bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Frances Ellen Watkins Harper
Authors: Cali Elizabeth , Moody Joycelyn K.
Published: February 2014

Frances Ellen Watkins Harper (b. 24 September 1825–d. 22 February 1911) is one of the most studied African American women writers in print scholarship. Her first published short story “The Two Offers” and her masterpiece Iola Leroy were for nearly a century the most widely known fictions by a 19th-century black woman. Nevertheless, critical attention to Harper remains grossly limited, especially in comparison to such canonical 19th-century US male authors as Herman Melville. The dearth of Harper scholarship ensues partly from a lack of autobiographical detail within her extant writings. Moreover, some of her professional papers were destroyed in a fire in the offices of the Philadelphia printers of Ferguson and Company. That noted, critics have situated Harper amid both 19th-century sentimentalist and realist writers. Scholarship devoted to Harper has accumulated since black arts–era critics Filler, Hill, and Robinson and black feminist critics Christian, Foster, and M. H. Washington studiously recovered Harper’s writings, staking out places for them within various (African) American literary traditions. Also, even before Graham called for “immediate and critical attention” to Harper’s works (Harper 1988, p. xxxvi, cited under Anthologies), Sherman and Ammons began recentering Harper in US poetry and women’s studies. Raised by her uncle, William Watkins, Harper worked as a teenage domestic for a Baltimore bookseller named Armstrong before becoming the first female faculty member (teaching sewing) at the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Union Seminary near Columbus, Ohio, in 1850. Harper’s work in the Armstrong bookstore and home provided her with access to the family’s library and determined her long literary career. She published at least ten volumes of poetry between 1846 and 1891, three serialized novels, magazine fiction especially notable for its racially ambiguous characters, and the novel Iola Leroy. She earned her living as an acclaimed writer and lecturer, educator, antislavery and temperance activist, orator, suffragist, and leader in various black and women’s rights organizations and Christian institutions. Across the 19th century, thousands of Americans heard or read her speeches decrying gender, race, and class inequities; her published works appeared in every major independent black publication of her long life and in numerous white venues as well. Hers was a fiercely moral rhetoric, often balanced with political or folk wit. Throughout her life, Harper suffered periodic illness; images of sickness and death recur in her work. Harper’s writings alternately critique injustice and exuberantly celebrate abolition, emancipation, and the promises of civil liberties for all.
Nella Larsen
Authors: Stringer Dorothy
Published: February 2014

Nella Larsen (b. 1891–d. 1963) was born in Chicago to a white, Danish immigrant mother and a Black Virgin Islander father. Her father’s early death, and her mother’s remarriage to a white man, meant isolation and rejection in childhood, and limited contact with her natal family as an adult. Larsen visited Denmark in childhood, and again in her late teens, and was educated at Fisk University briefly, at Lincoln Hospital’s nursing school in the Bronx, and at the Library School of the New York Public Library. She married Elmer Imes, an African American physicist, in 1919, and the couple developed a Harlem-based circle of writers, performers, artists, and intellectuals. Larsen’s earliest known works are two 1926 pulp stories about presumptively white characters. However, in response to the cultural ferment of post–Great Migration Harlem, and with the encouragement of her friend Carl Van Vechten—a white, gay critic, novelist, and saloniste interested in Black culture—Larsen wrote an autobiographical first novel, Quicksand (1928). This story of a biracial young woman unable to find a place among Southern Blacks, Black Harlemites, or white Danish relatives appeared with Van Vechten’s publisher Knopf and was well received by African American and white reviewers alike. Passing (1929), a short, expressionistic novel about phenotypically ambiguous African American women, also received positive notices, and in 1930 Larsen became the first Black woman awarded a Guggenheim fellowship. Her success was fragile, though; earlier the same year, a short story brought accusations of plagiarism, and in 1931 Knopf rejected the Guggenheim manuscript. Her marriage also ended in the mid-1930s, and Larsen withdrew from literary friendships and networks. She never published again, and all her manuscripts have been lost. From the mid-1940s almost to her death, she worked as a nurse. Larsen’s fiction was neglected for decades, but interest revived as feminist and African Americanist scholars gained places in the academy during the 1970s and 1980s. After a 1986 reissue of her novels by Rutgers University Press, she became the subject of a new, intense vogue across many sectors of literary study, including not only US and African American literary fields and women’s studies, but also literary theory and queer studies. Readers today emphasize Larsen’s formal polish, intellectual range, psychological depth, and ironic subtlety and have often employed the novels as tools for examining the relationships among class, gender, sexuality, and racial identification in African American literature.
Sensation Seeking
Authors: Glicksohn Joseph , Zuckerman Marvin
Published: February 2014

Many personality traits are popular sources of research for a short time, and then, like the constructs on which they are based, they gradually fade away. In contrast, Sensation Seeking (otherwise known as Novelty Seeking, Arousal Seeking, Excitement Seeking, and other “seeking” labels) has had a steady increase in citations over the half century since the first published paper. The construct of Sensation Seeking, as developed by Marvin Zuckerman, derived from his prior research in the field of sensory or perceptual deprivation (this area of research is now referred to as “restricted environmental stimulation”). The first scale designed to predict results in these experiments on sensory deprivation was based on postulated differences in an “optimal level of stimulation,” with reference to the intensity of the stimulation. However, both these experiments and the content of the early scales showed that novelty and complexity of stimuli were also sources of motivation for the sensation seeker, and they predicted a wide range of behavioral phenomena, including volunteering, sexual behavior, relationships, smoking, drinking, drug use and abuse, risky driving, sports and other activities, vocational choices, and media, entertainment, art, and music preferences. Interest in the optimal level of stimulation and the related “optimal level of arousal” led to the first studies using psychophysiology. These studies showed a stronger reaction to novel stimuli and a greater cortical response to high-intensity stimuli in high sensation seekers, and more cortical inhibition in response to high-intensity stimuli in low sensation seekers. This latter relationship was confirmed in other species, particularly cats and rats, in which the relationship was with behavioral differences, suggestive of sensation seeking in humans. The fact that the psychophysiological marker for sensation seeking could be found in other species suggests an evolutionary origin for the trait extending back before the evolution of the human species. It also suggests a strong genetic component in the trait, confirmed in biometric twin studies. More recently, a specific dopamine receptor gene has been associated with novelty seeking in some but not all studies. In the 1970s, psychopharmacological studies showed a relationship between the enzyme monoamine oxidase (MAO) and sensation seeking. This finding shifted the focus of the biological theory of the trait to the monoamine neurotransmitters in the brain that are involved in approach, inhibition, and arousal—dopamine, serotonin, and norepinephrine, respectively. Sensation seeking was postulated as being characterized by strong approach and weak inhibition (impulsivity) and arousal in approach-avoidance conflict situations. The balance between monoamine reactivities and such conflict is hypothesized to be the biological predisposition encoded in the genes.
Personality Psychology
Authors: Latzman Robert D. , Shishido Yuri
Published: February 2014

The title of “Godfather of Personality” may well be ascribed to Gordon Allport, who was the first to make public efforts to promote the “field of personality” in the 1930s (see Allport and Vernon 1930, cited under Gordon Allport). Personality psychology—located within what many argue is the broadest, most encompassing branch of psychological science—can be defined as the study of the dynamic organization, within the individual, of psychological systems that create the person’s characteristic patterns of behaviors, thoughts, and feelings (see Allport 1961, also cited under Gordon Allport). The field of personality psychology is concerned with both individual differences—that is, the way in which people differ from one another—and intrapersonal functioning, the set of processes taking place within any individual person. The area of personality psychology is often grouped with social psychology in research programs at universities; however, these are quite different approaches to understanding individuals. While social psychology attempts to understand the individual in interpersonal or group contexts (i.e., “when placed in Situation A, how do people, in general, respond?”), personality psychology investigates individual differences (i.e., “how are people similar and different in how they respond to the same situation?”). Personality psychology has a long history and, as such, is an extremely large and broad field that includes a large number of approaches. Discerning readers will quickly note that the current chapter is largely focused on what has come to be the most commonly studied perspective, the trait approach. Those readers interested in other approaches are referred to a number of resources focusing on Other Approaches within the diverse field.
Person Perception
Authors: Cunningham Sheila
Published: February 2014

“Person perception” is an element of social psychology concerning how we process information about people. The term is somewhat misleading because person perception does not deal with perception per se. Rather, it concerns social processing issues like what information we extract when we see other people, how we interpret what we see, and how this interpretation influences our subsequent behavior. Research in person perception has focused on the social and cognitive biases that influence our interpretation of others, particularly of people we do not know (rather than intimate others). For example, models of person perception can offer accounts of what we remember about the person who serves us coffee, our impression of the couple sitting behind us on the bus, and how we feel when someone in our social group performs poorly on a task. Research has highlighted the non-veridical nature of person perception, revealing a number of biases that are relied upon in order to cope with the enormous complexity of social information processing. These biases include Attribution Errors, Context Effects, and the most widely studied element of person perception: social categorization. Social categories, or stereotypes, can have a significant influence on person perception, providing a framework through which the processing of stereotype-consistent information is facilitated. Dual-process models predict the situations in which social cognition is dominated by categorization, rather than individuation. Social categories also influence our sense of identity. The tendency to identify with particular “in-groups” and denigrate “out-group” members is modeled in Social Identity Theory (see Social Identity: Us and Them) and the related Self-Categorization Theory. More recent work has focused on identifying the neural correlates of social processing, highlighting roles for prefrontal and limbic areas in the brain. These wide-ranging aspects of person perception are addressed in this article.
Coping Processes
Authors: Gottlieb Benjamin
Published: February 2014

As ubiquitous as it is in everyday life, in media accounts of disasters, and in old and new cinema, it has proved difficult for investigators to capture the coping process in a way that is faithful to its complexity and dynamic character. Lazarus and Folkman’s groundbreaking work on the cognitive and behavioral ways that people deal with the alarms of life is replete with phrases like “constantly changing,” “process-oriented,” and “contextual,” signaling that the landscape surrounding the study of coping is steep and treacherous, and certainly not for the faint of heart (Stress, Appraisal, and Coping. NY: Springer, 1984). Even their definition of coping is daunting: “constantly changing cognitive and behavioral efforts to manage specific external and/or internal demands that are appraised as taxing or exceeding a person’s resources” (p. 141). Indeed, the many empirical studies, literature reviews, and conceptual papers launched in the wake of their formulations of the appraisal and coping process have borne out the challenges that await those entering this field of study. They range from such fundamental questions as how coping differs from ordinary and routine behaviors and thoughts to profound questions about the contribution that coping makes to the survival of the human species. The principal foci of coping research since the late 20th century have been the measurement of coping; productive exploration of particular modes of coping, notably social support and social comparison; examination of coping with specific life stressors; cultural variations in coping; and recent research on proactive and religious/spiritual coping. Social and clinical research psychologists have been most active as investigators in this field of study, followed by sociologists and nurses. Remarkably, psychodynamic concepts associated with Freud’s formulation of such defensive mechanisms as repression and projection have largely been replaced by a daily process approach that eschews unconscious desires, conflicts, and wishes in favor of emotion-regulatory and adjustment goals. This article offers a path for students, professional researchers, clinicians, and human services personnel seeking their way through the coping literature on adults from the 1980s to the present.
Brownfields
Authors: De Sousa Christopher , Spiess Thierry
Published: February 2014

Brownfields are defined by the United States government as “real property, the expansion, redevelopment, or reuse of which may be complicated by the presence or potential presence of a hazardous substance, pollutant, or contaminant” (Environmental Protection Agency website). While they are most often associated with derelict industrial facilities, brownfields can include an array of other properties with a likelihood of contamination, such as landfills, vehicle repair shops, gas stations, and dry cleaners. Prior to the focus on brownfield redevelopment, the original emphasis was on the remediation of land contaminated by pollution disasters and industrial chemicals. While this perspective forced governments to better understand the risks posed by contaminants and develop procedures for effective cleanup, it discouraged private investment by developers and financiers because of the potential risks and costs associated with redevelopment. Industrialized cities were, therefore, left with extensive tracts of idle and stigmatized property, while developers chose to build and residents chose to live in suburban greenfields. The brownfield literature expanded rapidly in the early 1990s as researchers sought to better understand the issue, its scale, and the key barriers to redevelopment (e.g., site assessment and cleanup, legal liability, funding). As the ability to manage risks and costs improved, researchers started to focus on other potential end uses for these properties and shift the perception of these sites from hazardous liabilities to land resource opportunities. Brownfields research continues to expand internationally and focuses more on strategic ways to manage sites in a smart and sustainable manner.
Museums of Art in the West
Authors: Sherman Daniel J.
Published: February 2014

Art museums, their antecedents, and, related exhibition spaces have produced texts of various kinds—catalogues, guidebooks, travel accounts—since their inception in Europe in the Early Modern period, and museums have been an important site of research since the beginnings of disciplinary art history in the 19th century. Courses of study aimed at museum professionals have also produced, over the past century, an abundant literature on the technical aspects of the various activities in which museums engage. But art museums have emerged as the object of sustained scholarly inquiry in their own right only since the 1980s. The scholarly study of art museums, moreover, is most fruitfully considered a subfield not only of art history, but also of an interdisciplinary field, critical museum studies. Contributions to this field come from a variety of disciplines, including anthropology, history, literature, and sociology as well as art history. Critical museum studies focuses on the functions, practices, and ideology of museums in society, understanding these to be neither fully autonomous nor wholly derivative of social or political structures. While recognizing that different museum types, such as art museums, have distinct protocols and histories, scholars in critical museum studies have often looked to work on related museum types, such as history, natural history, and anthropology museums, for theoretical insight. Indeed, the role of institutions in constituting distinct categories of knowledge, and in delineating borders between them, has long been a significant area of inquiry in critical museum studies. As a contribution to Oxford Bibliographies in Art History, this article is not an introduction to the entire field of critical museum studies; it does not, for example, include works concerned solely with museums of science, history, or anthropology. The focus is on resources pertinent to the study of art museums within the parameters of art history, excluding primarily technical works (those related to conservation, for example). In keeping with the interdisciplinary nature of scholarly research on the history of museums, however, the titles surveyed include many that are not limited to museums of art. For among the signal insights of critical museum studies is that questioning the boundaries of art history and its institutions is a productive way of bringing art history to the forefront of humanist inquiry. The overriding, but not exclusive, emphasis on museums in Europe and North America reflects both the way the study of art museums has developed and the contours of the field, though the rapid proliferation of art institutions in other parts of the world has spurred scholarship worthy of attention.
Behavioral Ecology
Authors: Swaddle John P.
Published: February 2014

Behavioral ecology is the integrative study of how and why behavioral mechanisms and processes mediate organisms’ interactions with their biotic and abiotic environment, thereby structuring many ecological and evolutionary processes. The behavior of organisms links physiological and molecular genetic systems with the external environment of organisms, which places the ecological study of behavior at the heart of how evolution operates in nature. The field of behavioral ecology emerged from two academic fields: ethology and sociobiology. Ethology represented the first concerted effort to study behavior in a scientific way, but it was largely descriptive and field-oriented. This field was revolutionized by scientists’ responses to Niko Tinbergen’s structuring of animal behavior around four specific topics: causation, function, development, and evolutionary history (or phylogeny). Sociobiology, although a politically charged topic for several decades, brought explicit cost-benefit analyses and a functional evolutionary perspective on how animals interact with each other in natural environments. Although this field was short-lived, perhaps due to its controversial formulation of modern human behavior, and how some people interpreted that in terms of cultural norms, sociobiology still helped inform the emergence of behavioral ecology as a core evolutionary discipline that viewed organisms as an integral part of natural habitats. Because behavioral ecology is an inherently evolutionary subject, much of the way in which practitioners study behavioral ecology is structured around evolutionary mechanisms and adaptive explanations of behavior. Behavioral ecologists have made many contributions to theoretical explanations of evolutionary mechanisms, as well as illustrating how evolution works on contemporary time scales. It is important to recognize that behavioral ecologists attempt to explain the functional evolution of behaviors in all types of organisms, not just animals, making the field taxonomically broad. There are many ways to parse the behavioral mechanisms and processes of ecology and evolution. These have been separated into the domains of (a) foraging and survival strategies, (b) sociality and social structure, (c) breeding and reproduction, (d) movement and dispersion, and (e) communication and cognition.
Alfred Russel Wallace
Authors: Fichman Martin
Published: February 2014

Alfred Russel Wallace (b. 1823–d. 1913) was one of the most brilliant theoretical and field biologists of the 19th century. He was a meticulous field observer, a prolific generator of ideas on a broad spectrum of issues ranging from evolutionary biology to social and political concerns, and a theoretician whose work laid some of the main foundations for the scientific study of biogeography and evolution. Wallace undertook two tropical journeys that were to transform his life and the emerging science of evolutionary biology: a four-year exploration of the Amazon basin of South America (1848–1852) and an eight-year exploration of the Malay Archipelago (1854–1862), including the islands of Java, Borneo, Celebes, New Guinea, and Bali. Wallace later generalized his findings from Southeast Asia to elaborate a global paradigm for identifying the earth’s fundamental biogeographical regions in his magisterial Geographical Distribution of Animals (1876). It was, of course, Wallace’s elucidation of the mechanism of evolution—in his 1858 “On the Tendency of Varieties to Depart Indefinitely from the Original Type”—that constitutes his greatest scientific legacy from his Malay travels. A copy of Wallace’s essay, along with extracts from an unpublished manuscript on natural selection written by Darwin in 1844, were presented together at the historic meeting of the Linnean Society (London) on 1 July 1858. This meeting—a year prior to the publication of Darwin’s On the origin of species (1859)—ensured that both Wallace and Darwin received recognition and joint priority for their momentous discovery of natural selection. Wallace spent the remainder of his long life in elucidating the implications of evolutionary theory for biogeography, sexual selection, the phenomenon of organic mimicry taxonomy, physical geography and geology, and anthropology. Although he remained an ardent selectionist in his overall analysis of evolutionary processes, Wallace considered natural selection inadequate to account completely for the origin and development of certain human characteristics, notably, consciousness and the moral sense. He insisted that certain aspects of theism and of political and social ideologies, including socialism, spiritualism, and anti-vaccinationism, were not merely compatible with the evolutionary process but essential for comprehending the full significance of human evolution. The issues Wallace confronted continue to resonate in contemporary debates on the scope, mechanism, and, ultimately, significance of evolution in both scientific and cultural domains. In the past two decades there has been a resurgence of interest in Wallace, and this article provides a scholarly guide through the thicket of materials now emerging on his life and achievements.
Founder Effect Speciation
Authors: Templeton Alan R.
Published: February 2014

The origin of species (speciation)—the process by which two or more species evolve from a single ancestral species—is a central problem in evolutionary biology. During the evolutionary synthesis of the twentieth century, the dominant theory of speciation for those working on sexually reproducing animals was allopatric speciation. Allopatric speciation posits that an ancestral species becomes subdivided into two or more geographical subpopulations by changing climates, colonization of new areas, the erection of geological barriers, etc. If these geographical subpopulations have little to no genetic interchange, they will begin to evolve separately. Speciation then arises as an incidental by-product of the independent evolution occurring within the geographical isolates. Evolution within species (microevolution) was often envisioned as being dominated by natural selection leading to adaptive divergence between the geographical isolates. However, the modern synthesis made it clear that microevolution involved many processes in addition to natural selection. One of these processes was genetic drift, the random changes in a population’s gene pool (the set of alleles or gametes collectively shared by a reproducing population) that inevitably arise from random sampling of a finite number of gametes to form the next generation. Just by chance, a particular form of a gene can decrease or increase in frequency in the population, including being completely lost or fixed. The impact of random sampling increases as the population size decreases. One special case of strong genetic drift is the founder effect, in which a population is established by a small number of founding individuals from a much larger ancestral population. Strong genetic drift in the founder population could lead to an immediate evolutionary divergence from the ancestral population. This accelerated divergence is the essence of founder effect speciation models. Founder effect speciation is a special case of allopatric speciation in which one of the geographical isolates was established from a small number of individuals. This does not mean that other microevolutionary forces, such as natural selection, are not operating, but rather that the founder effect enhances and accelerates microevolutionary divergence in concert with natural selection and other microevolutionary forces, thereby making speciation more likely.
The Origin of Life
Authors: Hedges S. Blair
Published: February 2014

Biological evolution begins with the origin of life, but the subject is the perhaps the most interdisciplinary of any in science. Understanding how life began on Earth requires knowledge of the astronomical, geological, and atmospheric settings. However, those settings are in turn dependent on knowing the time period when life arose, which comes from the fossil and molecular records, including molecular clocks based on genetic mutations. Interrelated with the setting is the chemistry that generates the organic molecules used to assemble the first cells and carry the genetic information to successive generations of cells. But holding the chemical reactions and products together in a cell requires a membrane, and the assembly of that involves biophysics. Thus, we have all of the fields of science coming together to understand a single event that happened about four billion years ago and initiated the Tree of Life on Earth. Because little evidence of anything has remained from this early time, there have been enormous amounts of published speculation on this subject. Narratives on how life originated can be grouped by location (surface versus submarine hydrothermal vents), temperature (cold versus hot), source of energy (heterotrophic versus autotrophic), and evolutionary order (genetics-first versus metabolism-first). I use the last dichotomy here, only because it has a long history and renewed focus in recent years. Currently there is no consensus on any one theory for the origin of life, but this is an active field that has made great strides in recent decades.
Evaluation of an Integrated Bipolar and Unipolar Ablation Device
Authors: Kiser Andy C. , Pappas Hayden R. , Garner Kelly C. , Pursell Irion W. , Mounsey J. Paul , Gehi Anil K.
Published: February 2014

Objective

Bipolar lesion creation is accepted as the most effective method to create transmural atrial ablations. However, the creation of an ablation pattern on the left and the right atrium with current bipolar devices is difficult on the beating heart. We have evaluated a novel integrated ablation device that creates both bipolar and unipolar lesions in a linear pattern on the beating porcine heart.

Methods

Using six porcine models, we evaluated the effectiveness of creating beating heart ablation lesions by transmurality and conduction block. Isolating lesions were created on the left and right atria of the beating porcine heart. After we created sequential bipolar and unipolar lesions, we confirmed conduction block and examined the lesion depth histologically.

Results

Linear lesions were created successfully on the surface of the beating porcine heart. Conduction block at 20 mV was confirmed at all isolated areas, and 96.4% of the lesion sections had full thickness and were transmural at histology.

Conclusions

This device enables unipolar and bipolar lesion creation in a linear and low-profile manner, enabling effective creation of a biatrial lesion pattern on the epicardial surface of the beating heart.
Clavibacter michiganensis subsp. phaseoli subsp. nov., pathogenic in bean
Authors: González Ana J. , Trapiello Estefanía
Published: February 2014

A yellow Gram-reaction-positive bacterium isolated from bean seeds (Phaseolus vulgaris L.) was identified as

Clavibacter michiganensis

by 16S rRNA gene sequencing. Molecular methods were employed in order to identify the subspecies. Such methods included the amplification of specific sequences by PCR, 16S amplified rDNA restriction analysis (ARDRA), RFLP and multilocus sequence analysis as well as the analysis of biochemical and phenotypic traits including API 50CH and API ZYM results. The results showed that strain LPPA 982T did not represent any known subspecies of

C. michiganensis

. Pathogenicity tests revealed that the strain is a bean pathogen causing a newly identified bacterial disease that we name bacterial bean leaf yellowing. On the basis of these results, strain LPPA 982T is regarded as representing a novel subspecies for which the name Clavibacter michiganensis subsp. phaseoli subsp. nov. is proposed. The type strain is LPPA 982T ( = CECT 8144T = LMG 27667T).
The effect of ultrasonic on the heat transfer of CaCO3 scaled water
Authors: Zheng Jiandong , Ren Xiaoguang
Published: February 2014

Purpose

– CaCO3 solution was chosen as the research environment in boiling pool heat transfer system using an automatic data collection system and scaling experiments. In this experiment, different concentrations of solution were made and ultrasonic excitation was applied under differing conditions of salt concentration and heat flux, such that the ultrasonics could reduce scale accumulation on the metal surface. The effectiveness of ultrasonics in inhabiting CaCO3 scale formation was evaluated. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

Design/methodology/approach

– Different concentration solution was made. Under the condition of different concentration and heat flux, the ultrasonic was introduced, so that it can reduce the scale accumulation on the metal surface. Ultrasonic function in inhabiting CaCO3 scale can be evaluated.

Findings

– The results showed that the ultrasonic not only enhanced the heat transfer rate under boiling conditions but also prevented the accumulation of the scale on the metal surface.

Originality/value

– The ultrasonic can enhance the heat transfer on the heater surface both in distilled water and scaled solution. In the earlier period, the heat transfer coefficient increases with the heat flux increases.
Web-based national corrosion cost inventory system for Saudi Arabia
Authors: Rehman Shafiqur , M. Al-Hadhrami Luai
Published: February 2014

Purpose

– The present work developed a national web-based corrosion cost inventory system for the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia which can be used by any nation with little bit of customization. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

Design/methodology/approach

– The proposed system is designed to be divided into five major sectors namely, utilities, transportation, infrastructure, government, and production and manufacturing. Each of these major sectors is having further sub-sectors and then blown down to the industry and specific identity. The web-based application is developed using Dotnet on SQL server. The corrosion cost estimation procedures and corrosion rates in different sectors and sub-sectors have been adapted from the literature.

Findings

– The proposed developed system will enable end-users to provide corrosion and cost-related data through web-based online system. The input information from end-users will be authenticated by a corrosion auditor before finally entering into the database tables. The system is also capable of generating reports related to corrosion cost which the nation is paying with further details of corrosion costs borne by each sector and sub-sector. These reports will be helpful in making decision to identify the sector and sub-sectors which are more prone to corrosion and consuming more money to combat corrosion. Finally, the sectors and sub-sectors that are identified through the proposed system could be put under thrust research areas to combat corrosion problem and hence reduce the corrosion cost burden in future.

Originality/value

– To the best of authors' knowledge, this is the first attempt on providing a web-based corrosion cost inventory system on national basis which could be adapted by any nation with some customization. It is flexible and can be expanded as the need may arise.
Corrosion behavior of borided AISI 304 austenitic stainless steel
Authors: Günen Ali , Serdar Karakaş Mustafa , Kurt Bülent , Çalık Adnan
Published: February 2014

Purpose

– The paper aims to clarify the effect of boriding on the corrosion behavior and mechanical properties of AISI 304 austenitic stainless steel.

Design/methodology/approach

– The commercially available steel was subjected to a boriding treatment with Ekabor III powders at temperatures of 1,223-1,273 K with boriding durations of 2-4 h. Microstructural characterization of the steel was carried out with optical microscopy, scanning electron microscopy and X-ray diffraction analyses. Static immersion corrosion tests were made using a 10 percent H2SO4 acid solution and salt spray tests were carried out in accord with the ASTM B-117 standard.

Findings

– Grain boundary precipitation of carbides was observed in the transition zone beneath the boride layers. The corrosion resistance of the steel against the acid solution increased to about seven times its untreated value with the boriding treatment.

Research limitations/implications

– The boride coating improved the corrosion resistance of the AISI 304 stainless steel against acidic media, but suffered from spalling in the salt spray test. Future work will focus on improving the adhesion between the coating and the substrate by changing the parameters for the boriding process.

Practical implications

– Pack boriding is a simple, environmentally friendly coating process and can be recommended for use in small and medium enterprises. The boride coatings deposited have potential in further improving the wear and corrosion resistance of stainless steels.

Originality/value

– The outcome of the research is of great importance for the industry using wear- and corrosion-resistant coatings.
Drug policy: a going-over down-under?
Authors: Stothard Blaine
Published: February 2014

Purpose

– The purpose of this paper is to inform readers of developments in drug policy debate in Australia following the publication of the Global Commission Report. To explain the activities, discussions and findings of events organised by the Australian NGO Australia21. To provide some key contextual information and references.

Design/methodology/approach

– Overview of international situation following publication of Global Commission Report. Summary of current Australian national policy and its origins. Summary of recent national reports and their impact on policy. Account of NGO reports and recommendations.

Findings

– Civil society agencies have entered national debate on drug policy and recommended an abandonment of prohibition-based approaches, using the Global Commission Report as a catalyst. First steps have been taken to introduce this debate into the Australian parliament.

Research limitations/implications

– Incomplete knowledge of relevant national documentation.

Practical implications

– Probable delay in government developing debate and acting on recommendations in an election year.

Originality/value

– Case study of developments and debate in one jurisdiction resulting from Global Commission Report. Aligns with similar debate and moves in other nations. Adds to knowledge of developments which challenge existing international policy debate and practical approaches which reject prohibition.
Treatment of problem gambling: development, status, and future
Authors: Wynn Jesse , Hudyma Aaron , Hauptman Elizabeth , Nicole Houston Tiffani , Michael Faragher James
Published: February 2014

Purpose

– The purpose of this paper is to seek to present an overview of past, present, and future approaches to the treatment of problem gambling.

Design/methodology/approach

– This paper reviews the literature concerning conceptual, historical, and clinical research perspectives on the treatment of problem gambling.

Findings

– Perspectives on the etiology, maintenance, conceptualization, and treatment of problem gambling have evolved over time. Once seen as a failure of moral character, problem gambling is now considered to be an addictive disorder with similarities to substance abuse disorders. Empirical research into the treatment of problem gambling is progressing, but is relatively sparse compared to the body of research in other addictive disorders. Methodological issues have been identified that will need to be addressed in future research. Currently, cognitive-behavioral approaches have received the most attention and have the greatest amount of research support. Brief interventions, pharmacological interventions, family therapy, and Gamblers Anonymous are also in use. Future directions for problem gambling treatment that are being researched and implemented are mindfulness-based interventions and internet-based treatment approaches.

Originality/value

– This review should be useful to those seeking general information about problem gambling treatment, its development, status, and future directions.
Misclassifying cash flows from operations: intentional or not?
Authors: Lightstone Karen , Wilcox Karrilyn , Beaubien Louis
Published: February 2014

Purpose

– The purpose of this paper is to investigate the accuracy and informational quality of the cash from operations section of the cash flow statement.

Design/methodology/approach

– This paper empirically tested the accuracy of the cash from operations reported by Canadian non-financial companies. The authors studied 262 companies at three different time periods providing 786 firm observations. For each observation, the balance sheet was used to confirm the figures reported in the statement of cash flows. In addition, the authors investigated management's disclosure of the particular working capital items.

Findings

– The findings suggest that in recent years, companies are more likely to overstate their cash flow from operations, thereby presenting a better financial picture than is supported by the balance sheet accounts. This would suggest that the investing or financing section would be correspondingly understated. The presence of acquisitions reduces overstatements, which may be the result of more auditor presence.

Research limitations/implications

– This paper extends previous research from documented single, isolated instances of cash from operations being misstated to include a significant sample with more generalizable findings. The data are Canadian which may limit the generalizability to other countries. Future research should address the extent to which financial analysts rely on the reported cash from operations figure.

Practical implications

– This preliminary study may have implications for financial analysts and others relying on the free cash flow figure.

Originality/value

– This study expands on previous research which has taken place only on a case-by-case basis.
Rounding phenomenon in reported earnings and revenues: evidence from Japan
Authors: He Daoping , Guan Liming
Published: February 2014

Purpose

– The paper aims to examine the rounding phenomenon in reported earnings and revenues of Japanese publicly listed firms to achieve key reference points. The paper also examines the changes of rounding behavior among Japanese publicly listed firms around the asset bubble burst in 1990.

Design/methodology/approach

– To test the null hypothesis of no managerial effort to round earnings and revenues, the paper compared the observed frequency of each number in the second place of earnings and revenues numbers to the expected occurrences of the number as predicted by Benford's law.

Findings

– The paper finds that rounding manipulation is prevalent in the reporting of both earnings and revenues among the firms. The paper also documents that rounding manipulation is more severe in reported earnings than that in reported revenues. The paper finds constant rounding manipulation behavior in reported earnings upon the asset bubble bursting in 1990; however, the magnitude of rounding manipulation in reported revenues decreases significantly after the bubble burst. This finding supports the argument that Japanese firms tend to focus more on short-term performance in the post-bubble era.

Originality/value

– This paper is the first study to focus on rounding behavior in reported revenues of Japanese firms. As important as the earnings are on firms' valuation and contractual measures, revenues deserve intensive awareness in the financial studies. The study also explores the changes of Japanese managers' rounding manipulation behavior since the asset bubble burst in 1990. Documentation of the structural changes in the lost decades in Japan can provide valuable lessons for other countries in similar situations.
Impact of accounting software utilization on students' knowledge acquisition
Authors: Boulianne Emilio
Published: February 2014

Purpose

– This study investigates the impact that software utilization may have on students' knowledge acquisition of the accounting cycle. Differences in knowledge acquisition are examined between three groups of students: those who completed an accounting case manually using the traditional pencil and paper approach, using software, and first manually and then using software. The main research question is: “To what extent does using computers to study the accounting cycle lead to better knowledge acquisition?” This paper aims to inform changes in accounting education.

Design/methodology/approach

– The survey method was employed to collect information from accounting students in a Canadian business school. A total of 1,053 usable questionnaires were returned. Declarative knowledge and procedural knowledge are the theoretical underpinnings.

Findings

– The results indicate that students who first completed the case manually and then completed the same case using accounting software experienced the best knowledge acquisition. This suggests that the best manner for students to acquire concrete knowledge of the accounting cycle is by completing cases using both methods. The results also indicate that students who completed the case using only the software experienced better knowledge acquisition than did students who completed the case only manually. This suggests that software can be effectively utilized and integrated in class to improve knowledge acquisition of accounting information systems.

Originality/value

– Little investigation has been performed on the usefulness and impact accounting software utilization may have on students' level of learning. The findings may benefit students and faculty members by helping in curriculum design changes, course design, and computer implementation decisions. The findings of this study have the potential to make a difference in the way that educators teach and business students learn. Business education may be improved by the judicious use of software in the classroom.
Development of integrated ECQFD, LCA and sustainable analysis model
Authors: Vinodh Sekar , Jayakrishna K.
Published: February 2014

Purpose

– The purpose of this paper is to propose a new framework to evaluate the sustainability of product at design and development phase in the modern manufacturing system.

Design/methodology/approach

– A detailed examination over the literatures reveals that the current frameworks that are available to measure overall product sustainability do not effectively address all aspects of sustainability to full extent. An integrated model encompassing the approaches such as environmentally conscious quality function deployment (ECQFD), life cycle assessment (LCA) and sustainability analysis has been proposed.

Findings

– The eco-friendly option as well as the component with high remanufacturing feasibility has been found. Also, the environmental impact of the component has been found.

Research limitations/implications

– The integrated model has been test implemented in a single manufacturing organisation. In future, more number of studies could be conducted to ensure the practical feasibility.

Practical implications

– The integrated model has been applied to an Indian organization manufacturing automotive assemblies. The case study also addresses the re-manufacturing feasibility of the product with validating the results at each step.

Originality/value

– The study is the outcome of deploying integrated sustainability framework model in a manufacturing organisation. Hence, the contributions and findings are original.
Hypothesis testing-based adaptive PSO
Authors: Sun Yanxia , Djouani Karim , Jacobus van Wyk Barend , Wang Zenghui , Siarry Patrick
Published: February 2014

Purpose

– In this paper, a new method to improve the performance of particle swarm optimization is proposed.

Design/methodology/approach

– This paper introduces hypothesis testing to determine whether the particles trap into the local minimum or not, then special re-initialization was proposed, finally, some famous benchmarks and constrained engineering optimization problems were used to test the efficiency of the proposed method. In the revised manuscript, the content was revised and more information was added.

Findings

– The proposed method can be easily applied to PSO or its varieties. Simulation results show that the proposed method effectively enhances the searching quality.

Originality/value

– This paper proposes an adaptive particle swarm optimization method (APSO). A technique is applied to improve the global optimization performance based on the hypothesis testing. The proposed method uses hypothesis testing to determine whether the particles are trapped into local minimum or not. This research shows that the proposed method can effectively enhance the searching quality and stability of PSO.