Claiming more: the Increased Voluminosity of Patent Applications and its Determinants

The size of patent applications has doubled over the past two decades, resulting in a dramatic surge in the workload of patent offices all over the world and serious concerns over patent quality standards. The current paper investigates the sources of this inflation in claims and pages for EPO applications. Four hypotheses are quantitatively examined: the diffusion of national drafting practices, the complexity of research activities, the emergence of new sectors, and filing strategies. The results validate the four hypotheses. They reveal major differences across countries in patent drafting styles, especially between Civil and Common Law countries, the latter being characterized by much larger patents. Second, the success of the PCT route is leading to the harmonizing of drafting styles worldwide on the US model. This paper therefore challenges the commonly accepted idea that more claims reflect a broader scope of protection by showing that the size of patents is partly due to institutional changes in the system.     

地方身份的重要性及其对于遗产保护的支撑作用：以比利时根特城市核心区工业化前的邻里关系为例

遗产包括代际之间物质和非物质的交流,各个群体和团体随着其所处环境、与自然界的相互关系和历史条件的变化不断使这种代代相传的物质的和非物质的遗产得到保护和创新,同时使他们自己具有一种认同感和历史感,从而促进了文化多样性,激发人类的创造力。但是目前这种交流的客观事实或性质以及历史维度在遗产保护中并没有给予足够的重视。本文针对遗产在当地社区身份中的重要性,以及地方身份是否在当地居民中产生了对遗产保护的积极性等问题进行了探讨,调查了遗产及其保护是否以及如何成为社区复兴、保护意识、社区建设及公众参与的一个组成部分。因此,当地居民的态度及其期望是非常关键的因素。本文对在比利时弗兰德地区根特城市核心区工业化前的邻里关系进行了考察,并进行了大量的参与式图片调查。尽管其历史渊源相当独特,但当地居民反对退化和支持保护的动机却具有更加普遍的价值。     

Understanding the Forms of Government in Today’s Liberal and Democratic Societies: An Introduction

What I consider in this paper are various forms of government, various technologies and discursive regimes of government that are in common use today. What interests me are the categories and tools, practical dispositifs and languages that developed over the last decades ‘to constitute, define, organize, and instrumentalize the strategies that individuals, acting freely, may use to deal with one another’ (Foucault). The paper considers first the neo-liberal wish to reassert the individual as alone in responsibility for his/her own life after the unfortunate digression into Welfare Statism and Keynesian economics, source of all ills. It then focuses on some material and social technologies that encourage people to accept full and complete ‘self-sovereignty’. This section leads to a discussion on the new demands (and resistance) society imposed on this liberal normative ideal. It notably considers the growing demands to ‘participate’ in decision processes and to be environmentally friendly. In section “Les Mots et Les Choses: A New Discursive Regime”, it considers the discursive regime that progressively took shape and which currently permeates international governance bodies of all stripes—from the World Bank to the Conference of Parties for Climate Change. In the final section, it comes back to the initial question and considers what these changes actually mean for the democratic order as constituted over the past 250 years.     

Differential outcomes of adult education on adult learners' increase in social inclusion

To date a significant share of the European population can be considered at risk of social exclusion. It has been argued that adult education programmes are a powerful tool to support vulnerable adults increasing their social inclusion. This study aims to answer the question if and which subgroups of vulnerable adults experience an increase in social inclusion after joining adult education programmes. The results of our study show that 46.3% of the participants experience an increase of social inclusion in terms of ‘activation and internalization’ and 41.0% experience an increase in ‘participation and connection’. Results show that foreigners and people who live together experience a higher increase on variables of ‘activation and internalization’ and ‘participation and connection’. Furthermore, results show that learners who received school education at a primary level and have no professional qualification experience a higher increase of social inclusion on a few variables of social inclusion.     

Scientific knowledge and attitude change: The impact of a citizen science project

This paper discusses the evaluation of an informal science education project, The Birdhouse Network (TBN) of the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology. The Elaboration Likelihood Model and the theory of Experiential Education were used as frameworks to analyse the impact of TBN on participants’ attitudes toward science and the environment, on their knowledge of bird biology, and on their understanding of the scientific process. The project had an impact on participants’ knowledge of bird biology. No statistically significant change in participants’ attitudes toward science or the environment, or in participants’ understanding of the scientific process, could be detected. The results suggest that projects must make explicit to participants the issues that they are experiencing. In addition, the results suggest that more sensitive measures need to be designed to assess attitude change among environmentally aware citizens.     

Learner-focused evaluation cycles: facilitating learning using feedforward,concurrent and feedback evaluation

There is a growing trend to offer students learning opportunities that are flexible, innovative and engaging. As educators embrace student-centred agile teaching and learning methodologies, which require continuous reflection and adaptation, the need to evaluate students’ learning in a timely manner has become more pressing. Conventional evaluation surveys currently dominate the evaluation landscape internationally, despite recognition that they are insufficient to effectively evaluate curriculum and teaching quality. Surveys often: (1) fail to address the issues for which educators need feedback, (2) constrain student voice, (3) have low response rates and (4) occur too late to benefit current students. Consequently, this paper explores principles of effective feedback to propose a framework for learner-focused evaluation. We apply a three-stage control model, involving feedforward, concurrent and feedback evaluation, to investigate the intersection of assessment and evaluation in agile learning environments. We conclude that learner-focused evaluation cycles can be used to guide action so that evaluation is not undertaken simply for the benefit of future offerings, but rather to benefit current students by allowing ‘real-time’ learning activities to be adapted in the moment. As a result, students become co-producers of learning and evaluation becomes a meaningful, responsive dialogue between students and their instructors.     

Behavioral inhibition,negative parenting,and social withdrawal: Longitudinal associations with loneliness during early,middle, and late adolescence

Adolescent loneliness can have detrimental effects on physical and mental health, but there is limited understanding of its antecedents in infancy and childhood. A 20-year longitudinal, multi-informant, and multi-methods study (first data collection in 1998) was conducted to examine mechanisms underlying adolescent loneliness (N = 128, 52% boys, M_{age_baseline} = 1.23, SD = 0.02, 99% White, recruitment in Dutch urban, healthcare centers). Structural equation modeling showed that high infant behavioral inhibition (BI) was indirectly associated with high loneliness during adolescence via high childhood social withdrawal. This indirect effect was equally strong during early, middle, and late adolescence. Contrary to expectations, infant parenting did not moderate the relation between BI and social withdrawal. The results suggest a developmental cascade with infant BI showing long-lasting indirect effects on adolescent loneliness up to 20 years later via childhood social withdrawal.     

Effects of Journalistic Adjudication on Factual Beliefs,News Evaluations,Information Seeking,and Epistemic Political Efficacy

A frequent critique of contemporary journalism is that journalists rarely adjudicate factual disputes when covering politics; however, very little research has been done on the effects of such passive journalism on audiences. This study tests effects of active adjudication versus “he said/she said” journalism on a variety of outcomes, finding that adjudication can correct factual beliefs, increase perceived news quality, satisfy perceived informational needs, and increase the likelihood of future news use. However, for readers who were less interested in the issues under dispute, adjudication also reduced epistemic political efficacy, which is confidence in one's ability to find the truth in politics.     

Sport to the Rescue of the Suburbs: Sport to Educate? Sport to Reassure? When Politicians Respond to the Signs of Disturbance of Law and Order

Since the beginning of the 1980s, sport has appeared to be the last recourse against the worsening of living conditions, lack of job security and the ghettoisation of certain boroughs that stand out mostly because of continuing urban riots and juvenile violence. All of this is continually exaggerated by the media and politicians in their continual desire to dramatise and exaggerate. Certain sub-issues immediately emerge: what are the theoretical or ideological foundations on which this concept of making sport a lever for preventive policies is based? And what sport are we talking about? Is it the physical activities and sport (PAS) practised in the schools and institutes, civil sport or sport in the streets? Why do young people increasingly abandon civil/federated sport to practise ‘adventure sports’ or self-organised sports? Can self-organised sports and, more precisely, sport played outside the tower blocks favour the ‘self-control of impulses’? And if they can, under what conditions can they favour socialisation and contribute to preventing vandalism or violent acts? If it must be admitted that the links between sport and education, sport and prevention, sport and insertion, etc., are considered to be self-evident, they are rarely analysed or questioned.