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This chapter explores the importance of early autism spectrum disorder (ASD) assessment and diagnosis to facilitate early treatment. This chapter will have a particular focus on ASD assessment and diagnosis within a Black and Minority Ethnic (BME) context. We propose using a Cultural Competence framework to process, analyze, assessment, and diagnosis results/findings. BME assessments/diagnoses can be delayed by up to 18 months longer when compared to Whites.

ASD Assessment aims to assess certain developmental traits in individuals to identify ASD which is a developmental disability. Autism is a spectrum condition which can manifest differently in each diagnosed individual. There are core features necessary for an ASD diagnosis to be made. These include among other traits: poor eye contact, abnormality in body language: for example, gestures, difficulties with social communication and social interaction, often they exhibit repetitive patterns of behavior, have obsessional interests, rigid thinking patterns, and have an aversion to certain sounds and textures and an unusual interest in sensory satisfaction.

It is reasonable to assume the existence of a new “dynamic” that influences how to measure reference services in libraries and how we evaluate the reference librarians who provide those services. Traditional, face-to-face delivery of reference services is reported to be declining, and there is myriad evidence, albeit largely uncollated and little evaluated, which suggests reference librarians are delivering significant and increasing amounts of the services they render in network environments. These trends raise questions, in turn, about how well we understand the current state of affairs in reference services, particularly where the management and evaluation of reference services in network environments are concerned.

The purpose of this study is to investigate relevant circumstances and conditions bearing – directly and indirectly – on changes in the nature, form, substance, and effects of reference services – through the reference librarian experience. Specifically, this attitudinal study will account for and assess changes in reference services (in the context of a medium-sized private university with a national reputation for successfully integrating information technologies into the educational process), with the further aim of developing an understanding of how to capture statistics and evaluate reference services and personnel in this dynamic environment. Reference librarians at a second mid-sized public university library were also interviewed for comparative data analysis in this study. Select portions of this paper have appeared in other publications in shorter, focused, introductory articles.

Despite the growing interest in IJVs and their governance, systematic research is limited on the board of directors and their roles in international joint ventures in emerging markets. In this study, we draw from corporate governance research that suggests that the levels of control and collaboration by boards are influenced by organizational complexity. While joint ventures possess several similarities compared to unitary firms, they also have unique sources of complexity given the fact that two or more international partners collaborate within JVs under an incomplete contract. Based on a sample of 114 IJVs, we argue and show four separate conditions that influence the functions that boards undertake as well as how control and collaboration as two separate functions are interrelated. Our findings address calls for research to open the black box of what boards actually do as well as to bring corporate governance theory to new organizational forms such as joint ventures.

Many early-career researchers (ECR) are motivated by the prospect of creating knowledge that is useful, not just within but also beyond the academic community. Although research facilities, funders and academic journals praise this eagerness for societal impact, the path toward such contributions is by no means straightforward. In this essay, we address five common concerns faced by ECRs when they strive for societal impact. We discuss the opportunity costs associated with impact work, the fuzziness of current impact measurement, the challenge of incremental results, the actionability of research findings, and the risk of saying something wrong in public. We reflect on these concerns in light of our own experience with impact work and conclude by suggesting a “post-heroic” perspective on impact, whereby seemingly mundane activities are linked in a meaningful way.

In 1862, a Confederate officer, Jo Shelby, and his men were deep in enemy territory, waiting to cross a river. While they were waiting for transportation, a member of their party, one Jake Connor, passed the time by softly singing a song. Years later, well after the war, they all remembered that moment and the words to that song. The song was called the Fallen Dragoon. Dragoon was a seventeenth century term from the English civil war for a cavalryman. The song also used another outdated English military term, vidette. A vidette was a mounted outpost who rode in advance of an army. Because the lyrics of the Fallen Dragoon are fairly significant, both for the men who were there, and for my analysis, I’d like to begin by quoting a few stanzas of this ballad:Rifleman, shoot me a fancy shotStraight at the heart of yon prowling vidette;Ring me a ball on the glittering spotThat shines on his breast like an amulet.Ah, Captain, here goes for a fine-drawn bead;There's music around when my barrel's in tune.Crack went the rifle, the messenger sped,And dead from his horse fell the ranging dragoon.Now, rifleman, steal through the bushes and snatchFrom your victim some trinket to handsel first blood –A button, a loop, or that luminous patchThat gleams in the moon like a diamond stud.Oh, Captain, I staggered and sunk on my trackAs I gazed in the face of the fallen vidette,For he looked so like you, as he lay on his back,That my heart rose upon me, and masters me yet.Yet I snatched off this trinket, this locket of gold;An inch from its center my lead broke its way,Scarce grazing the picture, so fair to behold,Of a beautiful lady in bridal array.Ha, rifleman, fling me the locket! Tis she,My brother's young bride, and the fallen dragoonWas her husband.Hush, soldier, was heaven's decree;We must bury him here by the light of the moon. Edwards, 1993

Six African-American, heterosexual couples with a toddler son in a southeastern United States county were interviewed about their beliefs and practices. Couples shared reflections of joys and challenges in their lives right before and during the pregnancy, delivery and right after the birth of their son. Through thematic analysis, results showed that most parents shared similar experiences of planning the pregnancy, breastfeeding from birth, and both being involved in caregiving. However, variability in preparation, emotions, and adjustment existed during this period. Although differential pregnancy outcomes could be race-related (i.e. gestational period length and preterm delivery), other aspects of this universal experience were similar to the average couple in the United States. This study aims to consider the implications for how race might impact the variability across families.

This chapter deals with the development of banking in the Crown of Aragon from the end of the thirteenth century through the establishment of money changers, which followed similar patterns as in other Western European territories. It starts with a review of existing literature and follows with an explanation on the different banking services provided by money changers and the specific legal framework that supported such activities. It then examines the geographical distribution of private banks in cities and towns within the domains of the kings of Aragon, as well as their evolution throughout the fourteenth century. After that, it offers an analysis of the most common professional profiles among these bankers and financers. Finally, drawing on a heterogeneous pool of unpublished data, it seeks to shed light on the diversity of investors and clients of these establishments, a crucial proof of their role in integrated financial markets.

Industry platforms can alter relations among exchange partners in such a way that the industry structure is changed. The focus of much industry platform research has been on how platform creation and leadership offers advantages to the most central firms, but platforms can also be advantageous for small specialist firms that compete with the most central firms. We examine book publishing as an example of an industry in which the central players – large publishing firms – are losing power to self-publishing authors because the distributor Amazon has a powerful platform for customers to communicate independently, and the non-publishing platform Twitter also serves as a medium for readers to discuss and review books. Our empirical analysis is based on downloaded sales statistics for Amazon Ebooks, matched with Amazon reviews of the same books and tweets that refer to the book or the author. We analyze how Ebook sales are a function of publisher, Amazon reviews, and tweets, and we are able to assess the importance of each factor in the sale of book titles. The main finding is that Amazon reviews are powerful drivers of book sales, and have greater effect on the sales of books that are not backed by publishers. Twitter also affects book sales, but less strongly than Amazon reviews.

Socio-economic, health and environmental turbulences experienced during the past decades have caused major value chain disruptions, triggering multinational enterprises (MNEs) to rethink the footprints of their global operations and redesign for resilience. These developments have fueled a rapidly expanding scholarly literature on resilience. Yet, its conceptual understanding and practical utility remain highly fragmented, cross-disciplinarily disconnected and ambiguous. This study explores the intellectual structure of resilience research in business and management, relying on a systematic literature review approach based on bibliometric techniques and content analysis. A unique database consisting of 545 peer-reviewed articles published in 65 leading Academic Journal Guide (AJG) journals are analyzed. Based on the findings, three leading research communities dominate the resilience discussion in business and management. Moreover, the intellectual structure of the field through the most productive authors and top cited journal articles is discussed. Based on the results, five potential research avenues are suggested.

In this chapter, we examine the current research on how technology is applied to benefit students with emotional and/or behavioral disorders (EBD). First, we describe the iterative yet unpredictable nature of technological innovation to suggest that incremental successes are qualified by the creation of often unforeseen consequences. We then identify commonly used nonelectronic technologies in education to emphasize that the hoped-for advances in electronic technology have failed to deliver on their decades-old promise of educational revolution. We continue with our review of the literature on empirical studies examining how technology is used to support students with EBD. These findings indicate that the research design primarily employed in this field is single-subject. Examples of specific findings include web-based graphic organizers for student writing, virtual self-modeling for targeting student behaviors, and virtual coaching for teachers of students with EBD. We conclude by reviewing how leaders in the field of special education predict the field will change in the future. Overall, with an increased emphasis on research accessibility and practitioner-validated knowledge, and advances in neuroscience and artificial technologies, practitioners may hold a more central role to the creation and dissemination of knowledge.