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Learning disability charity founder made MBE

My Life My Choice founder Michael Edwards is recognised during a ceremony at Windsor Castle.




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Plans for carbon capture facility at incinerator

The business says it is welcoming public feedback on the proposal.




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Chris McCausland: 'Perception of people with disabilities is antiquated'

The comedian has been praised by students at the Royal National College for the Blind, where he studied.




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Paralympian says party snub example of inequality

The high-end store has apologised for not hosting Paralympic athletes alongside Team GB Olympians.




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'My MBE means elite sport pain is all worthwhile'

Paralympic swimmer Rebecca Redfern was recognised for services to young people and her community.




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Mary Queen of Scots landmark to be lit up for show

Workington Hall is famous for having provided shelter to Mary Queen of Scots.




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Is Nintendo Switch 2 about to be announced? Instagram lowers quality of less popular videos

The internet is still convinced a Nintendo Switch 2 announcement is going to happen this month, as a part of a major third-party open world game is also rumoured. It’ll […]

The post Is Nintendo Switch 2 about to be announced? Instagram lowers quality of less popular videos appeared first on ShinyShiny.




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Did the change of start time affect your ability to watch the Brazilian GP? | Debates and Polls

F1 did something it has never done before last weekend and moved a race start time earlier. But did that affect your ability to watch?



  • Debates and Polls

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‘Protect the reliability of the grid’

Jon Sanders discusses the feasibility of renewable energy in North Carolina




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Time for me to stop commenting about politics and other sensitive topics

I've been cautioned and advised by several good friends that I should take a chill pill on commenting about various political things. Some of the topics I've been quite vocal about are high profile things involving high power people .. and I might be beginning to get noticed by them, which of course is not a good thing!

I get frustrated by political actions that I find to be stupid and I don't hesitate to tell it straight the way I think about it. Obviously every such statement bothers someone else. Its one thing when its irrelevant noise, but if it gets noisy then I'm a troublemaker.

I'm not keen to get to that state.

Its not because I have anything to hide or protect - not in the least. Further I'm not scared off by the PM telling private sector people like me to "go home" or "be exposed" but publicly naming private individuals in parliament is rather over the top IMO. Last thing I want is to get there.

I have an immediate family and an extended family of 500+ in WSO2 that I'm responsible for. I'm taping up my big mouth for their sake.

Instead I will try to blog constructively & informatively whenever time permits.

Similarly I will try to keep my big mouth controlled about US politics too. Its really not my problem to worry about issues there!

I should really kill off my FB account. However I do enjoy getting info about friends and family life events and FB is great for that. So instead I'll stop following everyone except for close friends and family.

Its been fun and I like intense intellectual debate. However, maybe another day - just not now.

(P.S.: No, no one threatened me or forced me to do this. I just don't want to come close to that possibility!)





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Amor a la literatura o Decálogo del traductor literario

Helena Cortés Gabaudan

Existen unos cuantos códigos deontológicos para traductores, pero muy pocos se refieren a la traducción literaria en particular. De entre ellos, uno de los primeros que se encuentra en Internet ni siquiera llega a reunir más de 7 normas, y las que incluye apenas tienen que ver con lo que realmente garantiza la calidad de una traducción literaria; es un mero listado de requisitos básicos del traductor en general y de aspectos legales (vid. el código deontológico del traductor literario redactado por el Consejo Europeo de Asociaciones de Traductores Literarios, ceatl). Ante esta carencia, hemos redactado, entre bromas y veras, un pequeño código personal para traductores literarios noveles, un decálogo que solo se basa en los cientos de horas solitarias, ingratas, desesperantes, pero siempre felices, pasadas frente a los textos de los grandes autores.

DECÁLOGO DEL BUEN TRADUCTOR LITERARIO

1. Humildad (o, lo que otros llaman fidelidad al texto). No trates de ser más brillante que el propio autor; en general, la mayor literalidad posible en fondo y forma es la mejor norma, aunque siempre creando un texto propio y sin caer en la burda copia. Si tienes siempre la tentación de mejorar el original, si te gusta adaptar y añadir cosas de tu cosecha o cortar y simplificar las partes complejas, escribe novelas, pero no traduzcas. Y, en particular, si eres poeta y te encanta traducir poesía, haz un esfuerzo: olvida tu condición por un instante y sé solo traductor. El lector no quiere leer tus versos.

2. Sensatez. Algunos escritores son gente rara, sí, ¡pero no tantos! En general no escriben estupideces ni insensateces. Así pues, si algo te sorprende sobremanera o parece no tener ningún sentido, es casi seguro que te has equivocado. Indaga. Seguro que algo se te está escapando.

3. Sentido estético. Traducir correctamente el contenido de la obra original puede ser relativamente fácil, pero no hay que olvidarse de la forma estética. Analiza a fondo los recursos estilísticos y estéticos empleados por el autor y trata de lograr lo mismo en tu propio idioma. De no ser así, tanto daría hacer un buen resumen del contenido como traducir la obra.

4. Paciencia. Si quieres traducir literatura no puedes tener prisa, es labor interminable de investigación, reescritura, relectura. Una recomendación: cuando hayas acabado de traducir, olvida tu versión en un cajón durante un tiempo suficientemente largo como para borrar de tu mente el original y haz una última lectura sin tener presente más que tu sentido lingüístico y literario: en este momento, y solo en éste, tómate todas las libertades que quieras con el texto hasta que a ti te suene bien, hasta hacerlo completamente tuyo, hasta que deje de ser una traducción y se convierta en tu texto: ganará en fluidez, no sonará a traducción y tendrá un estilo homogéneo.

5. Cultura. Si no tienes cientos de horas de lectura acumulados, si careces de una sólida cultura general y de cierta experiencia vital, si no conoces los clásicos y te aburre cualquier libro que no esté lleno de acción y diálogos, si nunca ganaste un premio de redacción en el colegio ni leías por las noches con una linterna debajo de las sábanas para que no te riñeran, si nunca viajaste a los países cuyas lenguas traduces, en definitiva, si no tienes gusto por la literatura: por favor ¡no te hagas traductor literario! Se gana más con los manuales de autoayuda y los libros de cocina.

6. Naturalidad. Es más importante que la obra suene bien en tu idioma y conseguir un texto natural y fluido, carente de todo artificio, que el que se cuele alguna disculpable metedura de pata. Y el que esté libre de error, que tire la primera piedra.

7. Buena pluma. Si no tienes talento para escribir con gracia y soltura en tu propio idioma no podrás ser nunca un buen traductor literario. Solo el que escribe bien traduce bien.

8. Dominio de tu lengua. Ser bilingüe ayuda mucho, pero no es garantía de buena traducción. Conocer bien la lengua de partida es un requisito técnico tan elemental como saber leer y escribir, pero no aporta nada más. Conocer bien la lengua de llegada, haberse perdido por sus más enrevesados vericuetos, saber jugar con ella, poder burlarse de ella: esa es la condición para ser un buen traductor. Busca a quien domine muy bien la lengua extranjera y tendrás, con suerte, un correcto traductor. Busca quien domine a
fondo su lengua materna y casi seguro que habrás encontrado a un buen traductor.

9. Actualidad. No envejezcas a propósito una traducción para acercarla a la época del autor. Piensa que los lectores contemporáneos del autor pudieron disfrutar de una lectura fluida y natural en el idioma de su tiempo. No castigues a tus lectores con una barrera idiomática artificial que solo provoca distancia. Para que el original siga siendo tan accesible como en su tiempo, cada generación necesita una nueva traducción.

10. Amor. O lo correcto no es igual a lo bueno. Cuántas traducciones hubo más o menos correctas que son perfectamente olvidables, por grises, planas, carentes de toda vida. Tal vez con un excelente adiestramiento se pueda conseguir un número aceptable de correctas traducciones. Pero siempre hubo, hay y habrá muy pocas buenas traducciones. En traducción literaria, traducción correcta no equivale a buena traducción. Porque también hacen falta grandes dosis de empatía. Si a pesar de haber renegado del texto más de mil veces, en el fondo has acabado sintiendo pasión por él y su autor, es señal de que eres un traductor. Si en caso de existir la máquina del tiempo lo que más te gustaría sería tener una entrevista con el clásico al que estás traduciendo, es señal de que eres un traductor. Si lo que más te gusta al llegar a casa es sentarte ante tu libro, y nunca te vas a la cama sin haber traducido al menos unas cuantas líneas —porque ése es el momento que más disfrutas del día— es señal de que eres un traductor. Y es que, además de profesión, hace falta un poco de vocación.

Estos diez mandamientos se encierran en dos: amarás a la literatura sobre todas las cosas y a los textos que traduces como a ti mismo.

Conclusión

Hacer traducciones literarias es lo más parecido a tener hijos: es una gestación larga y complicada, cuanto más se acerca el inexorable plazo de entrega más insoportable y más pesado se vuelve el asunto, hay momentos en que detestas al que te embarcó en aquel lío y te preguntas cómo pudiste aceptar; y llega siempre ese momento de extremo dolor, cuando tienes que sacar fuera como sea la cabeza del infante, en que te juras a ti mismo que nunca volverás a caer en semejante empresa… pero, en general, una vez que el niño ya está fuera y lo miras, solo queda amor incondicional por tan trabajoso producto, pese a los muchos fallos que pueda tener. Y es que ¿hay alguna madre que piense que sus hijos son feos? En resumen, la traducción literaria no es una profesión, no da de comer ni se aprende en la academia: es una vocación y un talento. Si no disfrutas con ella, no la ejerzas.

Fuente: La Linterna del Traductor




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Marine Le Pen dans le piège de « l’inéligibilité obligatoire »

Alors que les procureurs doivent requerir, ce mercredi 13 novembre a son proces, la presidente du groupe RN a l'Assemblee redoute, par-dessus tout, d'etre empechee de se presenter en 2027.




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¿Por dónde empiezo? Escribir un libro sin haber estudiado literatura

Publico este artículo para contestar a un comentario que he recibido y que me ha hecho reflexionar. El comentario de esta persona toca varios puntos […]

Origen




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Visualizing and Analyzing the Quality of XML Documents

In this paper we introduce eXVisXML, a visual tool to explore documents annotated with the mark-up language XML, in order to easily perform over them tasks as knowledge extraction or document engineering.

eXVisXML was designed mainly for two kind of users. Those who want to analyze an annotated document to explore the information contained-for them a visual inspection tool can be of great help, and a slicing functionality can be an effective complement.

The other target group is composed by document engineers who might be interested in assessing the quality of the annotation created. This can be achieved through the measurements of some parameters that will allow to compare the elements and attributes of the DTD/Schema against those effectively used in the document instances.

Both functionalities and the way they were delineated and implemented will be discussed along the paper.




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Modeling Quality Attributes with Aspect-Oriented Architectural Templates

The quality attributes of a software system are, to a large extent, determined by the decisions taken early in the development process. Best practices in software engineering recommend the identification of important quality attributes during the requirements elicitation process, and the specification of software architectures to satisfy these requirements. Over the years the software engineering community has studied the relationship between quality attributes and the use of particular architectural styles and patterns. In this paper we study the relationship between quality attributes and Aspect-Oriented Software Architectures - which apply the principles of Aspect-Oriented Software Development (AOSD) at the architectural level. AOSD focuses on identifying, modeling and composing crosscutting concerns - i.e. concerns that are tangled and/or scattered with other concerns of the application. In this paper we propose to use AO-ADL, an aspect-oriented architectural description language, to specify quality attributes by means of parameterizable, and thus reusable, architectural patterns. We particularly focus on quality attributes that: (1) have major implications on software functionality, requiring the incorporation of explicit functionality at the architectural level; (2) are complex enough as to be modeled by a set of related concerns and the compositions among them, and (3) crosscut domain specific functionality and are related to more than one component in the architecture. We illustrate our approach for usability, a critical quality attribute that satisfies the previous constraints and that requires special attention at the requirements and the architecture design stages.




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A Framework to Evaluate Interface Suitability for a Given Scenario of Textual Information Retrieval

Visualization of search results is an essential step in the textual Information Retrieval (IR) process. Indeed, Information Retrieval Interfaces (IRIs) are used as a link between users and IR systems, a simple example being the ranked list proposed by common search engines. Due to the importance that takes visualization of search results, many interfaces have been proposed in the last decade (which can be textual, 2D or 3D IRIs). Two kinds of evaluation methods have been developed: (1) various evaluation methods of these interfaces were proposed aiming at validating ergonomic and cognitive aspects; (2) various evaluation methods were applied on information retrieval systems (IRS) aiming at measuring their effectiveness. However, as far as we know, these two kinds of evaluation methods are disjoint. Indeed, considering a given IRI associated to a given IRS, what happens if we associate this IRI to another IRS not having the same effectiveness. In this context, we propose an IRI evaluation framework aimed at evaluating the suitability of any IRI to different IR scenarios. First of all, we define the notion of IR scenario as a combination of features related to users, IR tasks and IR systems. We have implemented the framework through a specific evaluation platform that enables performing IRI evaluations and that helps end-users (e.g. IRS developers or IRI designers) in choosing the most suitable IRI for a specific IR scenario.




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Le meilleur de nos politiques sur twitter... (1)

Twitter, personnellement j'adore. J'ai connu ses balbutiements, il y a dix ans, nous n'étions que quelques blogueurs et journalistes, c'était un formidable lieu d'informations et de déconnes gentilles... à l'époque, il n'y avait pas de trolls aigris et...




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On reparle des classes populaires, des péri-urbains, partis politiques... (billet de Mai 2011 )

L'actualité aidant, une personne sur twitter a exhumé un vieux billet que j'avais écrit en Mai 2011. A l'époque, je parlais du Parti Socialiste... sans fausse modestie, j'avais vu plutôt juste... Aujourd'hui, on peut déjà parler d'un autre "parti" mais...




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Notre Dame des spiritualités.

L’émoi de l’incendie de Notre Dame de Paris dépasse largement nos frontières hexagonales. Et plus intéressant encore, il transcende nos croyances, nos cultures, il touche au plus de profond de l’être humain. A cet égard, j’ai également été touché par...




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Tensions à l'Université Lyon-3 : la classe politique condamne les attaques contre Yaël Braun-Pivet

Tensions à l'Université Lyon-3 : la classe politique condamne les attaques contre Yaël Braun-Pivet




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Avec l'Arizona, Donald Trump a désormais remporté la totalité des sept États clés

Avec l'Arizona, Donald Trump a désormais remporté la totalité des sept États clés




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Trump va nommer les "faucons" Rubio et Waltz à la tête de la politique étrangère (rapports)

Trump va nommer les "faucons" Rubio et Waltz à la tête de la politique étrangère (rapports)




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L'aide militaire américaine à Israël va se poursuivre après un ajustement de l'aide à Gaza

L'aide militaire américaine à Israël va se poursuivre après un ajustement de l'aide à Gaza




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No Comment : en Serbie, des centaines d’œufs jetés sur le siège d’Euro Lithium Balkan

No Comment : en Serbie, des centaines d’œufs jetés sur le siège d’Euro Lithium Balkan




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Attention, votre airfryer pourrait produire une substance cancérigène dans vos aliments selon une étude - Yahoo Actualités

  1. Attention, votre airfryer pourrait produire une substance cancérigène dans vos aliments selon une étude  Yahoo Actualités
  2. 3 bonnes raisons de choisir un Airfryer en 2024  La Provence
  3. Nos 30 recettes rapides et faciles au Airfryer, du plat de résistance au dessert  Le Figaro
  4. Les air fryers sont-ils dangereux pour la santé ? Une étude lance l'alerte  Allo Docteurs
  5. Airfryer : attention aux acrylamides potentiellement cancérigènes  Pourquoi Docteur ?







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Premiers résultats de la grande enquête nationale « Contexte des sexualités en France 2023 - Inserm (salle de presse)

  1. Premiers résultats de la grande enquête nationale « Contexte des sexualités en France 2023  Inserm (salle de presse)
  2. La sexualité des Français a connu de gros changements en dix ans  L'Union
  3. Plus de partenaires, pratiques variées, numérique... Une grande étude dévoile les dessous de la sexualité...  BFMTV
  4. La vie sexuelle des Français, une journée spéciale sur France Inter, jeudi 14 novembre 2024  France Inter






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Insurrection à Washington - Assaut du Capitole: culpabilité pour l'homme photographié dans le bureau de Nancy Pelosi

(Belga) Un Américain, qui avait été immortalisé les pieds sur une table dans le bureau de la cheffe démocrate Nancy Pelosi lors de l'assaut sur le Capitole, a été reconnu coupable lundi de plusieurs délits.

Après une courte délibération, les jurés ont déclaré Richard Barnett, 62 ans, coupable, entre autres, d'entrave à une procédure officielle, vol et intrusion dans un bâtiment officiel avec une arme dangereuse (un bâton de marche capable d'envoyer des décharges électriques). Le 6 janvier 2021, il avait envahi, comme des centaines de partisans de l'ex-président républicain Donald Trump, le siège du Congrès au moment où les élus certifiaient la victoire du démocrate Joe Biden à la présidentielle. Il avait été photographié par l'AFP dans le bureau de la cheffe de la chambre des représentants, Nancy Pelosi, les pieds sur un meuble. Le cliché avait fait le tour du monde et permis à la police de l'interpeller rapidement. Selon le dossier d'accusation, ce partisan de la mouvance complotiste Qanon avait laissé un message insultant à la démocrate et volé une enveloppe qu'elle avait signée. Pendant son procès, il s'était montré défiant, assurant avoir été "poussé à l'intérieur" du Capitole par la foule. Sa peine sera prononcée en mai. En attendant, il reste assigné à résidence avec un bracelet électronique. En deux ans d'enquête, plus de 950 participants à cette attaque ont été arrêtés, et près de 200 condamnés à des peines de prison. (Belga)




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La Semaine politique : la France a dᅵtruit ses masques, un ex-collaborateur de Vᅵran a cherchᅵ ᅵ en vendre (et quelques autres infos)

Vous n'avez pas eu le temps de lire Le Canard enchaᅵnᅵ, Mediapart, Le Monde, Arrᅵt sur images et tous les autres titres de presse ? On s'en charge pour vous.




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Undertaking a bibliometric analysis to investigate the framework and dynamics of slow fashion in the context of sustainability

The current study has outlined slow fashion (SF) research trends and created a future research agenda for this field. It is a thorough analysis of the literature on slow fashion. Numerous bibliometric features of slow fashion have been discussed in the paper. This study comprises 182 research articles from the Scopus database. The database was utilised for bibliometric analysis. To identify certain trends in the area of slow fashion, a bibliometric study is done. For bibliometric analysis, the study employed R-software (the Biblioshiny package). Here, VOSviewer software is used to determine the co-occurrence of authors, countries, sources, etc. The study has outlined the gap that still exists in the field of slow fashion. Here, the research outcome strengthens the domain of slow fashion for sustainable consumption. The study findings will be useful for policymakers, industry professionals, and researchers.




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What we know and do not know about video games as marketers: a review and synthesis of the literature

The video game industry (VGI) has evolved considerably, transitioning from a niche market to a substantial sector. The VGI's magnitude and the societal implications tied to video game consumption have naturally piqued the interest of scholars in marketing and consumer behaviour. This research serves a dual purpose: firstly, it consolidates existing VG literature by evaluating articles, concepts, and methodologies, systematically tracing their evolution; secondly, it outlines potential directions and implications for forthcoming research. Within this literature, a predominant focus lies on articles investigating purchase decisions concerning VGs, followed by those exploring the integration of video game consumption into broader social contexts. Notably, a limited number of articles delve into player-game interactions and experiences within gaming worlds. This imbalance can be attributed to the fact that such inquiries are often suited to psychology and multidisciplinary journals, while the marketing discipline has predominantly addressed the VGI from a marketing management standpoint.




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BEFA: bald eagle firefly algorithm enabled deep recurrent neural network-based food quality prediction using dairy products

Food quality is defined as a collection of properties that differentiate each unit and influences acceptability degree of food by users or consumers. Owing to the nature of food, food quality prediction is highly significant after specific periods of storage or before use by consumers. However, the accuracy is the major problem in the existing methods. Hence, this paper presents a BEFA_DRNN approach for accurate food quality prediction using dairy products. Firstly, input data is fed to data normalisation phase, which is performed by min-max normalisation. Thereafter, normalised data is given to feature fusion phase that is conducted employing DNN with Canberra distance. Then, fused data is subjected to data augmentation stage, which is carried out utilising oversampling technique. Finally, food quality prediction is done wherein milk is graded employing DRNN. The training of DRNN is executed by proposed BEFA that is a combination of BES and FA. Additionally, BEFA_DRNN obtained maximum accuracy, TPR and TNR values of 93.6%, 92.5% and 90.7%.




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Trust in news accuracy on X and its impact on news seeking, democratic perceptions and political participation

Based on a survey of 2548 American adults conducted by Pew Research Center in 2021, this study finds that trust in the accuracy of news circulated on X (former Twitter) is positively correlated with following news sites on X, underscoring the crucial role of trust in news accuracy in shaping news-seeking behaviour. Trust in news accuracy also positively relates to political participation via X. Those who trust in news accuracy are more likely to perceive X as an effective tool for raising public awareness about political and social issues, as well as a positive force for democracy. However, exposure to misinformation weakens the connection between trust in news accuracy and users' perception about X as an effective tool for raising public awareness about political or social issues and as a positive driver for democracy.




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Beyond utility: unpacking the enjoyment gap in e-government service use

E-government serves as a vital channel for citizen interactions with the public sector, where user enjoyment is of paramount importance. To date, few studies have comprehensively examined the determinants of citizen enjoyment in e-government. To address this research gap, we administered a survey and gathered data from 363 Australian residents using myGov for tax filing. Our analysis revealed a pronounced discrepancy between reported enjoyment and the intention to continue using the services. Although users demonstrated a strong intent to use e-government services, this intent did not uniformly align with enjoyment. Additionally, informed by self-determination theory, we developed and tested an e-government service enjoyment model to study the impacts of effort expectancy, technophilia, technology humanness, and engagement in fostering user enjoyment. Unexpectedly, the results showed that information privacy concerns, commonly seen as a deterrent in e-government adoption, did not significantly affect enjoyment. Our findings advance the discourse on e-government service improvement.




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Does perceive organisational politics effect emotional intelligence and employee engagement? An empirical study

This paper examines the growing aspect of perceive organisational politics (POPs) in organisations by understanding their employee engagement with mediating effect of emotional intelligence. This study is cross-sectional, wherein a survey is conducted on executives of different sectors holding strategic positions. The purposive sampling technique is applied to find the 117 most suitable executives for this survey. The survey is self-administered, and a questionnaire is used as an instrument with 43 measurement scale items adopted from previous similar studies. Construct's reliability and validity followed by PLS-SEM is performed using JASP statistical application. The result revealed that the dimensionality support and validation of POP based on a new set of measures centred on generalised beliefs of the application and abuse of power, infrastructure, credibility, choice making, and line-of-sight. In line with previous findings, the current findings also showed that POP works as a barrier to individual behavioural demand and can negatively affect work efficiency. Existence of perceive organisational politics due to the normative belief of the situation happing in the organisation, disengagement of employees, and also evaluates new empirical insight into the organisation by mediating emotional intelligence.




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The relationship between 'creative slack' as an intangible asset and the innovative capabilities of the firm

The notion of creative slack purposefully refers to the notion of organisational slack proposed by Penrose (1959), who suggested that managers in organisations always have some stock of unused resources that inevitably accumulate when developing projects and are the primary factors determining the growth and innovation of the firm. In this contribution, we aim at adding a new dimension to the notion of organisational slack. Our view is that in many innovative organisations the slack of unused ideas is essentially a creative one, which is accumulated in diverse communities through multiple projects. This creative slack is a key intangible asset and a source of knowledge creation and innovation. To explain how organisations may benefit from exploiting the creative slack accumulated by communities, we rely on the analysis of two case studies, that of the Hydro-Québec Research Institute (IREQ), and of Ubisoft Montreal.




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Role of career adaptability and optimism in Indian economy: a dual mediation analysis

The face of the hospitality sector in India is continuously changing and in times of career transitiveness, it is important to know the factors that support a successful career. The current research aims to explore the relationship between career planning, employee optimism, career adaptability and career satisfaction in the Indian hospitality sector. The study included 283 employees from Indian hospitality sector. Additionally, the study used SEM and bootstrap method to measure the dual mediating relationship between career planning, employee optimism dimensions, career adaptability dimensions, and career satisfaction in Indian setting. The results indicated that optimism dimensions and career adaptability dimensions partially mediate the relationship between career planning and career satisfaction in Indian hospitality sector. The study suggests useful implications for academia and industrial purpose. The limitations and future research avenues have been discussed. The study would contribute to the sparse literature on employee optimism, career planning, career adaptability and subjective career success. It would contribute to the social cognitive career theory (SCCT).




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Learning & Personality Types: A Case Study of a Software Design Course




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Fostering Digital Literacy through Web-based Collaborative Inquiry Learning – A Case Study




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The Study of Motivation in Library and Information Management Education: Qualitative and Quantitative Research




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Using Student e-Portfolios to Facilitate Learning Objective Achievements in an Outcome-Based University




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Augmenting a Child’s Reality: Using Educational Tablet Technology




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Facilitating Exposure to Sign Languages of the World: The Case for Mobile Assisted Language Learning




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A Detailed Rubric for Assessing the Quality of Teacher Resource Apps

Since the advent of the iPhone and rise of mobile technologies, educational apps represent one of the fastest growing markets, and both the mobile technology and educational app markets are predicted to continue experiencing growth into the foreseeable future. The irony, however, is that even with a booming market for educational apps, very little research regarding the quality of them has been conducted. Though some instruments have been developed to evaluate apps geared towards student learning, no such instrument has been created for teacher resource apps, which are designed to assist teachers in completing common tasks (e.g., taking attendance, communicating with parents, monitoring student learning and behavior, etc.). Moreover, when teachers visit the App Store or Google Play to learn about apps, the only ratings provided to them are generic, five-point evaluations, which do not provide qualifiers that explain why an app earned three, two, or five points. To address that gap, previously conducted research related to designing instructional technologies coupled with best practices for supporting teachers were first identified. That information was then used to construct a comprehensive rubric for assessing teacher re-source apps. In this article, a discussion that explains the need for such a rubric is offered before describing the process used to create it. The article then presents the rubric and discusses its different components and potential limitations and concludes with suggestions for future research based on the rubric.




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Teaching Quality Evaluation: Online vs. Manually, Facts and Myths

Aim/Purpose: This study aimed to examine whether there is a difference between manual feedback and online feedback with regard to feedback quality, respondents’ percentage, reliability and the amount of verbal comments written by students. Background: The quality of teaching is an important component of academic work. There are various methods for testing the quality of teaching; one of these methods is through students’ feedback. Methodology: This study used a quantitative approach, including the quantification of qualitative verbal data collected through an open question in the questionnaire. A sample of 180 courses was randomly chosen, 90 courses were evaluated manually and 90 were evaluated online. The number of students ranges from 7 to 60 students per course. In total 4678 students participated in the study. Contribution: The findings show that there is almost an identical pattern of feedback of manual and online course teaching evaluation. These findings encourage a continued use of this evaluation method. Findings: No significant differences were found between manual feedback and online feedback in the students’ evaluation of the lecturer/course. The percentage of respondents was significantly higher in the manual feedback than in the online feedback. The number of qualitative comments was significantly greater in the online feedback than in the manual feedback. Impact on Society: The findings of this study refute the claims with regard to the unreliability of an online teaching evaluation. These findings reflect the advantages of using online feedback, such as cost savings, granting more time to students in order to provide feedback, and reducing disturbance during lectures. Future Research: The gender aspect was not taken into account in the study. Therefore, we recommend conducting a follow-up study that will examine gender differences in directions of- difference between male and female lecturers, and differences between male and female students in teaching evaluation.