Applying kaizen to the schedule in a concurrent environment

Not only ETO (Engineering to Order), but even serial production industry should know how to deal with projects and their schedule: plant commissioning, shutdown, introducing new products and similar circumstances should be managed with adequate planning and resource allocation techniques to create a schedule useful in decision making during the execution. The current complex reality, with evolving technologies and fierce pressure to reach the market as soon as possible, pushes the project managers to use more advanced techniques than waterfall planning, such as agile or lean. It also requires them to take a holistic view and manage concurrent tasks in complex projects. The contributions of this paper are two: the proposal to control specific parallel groups of waterfall activities under uncertain environments, which can lead to iterations and reworks, as a single concurrent Activity Managed by Kanban Methods (AMKM). This activity can be subsequently embedded into traditional scheduling approaches as CPM-PERT. The second contribution is the feasibility of its application in industrial environments due to the affordability of simulation software. Two use cases are shown as evidence. It is not a disruptive proposal, but a kaizen action based on very mature technologies. Finally, it is suggested some improvements to be implemented in Project Management Software due to this ‘kaizen’ proposal.     

全球化团队的敏捷开发模式

敏捷开发是软件项目的一个概念框架，能够帮助开发团队快速响应需求的变化并且能够很好地控制成本和风险。它是一种以人为核心、迭代、循序渐进的开发方法。Serum是一个应用广泛的迭代增量过程进行软件开发的敏捷开发方法。在全球化的背景下，存在很多全球化的开发团队，他们在不断探索全球化敏捷开发的模式。文章最后给出的HP的全球化团队敏捷开发模式，能够帮助大家更好地认识敏捷开发。     

A feminist revisiting of the insider/outsider debate: The “outsider phenomenon” in rural Iowa

This article draws upon findings from an ethnographic study of two towns in rural Iowa to examine the adequacy of the insider/outsider distinction as a guideline for evaluating and conducting ethnographic research. Utilizing feminist standpoint and materialist feminist theories, I start with the assumption that, rather than one “insider” or “outsider” position, we all begin our work with different relationships to shifting aspects of social life and to particular knowers in the community and this contributes to numerous dimensions through which we can relate to residents in various communities. “Outsiderness” and “insiderness” are not fixed or static positions, rather they are ever-shifting and permeable social locations illustrated in this case study by the “outsider phenomenon.” Community processes that reorganize and resituate race-ethnicity, gender and class relations form some of the most salient aspects of the “outsider phenomenon.” These dynamic processes shaped our relationships with residents as ethnographic identities were repositioned by shifts in constructions of “community” that accompanied ongoing social, demographic, and political changes.     

教育研究方法论反思:实证与思辨

教育研究中的实证问题在于实证技术化与学术的反实证性以及自身否认价值关涉的方法论缺陷;教育研究中思辨问题则形式化、庸俗化,缺乏思辨的矛盾、激情和魅力。其共性问题在于对教育实践问题的漠视,其出路在于研究者方法论的开放与创新。     

关于专业英语教学的几点思考

文章针对专业英语教学的现状，结合教学实践，提出专业英语教学应加强师资与教材建设，教学中应注意加强专业词汇的掌握、加强英语思维训练、强调获取专业信息等几方面的问题。     

结对编程在计算机专业学生编程实践的应用

结对编程是敏捷的和基于实践的软件开发方法学。将结对编程引入计算机专业编程设计中,并探讨了在编程实践中引入结对编程的意义,以及如何应用结对编程有效地进行编程实践。     

Beyond the mirror towards a plurilingual prism: exploring the creation of plurilingual ‘identity texts’ in English and French classrooms in Toronto and Montpellier

In an age of transnational mobility, there has been a growing recognition of the need for both English and French mainstream classroom teachers to be trained to teach increasingly plurilingual student populations. In this article, I begin by describing the context for an exploratory comparative and collaborative ethnographic action research study in four English and French schools in Toronto, Canada and one school in Montpellier, France that engaged children as co-researchers of their lived plurilingualism. I analyse in particular the process of creating plurilingual multimodal books with students and teachers across the five different school cases. This paper focuses on the iterative ‘identity text’ creation process across all five schools by examining one plurilingual identity text from each case, along with students’ research conversations about their creative productions, and interviews with their classroom teachers and parents. Finally, I summarize five features of inclusive plurilingual pedagogy that emerged across the five cases and call for further collaborative research across English and French schools and scholarly communities investigating creative plurilingual language and literacy production in the twenty-first century.     

What if gender became an essential,standard element of Vulnerability Assessments?

Vulnerability Assessments (VAs) can be useful tools for providing key insights for non-government organisations and other development actors, including governments. Not only can they provide an extensive, ‘landscape-wide’ understanding of vulnerability and its underlying causes in a specific context, but this understanding can be jointly owned by all participants. They can thus be used for designing risk reduction and resilience-building measures, programmes, or projects that affect specific groups within a community or the landscape. Beyond that, VAs can provide a platform that promotes interaction among otherwise disconnected stakeholders, as well as the evidence and argumentation for community groups to engage in advocacy with local and municipal/district authorities. This article draws on our combined experience as development practitioners, and considers what we have learnt about the importance of integrating gender issues into VAs.     

Approximating probability density functions in hybrid Bayesian networks with mixtures of truncated exponentials

Mixtures of truncated exponentials (MTE) potentials are an alternative to discretization and Monte Carlo methods for solving hybrid Bayesian networks. Any probability density function (PDF) can be approximated by an MTE potential, which can always be marginalized in closed form. This allows propagation to be done exactly using the Shenoy-Shafer architecture for computing marginals, with no restrictions on the construction of a join tree. This paper presents MTE potentials that approximate standard PDF’s and applications of these potentials for solving inference problems in hybrid Bayesian networks. These approximations will extend the types of inference problems that can be modelled with Bayesian networks, as demonstrated using three examples.     

频率捷变信号的频率／方向联合估计

提出一种利用并行阵列数据联合估计频率捷变信号（ＦＡＳ）的频率和ＤＯＡ算法。这种算法能同时估计频率和ＤＯＡ，并自动地将它们配对，从而识别不同的ＦＡＳ。计算机模拟结果表明这种算法是有效的。