supervision. We posit there is a genuine art to getting the best supervision possible, and that doing so can be both learned and taught. We first unpack some of the disconnects and hidden assumptions that can hinder effective supervisory meetings. We observe that participants in supervisory meetings may have very different expectations about the roles of the participants. We further explore the relational aspects of supervision and note that a shared sense of responsibility for supervision promotes more effective supervisory interactions. Next, the Article turns to considering what law professors can do to prepare law students to get the most out of feedback from their supervisors. We conclude that teaching law students to adjust their attributions toward growth, to set clear and achievable goals, and to be thoughtfully self-reflective, will maximize their learning in any academic and professional supervision.

One way in which the law is often related to new technological developments is as an external restriction. Lawyers are frequently asked whether a new technology is compatible with the law. This implies an asymmetry between technology and the law. Technology appears dynamic, the law stable. We know, however, that this image of the relationship between technology and the law is skewed. The right to data protection itself is an innovative reaction to the law from the early days of mass computing and automated data processing. The paper explores how an essential aspect of AI-technologies, their lack of transparency, might support a different understanding of the right to data protection. From this different perspective, the right to data protection is not regarded as a fundamental right of its own but rather as a doctrinal enhancement of each fundamental right against the abstract dangers of digital data collection and processing. This understanding of the right to data protection shifts the perspective from the individual data processing operation to the data processing system and the abstract dangers connected with it. The systems would not be measured by how they can avoid or justify the processing of some personal data but by the effectiveness of the mechanisms employed to avert the abstract dangers associated with a specific system. This shift in perspective should also allow an assessment of AI-systems despite their lack of transparency.

The Open University Systems of Pangasinan State University as one component embraced the changes brought by the COVID-19 Pandemic. The role of the established online institution is not exempted from the challenges in the implementation of flexible learning. Educators do not have any choice but to adopt technological tools such as video conferencing and learning management systems for continuity. In line with the current study, the main objective of this study is to determine the Challenges and practices of Open University Systems in Instructional Delivery during the COVID-19 Pandemic by determining its practice based on the readiness model being implemented. The researchers initiated a focus group discussion for the educators. The study results show that educators in Open University System didn’t encounter serious adjustments during the COVID-19 Pandemic when it comes to delivery of instruction, and Pangasinan State University is right on track despite the disruption brought by the Pandemic.

This chapter identifies two of the key elements in accountable artificial intelligence infrastructure globally -ethical modelling and responsible data. The chapter takes a global perspective and highlights issues of particular relevance to countries which were already in humanitarian crises, such as food insecurity and conflict, explaining how these play into the way in which epidemiological models should be constructed. Furthermore, it examines vulnerability from the perspective of aid recipients and migrants, to evoke the type of guidelines and laws that should be taken into account for data protection and privacy.

The primary objective of this paper is to examine the concept of the pluralism in Islam in accordance with the Qur’anic perspective. What does the Qur’an say about the pluralistic society? Does the Qur’an accept the concept of pluralism? Is there any room for Non-Muslims and atheists in the Muslim society? How does the Qur’an treat any non-Muslim community? It is generally believed that Islam promotes an exclusive society of its own. Yet, the prophet Muhammed lived in a pluralistic society. He accepted the concept of pluralism in his lifetime. The covenant of Medina is a historical document that justifies the concept of pluralism in Islam. This paper examines all these questions in this short article.

Controlling online content with a brand, which performs well in search and social results, is considered a major force when it comes to image analysis in the online environment. Positive reviews, press coverage and other beneficial materials are also considered useful for a brand. In addition, a strong search profile, including links from authoritative sites to positive online content, is a form of advantage. In order to investigate the interaction of Facebook users, a questionnaire was prepared which was distributed and completed by online users. The role of the questionnaire is to capture users' perception of the importance they attach to their image from the perspective of their personal Facebook profile. The objectives of the study were to identify the main reasons why Internet users use the Facebook site, the frequency with which they access the social network, the most used device for logging in and the evaluation of affirmations that confirm or disprove the use of Facebook to promote the personal image. The questionnaire was distributed on the Internet and on several Facebook groups with over 50,000 members, between June 10 and 25, 2019.

Our view of big city environmental problems is powerfully dominated by environmental policy as a response to the Anthropocene. From today’s perspective, it is easy to underestimate the relationship between the environmental history and the history of family and home. This paper uses the famous Home & Garden magazine to trace the ideas of the middle-class reactions to the anthropocenic changes in Bangkok, the capital city of Thailand, in the 1980s and 1990s. The concept of bringing nature home and Bangkok’s environmental deterioration were not contradictory, but rather were closely related. Home and garden decoration carried with it certain ideas, ranging from natural purity and serenity to spirituality and mind regeneration. They were an important method people used to negotiate their lives in the age of Anthropocene.

In a series of cases over the past year, the Supreme Court upheld then struck down COVID-19 restrictions on worship in various states across the country. Those decisions clarified the meaning of the requirement that, under the Free Exercise Clause, laws burdening religion must be “generally applicable.” But they were also criticized for relying on contestable claims that churches and other religious gatherings were comparable to places like grocery stores in their likelihood of spreading the virus. This Article offers a different perspective. In addition to general applicability, the Court has said the Free Exercise Clause also requires that laws be “neutral” with respect to religion. The Court mostly ignored that requirement in the COVID cases. But rightly understood, it may have provided a simpler path for resolving them—and one that didn’t depend on controversial comparisons between churches and campgrounds. Instead, focusing on neutrality would have yielded a common-sense conclusion: where a law or policy grants favored treatment for activities it explicitly deems “essential,” “critical,” or “life-sustaining,” one of those things must be religion. And understanding the rationale behind that conclusion provides important insights about the meaning of the Free Exercise Clause and several other issues at the heart of the First Amendment.

In this article, I trace the development of the term 'cyber'. The purpose of the article is to counter discourses suggesting that the use of 'cyber' is an obstruction to clarity in academic and policy discussions. Thus, I provide a historical overview of the development and usage of 'cyber' from the perspective of the guiding 'Cyber' question, i.e. Whose use of what information and communication technology creates which changes for whom? The primary contribution of the article is providing clarity with respect to the use of the prefix and/or noun 'cyber' in its current primary contexts, i.e. cybersecurity and cybercrime.

Background: Delusions in schizophrenia are commonly approached as empirical false beliefs about everyday reality. Phenomenological accounts, by contrast, have suggested that delusions are more adequately understood as pertaining to different kind of reality-experience. To date, however, the specific nature of delusional reality-experience has not been subject to systematic empirical study. It is also unclear how this alteration of reality-experience should be characterized, which dimensions of experiential life are involved and whether delusional reality may differ from standard reality in various ways. Furthermore, little is known about how delusional patients value and relate to these experiential alterations. This study aimed to investigate the nature of delusional reality-experience, and its subjective apprehension, in individuals with lived experience of delusions and a schizophrenia-spectrum diagnosis. Methods: In this study, individuals with lived experience of delusions and a schizophrenia-spectrum diagnosis formed a purposeful sample. Phenomenologically driven semi-structured interviews were conducted to explore the nature of delusional reality-experience and participants’ subjective valuation of these experiences. Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA), a qualitative method tailored to the in-depth exploration of participants’ first-person perspective, was used to analyze participants’ accounts. Findings: Between Mar 2, 2020 and Sep 30, 2020, 18 adults with a clinical schizophrenia-spectrum diagnosis and lived experience of delusions participated in the interview-study. The findings suggest that delusions are often embedded in wide-ranging alterations of basic reality-experience, involving quasi-ineffable atmospheric and ontological qualities that undermine participants’ sense of the world as unambiguously real, fully present, and shared with others. We also found that delusional reality-experience can differ from standard reality in various way (i.e., in a hypo –and hyper-real form), across multiple dimensions (e.g., meaningfulness, necessity/contingency, detachment/engagement), and that participants are often implicitly or explicitly aware of the distinction between delusional and standard reality. Finally, delusional experience can have an enduring value and meaning that is not fully captured by a strictly medical perspective. Interpretation: Increased awareness and recognition of the distinctive nature of delusional reality-experience, in both clinical and research settings, can improve diagnostic accuracy, explanatory models, and therapeutic support for delusional individuals whose lived realities are not always evident from an everyday perspective. Funding Statement: FWO Flanders - 12Q3319N Declaration of Interests: We declare no competing interests. Ethics Approval Statement: Ethical approval for the study was obtained from Ghent University Hospital Ethics Committee (EC/2019/0042). All participants gave written informed consent, including for use of anonymized quotes.

In a decision handed down on Thursday 18th August 2016, a full panel of Abuja division of the Court of Appeal seemed to have taken a novel but progressive position on interlocutory appeals when the court had the singular opportunity of interpreting the provision of Order 4 Rules 10 and 11 of the Court of Appeal Rules 2011 (which is impari materia with 2016 rules).

The article analyses events that marked the 20th anniversary of the Rome Statute. Building on sociological methods and original data, the article shows how these events were dominated by particular elites and by an orthodox perspective on international criminal justice that excluded of other points of view and professional groups.

Women are currently under-represented among patent holders. Studies show that female inventors, both in industry and in academia, hold fewer patents, file fewer patent applications, and have their applications more often rejected by the patent office as compared to men. As a result female inventors are less likely to receive patent protection for their innovative efforts or to see their inventions commercialized, hindering their ability to participate in highly innovative fields. One measure that could help women gain access to protections for their innovation is by recognizing unregistered patent rights in addition to the existing regime of registered patent rights. The proposed unregistered rights would extend only to inventions that meet the familiar substantive requirements for patentability but would do so without requiring inventors to go through the expensive, complicated, and time-consuming patent examination process. Such unregistered patents would grant exclusive rights to inventions for only a limited period of time and only against direct and knowing copying but nonetheless would provide much needed protections to female innovators, who face many obstacles in obtaining registered patent rights to their innovative efforts.

The optimal development of youngsters is extremely important to society, so it's important to know the physical, social, emotional and academic development of youngsters. during this article discuss about the concept of growth, development, and maturation, make yourself conversant in the views and studies of various psychologists and researchers who have contributed tons within the field of kid development. I shall affect the important issues associated with the influence of nature and nurture on development, and continuous and discontinuous change in development. I shall also discuss intimately some important techniques of gathering date about children. I hope, this text will help to feature some more information into the basket of your knowledge with reference to child development and you'll be ready to observe the youngsters more systematically and contribute to their development during a better way.

It is now conventional wisdom that electric vehicles (EVs) will replace conventional, oil-based, passenger vehicles in the future. This has occurred because of dramatic technological progress, bolstered by government policy support. Despite this consensus, no one really knows how long the transition to EVs will take. This paper claims that two opposing viewpoints on the transition can be discerned from a literature review: one is an incrementalist perspective that views change as gradual and drawn out over decades; the other is an expansionist perspective that claims change is going to happen rapidly with notable results by the end of this decade. This paper reviews the claims of both visions, and discusses the basis for their differing perspectives. And, it posits that even if the expansionist vision prevails, large-scale, near-term carbon reductions should not be expected.

This study is entitled “Social Media Utilization of Mothers and Their Children and Its Effect to their Communication Relationship”. The study was conducted in San Carlos City, Pangasinan, Philippines. This study aimed to determine how the use of social media affects the communication relationship of mothers and their children from the perspective of the matriarchal head of the family – mothers. It tried to analyze whether social media use decreases the personal communication of the respondents to their children. The study also explored the following: relationship of socio-demographic characteristics of respondents to the frequency of social media use; and relationship of social media use and family communication relationship. Based on the results, respondents always use social media 3-4 hours a day during the evening hours while Facebook is the frequently used social media site of the respondents. Respondents observed that their children always use social media at home, however, the face-to-face conversation remained their most frequent way to communicate with their children. More than half (63.3%) of the respondents believed that social media has decreased their personal communication with their children. Those who disagreed with this statement, however, believed that it has not affected their personal communication with their children as they impose discipline and control over them. Moreover, there is no correlation seen between the socio-demographic characteristics of respondents and the social media use of respondents. Thus, regardless of their demographic profile, the frequency of use of social media among families of respondents is the same. However, no relationship is found between social media use and family communication relationship. This then implies that family communication is affected by the use of social media, in a positive way as it is seen to aid the respondents in monitoring their children especially when they are out of their homes.

Speaking plays a vital role in the second language classroom as the ability to communicate one’s own ideas is an essential factor determining language proficiency. However, learners’ anxiety in speaking is a frequent challenge encountered by the language teacher which negatively affects the teaching-learning process. In this light, the present study attempts to investigate the factors affecting second language speaking anxiety in the perspective of learners. The sample was a group of 60 mixed-ability undergraduate students belonging to three different disciplines at a state university. They learn English language as a compulsory subject during the first two years of their study and their curriculum covers essential speaking activities required for day-to-day conversation and for academic purposes. The learners were administered a semi-structured questionnaire in order to identify their perspective on speaking anxiety in the language classroom along with the factors that cause and reduce their anxiety. The findings revealed that while the students agree that oral activities in the language classroom are beneficial, their reluctance to communicate stems from inadequate vocabulary, fear of making mistakes and testing. These concerns can be addressed by engaging the learners in adequate activities prior to testing, providing ample language input for each task and by helping them to correct their own mistakes.

In this study, we examine the relationships among group-affect tone, teams’ transactive memory systems (TMSs), and teams’ team-performance and team-creativity outcomes. We conducted two studies, each corresponding to a particular survey. For Study 1, we sampled 515 team members and 95 team leaders covering 95 teams. The results show that positive group-affect tone is positively related to TMSs, whereas negative group-affect tone is negatively related to TMSs. TMSs have a positive influence on team performance and team creativity. In addition, Study 1 shows that TMSs have a mediating effect on the relationship between positive group-affect tone and team performance and between negative group-affect tone and team performance. For Study 2, we sampled 334 members and 70 team leaders covering 70 teams. The results reveal that two types of group-affect tone influenced team performance and incremental creativity through TMS mediation. This research contributes to TMS theory and group-affect tone in teams.

Operations management entails the design and control of business operations with the goal of providing goods and services as efficiently as possible. Usually various resources are required to conduct operations and the required resources are usually limited in numbers and availability. Business process models supporting operations management should aid in effectively using available resources, identifying process inefficiencies, and enabling appropriate action if resources are unavailable or cannot operate as required. In this contribution we show how typical resource requirements found in operations management can be included in business process models and propose BPMN 2.0 compatible modelling patterns for describing resource requirements based on the concepts of requests and releases. We discuss various modelling requirements from an operations management perspective and discuss how request-release modelling patterns can be used for different application cases.

This chapter is a songwriter’s essay on the Music Modernization Act and how it attempts to address the future of the songwriting profession in the digital age. Although the advent of streaming has resuscitated the music industry writ large, songwriters—unlike artists and record labels—are regulated by the government in ways that have stopped them from receiving their fair share of the growing pie. The author explains from a songwriter’s perspective how the MMA was designed to address these issues and assesses its strengths and weaknesses, the compromises that led to its passage, and the challenges going forward.

This paper presents an overview of critical policy scholarship (CPS) in education. Historically, policy research has been dominated by what is commonly referred to as the policy science tradition, which is positivist in its philosophical stance and instrumentalist in its purpose—it focuses on producing knowledge relevant for policy decisions. However, with the rise of interpretive social inquiry in the 1970s and against the backdrop of unique political developments in the 1980s, CPS emerged as an alternative policy research perspective. This review discusses the scope and foci of CPS in education under four themes: methodological assumptions, interdisciplinary roots, enduring analytical goals, and emerging empirical contexts. Implications of the prevalence of inequality, Big Data and digital panopticon for educational policymaking and policy research are also briefly discussed. The paper concludes that although its foci of analysis have shifted considerably in the last four decades, analytical interest and tools of CPS remain largely unchanged.

Gender discrimination in the labor market is usually seen as the result of the employers' cultural bias. In this paper, we see the issue from a larger perspective by combining both labor market and household decision making together. It is often observed that women, prioritizing their families over their careers, willfully settle for less paying and less demanding job profiles. This leads to gender wage gap even if the employers do not discriminate between male and female employees. We argue that women may make such choices in presence of patriarchal social norms which see household chores as the primary duty of women. Our theoretical model predicts that women coming from families with stronger patriarchal values are more likely to accept less paying (and less demanding) jobs in the labor market than the women from liberal families. Our empirical section that uses a nationally representative survey data from India provides support for our theoretical predictions. Our results are robust to different measures of patriarchal culture. We also show that the marginal effect of patriarchy on women's wage varies across occupations and places of residence.

Deregulation is a widely suggested strategy to make agricultural markets efficient. In this article, we critically examine the recent reforms undertaken in India aiming to deregulate agricultural markets. Our analysis is from the perspective of the potential of market reforms to benefit farmers. Relying on primary and secondary data for analysis, we draw three conclusions: (1) While reforms to agricultural marketing in the country are long overdue, the new farm laws in their current form are unlikely to result in any radical changes to majority farmers. (2) The provisions of the laws, when implemented, will weigh in favour of traders. This goes against the basic tenets of the introduction of the laws. (3) Even the regulated markets can generate favourable outcomes for farmers if farmer-oriented entities play dominant roles in them. We argue that deregulation in the absence of enabling pre-conditions are unlikely to generate favourable outcomes for farmers. Instead, they may even turn counterproductive.

Inflation persistence or ‘inertia’ has important consequences for monetary policy. Inflation which does not get eliminated today tends to persist entailing higher costs in the future. In turn, a monetary regime can exert significant influence on inflation persistence by its credibility and responses in the face of inflationary shocks. In this study, we use a flexible, time-varying parameter approach to analyze inflation persistence in the United Kingdom and United States during 1880-2016. Our results indicate strong evidence for time-varying inflation persistence in conjunction with shifts in monetary policy regimes. Further, we show that credibility of the monetary regime significantly influences inflation persistence observed under the regime, such that higher (lower) regime credibility leads to lower (higher) inflation persistence. Finally, we argue that institutional framework such as adherence to a rule-based policy, provision of a nominal anchor, policy autonomy etc., and the actions of monetary authorities are vital for understanding the shifts in regime credibility and inflation persistence across time. Overall, our findings indicate that appropriate design and credible conduct of monetary policy is crucial for achieving and sustaining price stability.

This paper explores digital piracy, otherwise known as digital intellectual property theft. After addressing the causes ethics and responses to piracy, we explore the implications of piracy from a marketing perspective. Digital piracy is shown in the light of a model of the consumer journey in e-commerce known as the conversion funnel model. Particular attention is paid to the plight of independent individual publishers of digital content.

More than 100 million people are afflicted with the COVID-19 pandemic and it is reported that more than 2.4m million people have been so far killed with this virus. This paper examines the underlying connections between the natural disasters and the divine punishment. Some philosophers and theologians make such an intriguing connection between the divine punishment and the natural disasters. Yet, atheists and rationalists look at this problem differently. This paper explores the arguments of some religious scholars and philosophers on the natural phenomenon of pandemics and plagues in human history. It also explores the question of good and evil from an Islamic perspective. What role man plays in the natural disaster of the world. This paper explores all these questions from an Islamic perspective.

In this paper, I present an informational approach to the nature of personal identity. In ‘‘Plato and the problem of the chariot’’, I use Plato’s famous metaphor of the chariot to introduce a specific problem regarding the nature of the self as an informational multiagent system: what keeps the self together as a whole and coherent unity? In ‘‘Egology and its two branches’’ and ‘‘Egology as synchronic individualisation’’, I outline two branches of the theory of the self: one concerning the individualisation of the self as an entity, the other concerning the identification of such entity. I argue that both presuppose an informational approach, defend the view that the individualisation of the self is logically prior to its identification, and suggest that such individualisation can be provided in informational terms. Hence, in ‘‘A reconciling hypothesis: the three membranes model’’, I offer an informational individualisation of the self, based on a tripartite model, which can help to solve the problem of the chariot. Once this model of the self is outlined, in ‘‘ICTs as technologies of the self’’ I use it to show how ICTs may be interpreted as technologies of the self. In ‘‘The logic of realisation’’, I introduce the concept of ‘‘realization’’ (Aristotle’s anagnorisis) and support the rather Spinozian view according to which, from the perspective of informational structural realism, selves are the final stage in the development of informational structures. The final ‘‘Conclusion: from the egology to the ecology of the self’’ briefly concludes the article with a reference to the purposeful shaping of the self, in a shift from egology to ecology.