Impacting Forces on eBook Business Models Development

As eBook and related technologies continue their relentless advance, book publishers face a veritable digital siege. Nevertheless, technology remains an enabler, a set of tools and facilitators, albeit linked to the potential for new entrants to the market and indeed, disintermediation. However, the fundamentals are to do with markets, organizational strategies and structures, and with finding answers to hard commercial questions about cost and profit, infrastructure management and sustainability all as reflected in appropriate business models. Underlying these is a range of internal and external forces, not all of which are negative in their effects, as witness signs of improvement in an eBook market faced with greatly reduced planning horizons and the need for dynamic product and marketing mixes. This paper addresses a range of responses by book publishers to such challenges and concludes by reviewing the resulting several business models currently in place for eBook publishing.     

Towards an econophysics view of intellectual capital dynamics: from self-organized criticality to the stochastic frontier

The paper begins with research studying the concept and nature of Intellectual Capital (IC), as well as how close IC firms are to the stochastic frontier. Then basic concepts of complexity theory – such as agents, self-organized criticality (SOC), connectivities, fractals, and power laws (PLs) – are used to distinguish between two kinds of IC firms’ success: traditional SOC applications to how firms maintain their position in a changing industry vs. how an IC firm (such as Apple) creates a new stochastic frontier. The research sets up PLs as indicators of whether or not firms and industries are SOC-effective and includes propositions about: (1) How IC firms benefit from complexity dynamics and SOC; (2) How PL distributions are indicators of efficacious SOC and adaptivity; and (3) Why IC attributes serve to create more transient dynamics pertaining to the stochastic frontier and the rest of the industry's rank/frequency distribution.     

White Noise: The Attack on Political Correctness and the Struggle for the Western Canon

This paper provides a critical overview of the debate about political correctness and the status of the Western Canon in education. The paper analyses a number of critical themes in the debate: Who is it under attack? What is the Canon which is to be defended? Why does it need to be defended? And what notions of knowing and learning underlie the arguments of the proponents of the Canon? After outlining the ways in which the arguments of those attacking political correctness and defending the Canon are profoundly flawed, the paper suggests that the case for multiculturalism and diversified curriculum needs to be substantially strengthened if it is to present a viable alternative.     

The Impact of Parental Work Experience and Education on Environmental Knowledge,Concern and Behaviour among Adolescents

This paper derives from a larger study of the correlates of environmental concern among adolescents in Victoria, Australia. It begins by identifying some of the factors likely to lead to variation in environmental concern with socio‐economic status (SES). It then examines empirical data offering some indication of greater environmental concern among adolescents whose parents have had an above average length of edu‐ cation. The article concludes by arguing for a socially critical approach to environmental education in lower SES areas that takes full account of the economic and cultural circumstances of youth and their gender identity.     

Effects of Parent Implemented Visual Schedule Routines for African American Children with ASD in Low-Income Home Settings

Low-income, minority families are underrepresented in the literature on parent training for school-aged children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Although the use of visual supports, such as visual schedules, is considered to be an evidence-based practice for children with ASD in school, it is not known whether this strategy is effective for minority, low-income families when implemented by the parent in the home setting. This study used a multiple-baseline across routines design replicated across two African American child-mother dyads to examine the effects of a parent-implemented visual schedule procedure on child independent schedule use and between-activity transitions. Parent participants were trained to implement a visual schedule intervention during home routines. Although a functional relation was demonstrated across routines for one mother-child dyad, results varied across participants, highlighting the importance of treatment fidelity. Implications for future research, including the challenges involved in parent-implemented interventions in low-income settings for minority children with ASD, are addressed.     

Guidelines for the protection and treatment of the abused child

The purpose of this paper is to review ten actions that can be taken by multi- disciplinary child protection teams or individuals in this field to assure that the interests of the abused child are consistently addressed.