Divergence Research Papers - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

The influence of Quarternary glacial cycles on the extant diversity of Holarctic species has been intensively studied. It has been hypothesized that palaeoclimatic changes are responsible for divergence events in lineages. A constant... more

The influence of Quarternary glacial cycles on the extant diversity of Holarctic species has been intensively studied. It has been hypothesized that palaeoclimatic changes are responsible for divergence events in lineages. A constant improvement in DNA sequencing and modeling methods, as well as palaeoclimatic reconstruction, permit a deeper exploration of general causes of speciation in geological time. In the present study, we sampled, as exhaustively as possible, the butterflies belonging to the genus Melitaea (Lepidoptera: Nymphalidae), which are widely spread in the Palaearctic region. We conducted analyses to assess the phylogeny of the genus and estimated the timing of divergence and the most likely distribution of ancestral populations. The results obtained indicate that the systematics of the genus is in need of revision and that the diversity of the genus has been profoundly shaped by palaeoenvironmental changes during its evolutionary history. The present study also emphasizes that, when employed with caveats, major palaeoenvironmental events could represent very powerful tools for the calibration of the dating of divergences using molecular data. © 2009 The Linnean Society of London, Biological Journal of the Linnean Society, 2009, 97, 346–361.

Cet article se propose d’étudier différents aspects du changement linguistique actuel dans le domaine du catalan nord-occidental grâce à un corpus contemporain conçu spécialement à ces fins. Pour ce faire, nous nous appuierons sur... more

Cet article se propose d’étudier différents aspects du changement linguistique actuel dans le domaine du catalan nord-occidental grâce à un corpus contemporain conçu spécialement à ces fins. Pour ce faire, nous nous appuierons sur plusieurs méthodes dialectométriques – basées sur la distance de Levenshtein et l’interface Gabmap – afin de calculer et analyser la distance linguistique entre ces variétés en temps apparent et selon une perspective quantitative globale. Concrètement, notre attention se portera sur le processus de perte structurelle qui affecte plusieurs variétés nord-occidentales de Catalogne et d’Andorre à la suite d’une advergence progressive avec les variétés orientales et le standard, situation totalement opposée au phénomène de relative stabilité des dialectes situés dans les régions soumises à l’administration aragonaise. Nous prendrons donc en considération le double processus d’advergence verticale des variétés catalanes et andorranes avec les variétés de prestige et en revanche, la divergence horizontale entre celles-ci et les différentes variétés de la Franja ; le résultat en étant une plus grande incidence de l’effet-frontière. Par ailleurs, nous constaterons que le changement linguistique qui touche le catalan nord-occidental est un phénomène complexe dans lequel le processus séculaire d’orientalisation semble céder le pas à un processus plus récent et plus puissant de standardisation. Enfin, nous analyserons les modèles de diffusion des innovations ayant le plus de poids sur le changement linguistique et nous indiquerons la complémentarité des modèles de diffusion hiérarchiques et par propagation.

Values-pragmatics theory (Hodges & Geyer, 2006) predicts that people will sometimes disagree with others they believe are correct, for reasons similar to those explaining agreement with incorrect answers in an Asch (1956) situation. In 3... more

Values-pragmatics theory (Hodges & Geyer, 2006) predicts that people will sometimes disagree with others they believe are correct, for reasons similar to those explaining agreement with incorrect answers in an Asch (1956) situation. In 3 experiments, we found evidence that people in a position of ignorance sometimes do not agree with the correct answers of others in positions of knowledge. Experiments 1a and 1b found this speaking-from-ignorance (SFI) effect occurred 27% of the time. Experiment 2 introduced experimental controls and self-report data indicating that the SFI effect (30%) was generated by realizing values (e.g., truth, social solidarity) and pragmatic constraints to act cooperatively, rather than by a wide array of alternatives (e.g., normative pressure, reactance). Experiment 3 experimentally manipulated concern for truthfulness, yielding 49% nonagreeing answers, even though there were monetary incentives to give correct, agreeing answers. The overall pattern suggests...

The role of human resource management function is at the crossroad, and on the one hand it is facing the crisis whereas there also exists an unprecedented opportunity to redefine and refocus the HRM function to leverage its credibility in... more

The role of human resource management function is at the crossroad, and on the one hand it is facing the crisis whereas there also exists an unprecedented opportunity to redefine and refocus the HRM function to leverage its credibility in organization. In Oman, HRM is in its infancy and there is a need to strengthen its discourse and learning. The present paper attempts to understand the dynamics of HRM in Oman and evaluates various HRM models which have evolved over a period of time. It is difficult to prescribe a HRM model without analyzing the regional and socio-contextual factors inherent in Oman and neither convergence nor pure divergence provides a solution to this end.

Proceeding from a critical assessment of two recent books, Prasannan Parthasarathi’s Why Europe Grew Rich and Asia Did ot, and Jean-Laurent Rosenthal and R. Bin Wong’s Before and Beyond Divergence, this paper takes stock of the present... more

Proceeding from a critical assessment of two recent books, Prasannan Parthasarathi’s Why Europe Grew Rich and Asia Did ot, and Jean-Laurent Rosenthal and R. Bin Wong’s Before and Beyond Divergence, this paper takes stock of the present state of the “Great Divergence” debate. It is argued that the discussion needs to be refined to distinguish between levels of economic development, and paths or trends, in the eighteenth century as well as between causes of sustained growth, and of stagnation or decline in the nineteenth century. It is further suggested that the debate needs to be connected to an understanding of the causes of a “Great Convergence” in the early modern world, and how different regions might have reached similar levels of economic complexity, but might nevertheless have been on different paths for future growth. Finally, this paper suggests that the divergence debate also needs to be connected to the debate on the transition to capitalism.

ABSTRACT Most people in Zambia expect a lot of quality content from the public media which is funded from taxpayers’ money. The sole objective of this research is to examine the public interest vis-a-vis public expectation of best public... more

ABSTRACT
Most people in Zambia expect a lot of quality content from the public media which is funded from taxpayers’ money. The sole objective of this research is to examine the public interest vis-a-vis public expectation of best public media practice in Zambia in the light of the many obstacles they face such as the state ownership and control of the major newspapers and broadcasting stations. The air waves and media space are controlled by a state monopoly outfit which sells the broadband to other private users such as the cell phone and internet service providers. The state monopoly itself competes with the private providers, such that there is little space for the private providers to operate freely as there is conflict of interest. There is a public perception of public media capture, bias, abuse, misinformation, and perceived state censorship and manipulation of news items. This paper examines the role of the public media in Zambia and tries to unearth some of the challenges facing public media practitioners, and proffers some solutions. This paper uses the methodology of primary and secondary research to examine how social media is filling the information gap in terms of content and variety and in the process creating some positive and negative externalities of entertainment and education on the one hand, and misinformation and political instability on the other hand. The paper further examines the decomposition of public media content in the various news coverage items, and explains why the pattern is the way it is. Finally, the research ends with some recommendations on the way forward towards the creation of a more vibrant, creative, and independent public media which is efficient, effective, user-friendly, responsible and responsive to public expectations, in line with modern trends in western countries.
Keywords: radio, print media, TV, electronic media, social media, information gap, content gap, press freedom, censorship, freedom of information, parallel media, gullibility, credulity, convergence

Aquest article és una primera aproximació al procés de canvi lingüístic que ha afectat sis poblacions de parla catalana nord-occidental en els darrers 80 anys. L'estudi segueix el mètode dialectomètric desenvolupat arran de l'explotació... more

Aquest article és una primera aproximació al procés de canvi lingüístic que ha afectat sis poblacions de parla catalana nord-occidental en els darrers 80 anys. L'estudi segueix el mètode dialectomètric desenvolupat arran de l'explotació del "Corpus Oral Dialectal" de la Universitat de Barcelona, consistent a calcular la distància lingüística entre les varietats estudiades a partir de la discriminació dels elements impredictibles i predictibles de la llengua des d'una perspectiva generativa clàssica. Els resultats permeten detectar un procés divergent en el si d’aquestes varietats: d’anivellament dialectal entre els parlars del Principat i de divergència entre aquests parlars i els dialectes nord-occidentals de l’Aragó. L’efecte-frontera entre Catalunya i l’Aragó està contribuint, doncs, a crear una falla dialectal en el tradicional contínuum del català nord-occidental.

The West has continued to supply leadership and management ideas, political systems, and economic infrastructures to Africa, from colonial times to present. Understandably, most Western theories that are continuously being used in... more

The West has continued to supply leadership and management ideas, political systems, and economic infrastructures to Africa, from colonial times to present. Understandably, most Western theories that are continuously being used in organisations in Africa, with their seemingly good intentions, have not achieved the desired outcomes, because many Africans find it difficult to relate to them and have to sacrifice their authenticity in order to fully embrace them. Some have identified the limitations of perspectives and practices formulated solely in the West (Blunt & Jones, 1992; Kamoche, 1993, 1997; Nzelibe, 1986), while others have offered empirical evidence on the nature of extant practices, pointing to their appropriateness or lack thereof (Blunt & Jones, 1986; Kamoche, 2000a; Seddon, 1985). This growing critique has highlighted the need to understand the African context as well as the indigenous thought system and, in particular, the perspective of the African worker.
The unquestioning use of Western models of management in Africa merely stifles the incentive to examine critically the real needs of organisations on the continent. The results of these imposed theories are counter intent and innumerable unintended consequences, as the leadership- and management styles are not well guided by theories that are meaningful to the majority of the African populace. True to the ‘African Way’, African theories are seldom captured in literature, and specifically not in organisational literature – the wisdom of the ages usually used to be passed on through the oral tradition. This no longer appears sufficient, as many Africans, particularly educated and skilled Africans, have been drawn to, and into, urban lifestyles, thus separating them from the traditional forms of oral transfer and additionally placing them in direct contact with often dominant Western organisational norms and cultures – and it has therefore become imperative that such traditional- and contemporary African wisdom be captured in supplementary communication forms, e.g., modern African music, art, popular-, praxis- and academic literature.

Cet article presente une vue generale sur la situation de l'occitan dans le Val d'Aran, la seule vallee de l'Etat espagnol se trouvant sur le cote septentrional de la chaine des Pyrenees qui possede l'occitan comme langue... more

Cet article presente une vue generale sur la situation de l'occitan dans le Val d'Aran, la seule vallee de l'Etat espagnol se trouvant sur le cote septentrional de la chaine des Pyrenees qui possede l'occitan comme langue officielle en plus de l'espagnol et du catalan. Dans cet article, nous en presentons en premier lieu la situation generale en termes sociolinguistiques: entree d'une forte immigration castillanophone depuis les annees 60 avec le boom du tourisme; developpement des institutions autochtones de gestion politique au long des annees 70-80; mise en pratique de l'enseignement en occitan et de la codification de la langue autochtone suivant les criteres etablis par l'Institut d'Etudes Occitanes. En second lieu, nous posons le probleme des criteres d'elaboration linguistique qui apparaissent avec l'exploitation des nouveaux contextes d'utilisation de la langue. Nous prenons parti pour un modele unitaire d'occitan ecrit, au...

A novel color image histogram equalization approach is proposed that exploits the correlation between color components and it is enhanced by a multi-level smoothing technique borrowed from statistical language engineering. Multi-level... more

A novel color image histogram equalization approach is proposed that exploits the correlation between color components and it is enhanced by a multi-level smoothing technique borrowed from statistical language engineering. Multi-level smoothing aims at dealing efficiently with the problem of unseen color values, either considered independently or in combination with others. It is applied here to the HSI color space for the probability of intensity and the probability of saturation given the intensity, while the hue is left unchanged. Moreover, the proposed approach is extended by an empirical technique, which is based on a hue preserving non-linear transformation, in order to eliminate the gamut problem. This is the second method proposed in the paper. The equalized images by the two methods are compared to those produced by other well-known methods. The better quality of the images equalized by the proposed methods is judged in terms of their visual appeal and objective figures of merit, such as the entropy and the Kullback–Leibler divergence estimates between the resulting color histogram and the multivariate uniform probability density function.

Recent decades have seen a growing ‘pluralisation’ of policing providers and authorisers in liberal democracies (Crawford 2003, Johnston and Shearing 2003). Some have interpreted this as part of a major transformation of policing in... more

Recent decades have seen a growing ‘pluralisation’ of policing providers and authorisers in liberal democracies (Crawford 2003, Johnston and Shearing 2003). Some have interpreted this as part of a major transformation of policing in western liberal democracies that reflects fundamental shifts in the nature of governance (Bayley and Shearing 1996, 2001). Others have stressed continuities with the recent history of policing and the persistence of significant national and local differences in policing structures (Jones and Newburn 2002, Ferret 2004). These discussions have some parallels with wider debates about convergence and divergence in penality and the ways in which structural and cultural shifts influence policy developments across different societies (Garland 2001). We here examine recent changes in policing within two EU countries – Britain and the Netherlands. This paper discusses areas of similarity and difference in plural policing developments, and speculates about what factors might explain these. There is evidence of structural and cultural shifts working to shape policing in similar ways, but also of the mediating influence of distinctive national and local political institutions and cultures. These particular contexts provide possibilities for the resistance and re-shaping of global forces, as well as provide a framework for the emergence of distinct policy innovations.

Hydrobiologia 471: 149–155, 2002. L. Watling & M. Risk (eds), Biology of Cold Water Corals. © 2002 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands. ... DNA sequences of the mitochondrial COI gene have low levels of divergence among... more

Hydrobiologia 471: 149–155, 2002. L. Watling & M. Risk (eds), Biology of Cold Water Corals. © 2002 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands. ... DNA sequences of the mitochondrial COI gene have low levels of divergence among deep-sea octocorals ( ...

The present research aims to develop a cross-cultural understanding of impression management (IM) behavior at workplace. A new measure of IM, using elements of jobfocused, initiative-focused and relationship-focused strategies, is... more

The present research aims to develop a cross-cultural understanding of impression management (IM) behavior at workplace. A new measure of IM, using elements of jobfocused, initiative-focused and relationship-focused strategies, is developed for the study.
Analysis of 535 employees from India, Israel and Pakistan demonstrates both differences
and similarities in the use of various IM strategies. Although a majority of the significant
differences contradict current evidence of IM, our findings do highlight the cross-cultural
significance of IM behavior, and demonstrate emergence of crossvergence of values among Israeli, Indian and Pakistani employees. New studies are needed to further evaluate the
cross-cultural validity of the IM scale developed for this study, at the same time fresh scholarly inquiry in international management should take a closer and more in-depth look at the complexity of transition of values in order to contribute to a better understanding of IM in international settings.

Following the realization that the northwestern dialect continuum of Catalan is splitting along the political border between Catalonia and Aragon, in Spain, this article upholds the view that internal borders should be incorporated into... more

Following the realization that the northwestern dialect continuum of Catalan is splitting along the political border between Catalonia and Aragon, in Spain, this article upholds the view that internal borders should be incorporated into border studies, since they often trigger processes of linguistic convergence and divergence which alter the most common patterns of linguistic diffusion. The language change is analysed in apparent time using a combination of dialectometric techniques that constitute an innovation within the field of border effects, and which, in the specific case of Catalan in Aragon, illustrates the usefulness of dialectometry in detecting processes of structural hybridization in areas where the vitality of the language is most seriously undermined. Lastly, this article evinces the need to further develop a form of social dialectometry that not only answers sociolinguistic questions, but also makes it possible to objectively evaluate the social motivations fuelling the ongoing changes.

Urban water consumption in Israel is on the rise. However, the direction of change differs by consumption sector. In the domestic sector, per capita water use tends to grow faster in “thinly” consuming places than in localities with high... more

Urban water consumption in Israel is on the rise. However, the direction of change differs by consumption sector. In the domestic sector, per capita water use tends to grow faster in “thinly” consuming places than in localities with high per capita rates of water consumption, indicating that water consumption rates tend to converge over time. Concurrently, in the non-residential sector (municipal consumption), water consumption tends to diverge, with heavily water-consuming places raising their per capita water consumption rates more rapidly. According to the explanation proposed, the observed convergence trend in the domestic sector is likely to stem from two major factors – the saturation of water consumption in affluent places, and the rising standards of living in poor localities, enabling them to consume more water for household use. Recent improvements in the level of infrastructure development in the peripheral areas of the country may have also contributed to the convergence of water consumption rates for domestic use.

In this study, we investigate which factors influence the linguistic dis-tance of Catalan dialectal pronunciations from standard Catalan. We use pronun-ciations from three regions where the northwestern variety of the Catalan language is... more

In this study, we investigate which factors influence the linguistic dis-tance of Catalan dialectal pronunciations from standard Catalan. We use pronun-ciations from three regions where the northwestern variety of the Catalan language is spoken (Catalonia, Aragon and Andorra). In contrast to Aragon, Catalan has an official status in both Catalonia and Andorra, which likely influences standardiza-tion. Because we are interested in the potentially large range of differences that standardization might promote, we examine 357 words in Catalan varieties and in particular their pronunciation distances with respect to the standard. In order to be sensitive to differences among the words, we fit a generalized additive mixed-effects regression model to this data. This allows us to examine simultaneously the general (i.e. aggregate) patterns in pronunciation distance and to detect those words that diverge substantially from the general pattern. The results reveal higher pronunciation distance...

Aquest treball vol constituir una baula més en l’anàlisi del procés de desdialectalització del català nord-occidental. El nostre propòsit és demostrar com, utilitzant tècniques dialectomètriques, no només és possible resseguir la... more

Aquest treball vol constituir una baula més en l’anàlisi del procés de desdialectalització del català nord-occidental. El nostre propòsit és demostrar com, utilitzant tècniques dialectomètriques, no només és possible resseguir la direccionalitat del canvi lingüístic (CL) a partir de dades fonètiques –com hem fet en treballs anteriors– sinó que es pot arribar a discriminar entre la naturalesa morfològica o fonològica d’aquest canvi . Es tracta, en altres paraules, de resseguir no només la direccionalitat i l’abast, sinó molt especialment la naturalesa del CL a partir d'una anàlisi generativista de les dades que discrimini allò que és predictible –o fonològic– d'allò que és impredictible –o morfològic. Aquest tipus d’anàlisi hauria d’aportar llum a un debat que a partir de les dades fonètiques –si més no des d’un punt de vista quantitatiu– no sembla que es pugui abordar: la constatació, o no, que el desgast de les varietats dialectals és més important en els aspectes morfològics que no en els fonològics i que, per tant, i des d’un punt de vista respectuós amb la diversitat, potser caldria reformular l’assumpció de procedència anglosaxona que un dialecte només ho és si manté una certa idiosincràsia morfològica . Altrament, la devaluació de parlars que, segons aquest criteri, passen a esdevenir “meres varietats accentuals” –en paraules de Viaplana (1999: 115-116)– podria no ser cap bon estímul a favor del manteniment de la dialectalitat d’alguns parlars nord-occidentals.