Search results for "VID"
showing 10 items of 14131 documents
Cadmium, Copper and Tributyltin effects on fertilization of Paracentrotus lividus (Echinodermata)
2009
Marine environments are continuously being threatened by a large number of xenobi- otics from anthropogenic sources. The effect of chemical pollution on living organisms are numerous and may impair reproductive success of adults species of marine invertebrate and vertebrate through effects on gamete quality. Echinoderms are characterized by external fertilizzation and gametes, free of any type of protection, may be in contact with toxic substances so the reproductive success depends largely on the environment conditions. The purpose of this work is to assess the effects on the in vitro fertiliza- tion of exposure of sea urchin Paracentrotus lividus gametes to xenobiotic substances as CuSO4,…
Return Migration Process in Policy and Practice
2019
AbstractThis chapter focuses on return migration processes in Latvia, integrating analysis of return migration policy and the experiences of return migrants. The analysis considers the extent to which return policy activities correspond to the needs and expectations of the target group, and addresses the role of this policy in the process of making the decision to return. The data used for the analysis are policy planning documents, The Emigrant Communities of Latvia survey and in-depth interviews. The main empirical evidence of the return experiences of migrants in the chapter comes from 18 in-depth interviews with Latvian returnees from various age and social status groups, who left Latvi…
Experiencing Commercial Videos for Online Shopping
2018
In recent years online shopping has become a popular and convenient instrument for companies to buy and sell products. However, the design of these web-shops does not offer the rich multisensory experiences than physical retailing offers. In the paper we argue that audio-visual contents could provide dynamic multisensory information to offer more engaging experiences to the consumer, but to achieve this goal, audio-visual contents need to be adjusted to the cultural characteristics of the users. Despite controversies regarding universalism of the emotional experiences induced by perceptual processes, we present evidence that suggests cultural modulations of videos experiences. In the report…
What makes environmental performance differ between firms? Empirical evidence from the Spanish tile industry
2007
Environmental performance is a matter of major concern both for policy makers and for firm managers. In this paper we interpret firms' environmental performance as their ability to reduce polluting wastes while maintaining observed levels of inputs and desirable outputs. Making use of data envelopment analysis techniques, we compute waste-specific environmental efficiency measures for a sample of ceramic-tile producers located in the eastern Spanish region of Valencia. Our results show that there exists substantial room for improving environmental performance, which would have highly beneficial consequences for the local environment. In a second stage of analysis, we find that affiliation …
Spatial Perspective on Everyday Transitions Within a Toddler Group Care Setting
2017
This chapter builds on spatial approaches to study everyday life, and in particular to consider Henri Lefebvre’s (1901–1991) theory on the social production of space. Lefebvre’s ideas on the social production of space are based on a dynamic “spatial triad” of conceived (representations of space), perceived (socio-spatial practices), and lived space (representational space). The aim of this chapter is to discuss, by building on Lefebvre’s approach, the spatial dynamics involved within the small-scale (horizontal) transitions for children in toddler group care. The discussion is based on a study where one Finnish day care group for 1- to 3-year-olds was investigated by applying a spatial, rel…
The measurement of populist attitudes: Testing cross-national scales using item response theory
2019
Recent research in the populism literature has devoted considerable efforts to the conceptualisation and examination of populism on the individual level, that is, populist attitudes. Despite rapid progress in the field, questions of adequate measurement and empirical evaluation of measures of populist attitudes remain scarce. Seeking to remedy these shortcomings, we apply a cross-national measurement model, using item response theory, to six established and two new populist indicators. Drawing on a cross-national survey (nine European countries, n = 18,368), we engage in a four-folded analysis. First, we examine the commonly used 6-item populism scale. Second, we expand the measurement wit…
Employers’ attitudes towards labour inclusion of persons with borderline intellectual functioning (BIF): An empirical evidence
2020
In the vocational rehabilitation of persons with disabilities (BIF), the need to consider the variables related to employer demand is increasingly becoming an important research topic. This empirical research explores the perceptions and attitudes of employers in hiring and retaining people with borderline intellectual functioning (BIF). For this purpose, the Metaplan procedure was used and a focus group was conducted in small and medium enterprises (SMEs) of the Spanish Vinalopó Footwear Cluster. Results showed a significant lack of knowledge and visibility of people with BIF. Lack of financial support to encourage hiring was pointed out by participants in the group as the most relevant ba…
Selves, interactive representations and context
2021
Abstract In this paper, I re-examine the notion of ‘clause-as-representation’ in Michael Halliday’s systemic functional theory of language. I argue that ‘representation’ is a mode of linguistic action that cannot be understood in terms of the experiential metafunction alone. Instead, a theoretical account of representation must be undertaken in relation to all the metafunctions. Rejecting encodingist accounts of representation, I develop the argument that representations are interactively constituted and emergent in languaging activity. The paper develops these arguments in relation to a process ontological account of the relations between language and the world-side phenomena that language…
Dynamic Functional Connectivity Captures Individuals’ Unique Brain Signatures
2020
Recent neuroimaging evidence suggest that there exists a unique individual-specific functional connectivity (FC) pattern consistent across tasks. The objective of our study is to utilize FC patterns to identify an individual using a supervised machine learning approach. To this end, we use two previously published data sets that comprises resting-state and task-based fMRI responses. We use static FC measures as input to a linear classifier to evaluate its performance. We additionally extend this analysis to capture dynamic FC using two approaches: the common sliding window approach and the more recent phase synchrony-based measure. We found that the classification models using dynamic FC pa…
Mitigation and reinforcement in general knowledge expressions
2020
Abstract Speakers often mitigate by downgrading their own role in their utterances, depersonalizing the origin of their utterances and de-focalizing the deictic-personal point of reference (Briz, 1998; Caffi, 2007). Linguistically, this can be accomplished by means of impersonalization, generalization and referencing general knowledge. Interestingly, using expressions that suggest the objective, general or shared status of information can, in some cases, lead to argumentative reinforcement or boosting 1 (Cornillie, 2007a, b; Caffi, 1999; Briz, 2016). Our goal is to examine the relationship between the functions of mitigation and reinforcement in indirect evidential expressions of common kno…