Software maintenance and support costs account for up to 60% of the overall software life cycle cost and often burdens tightly budgeted information technology (IT) organizations. Agile software development approach delivers business value early, but implications on software maintainability are still unknown. The purpose of this quantitative study…

Stanford University's (California) Julie Sweetkind-Singer is a recognized authority on digital preservation, and has been honored by the Library of Congress for her work in the field. She currently serves as both the assistant director of Stanford's Geospatial, Cartographic and Scientific Data and Services and as head of the Branner Earth Sciences…

Many colleges have put off repairs and renovation since the recession. Now crumbling buildings, limited budgets, and mounting debt present an increasingly intractable problem. Sightlines, a consulting company that tracks and analyzes facilities issues at more than 300 colleges, shared some of its latest findings with "The Chronicle". The data…

Based on a 3-year qualitative research study that took place in a new immigrant-receiving community in North Carolina, the manuscript examines the implications of transnational cultural and sociolinguistic patterns of multilingual indigenous Latino immigrants (ILIs), and its effects on their survival in the US. Utilizing narrative analysis, it…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to draw attention to an indigenous community that lives in the periphery of Taiwan. The Tao were confronted with modernization beginning with the Japanese colonial time and later through missionary work and Sinicization. These exogenous factors had a major influence on the Tao's traditional lifestyle and…

Donating computers to schools in poorer communities with the altruistic hope of bridging some kind of "digital-divide" by providing access to modern technologies may seem commendable. Critics, however, would argue that these actions are ineffective, primarily serving the interests of the donators and may even damage the community. This…

Providing feedback to trainees in clinical settings is considered important for development and acquisition of skill. Despite recommendations how to provide feedback that have appeared in the literature, research shows that its effectiveness is often disappointing. To understand why receiving feedback is more difficult than it appears, this paper…

The emergence of new domains, such as the Internet, can prove challenging for minority languages. Welsh is a minority, regional language and is considered "vulnerable" by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). The Welsh-speaking community appears to have responded positively to the Internet and the…

The language problems faced by migrants may be more complex when they come from a minority language group in their homeland. The new arrivals may find that there are few, or even no, speakers of their language in the community to which they have moved. Then decisions have to be made as to whether to attempt to maintain the native language and also…

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to assess staff perceptions of four U.S.-Saudi Diplomatic Corps, the embassy in Washington, DC, and the three consulates in New York, Houston, and Los Angeles regarding the implementation of virtual teams. This study applied the adaptive structuration theory (AST). AST explains how teams develop in a given…

Regretted messages provide speakers an opportunity to learn. Whether learning occurs should depend upon how the incident is processed. This study had two objectives: (a) to determine how the goal a message conflicts with and seriousness influence the emotion(s) evoked; and (b) to determine which variables predict adoption of learning-oriented,…

Language policies have a better chance of succeeding if they align with the persuasions of the polity, and this is only more pronounced in the case of endangered languages, such as Te Reo (the Maori language) in New Zealand. There, a comprehensive suite of laws, policies, and programmes are in place to acknowledge and reverse the linguistic…

Employment for individuals with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) is a significant factor in assuring quality of life in adulthood. The research reported in this article examines the effectiveness of video feedback (VFB) in improving the job-related behaviours of twin adolescents with ASD and learning disabilities. The targeted behaviours included…

The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of a comprehensive social skills intervention package combining peer-mediated strategies and environmental arrangements on the peer interactions of three children with autism in a Malaysian preschool. Following baseline, nine typically developing children participated in social initiation…

The United Arab Emirates (UAE) is a small state transitioning from traditional communities into a modern society. This is a complex process: it involves instilling a national identity over tribal structures; modernising and technologising while retaining Islam; ensuring a high level of security while allowing for a liberal and relatively free…