Specifying the Relation between Novel and Known: Input Affects the Acquisition of Novel Color Terms

4 studies investigate how differential input affects preschoolers' abilities to learn novel color words. 3-, 4-, and 5-year-old children saw objects in novel shapes and colors and heard a novel color label for the object. Labels were presented through ostensive definition (e.g., "See, it's mauve"), corrective linguistic contrast (e.g., "See, it's not purple; it's mauve"), or an inclusion statement (e.g., "See, it's mauve; it's a kind of purple"). 4- and 5-year-old children interpreted the novel word as a shape term when ostensive information was provided but as a color term when additional information, either contrastive or inclusive, specified a relation between the novel term and a known label for that color. Furthermore, children who consistently interpreted the novel word as a color word tended to treat the novel and known labels as mutually exclusive color terms if they heard contrastive information, whereas they tended to treat the words as hierarchically related if they heard inclusion information. 3-year-olds generally did not make use of either type of information in determining the semantic domain of the novel word or the relation between terms.     

Transparency and social responsibility issues for Wikipedia

Wikipedia is known as a free online encyclopedia. Wikipedia uses largely transparent writing and editing processes, which aim at providing the user with quality information through a democratic collaborative system. However, one aspect of these processes is not transparent—the identity of contributors, editors, and administrators. We argue that this particular lack of transparency jeopardizes the validity of the information being produced by Wikipedia. We analyze the social and ethical consequences of this lack of transparency in Wikipedia for all users, but especially students; we assess the corporate social performance issues involved, and we propose courses of action to compensate for the potential problems. We show that Wikipedia has the appearance, but not the reality, of responsible, transparent information production. This paper’s authors are the same as those who authored Wood, D. J. and Queiroz, A. 2008. Information versus. knowledge: Transparency and social responsibility issues for Wikipedia. In Antonino Vaccaro, Hugo Horta, and Peter Madsen (Eds.), Transparency, Information, and Communication Technology (pp. 261–283). Charlottesville, VA: Philosophy Documentation Center. Adele has changed her surname from Queiroz to Santana     

Rethinking XML-enabled agile supply chains

This paper critically discusses the use of Extensible Markup Language (XML) for agile supply chains and proposes practical guidelines and future research directions for the field. XML has been identified by many as a prominent technology for enabling electronic supply chain integration, but the adoption of it in the industry has been rather slow and limited. This paper discusses the factors that enable agility in supply chains, and explains why XML is the best candidate for facilitating such factors. Then the major XML-based integration initiatives such as ebXML, RosettaNet, and Web Services are diagnosed in terms of their pros and cons for supply chain agility, as well as the reasons for their slow diffusion. Based on the discussion, this paper proposes that: the integration efforts need to first focus on the industries that need agility; stringent business process standards are necessary; and implementation should be made much easier and more affordable for small and medium enterprises (SMEs). Further research issues are also suggested based on the discussion.