The politics of school choice in two countries with large private‐dependent sectors (Spain and Chile): family strategies,collective action and lobbying

In many countries choice of school is an increasing concern for families and governments. In Spain and Chile, it is also associated with a long‐standing political cleavage on the regulation of large sectors of private‐dependent schools. This article analyses both the micro‐ and the macro‐politics of choice in these two countries, where low‐status 15‐year‐old students record a significant segregation. At the micro level, some evidence is provided that not only middle‐class skilful choosers but also the political representatives of private‐dependent schools manage to pursue their interests drawing on economic, social and cultural capital. At the macro level, evidence also shows that the lobbies defending private‐dependent schools can use and maintain these power resources. However, in some episodes collective action is an effective power resource for those who campaign in favour of a stricter regulation of these schools, but its influence is much difficult to maintain for longer periods.     

Older Characters in Teen Movies from 1980–2006

Although children as young as age three have already begun to manifest negative stereotypes toward older adults, attitudes toward older adults likely crystallize during late childhood and adolescence and become entrenched by the time an individual reaches young adulthood. Studies have shown that young people view older people in general as ineffective, dependent, lonely, poor, angry, overly wrinkled, ugly, dirty, disabled, and less physically active and healthy than younger adults. Because today's children and adolescents have less contact with older people than in past decades, it is likely that some young people get most of their information about older people and aging from the media. This is all the more likely during the teen years, when vulnerable adolescents purposely seek out certain media to form their identity. This content analysis examined the 60 most popular teen movies from the 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s to determine how older people are portrayed. Older people were greatly underrepresented, according to their numbers in the actual U.S. population, making up only 7% of the total number of characters in teen movies. Older people were marginalized in terms of plot and were likely to be featured only as background characters. Of older characters, 60% were portrayed stereotypically, and only 45% of the older characters were portrayed in a positive manner. Also, 32% of older characters were portrayed in a negative manner, and one-fifth of older characters were portrayed only with negative characteristics. The stereotypes that adolescents today hold toward older people, including the belief that they are bad drivers, are angry most of the time, and are senile, were reflected in older character portrayals in these popular teen films. Given the negative representations of older people that adolescents are exposed to in their childhood and during the teen years, it is no wonder that they express negative attitudes toward older people. After years of exposure to media that negatively depict older adults, adolescents have been cultivated to stereotype older people. This has the potential to influence the quality of their interactions with older people, and also influence the way they come to view the prospect of getting old.     

Decreased Self-Reported Cognitive Failures after Memory Training

In recent years, attention has been focused on investigating the effectiveness of composite memory intervention programs with different age and diagnostics groups. The goal of this study was to measure changes in cognitive lapses by Cognitive Failure Questionnaire (CFQ) in a large trained, dementia free group (Mini-Mental State Examination [MMSE] > 26). The CFQ was administrated to older adults before training (Wave 1), after training (Wave 2), and in a six-month follow-up (Wave 3) to an experimental (N = 77; memory training) and control sample (N = 78, no intervention). Significant changes in subjective cognitive functioning in the experimental group and a plateau curve in the control group were observed. The results indicate support for the efficiency of a large memory-training group in promoting subjective cognitive functioning.     

Spelling well despite developmental language disorder: what makes it possible?

The goal of the study was to investigate the overlap between developmental language disorder (DLD) and developmental dyslexia, identified through spelling difficulties (SD), in Russian-speaking children. In particular, we studied the role of phoneme awareness (PA), rapid automatized naming (RAN), pseudoword repetition (PWR), morphological (MA), and orthographic awareness (OA) in differentiating between children with DLD who have SD from children with DLD who are average spellers by comparing the two groups to each other, to typically developing children as well as children with SD but without spoken language deficits. One hundred forty-nine children, aged 10.40 to 14.00 years, participated in the study. The results indicated that the SD, DLD, and DLD/SD groups did not differ from each other on PA and RAN Letters and underperformed in comparison to the control groups. However, whereas the children with written language deficits (SD and DLD/SD groups) underperformed on RAN Objects and Digits, PWR, OA, and MA, the children with DLD and no SD performed similarly to the children from the control groups on these measures. In contrast, the two groups with spoken language deficits (DLD and DLD/SD) underperformed on RAN Colors in comparison to the control groups and the group of children with SD only. The results support the notion that those children with DLD who have unimpaired PWR and RAN skills are able to overcome their weaknesses in spoken language and PA and acquire basic literacy on a par with their age peers with typical language. We also argue that our findings support a multifactorial model of DLD.     

Beyond formal R&D: Taking advantage of other sources of innovation in low- and medium-technology industries

This study deepens our knowledge of critical success factors in the innovation process of low- and medium-technology (LMT) industries. To accomplish this, it explores how the innovation process in LMT firms may depend on non-formal R&D activities and the use of external sources. The empirical analysis is based on a representative panel of Spanish manufacturing firms. The results strongly support the view that non-R&D activities such as design, the use of advanced machinery and training are crucial to understanding the innovation process of any firm. The study finds, however, that the impact of these activities is especially important in LMT industries, particularly for the achievement of product innovations. The empirical evidence also reveals the importance of external sources such as the use of consultants, the hiring of personnel, collaboration agreements and external R&D, with the greatest differences between LMT and high-technology (HT) firms being observed in process innovations.     

Internet and mature industries. Its role in the creation of value in the supply chain. The case of tile ceramic manufacturers and distributors in Spain

For traditional industries it is a real challenge, not only to achieve a clear product differentiation, but also to provide adequate services in order to ensure value and customer fidelity.     

Making the development of technological innovations more efficient: An exploratory analysis in the biotechnology sector

The current study analyzes the processes involved in obtaining technological innovations. Conclusive results are lacking in the literature, so this work defines and empirically tests a model of the relations between the firm's innovative capacity and the different ways of accumulating knowledge and the decision whether or not to codify it. Also, the model takes into account whether the innovations obtained are radical or incremental.The empirical study uses a sample of Spanish biotechnology firms, and the results show that accumulating knowledge using internal sources and not codifying it significantly improves the firm's capacity to develop radical innovations. The results also show that knowledge codification speeds up the development of incremental innovations. The relation between incremental innovations and the sources of knowledge is not so clear, although the results suggest the possible existence of a nonlinear relation between the two variables.     

Defining the problem: key element for the success of knowledge management

The objective of this paper is to propose a methodology for applying knowledge management (KM), in which we first focus on explaining problematic areas of an organization by identifying the knowledge core process, before applying KM strategies to those processes. For the methodology, we lean on the larger context of systems thinking to help visualize the whole organization, and it is here that the key factors are identified and a set of strategic criteria is established. The most important criteria are then used to evaluate the associated processes and their respective tasks in order to establish the problematic areas or opportunities where KM initiatives can be applied. This strategy precludes tackling all the organization's problems and allows management to focus on only those processes that provide significant and manageable knowledge. Finally, this study explores and cautiously recommends an unexploited but valuable element to be taken into account when implementing KM initiatives.     

International research orientation of Swiss universities: self-regulated or politically imposed?

International openness is essential to science in small modern countries. The modernization of Swiss science and economy in the nineteenth century was promoted largely by foreigners: newly founded Swiss universities were staffed to a large extent by foreign professors, but students also came from abroad. Up to the middle of this century, the development of Swiss universities was marked by distinct successive phases of inviting in or shutting out international influence, depending mainly on changes in the political context. The international landscape of knowledge and science since the 1950s has undergone dynamic change. University structures were installed as a reaction to this dynamism. Patterns of international research orientation emerging in different universities and in the disciplinaryfields of business administration, chemistry and history are discussedin a comparative perspective.