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Humanities and Social Sciences60%

Selected Abstracts

Alternative Forms of Mixing Banking with Commerce: Evidence from American History

FINANCIAL MARKETS, INSTITUTIONS & INSTRUMENTS, Issue 2 2003
Joseph G. Haubrich
Much of the discussion about banking and commerce in America has failed to make several crucial distinctions and has not accounted for many arrangements that have promoted the mixing of these activities. We investigate the history of banking and commerce in the United States, looking both at bank control of commercial firms and commercial firms' control of banks. We trace how these controls have changed with shifting definitions of "bank" and changing methods of "control." Despite the regulations prohibiting some arrangements that promote financial control, we find evidence of extensive linkages between banking and commerce in the United States. These linkages usually build on devices that are very close substitutes to the arrangements prohibited by law. Altogether, our findings question the often made claim that traditionally banking in the United States has been separated from commerce. Furthermore, given that research on Japan and Germany has shown that the mixing of banking and commerce matters for a variety of issues, our evidence also raises some questions on similar research in the United States which makes the simplifying assumption that these industries are separated. [source]

Explaining the "Natural Order of L2 Morpheme Acquisition" in English: A Meta-analysis of Multiple Determinants

LANGUAGE LEARNING, Issue 1 2001
Jennifer M. Goldschneider
Some researchers have posited a &;ldquo;natural&;rdquo; order of acquisition of English grammatical morphemes common to all learners of English as a second language, but no single cause has been shown for this phenomenon. This meta-analysis investigated whether a combination of five determinants (perceptual salience, semantic complexity, morphophonological regularity, syntactic category, and frequency) accounts for a large part of the total variance found in acquisition order. Oral production data from 12 studies over almost 25 years, together involving 924 subjects, were pooled. Multiple regression analysis showed that a very large portion of the total variance in acquisition order is explained by the combination of the five determinants. We suggest research on other potential contributing factors and discuss the need for similar research in other languages. [source]

Second Language Listening: Listening Ability or Language Proficiency?

MODERN LANGUAGE JOURNAL, Issue 1 2006
LARRY VANDERGRIFT
This article reports on a study exploring the respective contributions of first language (L1) listening comprehension ability and second language (L2) proficiency to L2 listening comprehension ability. The participants were 75 Grade 8 English-speaking students learning French. The students completed tests in French and in English that required them to listen to authentic dialogues and to complete a number of multiple choice comprehension questions. Multiple regression analysis indicated that both L1 listening comprehension ability and L2 proficiency contributed significantly to L2 listening comprehension ability, with L2 proficiency having about twice as much common variance. A further analysis by question type indicated that, although the relative contribution of L2 proficiency to the combined variance continued to be higher for both question types, the relative contribution of L1 listening comprehension ability to answering literal questions was greater than for answering inferencing questions. The results are discussed in light of the linguistic threshold and the linguistic interdependence hypotheses and similar research on this same question for L2 reading. This article initiates an exploration of the ability/proficiency debate as it relates to L2 listening comprehension ability, discusses implications for L2 pedagogy, and suggests important avenues for further research. [source]

IS IT TIME FOR BIOETHICS TO GO EMPIRICAL?

BIOETHICS, Issue 3 2008
CHRIS HERRERA
ABSTRACT Observers who note the increasing popularity of bioethics discussions often complain that the social sciences are poorly represented in discussions about things like abortion and stem-cell research. Critics say that bioethicists should be incorporating the methods and findings of social scientists, and should move towards making the discipline more empirically oriented. This way, critics argue, bioethics will remain relevant, and truly reflect the needs of actual people. Such recommendations ignore the diversity of viewpoints in bioethics, however. Bioethics can gain much from the methods and findings from ethnographies and similar research. But it is misleading to suggest that bioethicists are unaware of this potential benefit. Not only that, bioethicists are justified in having doubts about the utility of the social science approach in some cases. This is not because there is some inherent superiority in non-empirical approaches to moral argument. Rather, the doubts concern the nature of the facts that the sciences would provide. Perhaps the larger point is that disagreements about the relationship between facts and normative arguments should be seen as part of the normal inquiry in bioethics, not evidence that reform is needed. [source]

Publishing trends in otorhinolaryngology from January 1997 to December 1999 in the UK

CLINICAL OTOLARYNGOLOGY, Issue 3 2001
G S. Sandhu
In the last 10 years there have been many changes in otorhinolaryngology training and academic resources. The Calman reforms were introduced to our speciality in July 1996 and the last decade has also seen the number of professorial chairs in the UK rise from two to 12. One would therefore expect an increase in academic output, in terms of published works, despite the impediments generated by the Calman Training System. A search of eight leading English language otorhinolaryngology journals was carried out from January 1997 to December 1999 looking for articles with British authors. The results were compared with similar research carried out 10 years ago. There has been no major growth in the output of otorhinolaryngological publications from the UK in the last 10 years. [source]