Contrary to the fairly established notion in the learning sciences that un-scaffolded processes rarely lead to meaningful learning, this study reports a hidden efficacy of such processes and a method for extracting it. Compared to scaffolded, well-structured problem-solving groups, un-scaffolded, ill-structured problem-solving groups struggled with defining and solving the problems. Their discu...

This research study describes the challenges facing five NHS Trusts resulting from Trust mergers and the implementation of the Agenda for Change pay modernisation programme. The study evaluates the impact of Acas interventions aimed at improving Trusts’ consultative structures and building their capacity to manage change. It finds that Acas assistance can help NHS Trusts to prepare for and mana...

This paper describes a system called Diamond for interactive exploration of multidimensional data. Diamond takes advantage of human pattern recognition and processing capacity, and puts major emphasis on performance and responsiveness. This creates a highly productive symbiosis between the human and the system. The basic philosophy of Diamond is to depict the data with pictures, and to help the...

Strengthening the Competitiveness of Export Oriented Agro Value Chains Cashew Nut Value Chain in Mozambique Date of submission: 31 January 2011 Region: Africa Country: Mozambique Type: Technical cooperation (building productive capacity) Author: Swiss State Secretariat for Economic Affairs (SECO) Contact Details: SECO, Economic Cooperation and Development: Hans‐Peter Egler, Head Trade Promoti...

Production agriculture in Rural America has two major problems. The first is that it has long-term excess productive capacity at acceptable prices. The second, accentuated by the recent change in Federal farm program policy, is widely fluctuating prices with their resulting “boom and bust” cycles. These severely damage the economies of communities in which production agriculture provides the ma...

Assisted housing counseling can enable clients to choose affordable housing in opportunity-rich communities. However, the quality of such services may vary widely. In this paper we present a framework for developing a spatial decision support system (SDSS) for housing mobility counseling and present evidence regarding the capacity of assisted housing clients to make productive use of such a SDS...

There have always been unused assets and people who are not working. Without transaction costs, many of these assets and people could be employed in productive ways, if only for a short time. These transactions could generate value by expanding market capacity, offering new products, and providing sources of income for sellers. However, until recently, the costs of transactions between unacquai...

Soil erosion is a major environmental threat to the sustainability and productive capacity of agriculture. During the last 40 years, nearly one-third of the world's arable land has been lost by erosion and continues to be lost at a rate of more than 10 million hectares per year. With the addition of a quarter of a million people each day, the world population's food demand is increasing at a ti...

Can a child who is not exposed to a model for language nevertheless construct a communication system characterized by combinatorial structure? We know that deaf children whose hearing losses prevent them from acquiring spoken language, and whose hearing parents have not exposed them to sign language, use gestures, called homesigns, to communicate. In this study, we call upon a new formal analys...