bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Imperfective Readings: Partitions as Quantificational Domains
Authors: Deo Ashwini
Published: July 2015

No abstract.
Cardiac Function in Adult Patients with Juvenile Idiopathic Arthritis
Authors: Aulie Hanne A. , Estensen Mette E. , Selvaag Anne M. , Lilleby Vibke , Murbraech Klaus , Flatø Berit , Aakhus Svend
Published: July 2015

Objective.

To compare cardiac function in adults with longterm juvenile idiopathic arthritis (JIA) with that of healthy controls, and to investigate the influence of inflammation, disease severity, and use of antirheumatic medication on cardiac function.

Methods.

Eighty-five patients with JIA (median age 38.6 yrs) with active disease for at least 15 years were reexamined at a median of 29 years after disease onset and compared with 46 matched controls. Echocardiography, including tissue Doppler imaging and longitudinal peak-systolic global strain, was used to assess diastolic and systolic myocardial function, and 12-channel electrocardiography was performed.

Results.

The interventricular septum was thicker in patients than controls (mean ± SD 0.8 ± 0.2 cm vs 0.7 ± 0.1 cm, p = 0.036). Diastolic function in patients was altered compared with controls characterized by lower mitral E wave deceleration time (165 ± 36 ms vs 180 ± 40 ms, p = 0.029), higher surrogate marker of left ventricular (LV) filling pressure (median lateral E/e’ 5.3, interquartile range 4.6–6.3 vs 4.8, 3.9–5.7, p = 0.036), and larger left atrial area (16.4 ± 2.9 cm2vs 15.1 ± 2.8 cm2, p = 0.015). Systolic and diastolic blood pressures were higher in patients (120 ± 15 mmHg vs 114 ± 9 mmHg, p = 0.021 and 76 ± 10 mmHg vs 71 ± 8 mmHg, p = 0.009, respectively). QT corrected interval was similar in patients and controls. High high-sensitivity C-reactive protein (CRP), polyarticular disease course, and extended joint affection at 29-year followup, as well as duration of active disease, cumulative erythrocyte sedimentation rate, and CRP, and prednisolone use were associated with higher lateral E/e’.

Conclusion.

Adult patients with JIA did not differ from controls in LV systolic function, but had mildly thicker interventricular septum and indications for higher LV filling pressure, and most in patients with a higher disease burden.
Differential Antigen-presenting B Cell Phenotypes from Synovial Microenvironment of Patients with Rheumatoid and Psoriatic Arthritis
Authors: Armas-González Estefanía , Díaz-Martín Ana , Domínguez-Luis María Jesús , Arce-Franco María Teresa , Herrera-García Ada , Hernández-Hernández María Vanesa , Bustabad Sagrario , Usategui Alicia , Pablos José L. , Cañete Juan D. , Díaz-González Federico
Published: July 2015

Objective.

To study the qualitative and quantitative phenotypic changes that occur in molecules involved in antigen presentation and costimulation in synovial B cells from rheumatoid arthritis (RA) and psoriatic arthritis (PsA).

Methods.

The presence of HLA-DR, CD86, and CD40 in CD20+ cells was studied in RA synovium biopsies using immunohistochemistry and immunofluorescence. Expression was assessed by flow cytometry of the Class II molecules CD40, CD86, CD23, and CD27 on B cells from the synovial fluid (SF), with respect to peripheral blood, from 13 patients with RA and 15 patients with PsA. Expression of interferon-induced protein with tetratricopeptide repeats 4 (IFIT4) in immune-selected CD20+ cells from patients with RA was assessed by quantitative realtime PCR.

Results.

Infiltrating synovial RA, B cells expressed HLA-DR, CD40, and CD86. Increased expression of CD86, HLA-DR, and HLA-DQ in B cells from SF was found in patients with RA and PsA. HLA-DP was also elevated in rheumatoid SF B cells; conversely, a significantly lower expression was observed in SF from patients with PsA. CD40 expression was increased in SF B cells from PsA, but not in patients with RA. Interestingly, CD20 surface expression level was significantly lower in SF B cells (CD19+, CD138−) from RA, but not in patients with PsA. CD27 upregulation and CD23 downregulation were observed in synovial B cells in both pathologies. Finally, a 4-fold increase in IFIT4 mRNA content was shown in B cells from SF in patients with RA.

Conclusion.

Synovial B cells from patients with RA and patients with PsA express different antigen-presenting cell phenotypes, suggesting that this cell type plays a dissimilar role in the pathogenesis of each disease.
Customer-Perceived Value of Medical Tourism
Authors: Sung Eunhee , Ozuem Wilson
Published: July 2015

The combination of medical treatment and tourism seems to be a promising and relatively new type of niche tourism. The globalization of health care has given rise to a new form of tourism that is commonly known as health tourism. Within the health tourism arena, medical tourism is among the fastest growing sectors. It enables patients to quickly and conveniently travel to receive medical services at lower prices and of better quality than they could in their native countries. Yet analyses of medical tourism in developing, emerging markets are under developed, particularly in South Korea. As a response, this chapter examines the customer-perceived value of medical tourism, which deriving explicit factors that influence choice in relation to medical tourism.
The Role of Medical Tourism in Emerging Markets
Authors: Kasemsap Kijpokin
Published: July 2015

This chapter reveals the role of medical tourism (MT) in emerging markets, give an overview of tourism, medical tourism, and emerging markets; discusses the advancement of medical tourism in emerging markets; the significance of medical tourism in emerging markets; and the characteristics of medical tourism in emerging markets. The execution of medical tourism is essential for modern organizations that seek to serve suppliers and customers, enhance business performance, reinforce competitiveness, and gain ordinary success in emerging markets. Thus, it is essential for modern organizations to consider their medical tourism applications, create a strategic plan to consistently investigate their dynamic promotion, and instantly respond to the needs of medical tourists in emerging markets. Understanding medical tourism will significantly improve organizational performance and achieve sustainable competitive advantage in emerging markets.
Gathering Medical Tourism Information through Algorithmic Text Analysis of Tweets
Authors: Claster William , Ghotbi Nader , Shanmuganathan Subana
Published: July 2015

Informed use of medical tourism services depends on an up-to-date knowledge of the available services, and their costs and risks at various potential destinations. Such information can also assist in the competitive development of healthcare services. Innovation, product development, and health user relationship management by medical service providers is enhanced, as is knowledge base construction and management. This chapter shows that new forms of social media can provide valuable and previously difficult to obtain real-time knowledge on medical tourists' perceptions, concerns, and sentiment towards medical tourism destinations - both those already visited by other users and those under consideration for a possible visit. We show how analysis of comments from such social media as Twitter micro-blogs can be used to reveal potential and recent medical tourism motivations in the medical services markets in various locations.
Stress Relief across Borders
Authors: Fukagawa Tomiyo
Published: July 2015

People suffer from both mental and physical stresses. International and domestic travelers may need examination and treatment for their relief. The need to stay for a longer time abroad for mental health treatment may seem unusual or not common. However, stress relief across borders is both possible, and may be very well catered for, as in Japan. Stress relief methods and equipment in Japan are equal to those of other countries, and are available as national measures. In fact, Japan's breathing therapy systems and relaxation methods using the abundant hot springs have long been a tradition. In this chapter stress relief program choices are described, including those for medical tourism participants, and stress management is proposed as part of or support for other treatments. If such programs can resolve stress, then both the traveler and the destination will have achieved a positive outcome.
Health Tourism in Iran
Authors: Ayoubian A.
Published: July 2015

This chapter shows that Iran has similar advantages to countries with a more developed brand of health tourism, including low costs, quality health services, competent doctors, and abundant natural and cultural attractions. The Health and Medical Ministry has developed 6 mandatory guidelines for medical centers receiving health tourists: these include the general condition of the facility, the workforce, medical facilities, geographical location, operational conditions, and the content of medical center websites. The Ministry offers facilities to hospitals and organizations applying to join the medical tourism program. In particular, the progressive provision of medical procedures, the distribution and marketing of health services, medical training, medical products, and equipment, is within a standardized framework of guidelines and development priorities. The chapter concludes that these interventions are designed to establish an effective presence in world and regional medical tourism markets.
The Development, Nature, and Impact of Medical Tourism in Bangladesh
Authors: Hassan Azizul , Ahamed Mojib Uddin , Shoeb-Ur-Rahman Muhammad
Published: July 2015

Medical tourism is recent phenomenon. All such tourism is based on three main factors (tourists, service providers and facilities, and the policy frameworks required to put these together), that contribute to its development. Bangladesh has put these main factors in place for medical tourism, and now wishes to make better use of available service providers and facilities. The country is believed to have the capacity to become a major medical tourism destination, if its development is properly orchestrated. Bangladesh produces a considerable number of medical tourists, however the country has in recent years witnessed huge investment in public and private medical services, and health infrastructure development. This chapter is an analytical study that aims to explore the existing patterns of medical tourism in Bangladesh, while offering suggestions that would allow the country to gain a competitive edge.
Inbound, Outbound, and Domestic
Authors: Vafadari Kazem
Published: July 2015

China is now being promoted as a medical tourism destination, however visa difficulties, and the lack of quality destinations mean the numbers of inbound tourists are so far small. The real interest for the moment lies in the growth that has now made China one of the main suppliers of outbound medical tourists. This Chapter shows that the number of Chinese going abroad for medical treatment has increased significantly in recent years due to rising incomes and fewer restrictions on mobility. Chinese health consumers appear not to be as motivated by price as US citizens, but more by their ability to substitute overseas destinations for the poor medical services at home. Development has generated a group of people wealthy enough to demand the quality care available world-wide, and internally has promoted significant domestic medical tourism from the less well-endowed regions to those that have such services available.
The Growth of Medical Tourism
Authors: Eades Jerry
Published: July 2015

In the late 2000s, the author wrote a summary paper on the rise of medical tourism. That paper discussed the rapid growth of interest in medical, health and wellness tourism, especially since 2003. The medical tourism industry has a long history, but this massive growth is a new phenomenon. The important factors are: the changing distribution of medical services and technologies; the growth of interest among both local medical practitioners and travel agents; the packaging of tourism and medical services as a single product; and, most significantly, the availability of the Internet to disseminate information them, creating a global market. The present chapter considers first the burgeoning literature on medical tourism. Second, the processes of development in countries becoming the main players in the international provision of medical services are discussed. Third, the chapter looks at the debates surrounding the rise of medical tourism in the developed countries.
Social CRM Analytics
Authors: Lal Prerna
Published: July 2015

Social CRM entails the premise of customer relationship management channelizing the latent power and potential of social media platforms to enhance customer engagement. Social CRM encompasses a community-based environment in which the control and rules of engagement in the relationship with organizations has shifted from the unidirectional ways of traditional CRM directly to the customer who has the power to influence others in his social network. Marketers are expending efforts and devising new strategies to understand the field of social media and networks to demystify and understand consumer behaviors, patterns of engagement and attitudes and then harness the gained insights for business value. Analytics can help marketers in analyzing social CRM data to identify the most valuable insights from conversations driven by peer groups, industry professionals, prospects, customers and competitors. The objective of this chapter is to explore the opportunities analytics provides to organizations in terms of converting social CRM data into useful insights for designing CRM strategies.
Adoption of Facebook for Customer Relationship Management for SMEs
Authors: Abedin Babak
Published: July 2015

This study has explored organizations' motivations to adopt Facebook for customer relationship management purposes. Interviews with twenty small to medium sized Australian organizations in this study showed that market pressures, direct customer service, brand promotion, and testing and experiencing are among key motivations for organizations to begin having presence on the Facebook. Ease of use, ease of receiving customers' feedback, availability of rich tools, and the opportunity to reach a large number of potential and existing customers are found to be amongst the key benefits of such presence. Furthermore, the findings show that dealing with negative comments, finding qualified human resources, ensuring the reliability of Facebook policies, and scalability of Facebook pages are some of the key issues that organizations have experienced with using this website for managing relationship with their customers.
CKM 2.0
Authors: Najafloo Fatemeh , Rasouli Hatef , Shamizanjani Mehdi
Published: July 2015

This chapter explores the affective role of Web 2.0 on customer knowledge management (CKM) in two ways. At first, a new conceptualization of customer knowledge regarding knowledge “for”, “from” and “about” customer is introduced through categorizing them in a detailed typological manner. The second part, attempts to find the relationship between Web 2.0 and three types of customer knowledge in a way that demonstrates each type of customer knowledge could be supported by using any kind of Web 2.0 tools. These parts are integrated as a comprehensive model which is named “Grape Model”. This model encompasses different types of customer knowledge in detail as “grapes” which is related to Web 2.0 tools as “leafs” which support encompassed grapes. The”Grape Model” was applied in four different Iranian industries so as to evaluate each industry in making benefits from CKM and using Web 2.0 tools in order to facilitate the CKM process.
Study of the Automatic Evaluation of Website Quality from Customer Insight
Authors: Arman Molood , Hajipoor Hassan , Sohrabi Babak
Published: July 2015

Effectiveness of websites is largely dependent on the quality of the website. The biggest share of the quality`s new concept is that the technical aspects of products and services combines with customers usage and understanding. Therefore websites evaluation based on the maximum usage and perception of the customers is considered an important issue to announce to the related organizations the success of website from customers' views. This customer relationship need a kind of management that first step of that for future decision needs knowledge about the websites features, customer insight and the position of websites among the competitors. One of the available media is the online news websites which their success is highly dependent on the relationship of their users. In this article achieving the information of websites is automatic and without the intervention of human so that the instant evaluation could be possible and used method is TOPSIS combined with information entropy to rank 791 news website which have most visitors of the Iranian users based on Alexa ranking report.
Barriers to Accessing Healthcare Services in Developing Nations
Authors: Alghodaier Hussah , Al-Nasser Lubna , Al-Shehri Ali , Khalifa Mohamed , Househ Mowafa , Alsalamah Majid , El-Metwally Ashraf
Published: July 2015

Patient satisfaction with the healthcare services is critical to addressing the barriers to accessing healthcare. Many combined factors are responsible for the poor accessibilities to primary healthcare centers. Less availability of prescription drugs and less thoroughness of care are most frequently associated with high rates of patient dissatisfaction. The low satisfaction rates of patients need to be investigated further to promote prevention programs and increase utilization of healthcare services by patients. The purpose of this book chapter is to analyse the critical dimensions that influence patient satisfaction with primary healthcare services in six gulf countries.
Reproductive and Mental Health during Natural Disaster
Authors: Anwar Jasim
Published: July 2015

With the ever-increasing number of natural disasters, it is important to understand the impact on the health and wellbeing of survivors, especially women. The reproductive and mental health of women contributes significantly to their overall wellbeing. The Chapter gives an overview of natural disasters with an emphasis on consequences of earthquakes of health and wellbeing of the survivors. It includes a critical review of published studies on psychological trauma and reproductive health following earthquake disasters. Among the psychological consequences of earthquakes, this chapter describes post-traumatic stress disorder, depression and anxiety. The last section of this chapter reviewed reproductive health in relation to the mental health consequences following natural disasters.
Noise-Induced Stability Analysis of a Capillary Flow Microreactor with Mixing by Radial Diffusion of Laminar Flow Profiles
Authors: Patnaik Pratap R.
Published: July 2015

To overcome the problem of fluid mixing in capillary tubes, the induction of radial diffusion of laminar flow profiles (RDLFP) was proposed recently, together with a mathematical. Since, under realistic conditions, continuous flow capillary reactors are influenced by noise in the feed streams, the stability of such a reactor for a system of three liquids was analyzed through its largest Lyapunov exponents. Simulations showed that although the aim of RDLFP is to improve mixing, poorly mixed microreactors are more robust to the influx of noise than well-mixed tubes. Therefore, these contrasting requirements have to be balanced to decide the besy operating conditions. Multi-component noise in multi-fluid systems can also induce stochastic resonance, which may either enhance or reduce stability. Thus, it is important and useful to filter the noise judiciously to promote reactor stability.
Extension of Ugi's Scheme for Model-Driven Classification of Chemical Reactions
Authors: Maiti Shyantani , Ram Sanjay , Pal Somnath
Published: July 2015

The first step to predict the outcome of a chemical reaction is to classify existing chemical reactions, on the basis of which possible outcome of unknown reaction can be predicted. There are two approaches for classification of chemical reactions: Model-Driven and Data-Driven. In model-driven approach, chemical structures are usually stored in a computer as molecular graphs. Such graphs can also be represented as matrices. The most preferred matrix representation to store molecular graph is Bond-Electron matrix (BE-matrix). The Reaction matrix (R-matrix) of a chemical reaction can be obtained from the BE-matrices of educts and products was shown by Ugi and his co-workers. Ugi's Scheme comprises of 30 reaction classes according to which reactions can be classified, but in spite of such reaction classes there were several reactions which could not be classified. About 4000 reactions were studied in this work from The Chemical Thesaurus (a chemical reaction database) and accordingly 24 new classes have emerged which led to the extension of Ugi's Scheme. An efficient algorithm based on the extended Ugi's scheme have been developed for classification of chemical reactions. Reaction matrices being symmetric, matrix implementation of extended Ugi's scheme using conventional upper/lower tri-angular matrix is of O(n2) in terms of space complexity. Time complexity of similar matrix implementation is O(n2) in worst case. The authors' proposed algorithm uses two fixed size look-up tables in a novel way and requires constant space complexity. Worst case time complexity of their algorithm although still O(n2) but it outperforms conventional matrix implementation when number of atoms or components in the chemical reaction is 4 or more.
Improving Human Activity Recognition in Smart Homes
Authors: Abidine M'Hamed Bilal , Fergani Lamya , Fergani Belkacem , Fleury Anthony
Published: July 2015

Even if it is now simple and cheap to collect sensors information in a smart home environment, the main issue remains to infer high-level activities from these simple readings. The main contribution of this work is twofold. Firstly, the authors demonstrate the efficiency of a new procedure for learning Optimized Cost-Sensitive Support Vector Machines (OCS-SVM) classifier based on the user inputs to appropriately tackle the problem of class imbalanced data. It uses a new criterion for the selection of the cost parameter attached to the training errors. Secondly, this method is assessed and compared with the Conditional Random Fields (CRF), Linear Discriminant Analysis (LDA), k-Nearest Neighbours (k-NN) and the traditional SVM. Several and various experimental results obtained on multiple real world human activity datasets using binary and ubiquitous sensors show that OCS-SVM outperforms the previous state-of-the-art classification approach.
Preservice Teachers Exploring the Nature of Science in Simulated Worlds
Authors: Marshall Jill A. , Erickson Tim , Sivam Kumaridevi
Published: July 2015

This article reports an investigation of preservice teachers' interactions with a computer simulation designed to allow them to explore the nature and practices of science. Participants included 188 preservice, secondary-level, science and mathematics teachers who were enrolled in one of seven consecutive semesters in a professional development course as part of the teacher certification program at a large research university. Artifacts, including articles published in an online journal, responses to focus questions, reflections on the activity, as well as audio and video recordings of the activities themselves, were analyzed following a grounded approach. The simulation activities qualified in many respects as authentic science as identified by . Further, what these activities revealed about student beliefs in regard to the nature and practice of science correlated with their reactions toward the simulation and their views of how it might be used in high school classes.
Examining Epistemic Practices of the Community of Players of Dwarf Fortress
Authors: Martinez-Garza Mario M.
Published: July 2015

Dwarf Fortress is a digital game with an unusually detailed and complex underlying simulation based on real world systems. Gameplay is unforgiving and condensed knowledge resources that support effective play are scarce. To learn more about the inner workings of the game and make its challenges more tractable, the community of Dwarf Fortress players engages in systematic, evidence-based, experimental inquiry of the game. The community calls this pursuit “dwarf science”. In this paper, the author investigates the origins, evolution, and practice of “dwarf science”, and frames it as a model of how digital games for science learning might support the epistemic frame of science among learners.
Problematizing Epistemology in Computer Games Research
Authors: Mechtley Adam
Published: July 2015

Epistemic frame theory has guided research using epistemic games, which are computer games focused on rich professional enculturation. Among other things, this theory characterizes communities of practice in terms of their epistemologies, which encompass the standards communities use to justify claims or actions. By drawing on contemporary perspectives in the subfield of research focused on epistemic cognition, this piece argues in favor of disambiguating enacted and professed epistemic cognition in epistemic frame theory, as well as attending to more nuances of the contexts of players' actions. These factors affect how we model communities of practice in games, how we assess players' capabilities, and what types of data we might include in our analyses of players' activity. By integrating with the epistemic cognition scholarship, games researchers could enrich their own work, while also leveraging some unique advantages of game-based learning to support broader goals in the scholarly community.
Ethics, Risk, and Media Intervention
Authors: Eid Mahmoud , Nahon-Serfaty Isaac
Published: July 2015

Breast cancer incidence and mortality rates are of concern among Latin American women, mainly due to the growing prevalence of this disease and the lack of compliance to proper breast cancer screening and treatment. Focusing on Venezuelan women and the challenges and barriers that interact with their health communication, this paper looks into issues surrounding women's breast cancer, such as the challenges and barriers to breast cancer care, the relevant ethics and responsibilities, the right to health, breast cancer risk perception and risk communication, and the media interventions that affect Venezuelan women's perceptions and actions pertaining to this disease. In particular, it describes an action-oriented research project in Venezuela that was conducted over a four-year period of collaborative work among researchers, practitioners, NGOs, patients, journalists, and policymakers. The outcomes include positive indications on more effective interactions between physicians and patients, increasing satisfactions about issues of ethical treatment in providing healthcare services, more sufficient and responsible media coverage of breast cancer healthcare services and information, a widely supported declaration for a national response against breast cancer in Venezuela, and the creation of a code of ethics for the Venezuelan NGO that led the expansion of networking in support of women's breast cancer healthcare.
Multimodality Medical Image Fusion using M-Band Wavelet and Daubechies Complex Wavelet Transform for Radiation Therapy
Authors: Chavan Satishkumar S. , Talbar Sanjay N.
Published: July 2015

The process of enriching the important details from various modality medical images by combining them into single image is called multimodality medical image fusion. It aids physicians in terms of better visualization, more accurate diagnosis and appropriate treatment plan for the cancer patient. The combined fused image is the result of merging of anatomical and physiological variations. It allows accurate localization of cancer tissues and more helpful for estimation of target volume for radiation. The details from both modalities (CT and MRI) are extracted in frequency domain by applying various transforms and combined them using variety of fusion rules to achieve the best quality of images. The performance and effectiveness of each transform on fusion results is evaluated subjectively as well as objectively. The fused images by algorithms in which feature extraction is achieved by M-Band Wavelet Transform and Daubechies Complex Wavelet Transform are superior over other frequency domain algorithms as per subjective and objective analysis.
GPU Based Modified HYPR Technique
Authors: Desai Shrinivas D. , Kulkarni Linganagouda
Published: July 2015

Medical imaging has grown tremendously over the decades. The computed tomography (CT) and Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) are considered to be most widely used imaging modalities. MRI is less harmful, but one cannot underestimate the harmful side effects of CT. A recent study reveals the fact of increasing risk of cancer as a side effect for patients undergoing repeated CT scans. Hence the design of the low dose imaging protocol is about the immense importance in the current scenario. In this paper, the authors present modified highly constrained back projection (M-HYPR) as a most promising technique to address low dose imaging. Highly constrained back projection (HYPR) being iterative in nature is computational savvy, and is one of the main reasons for being neglected by CT developers. The weight matrix module, being root cause for huge computation time is modified in this work. Considerable speed up factor is recorded, as compared original HYPR (O-HYPR) on a single thread CPU implementation. The quality of the reconstructed image in each platform has been analyzed. Recorded results upholds M-HYPR algorithm, and appreciates usage of graphical processing units (GPU) in medical imaging applications.
Parallelization of Enhanced Firework Algorithm using MapReduce
Authors: Ludwig Simone A. , Dawar Deepak
Published: July 2015

Swarm intelligence algorithms are inherently parallel since different individuals in the swarm perform independent computations at different positions simultaneously. Hence, these algorithms lend themselves well to parallel implementations thereby speeding up the optimization process. FireWorks Algorithm (FWA) is a recently proposed swarm intelligence algorithm for optimization. This work investigates the scalability of the parallelization of the Enhanced FireWorks Algorithm (EFWA), which is an improved version of FWA. The authors use the MapReduce platform for parallelizing EFWA, investigate its ability to scale, and report on the speedup obtained on different benchmark functions for increasing problem dimensions.
Assessment of Long-Term Effects of Marketing Mix Policies
Authors: Hajiheydari Nastaran , Khakbaz Seyed Behnam
Published: July 2015

Understanding of the long term effects of marketing mix policies on firm's financial outcomes is counted as an essential issue in marketing studies. Managers really need to know the efficiency of their decisions in marketing efforts. A large number of researches have been already conducted so as to disclose these consequences, although all of them have got some limitations. In the present paper, the authors have made use of system dynamics to develop a dynamic marketing system and analyze the effect of different marketing mix policies on firm's financial indicators. For this purpose, they have introduced two dynamic marketing models based on the related literature review. The first one, that is a qualitative model, represents the logic of marketing efforts based on system dynamic rules and the second one is a quantitative model which is based on five important loops of the qualitative model. The quantitative model has been manipulated in order to analyze several marketing mix policies (scenarios). The results indicate that decision making for selecting appropriate marketing mix is a complicated process usually leading to nonlinear and complex results. Considering this point, the authors' study suggests the utilization of dynamic simulation in order to predict and analyze the effects of marketing policies on firm's financial indicators. Finally, the findings clearly show the ability of system dynamics in measuring and anticipating firm's marketing initiatives and adapting the most effective policy for its success.
Sustainable Development and the Sustainability of Socioeconomic Systems
Authors: Olga Tikhomirova
Published: July 2015

In the current global scenario, it is essential to ensure the stability and sustainable development of the socioeconomic system. The literature shows that there is so far no clear understanding of the nature of the sustainability and development of socioeconomic system. Systems thinking may be the right approach for the transition to sustainable development, supplying a way to understand the universality of the laws of development. This theoretical paper shows how the management of firms can be based on the universal laws of evolution and development
Recognising Influences on Attitudes to Knowledge Sharing in a Research Establishment
Authors: Hart Penny
Published: July 2015

Knowledge sharing in organizations is influenced by several interconnecting factors, but there is little written on the individual perspective of those involved in sharing. An interpretivist, action research methodology was used to help members of a research organization determine what knowledge means for them and the knowledge sharing issues they face. Their shared Appreciations were that although they believed “knowledge-as-practice” was an essential aspect of their work, it was undervalued by the organization's clients and fund-holders, causing difficulties for the maintenance of knowledge capability, and influencing organizational subcultures. These included a “you should know” subculture and a risk-averse subculture, where staff perceive that there is a tendency to assign blame rather than to accept and learn from errors. An officially mandated culture of knowledge sharing is subverted by these subcultures, affecting individuals' motivation to share their tacit knowledge, their self-efficacy and consequent sharing behaviours.
Histone Arginine Methylation by PRMT7 Controls Germinal Center Formation via Regulating Bcl6 Transcription
Authors: Ying Zhengzhou , Mei Mei , Zhang Peizhun , Liu Chunyi , He Huacheng , Gao Fei , Bao Shilai
Published: July 2015

B cells are the center of humoral immunity and produce Abs to protect against foreign Ags. B cell defects lead to diseases such as leukemia and lymphomas. Histone arginine methylation is important for regulating gene activation and silencing in cells. Although the process commonly exists in mammalian cells, its roles in B cells are unknown. To explore the effects of aberrant histone arginine methylation on B cells, we generated mice with a B cell–specific knockout of PRMT7, a member of the methyltransferases that mediate arginine methylation of histones. In this article, we showed that the loss of PRMT7 led to decreased mature marginal zone B cells and increased follicular B cells and promoted germinal center formation after immunization. Furthermore, mice lacking PRMT7 expression in B cells secreted low levels of IgG1 and IgA. Abnormal expression of germinal center genes (i.e., Bcl6, Prdm1, and Irf4) was detected in conditional knockout mice. By overexpressing PRMT7 in the Raji and A20 cell lines derived from B cell lymphomas, we validated the fact that PRMT7 negatively regulated Bcl6 expression. Using chromatin immunoprecipitation–PCR, we found that PRMT7 could recruit H4R3me1 and symmetric H4R3me2 to the Bcl6 promoter. These results provide evidence for the important roles played by PRMT7 in germinal center formation.
Developing South Africa’s national evaluation policy and system: First lessons learned
Authors: Goldman Ian , Mathe Jabulani E. , Jacob Christel , Hercules Antonio , Amisi Matodzi , Buthelezi Thabani , Narsee Hersheela , Ntakumba Stanley , Sadan Mastoera
Published: July 2015

This article describes the development of the national evaluation system in South Africa, which has been implemented since 2012, led by the Department of Planning, Monitoring and Evaluation (DPME, previously the Department of Performance Monitoring and Evaluation) in the Presidency. It suggests emerging results but an evaluation of the evaluation being carried out in 2015 will address this formally. Responding to dissatisfaction with government services, in 2009 the government placed a major emphasis on monitoring and evaluation (M&E). A ministry and department were created, initially focusing on monitoring but in 2011 developing a national evaluation policy framework, which has been rolled out from 2012. The system has focused on improving performance, as well as improved accountability. Evaluations are proposed by national government departments and selected for a national evaluation plan. The relevant department implements the evaluations with the DPME and findings go to Cabinet and are made public. So far 39 evaluations have been completed or are underway, covering around R50 billion (approximately $5 billion) of government expenditure over a three-year expenditure framework. There is evidence that the first evaluations to be completed are having significant influence on the programmes concerned. The big challenge facing South Africa is to increase capacity of service providers and government staff so as to be able to have more and better quality evaluations taking place outside of as well as through the DPME.
Teaching Mark through a postcolonial optic
Authors: Punt Jeremy
Published: July 2015

This contribution explores the potential value of a postcolonial approach for teaching Mark’s gospel. Investigating a number of texts from the gospel, it asks to what extent a postcolonial optic implies a different approach to the gospel, what it adds and where challenges exist. Teaching with a postcolonial optic entails framing the gospel in its 1st-century imperial context and focusing on the ambivalence and ambiguity of imperial rule, investigating texts with attention to hybridity and mimicry in particular. Teaching the Gospel of Mark through a postcolonial optic opens up new possibilities for interpretation and contextualisation, but at the same time poses certain challenges, pedagogically and otherwise.
Interreligious dialogue in the views of Turkish historians of religions
Authors: Çatalbaş Resul , Çetinkaya Kenan
Published: July 2015

In our global world the term ‘interreligious dialogue’ has become a powerful fact that promises mutual understanding and learning among the adherents of religions. The issue is becoming a popular subject among the religious circles and theological discussions and studies. One of the significant portions of scholars who discuss it presents opinions and offers suggestions for the historians of religions. The Turkish historians of religions provide significant material in terms of the place of interreligious dialogue within the Turkish context. Their perceptions of the concept will also give a clear picture about its implications within the Muslim world. Therefore, the article analyses and criticises the opinions of historians of religions about the concept of dialogue and its propositions in a critical manner. It also focuses their reactions to dialogue and provides suggestions for a healthy dialogue.
Analysis of the South African yellow maize price and the international crude oil price
Authors: Delport Marion
Published: July 2015

No abstract available
On the effect of rearrangement on complex interpolation for families of Banach spaces
Authors: Qiu Yanqi
Published: July 2015

We give a new proof to show that the complex interpolation for families of Banach spaces is not stable under rearrangement of the given family on the boundary, although, by a result due to Coifman, Cwikel, Rochberg, Sagher and Weiss, it is stable when the latter family takes only 2 values. The non-stability for families taking 3 values was first obtained by Cwikel and Janson. Our method links this problem to the theory of matrix-valued Toeplitz operator and we are able to characterize all the transformations on

\mathbb T

that are invariant for complex interpolation at 0, they are precisely the origin-preserving inner functions.
Exponentially sparse representations of Fourier integral operators
Authors: Cordero Elena , Nicola Fabio , Rodino Luigi
Published: July 2015

We investigate the sparsity of the Gabor-matrix representation of Fourier integral operators with a phase having quadratic growth. It is known that such an infinite matrix is sparse and well organized, being in fact concentrated along the graph of the corresponding canonical transformation. Here we show that, if the phase and symbol have a regularity of Gevrey type of order

s>1

or analytic (

s=1

), the above decay is in fact sub-exponential or exponential, respectively. We also show by a counterexample that ultra-analytic regularity (

s<1

) does not give super-exponential decay. This is in sharp contrast to the more favorable case of pseudodifferential operators, or even (generalized) metaplectic operators, which are treated as well.
Differential calculus on topological spaces with weak Markov structure I
Authors: Brudnyi Alexander
Published: July 2015

The concept of a weak Markov set takes its origin from Whitney problems for differentiable functions on

\mathbb R^n

. In the present paper we study a version of the first Whitney problem of
characterizing families of continuous functions satisfying certain differential relations
on weak Markov sets. To this end we develop differential calculus on weak Markov sets similar to that on open subsets of

\mathbb R^n

. Then we show that some classical results for smooth functions and differential forms (such as Poincaré lemma, de Rham and Hartogs theorems, Künneth formulas, etc.) are valid also on certain weak Markov sets and more generally certain topological spaces with weak Markov structures. The class of such spaces includes, in particular,

C^{\infty}

manifolds with boundaries and some Lipschitz and fractal topological manifolds. Thus the paper offers yet another approach to analysis on fractals, a developing area of modern mathematics that focuses on geometric and dynamical aspects of fractals.
Aerosol dynamics within and above forest in relation to turbulent transport and dry deposition
Authors: Rannik Ü. , Zhou L. , Zhou P. , Gierens R. , Mammarella I. , Sogachev A. , Boy M.
Published: July 2015

Abstract. One dimensional atmospheric boundary layer (ABL) model coupled with detailed atmospheric chemistry and aerosol dynamical model, the model SOSAA, was used to predict the ABL and detailed aerosol population (characterized by the number size distribution) time evolution. The model was applied over a period of ten days in May 2013 for a pine forest site in southern Finland. The period was characterized by frequent new particle formation events and simultaneous intensive aerosol transformation. Throughout this study we refer to nucleation, condensational growth and coagulation as aerosol dynamical processes, i.e. the processes that govern the particle size distribution evolution. The aim of the study was to analyze and quantify the role of aerosol and ABL dynamics in vertical transport of aerosols. It was of particular interest to what extent the fluxes above canopy deviate due to above mentioned processes from the particle dry deposition on the canopy foliage. The model simulations revealed that the particle concentration change due to aerosol dynamics can frequently exceed the effect of particle deposition even an order of magnitude or more. The impact is however strongly dependent on particle size and time. In spite of the fact that the time scale of turbulent transfer inside canopy is much smaller than the time scales of aerosol dynamics and dry deposition, letting to assume well mixed properties of air, the fluxes at the canopy top frequently deviate from deposition inside forest. This is due to transformation of aerosol concentration throughout the ABL and resulting complicated pattern of vertical transport. Therefore we argue that the comparison of time scales of aerosol dynamics and deposition defined for the processes below the flux measurement level do not unambiguously describe the importance of aerosol dynamics for vertical transport within canopy. We conclude that under dynamical conditions the micrometeorological particle flux measurements such as performed by the eddy covariance technique do not generally represent the dry deposition. The deviation can be systematic for certain size ranges so that the conclusion applies also to time averaged particle fluxes.
Trichodesmium and nitrogen fixation in the Kuroshio
Authors: Shiozaki T. , Takeda S. , Itoh S. , Kodama T. , Liu X. , Hashihama F. , Furuya K.
Published: July 2015

Abstract. Nitrogen fixation in the Kuroshio influences nitrogen balance in the North Pacific Ocean. The genus Trichodesmium is recognized as a major diazotroph in the Kuroshio. Although its abundance is higher in the Kuroshio than in adjacent waters, the reason for this difference remains unclear. The present study investigated the abundance of Trichodesmium spp. and nitrogen fixation together with concentrations of dissolved iron and phosphate, whose availabilities potentially control diazotrophy, in the Kuroshio and its marginal seas. We performed the observations near the Miyako Islands, which form part of the Ryukyu Islands, situated along the Kuroshio, since satellite analysis suggested that material transport could occur from the islands to the Kuroshio. Trichodesmium spp. bloomed (> 20 000 filaments L−1) near the Miyako Islands, and the abundance was high in the Kuroshio and the Kuroshio bifurcation region of the East China Sea, but was low in the Philippine Sea. The abundance of Trichodesmium spp. was significantly correlated with the total nitrogen fixation activity. The surface concentrations of dissolved iron (0.19–0.89 nM) and phosphate (< 3–36 nM) were similar for all of the study areas, indicating that the nutrient distribution could not explain the spatial differences in Trichodesmium spp. abundance and nitrogen fixation. We used a numerical model to simulate the transportation of water around the Ryukyu Islands to the Kuroshio. Our results indicate that Trichodesmium growing around the islands situated along the Kuroshio is potentially important for determining diazotrophy in this region.