scholarly journals Large-scale, Distributed, Multilingual, Electronic Meetings: A Pilot Study of Usability and Comprehension

2015 ◽  
Vol 14 (3) ◽  
pp. 5578-5585
Author(s):  
Jamison Posey ◽  
Milam Aiken

The United Nations, the European Union, and many other organizations must conduct meetings in many languages, but typically employ human interpreters with their accompanying cost. In addition, these oral discussions require participants to take turns speaking, lengthening the process. Many studies have shown that group support systems can reduce meeting time and increase productivity, and the addition of automatic translation into this process could support these multilingual groups. However, prior studies have typically used only a few languages with group members face to face. This study investigates how well a large multilingual group can use electronic meeting software in a geographically dispersed environment. Results show that the group members were able to understand comments exchanged in 66 languages when translated to English, and they believed the multilingual meeting system was useful for such discussions.

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (9) ◽  
pp. 4772
Author(s):  
Hanna Klikocka ◽  
Aneta Zakrzewska ◽  
Piotr Chojnacki

The article describes and sets the definition of different farm models under the categories of being family, small, and large-scale commercial farms. The distinction was based on the structure of the workforce and the relationship between agricultural income and the minimum wage. Family farms were dominated by the farming family providing the labour and their income per capita exceeded the net minimum wage in the country. The larger commercial farms feature a predominance of hired labour. Based on surveys, it was found that in 2016 in the EU-28 there were 10,467,000 farms (EU-13—57.3%, EU-15—42.7%). They carried out agricultural activities on an area of 173,338,000 ha (EU-13—28.5%, EU-15—71.5%). Countries of the EU-28 generated a standard output (SO) amounting to EUR 364,118,827,100 (EU-13—17.2% and EU-15—82.8%). After the delimitation, it was shown that small farming (70.8%) was the predominant form of management in the European Union (EU-13—88.2% and EU-15—79.8%) compared to family farming (18.4%) (EU-13—10.5% and EU-15—29%). In most EU countries the largest share of land resources pertains to small farms (35.6%) and family farms (38.6%) (UAA—utilised agricultural area of farms).


2015 ◽  
Vol 46 (3) ◽  
pp. 989 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mario Patrono ◽  
Justin O Frosini

This article discusses the Constitution of the United Kingdom and then draws some comparisons between it and the Constitution of the United States of America. It touches on issues such as how the United Kingdom's commitment to parliamentary sovereignty has been affected by the country's relationship with the European Union.


2020 ◽  
pp. 233-261
Author(s):  
Chris Heffer

This chapter summarizes the main analytical moves in the TRUST heuristic for analyzing untruthfulness. It then applies the heuristic to three short texts that have been widely called out as lies: Trump’s tweet about large-scale voter fraud just before the 2016 presidential elections; the “Brexit Battle Bus” claim that the United Kingdom sent £350 million per week to the European Union; and Tony Blair’s 2002 statement to Parliament about Iraq possessing weapons of mass destruction. The cases share a common theme: the capacity of untruthful public discourse to undermine democratic legitimacy by, respectively, questioning the integrity of electoral procedures, harming the capacity of voters to make a rational choice, and undermining faith in the rational and responsible deliberation of one’s leaders. The chapter troubles the simple attribution of lying in these cases and shows how a TRUST analysis can lead to a deeper understanding of the types and ethical value of untruthfulness.


2019 ◽  
Vol 67 (4) ◽  
pp. 1034-1052 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wouter Veenendaal

While it has long been assumed that smaller communities are more prone to particularistic politics, the relationship between state size and clientelism remains strongly undertheorized. Departing from the assumption that face-to-face contacts, overlapping role relations, stronger monitoring mechanisms, and the enhanced power of single votes contribute to the emergence of patron–client linkages, this article provides an in-depth case study of clientelism in Malta, the smallest member state of the European Union. The analysis reveals not only that patron–client linkages are a ubiquitous feature of political life in Malta, but also that the smallness of Malta strongly affects the functioning of clientelism by eliminating the need for brokers and enhancing the power of clients versus patrons. In addition, clientelism is found to be related to several other characteristics of Maltese politics, among which the sharp polarization between parties, extremely high turnout rates, profound executive dominance, and the incidence of corruption scandals.


Author(s):  
Milam Aiken

Groups in which participants do not speak the same language frequently find communication difficult. Yet, multilingual meetings are common as a form of collaboration. To overcome this language barrier, banks, government agencies, hospitals, the courts, and many other institutions have relied upon human translators to enable meeting participants to exchange ideas and opinions. For example, the United Nations General Assembly’s discussions, conferences within the European Union, multinational corporations’ business negotiations, and many other meetings are conducted almost daily, requiring large amounts of interpreters’ scarce expertise and time.


2013 ◽  
Vol 3 (3) ◽  
pp. 175-194 ◽  
Author(s):  
Olga Gulyaeva

AbstractThis article analyses images of the European Union (EU) existing in the discourse of the Russian news media, the general public and the Russian elites. The EU’s actions in the countries of Russia’s “near neighbourhood” and “far neighbourhood” were among the leading topics, showing high interest in the intensive Russia-EU political relations. The data of this paper comes from a year of monitoring of three daily newspapers, face-to-face interviews with political, business, media and civil society representatives and a public opinion survey. This analysis observed that both partnership and competition exist in Russia-EU political relations.


2013 ◽  
Vol 3 (3) ◽  
pp. 105-126 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rajendra K. Jain ◽  
Shreya Pandey

AbstractDrawing on thirty face-to-face interviews with Indian business, civil society, media and political elites during the period from September 2011 to April 2012, this article seeks to examine the perceptions of Indian elites of the European Union as a normative power. It discusses the evolution of the concept of normative power and the evolution of the EU’s normative identity. It clearly outlines the expansion of the varied roles played by the EU in the course of assuming responsibilities in the capacity of civilian, ethical and normative power of Europe both within its borders and abroad. The article seeks to highlight the diverse external perceptions about the normative power of EU by focusing upon the elite opinion from India. The article captures the changing mood of the elites about the effectiveness of the normative power of the EU with the intensification of the eurozone crisis. It argues that the normative disconnect in worldviews, mindsets and practical agendas between India and the European Union has made it difficult to transform shared values into coordinated policies.


2015 ◽  
Vol 35 (3) ◽  
pp. 505-530 ◽  
Author(s):  
Petya Alexandrova

AbstractFocusing events are sudden, striking large-scale occurrences that attract political attention. However, not all potential focusing events appear on the agenda. Combining data from multiple sources, this study conducts an analysis of the determinants of prioritisation of external focusing events in the European Council over a period longer than two decades. The results demonstrate that decisions regarding the placement of crises on the agenda are underscored by exogenous (humanitarian) and endogenous (geopolitical interest) considerations. Those events with a higher likelihood of agenda access include manmade incidents (versus natural disasters), events with larger death tolls and crises in the neighbourhood. Stronger competition between potential focusing events across time and space reduces the chances of access. The level of attention each event receives depends on purely strategic interests. Focusing events in neighbouring countries gain a higher portion of attention, as do occurrences in states having a larger trade exchange with the European Union.


2021 ◽  
Vol 2021 ◽  
pp. 1-12
Author(s):  
José L. Hernández-Ramos ◽  
Georgios Karopoulos ◽  
Dimitris Geneiatakis ◽  
Tania Martin ◽  
Georgios Kambourakis ◽  
...  

During 2021, different worldwide initiatives have been established for the development of digital vaccination certificates to alleviate the restrictions associated with the COVID-19 pandemic to vaccinated individuals. Although diverse technologies can be considered for the deployment of such certificates, the use of blockchain has been suggested as a promising approach due to its decentralization and transparency features. However, the proposed solutions often lack realistic experimental evaluation that could help to determine possible practical challenges for the deployment of a blockchain platform for this purpose. To fill this gap, this work introduces a scalable, blockchain-based platform for the secure sharing of COVID-19 or other disease vaccination certificates. As an indicative use case, we emulate a large-scale deployment by considering the countries of the European Union. The platform is evaluated through extensive experiments measuring computing resource usage, network response time, and bandwidth. Based on the results, the proposed scheme shows satisfactory performance across all major evaluation criteria, suggesting that it can set the pace for real implementations. Vis-à-vis the related work, the proposed platform is novel, especially through the prism of a large-scale, full-fledged implementation and its assessment.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document