Construct in Assessments of Spoken Language

Language assessment constructs conjoin two complex, dynamic phenomena: collective patterns of language use and individual language ability. Assessment constructs emerge from “spheres of activity” across multiple, overlapping dimensions, denoted in this chapter as theoretical, operationalized, stated, and perceived constructs. While theoretical constructs are assumptions about what causes differences in scores, the operationalized construct is what actually emerges in the interaction between the assessee and the assessment infrastructure. Stated constructs are descriptions of what the assessment claims to assess, and perceived constructs are the ways these statements are interpreted. Interrogating the congruence of these dimensions has the potential to provide a holistic view of the development, experience, use, and impact of assessment constructs across diverse stakeholder worlds.

Prospects and Challenges In Developing 'Japanese Studies' Program in Bangladesh: Lessons From the University of Dhaka

Japanese Studies has entered a booming period in Bangladesh where the growing demand for knowledge on Japan, particularly Japanese development experience, society, and culture, has intensified. Besides, the increasing number of Japanese companies and opportunities to work in Japan so far is conducive to the increasing number of students in the Japanese language. Considering the given facts, academic institutions of Bangladesh need to initiate 'Japanese Studies' programs to produce 'Japanologists’-contextual and transitional expertise. The larger goal of this study is to identify the major prospects and challenges and consider the future directions for the Japanese Studies program. The paper intends to think alternatively beyond the 'ivory tower' mindset of a large number of Bangladeshi students as well as academicians and show the prospects of Japanese Studies with sustainable employment opportunities through industry-academia collaboration. The methods and equipping tools employed in this paper include lexical scrutiny and contextual analysis under the qualitative research method to analyse the current state of knowledge and pedagogical development. Presenting the number of stumbling blocks of the Japanese Studies program in Bangladesh, the paper finally demonstrates the program's future as an academic discipline. It ends with possible suggestions towards success in producing Japanologists to strengthen Bangladesh-Japan bilateral relations.

Reassessing Ireland’s economic development through the lens of sustainable development

After a century of Irish independence, this study constructs long run Genuine Savings estimates, a leading economic indicator of sustainable development, to reassess Irish economic history from the vantage of sustainable development. The main difference uncovered surrounds the post-1950 period where Ireland failed to achieve economic convergence and was considered an economic failure in growth terms. From a sustainability perspective, Ireland may have been an overachiever during a “great transition” of sustainable development driven by improved institutions and policies. The findings show the value of the sustainable development perspective in shedding new light on a country’s development experience.

Adaptive On-the-Fly Changes in Distributed Processing Pipelines

Distributed data processing systems have become the standard means for big data analytics. These systems are based on processing pipelines where operations on data are performed in a chain of consecutive steps. Normally, the operations performed by these pipelines are set at design time, and any changes to their functionality require the applications to be restarted. This is not always acceptable, for example, when we cannot afford downtime or when a long-running calculation would lose significant progress. The introduction of variation points to distributed processing pipelines allows for on-the-fly updating of individual analysis steps. In this paper, we extend such basic variation point functionality to provide fully automated reconfiguration of the processing steps within a running pipeline through an automated planner. We have enabled pipeline modeling through constraints. Based on these constraints, we not only ensure that configurations are compatible with type but also verify that expected pipeline functionality is achieved. Furthermore, automating the reconfiguration process simplifies its use, in turn allowing users with less development experience to make changes. The system can automatically generate and validate pipeline configurations that achieve a specified goal, selecting from operation definitions available at planning time. It then automatically integrates these configurations into the running pipeline. We verify the system through the testing of a proof-of-concept implementation. The proof of concept also shows promising results when reconfiguration is performed frequently.

China’s “Economic Miracle” and the Universal Modernization Model

Neoclassical economics relies on highly formalized deductive logic to create an overly simplified picture of economic practices. Its universalized model of modernization assumes that the relationship between state and market is antagonistic. This presumption reduces China’s “economic miracle” to a simple transformation into a market economy and underestimates the role played by the government, making it impossible to construct a theory that considers China’s subjectivity. Studies on China’s economy should focus on its practices, which may appear to be paradoxical if seen only from the perspective of Western neoclassical economics, in order to construct an accurate depiction of the foundations of China’s development experience. Only through such an endeavor will it be possible to incorporate into any new theory of economic modernization the distinctive features of China’s development.

Agritourism Development in the USA: The Strategy of the State of Michigan

Agritourism has been widely promoted by governments at many levels, especially in the developed regions of Europe and North America, as a tool to revitalize rural economies and as a sustainable path. Research on agritourism has mainly focused on defining and categorizing agritourism, farmers’ perceptions, tourists’ attitudes, tourism benefits, and marketing. However, little attention has been paid to characterizing the processes and strategies of agritourism development in a relatively large region, for instance, in a state or a province. This article uses the state of Michigan in the Midwest of the USA as a case study, systematically collecting academic publications from several literature databases on agritourism, the state’s regulation and policies on agritourism, the development of agritourism associations, the participation of universities in agritourism related to academic and outreach activities, identifying key and critical developmental events, and reconstructing the historical phases of the agritourism development process. It summarizes the significant characteristics of agritourism’s development in the state of Michigan, the state government’s comprehensive strategy and leadership, the universities’ strong intellectual support, and the consistent involvement of the industrial associations, as well as the interactions of these three parties at the different developmental stages of agritourism. The discussion is set in the wider context of agritourism’s development in the USA. We conclude by presenting the implications and recommendations derived from the agritourism development experience in the state of Michigan. We specifically discuss the relevance of the Michigan experience for agritourism stakeholders in other regions worldwide, especially those that are still in the early stages of agritourism development, such as China.

Expandable Substrate Module and Storage Network Compatible w/ BitBadges

(THIS IS THE MIRROR OF A GRANT PROPOSAL). We are working on creating a storage network module on substrate compatible w/ the BitBadges blockchain. This will allow for substrate to interact in a meaningful way with the BitBadges ecosystem, which follows an experimental PoCP or Proof of Computation proof.Other projects like Crust or Subspace are within the same realm of trying to create some form of storage network. The difference is how BitBadges goes about accomplishing this and what a substrate module as an integration will provide. BitBadges as a whole is working on offline-centric networks and integrating variations of distributing sharding algorithms. Their data is transmitted w/ CouchDB being an integral part of its core for node syncronization. BitBadges is also integrating w/ various third party networks viewed as either pegs or applications.We believe that the substrate ecosystem can provide another integration w/ our network and we might even be able to create something similar to what Crust is doing on their mainnet, but w/ BitBadges as the storage method or a mirrored peg for the data. Our team, which is currently just two people, are passionate and have years of blockchain development experience under our belts. We think Substrate can work great as one of our third party integrations or pegged chains.