bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Time for a change: a critical discoursal analysis of synchronic context with diachronic relevance
Authors: Hyatt David
Published: May 2005

This article offers a framework for the analysis of temporal context, an analysis of synchronic context with diachronic relevance. It seeks to look at the way in which temporal context operates on a number of levels to help construct the ways in which individuals and groups understand their social worlds. Aspects considered include the immediate and medium-term sociopolitical contexts, the contemporary sociopolitical individuals, organizations and structures and the more long-term temporal context which includes the various assumptions of order, structures of inclusion and exclusion and generally how a society legitimates itself and achieves its social identity. In addition to the analytical tool considered, the article also posits some methodological implications for research in this area.
Symmetry in interaction in meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous: the management of conflict
Authors: O’Halloran Seán
Published: May 2005

This is a study of the interactive order of participants in meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous (AA). It explores, through a detailed examination of one instance of conflict, the turn-taking system of AA meetings and the discursive alignment of members to each other. It aims to demonstrate that the non-hierarchical, egalitarian nature of AA is reflected in and constituted through the way symmetrical interaction is managed. It is proposed that this symmetry is institutional and is constitutive of the aims of AA; demonstrating that discursive symmetry is constituted by members’ access to and employment of a similar range of discursive practices which reflects and constitutes non-differentiated roles among members, mitigating against conflict. It is further proposed that the symmetry in AA discursive practices is exceptional in that, unlike the symmetry of mundane conversation between equals, it is institutional and that symmetry is displayed to a higher degree, i.e. that AA discourse is both institutional and highly symmetrical and that this has a particular bearing on conflict management within AA meetings.
Craft Guilds and Christianity in Late-Medieval England
Authors: Richardson Gary
Published: May 2005

In late-medieval England, craft guilds simultaneously pursued piety and profit. Why did guilds pursue those seemingly unrelated goals? What were the consequences of that combination? Theories of organizational behavior answer those questions. Craft guilds combined spiritual and occupational endeavors because the former facilitated the success of the latter and vice versa. The reciprocal nature of this relationship linked the ability of guilds to attain spiritual and occupational goals. This link between religion and economics at the local level connected religious and economic trends in the wider world.
Cascade Effects in Heterogeneous Populations
Authors: Neill Daniel B.
Published: May 2005

We present a model of sequential choice which explains the emergence and persistence of unpopular, inefficient behavioral norms in society. We model individuals as naïve Bayesian norm followers, rational agents whose subjective expected utility is increased by adherence to an established norm. Agents use Bayesian reasoning to combine their private preferences and prior beliefs with empirical observations of others’ decisions. When agents must infer the preferences of others from observation, this can result in negative cascades, causing the majority of agents to choose a dispreferred action (because they believe, incorrectly, that they are following the majority preference). We demonstrate that negative cascades can result even when the degree of conformity is relatively low, and under a wide range of conditions (including heterogeneity in preferences, priors, and impact of public opinion). This allows us to present a general model of how rational norm-following behavior can occur, and how unpopular norms might emerge, in real populations with heterogeneous preferences and beliefs.
Symmetry and the Illusion of Control as Bases for Cooperative Behavior
Authors: Goldberg Jeffrey , Markoczy Lívia , Zahn G. Lawrence
Published: May 2005

The existence of cooperation in the face of temptation to free ride requires explanation. We discuss two psychological phenomena, ‘symmetry’ and ‘the illusion of control,’ which we believe underlie the ‘what if everyone acted that way’ type of reasoning used in some types of cooperation. We provide a simple model of how these lead to cooperation. We also show how some bizarre causal beliefs, such as effect preceding cause, can follow from these phenomena. We look at some existing evidence for these phenomena and report on our studies which support the model.
The Development of Project Risk Metrics for Robust Concurrent Product Development (CPD) across the Supply Chain
Authors: Esterman Marcos , Ishii Kosuke
Published: May 2005

Many companies report that they can attain a competitive product development advantage from strategic relationships with key suppliers, but even the successful relationships are not without their challenges. Industry has expressed a need for robust concurrent product development (CPD) practices to include supplier issues. Unfortunately, most of the practices currently available provide little to quantitatively analyze the product development process and to identify risk as a direct result of supplier interactions. This study develops metrics that characterize product development project risk that results from supplier interactions by using the concepts of degree of design customization (DoDC) and coupling ratio (CR). A correlation analysis based on HP LaserJet development projects demonstrates that the proposed metrics for DoDC and CR are good indicators of the likelihood of product development efficiency. Furthermore, there was enough evidence to use the interaction term, the CR multiplied by the DoDC, as a risk index. An important implication of using the coupling assessment as part of the project risk assessment is that the same process can address both project and product risks.
Relevance-based Content Modeling and Object Retrieval from Multi-source Image Data
Authors: Zaremba Marek B. , Palenichka Roman M.
Published: May 2005

The problem of object retrieval for design automation based on semi-semantic representation of objects of interest in images is addressed in this article. The concept of an ordered set of salient feature vectors (SFVs) is introduced to concisely describe multi-source image data in different application areas. A system architecture is presented which combines statistical learning modules with multi-scale morphological modeling and analysis of image contents. In the presented approach, the object retrieval is based on establishing correspondence between two ordered sets of SFVs: a query reference image (or concise description of the object) and a database image. On a higher level, new rules of association are established between the design objects, based on the extracted SFVs and their spatial relations in images. Experiments with different types of images confirmed the utility of the proposed content modeling and proved the adequacy of the extraction accuracy of the SFVs.
A Matrix Approach to the Customer-oriented Product Design
Authors: Lin Ming-Chyuan , Chen Lung-An
Published: May 2005

A customer-oriented product designer must rely on many types of information, including customer-product requirements and design developments in the related fields. Concurrent engineering applications in product design problems will help designers to systematically consider relevant design information and make the most effective use of the time they devoted to the design process. Even though many new principles and approaches have been introduced to help designers to identify the relationship between customer requirements and design characteristics and solve complex design problems, they seldom focus on the generation of feasible design alternatives. This drawback greatly affects customer-oriented product design development.

This research introduces a matrix approach that can efficiently generate feasible design alternatives for a specific set of customer requirements. The procedures developed for this matrix approach is based on a congruent matrix multiplication operator, component design strategy, and relational database system. A sport shoe design is used as an example to help explain the development of these procedures. The results indicate that the matrix approach will assist designers in linking customer requirements with products during design development and even enhance the efficiency of concurrent engineering.
Concurrent Engineering in Research Projects to Support Information Content Management in a Collective Way
Authors: Gardoni M.
Published: May 2005

Innovation has become a factor of competition. In order to increase the production of new knowledge, Concurrent Engineering (CE) could be applied to research activities by improving efficiency and reliability in the communication between the researchers. In the same way, research activities could also profit from approaches such as quality management and knowledge management. To this end, in this article, within a CE integrated team, research activities are analyzed in depth using a sociological study. Approaches harnessing the bibliographical work done by researchers are proposed - ANITA (ANnotation tool for Industrial TeAms) and MICA-Graph. Their associated communication tools are developed and undergo experimentation. The intention is to facilitate research activities by supporting information artifacts (textual and graphical such as sketches). These new and ergonomic groupware prototypes working on PC networks tend to be used to control two kinds of artifact: (1) Semi Structured Information (e.g., reports, etc.) thanks to the ANITA functions, that are based on the attribution of points of view and annotations on artifacts, and (2) Non Structured Information (such as mail, dialogues, etc.), thanks to the MICA-Graph approach, which is intended to support the exchange of messages that concern common resolution of research problems within CE-integrated teams and to capitalize relevant knowledge. It also provides facilities to structure and archive knowledge learned during this process owing to new methods of design sketch retrieval. For both approaches, the main feedback utilized involves manufacturing knowledge in the EADS industrial environment.
Alternative Spatial Growth and Decay for Constrained Motion in an Elastic Cylinder
Authors: Knops R. J. , Payne L. E.
Published: May 2005

Alternative spatial growth and decay behavior is established for the motion of a (semi-infinite) cylinder composed of a nonhomogeneous anisotropic linear material and subject to zero body force and zero lateral boundary conditions. The motion, induced by displacement prescribed on the base, is constrained to have the displacement and velocity at a given time proportional to the respective initial values. Neither initial data nor the asymptotic behavior at large axial distance are specified. A differential inequality is derived for certain time integrals of the cross-sectional energy flux and integration leads to estimates that either exponentially grow or decay. Decay estimates are also obtained for the cross-sectional measures of strain energy, strain, displacement and its gradient, while explicit bounds in terms of the data are constructed for the amplitude in each decay estimate.
Analyzing the Impact of Overlap, Offload, and Independent Progress for Message Passing Interface Applications
Authors: Brightwell Ron , Riesen Rolf , Underwood Keith D.
Published: May 2005

The overlap of computation and communication has long been considered to be a significant performance benefit for applications. Similarly, the ability of the Message Passing Interface (MPI) to make independent progress (that is, to make progress on outstanding communication operations while not in the MPI library) is also believed to yield performance benefits. Using an intelligent network interface to offload the work required to support overlap and independent progress is thought to be an ideal solution, but the benefits of this approach have not been studied in depth at the application level. This lack of analysis is complicated by the fact that most MPI implementations do not sufficiently support overlap or independent progress. Recent work has demonstrated a quantifiable advantage for an MPI implementation that uses offload to provide overlap and independent progress. The study is conducted on two different platforms with each having two MPI implementations (one with and one without independent progress). Thus, identical network hardware and virtually identical software stacks are used. Furthermore, one platform, ASCI Red, allows further separation of features such as overlap and offload. Thus, this paper extends previous work by further qualifying the source of the performance advantage: offload, overlap, or independent progress.
Optimizing the Synchronization Operations in Message Passing Interface One-Sided Communication
Authors: Thakur Rajeev , Gropp William , Toonen Brian
Published: May 2005

One-sided communication in Message Passing Interface (MPI) requires the use of one of three different synchronization mechanisms, which indicate when the one-sided operation can be started and when the operation is completed. Efficient implementation of the synchronization mechanisms is critical to achieving good performance with one-sided communication. However, our performance measurements indicate that in many MPI implementations, the synchronization functions add significant overhead, resulting in one-sided communication performing much worse than point-to-point communication for short- and medium-sized messages. In this paper, we describe our efforts to minimize the overhead of synchronization in our implementation of one-sided communication in MPICH2. We describe our optimizations for all three synchronization mechanisms defined in MPI: fence, post-start-complete-wait, and lock-unlock. Our performance results demonstrate that, for short messages, MPICH2 performs six times faster than LAM for fence synchronization and 50% faster for post-start-complete-wait synchronization, and it performs more than twice as fast as Sun MPI for all three synchronization methods.
Running Large-Scale Applications on Cluster Grids
Authors: Frattolillo Franco
Published: May 2005

Grid computing enables the enormous, but often poorly utilized, computing resources existing on the Internet to be harnessed in order to solve large-scale problems. However, if they want to solve the problems of configuration and performance optimization of their large-scale applications, programmers wishing to exploit such computing resources have to deal with highly variable communication delays, security threats, machine and network failures, and the distributed ownership of the computing resources. On the other hand, Parallel Virtual Machine (PVM) is still widely used to develop high performance parallel applications on high performance/cost ratio computing platforms, such as workstation clusters. However, workstations belonging to networked clusters cannot often be exploited since they are provided with private IP addresses, being hidden from the Internet by publicly addressable IP front-end machines. This paper presents an extension of PVM that enables such clustered machines hidden from the Internet to take part in a PVM computation as host machines. This way, programmers can exploit low-cost, networked computing resources, such as collections of clusters, widely available within departmental organizations, in a well-known programming environment, such as PVM, without having to tackle the problems affecting grid computing, which often ends up turning the development of parallel applications into a burdensome activity as well as penalizing application performance.
Enhancing Individual and Organizational Learning
Authors: Casey Andrea
Published: May 2005

Learning at all levels is essential for organizational survival. Drawing on the literature in adult and organizational learning, this article proposes a sociological model of organizational learning based on Parsons’ general theory of action. The model defines individuals and organizations as learning systems, and uses diagnostic questions related to adaptation, goal attainment, integration, and pattern maintenance to identify individual and organizational learning needs. The article applies the model to a strategic planning scenario, showing how managers may be able to use the model as a guide to address the learning needs of individuals and organizations.
Strategies of Renewal
Authors: Ferguson-Amores María C. , García-Rodríguez Manuel , Ruiz-Navarro Jośe
Published: May 2005

Total Quality Management (TQM) and the Learning Organization (LO) are two management practices for dealing with the problem of organization renewal. From a more detailed study and with a transformational, dynamic and interactive perspective, the two are not only mutually non-exclusive but even that they are found to be mutually complementary in the renewal process. This article focus on the process of TQM&LO transition on the premise that certain complementarities exist between the two systems that facilitate the implementation of organization renewal, and also on the identification of key factors facilitating the transition. The review of the literature, the comparative analysis of the two systems, and the presentation of a case study (Electrical and Fuel Handling Division - VISTEON) in which two of the authors have participated; enriched by applying the perspective of ‘learning history’, constitute the nucleus of this article.
‘Copernicus’
Authors: Hardless Christian , Nilsson Malin , Nuldén Urban
Published: May 2005

In this article, we discuss an approach to initiate learning and improvement of practice related to complex business processes in corporations. The approach called PIER (Problem-based learning, Interactive multimedia, Experiential learning and Role-playing) uses interactive multimedia scenarios for role-playing in groups. We describe an action research project where PIER was applied as a large-scale competence development initiative in an industrial setting. The purpose was to facilitate experience sharing, discussion and reflection, with the intention of improving project management practices both at the individual level and the organizational level. The results of the evaluation present a situation where PIER supported organizational maintenance but failed to promote organizational change. Hence our study provides support for several key arguments in the debate about organizational learning; in particular, concerning the relationship between learning interventions and organizational development.
Narrative
Authors: Ramsey Caroline
Published: May 2005

This article reviews one current concept of experiential learning, using the work of David Kolb as an exemplar of this genre of learning theory. Working from a relational or social constructionist perspective, the article suggests that there are three problematic assumptions within current experiential learning cycles. First, there is a realist treatment of world and events. Second, a distinct and independent individual is assumed to be able to experience, know and act on this real world. Third, cognition, be it in the form of knowledge, interpretation or perception, is treated as the unproblematic precursor to action. In contrast to these assumptions relational premises invite multiple narratives to replace ‘concrete experience’, social rather than individual action and coordination with others in contrast with adaptation to a real world. These alternative premises form the basis of an alternative, narrative reflective cycle that is argued to offer practical reflective ‘tools’ that would be of benefit, even if the reflector did not share the author’s relational constructionist assumptions.
Low Cost, Accurate Monitoring of Indoor Carbon Monoxide Concentrations
Authors: Croxford B. , Fairbrother L.
Published: May 2005

This paper reports on the ICOM carbon monoxide monitoring device, this is a low cost, highly accurate, data logger. In the default setting it monitors carbon monoxide (CO) every minute and stores an average CO reading every 15 minutes. Air temperature is also recorded. The logger is physically small, approximately the size of 2 cigarette packets, it is rechargeable and requires no programming to start, just switching on. The technology behind the logger is similar to that used in the StreetBox monitoring instrument, which was developed from a prototype made by the author and used in various research projects [1,2]. This paper describes the monitoring device and reports briefly on a case study where 80 of the loggers were used to monitor CO in homes at risk from high CO concentrations. The ICOM logger has been shown to be accurate and the inter-instrument variation to be within 0.2ppm at low concentrations and 5% at higher concentrations.
Analysis of Topics and Trends in Indoor Environment Research in Europe: Studies in Indoor Monitoring
Authors: Aylward C. , Harris R. S. , Harrison P. T. C.
Published: May 2005

A database (IERIE) has been established that holds detailed information on indoor environment research projects across Europe, which is of potential value to both researchers and funders of research. This paper demonstrates how the database can be used to evaluate topic trends and patterns in indoor environment research, particularly focusing on indoor air monitoring. The illustrative analyses reveal, for example, the number of projects that are associated with indoor air monitoring and the types of study being performed. It is anticipated that as the database grows and develops it will be of increasing value to policy makers as well as to researchers and funding bodies.
Toxic Moulds and Indoor Air Quality
Authors: Singh Jagjit
Published: May 2005

Indoor air quality issues associated with exposure to moulds and their metabolites, mycotoxins, are becoming of increasing importance. There are believed to be about 1.5 million species of fungi of which more than 1000 species have evolved to exploit the built environment. Sexually mature fungi produce large numbers of spores that when airborne can be inhaled and deposited on the mucosal surface of the upper airways and in the eyes. Occupants of buildings may be affected in any of a number of ways. Fungi and moulds can contribute to the sick building syndrome or other building related illnesses and some people can have an allergic response. Such exposure to moulds and the other fungi and their spores indoors is unavoidable except when the most stringent air filtration or other environmental measures are observed. The repeated exposure to large amount of particular fungal propagules is an important risk factor for the development of specific allergic reactions. There are also a large number of toxic mould metabolites which can have a range of biological activities. Black Mould ( Stachybotrys chartarum), in particular has been implicated in illnesses associated with living in damp houses. Reactions may be severe as in recent reports of idiopathic pulmonary haemorrhage in very young children in Cleveland, Ohio. Although some governmental agencies have published guidelines on mould assessment and remediation most are very general in nature and most focus on Black Mould as the major concern.
The Contribution of Environmental Tobacco Smoke to Indoor Pollution in Pubs and Bars
Authors: Gee Ivan L. , Watson Adrian F. R. , Carrington Joanna
Published: May 2005

Smoking is currently allowed in most UK pubs and bars and smoking policies are self regulated by the hospitality industry through the Public Places Charter, which encourages the provision of non-smoking areas and improved ventilation. In this study monitoring of environmental tobacco smoke (ETS) has been conducted in 60 pubs and bars in the Greater Manchester area to determine the effectiveness of different smoking policies. The ETS markers RSP (as PM2.5), UVPM, FPM, SolPM and nicotine were sampled at several locations in each establishment, using portable monitoring cases and analysed using established methods.

ETS concentrations were significantly lower in non-smoking areas in comparison to smoking areas, with reductions of between 27-69%. Bar areas had similar levels to smoking areas. The proportion of particles (RSP) that could be attributed to ETS was considerable even in non-smoking areas (43-55%) indicating that smoking was the major source of particles in these environments. The use of mechanical and/or air cleaning systems resulted in lower average concentrations of ETS markers in comparison to use of extractor fans or natural ventilation, but these differences were not statistically significant.
Cancer Risk from Common Sources of Indoor Pollution
Authors: Holcátová Ivana , Slámová Alena , Valenta Zdenek
Published: May 2005

Compared to other Western countries there is a much higher incidence of several types of cancers in Eastern and Central Europe. A large multinational hospital-based case-control study of lung, kidney and oesophageal cancers, co-ordinated by IARC, is in progress to identify some of the risk factors that may be involved. This paper reports preliminary results from the Prague centre that focus on the risk factors for lung cancer.

According to the study protocol all cases had to be admitted at a collaborating clinic. Within 3 months patients were asked to sign an informed consent form and complete the study questionnaire with the help of a nurse. They were asked to give a blood sample and, if circumstances permitted, a fresh tissue sample. Data from the questionnaire were entered into 3 databases: lifestyle, occupational and clinical. Identification of risk factors related to the indoor environment was the aim of the first part of the lifestyle questionnaire.

Several risk factors for lung cancer, such as smoking, are well-known. Our study showed other associations between lung cancer incidence and lifestyle-related factors, such as education status, which is generally an indicator of socio-economic status. Solid fuel burning was confirmed as a potential risk factor. A significant association between incidence and partner smoking was observed in non-smokers also an inverse association (trend) between lung cancer incidence and the size of the subject’s community, which appeared consistent for both smokers and non-smokers.
PAHs in Cigarette Smoke by Gas Chromatography-Mass Spectrometry
Authors: Culea Monica , Cozar Onuc , Culea Eugen
Published: May 2005

Tobacco smoke is a major source of human exposure to carcinogenic pollutants, especially polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs). Our capacity to metabolise and so biologically activate PAHs from both tobacco smoke and occupational exposure puts us at even greater risk for PAH-related cancers, especially certain respiratory cancers. The techniques most used for determining pollutants in environmental or biological samples are GC-MS and HPLC methods. In the present work a GC-MS has been used in both the scan and SIM mode to characterise the organic compounds adsorbed on a charcoal cartridge comparable with the conventional cigarette filter or other types of cigarette. Charcoal cigarette filters and normal filters were compared. A method for quantitative determination of naphthalene, phenanthrene and anthracene in urine or in cigarette smoke was validated and tested. A Thermo Finnigan Trace gas chromatograph coupled with a Trace DSQ mass spectrometer was used. The chromatograms were obtained on a fused silica capillary column Rtx-5MS, (15m 0.25mm id) 0.25 m using 2 temperature programmes.
Indoor Air Quality, Environmental Tobacco Smoke and Asthma: A Case Control Study of Asthma in a Community Population
Authors: Gee Ivan L. , Watson Adrian F. R. , Tavernier Gael , Stewart Lorraine J. , Fletcher Gill , McL Niven Robert
Published: May 2005

In recent decades the prevalence of asthma has been increasing in Western countries. Altered environment and lifestyle conditions have been implicated but the underlying mechanisms remain unclear. The Indoor Pollutants, Endotoxin, Allergens, Damp and Asthma (IPEADAM) study is a cross-sectional, case control study designed to analyse the home environments of 200 children in Manchester. In this paper the home concentrations and relationships to asthma development have been examined for a variety of indoor agents including environmental tobacco smoke (ETS), nitrogen dioxide (NO2), formaldehyde, volatile organic compounds (VOCs) and damp, which have been reported as potential factors in the development or the exacerbation of asthma.

Levels of respirable particles and tobacco specific particles were found to be significantly higher in the homes with smokers present, but there were no differences in the levels of NO2, formaldehyde or VOCs. However, there were no significant differences in the levels of tobacco related pollutants in the homes of children with and without asthma. Similarly there were no statistically significant differences in the levels of NO2, formaldehyde, VOCs, temperature or relative humidity between the homes of children with and without asthma.

This study has demonstrated that few differences exist between the home environments of English children, between 4-16 years of age, with asthma and those without the disease. The parameters examined in this study are unlikely to be related to the development of asthma. Avoidance of these pollutants may not be beneficial in preventing the development of asthma in this age group.
Tracing Outdoor/Indoor Penetration of PM2.5, PM1.0 by 210Po/210Pb
Authors: Hovorka Jan , Holub Robert F. , Braniš Martin , Honeyman Bruce D.
Published: May 2005

Alpha activities of 210Po were determined in low-volume, 24-hour samples of 2 particulate matter (PM) size fractions indoors and outdoors in 3 localities in the centre of Prague during the winter periods of 2002-2003. High values of ventilation rates (0.34 0.12h 1) and penetration of outdoor aerosols into the indoor environment, which favours particles smaller than 1 m size, allows the application of a simplified equation of the indoor/outdoor (I/O) relationship. The slope of linear regression of indoors against outdoors for both mass concentrations and alpha activities as well as the I/O penetration factors Cmass, and Calpha, respectively were determined. While the Cmass ranged from 0.46 to 0.64, appropriate Calpha ranged from 0.57 to 0.95 being always greater and reflecting size selective particle penetration through the building envelope. Personal activities indoors had little effect on particle deposition indoors, which is in agreement with the finding that the majority (70%) of PM2.5 indoors is formed by PM1.0. For all 3 localities it was shown that outdoor PM concentrations determined indoor ones while probably the particle removal during infiltration through the building envelope is the most important aerosol loss mechanism.
Levels of Indoor VOCs in Workplaces in a Polluted Urban Area of London
Authors: Jamieson Sirinath S. , Dimitroulopoulou Sani , Brown Veronica M. , ApSimon Helen M. , Colvile Roy N.
Published: May 2005

To date there have been few published investigations on the levels of indoor volatile organic compounds (VOCs) in workplaces in polluted urban areas in the UK. The present investigation was carried out in a non-smoking and naturally-ventilated office building situated along one of the most polluted roads in London in conjunction with the Dispersion of Air Pollutants and their Penetration into the Local Environment (DAPPLE) 2003 field campaign. The results from the measurements taken for indoor VOCs in offices where smoking was prohibited are reported. The concentrations of hexanal, m-, p-xylene, styrene, toluene and total VOCs (TVOCs) are presented and discussed. Other VOCs, in addition to those primarily selected for analysis, were also recorded.
Personal Exposure and Indoor PM2.5 Concentrations in an Urban Population
Authors: Mohammadyan M. , Ashmore M. R.
Published: May 2005

Personal exposures and micro-environmental concentrations of PM2.5 were measured in a non-smoking adult population of 40 workers for 48h each over a period of 1 year. Geometric mean daytime and non-work personal exposures to PM2.5 were slightly higher than mean indoor office and home concentrations respectively. Personal exposures to PM2.5 were also higher than fixed site PM10 concentrations. Individual personal exposures and micro-environmental concentrations varied by about 1 order of magnitude. According to a stepwise regression model for all participants, indoor office concentration was the best predictor for daytime personal exposure, and residential indoor concentration and time spent in public houses were the best predictors for non-work personal exposure.
Determination of the Inflammatory Potential of Bioaerosols by Using Human Whole Blood Cytokine Response
Authors: Zucker Bert-Andree , Linsel Gunter , Fennrich Stefan , Müller Wolfgang
Published: May 2005

Exposure to bioaerosols can induce pulmonary diseases and subjective symptoms in humans and animals. Some of these diseases are of inflammatory origin, such as organic dust toxic syndrome or chronic bronchitis.

Here we describe an in vitro assay - a human whole blood assay - that can be used to estimate the inflammatory potency of bioaerosol samples. With the whole blood assay the inflammation reaction that bioaerosols cause in the respiratory tract is reproduced. The assay is able to detect a broad spectrum of macrophage activating substances and not only endotoxins as with the Limulus assay.
An Investigation of Indoor Air Quality in Rural Residential Houses in India - A Case Study
Authors: Lawrence Alfred J. , Taneja Ajay
Published: May 2005

Indoor air quality (IAQ) is a matter of public concern these days whereas air pollution is normally monitored outdoors as required under national air quality strategies. In consequence, much less is known about air pollution levels indoors. As 70% of the Indian population lives in villages in rural areas this study attempts to provide information about the present IAQ of rural residential homes in Agra (the city of the Taj Mahal), India, during 3 months of the rainy season from July to September 2003. Measurements were made in the living rooms of the homes and included CO, NO, NO2, SO2 and particulate matter (PM10). The results were analysed statistically and indoor concentrations were correlated with outdoor concentrations for all the houses. It was found that the average indoor concentration of CO was 1.8±0.4ppm, for NO it was 0.12±0.06ppm, for NO2 it was 0.09±0.02ppm, and for SO2 it was 0.06±0.01ppm whereas PM10 was found to be 0.0287ppm. It was seen that the indoor concentrations at all the houses of the 5 villages studied had a positive correlation with the outdoor concentrations but little of the variation indoors was due to outdoor sources. An activity schedule of inside and outside these homes was also prepared to see its influence on the concentrations of pollutants. As standards for indoor air were not available for the Indian conditions the results were compared with standards of other countries, which showed that they lay below permissible limits.
Information management in health visitors’ public health and community development activities
Authors: Bacigalupo Ruth , Fox Nick , Levy Philippa
Published: May 2005

This qualitative study aimed to identify UK health visitors’ management of information, with particular reference to their public health and community development activities. Widely recognized concepts, such as information audit to assess information need and process models of information management, were applied at operational level to represent health visitors’ information environment. The naturalistic methodology included interviews and observation, the use of NUD.IST to aid qualitative data analysis, and the code and retrieve method to develop theory. The results highlight information flows, categories of information need, and key issues relating to health visitors’ information management practice. It is concluded that the community development work of health visitors can be seen as information work, and that health visitors can be viewed as ‘information processors’ and ‘information facilitators’. It is suggested that health visiting requires an information policy that will inform the development of local information strategies and effective information management practices.
Adolescents’ identity experiments on the internet
Authors: Valkenburg Patti M. , Schouten Alexander P. , Peter Jochen
Published: May 2005

The aim of this article is to investigate how often adolescents engage in internet-based identity experiments, with what motives they engage in such experiments and which self-presentational strategies they use while experimenting with their identity. Six hundred nine to 18-year-olds completed a questionnaire in their classroom. Of the adolescents who used the internet for chat or Instant Messaging, 50 percent indicated that they had engaged in internet-based identity experiments. The most important motive for such experiments was self-exploration (to investigate how others react), followed by social compensation (to overcome shyness) and social facilitation (to facilitate relationship formation). Age, gender and introversion were significant predictors of the frequency with which adolescents engaged in internet-based identity experiments, their motives for such experiments, and their self-presentational strategies.
Seeing like a system
Authors: Gershon Ilana
Published: May 2005

In this essay, I discuss how Niklas Luhmann’s systems theory might be useful for anthropologists. After providing a summary of Luhmann’s theory, I address the quandaries anthropologists might face when deploying a theory that presumes systems without selves. I also recount how other anthropologists have made use of Luhmann’s systems theory to analyze auditing, legal pluralism, and biosecurity hazards.
Suppressor of cytokine signaling-1 in T cells and macrophages is critical for preventing lethal inflammation
Authors: Chong Mark M. W. , Metcalf Donald , Jamieson Emma , Alexander Warren S. , Kay Thomas W. H.
Published: May 2005

The balance between pro- and anti-inflammatory cytokines modulates inflammation. Intracellular inhibitors of signaling, in turn, contribute to the negative regulation of cytokines. One of these inhibitors is suppressor of cytokine signaling-1 (SOCS-1). Socs1-/- mice die by 3 weeks of age with inflammation and fatty necrosis of the liver. Here, cre/loxP deletion of Socs1 was used to investigate the contribution of specific cells/tissues to inflammatory disease. Mice with SOCS-1 deficiency in myeloid and lymphoid cells, but not lymphoid alone, became ill at 50 to 250 days of age. These mice developed splenomegaly and T-cell/macrophage infiltration of many organs, including liver, lung, pancreas, and muscle. There were also abnormally high levels of the proinflammatory cytokines interferon γ (IFN-γ), tumor necrosis factor (TNF), and interleukin-12 (IL-12), and activated T cells circulating in these mice. Socs1null T cells were found to be hypersensitive to multiple cytokines, including IL-1, IL-2, and IL-12, resulting in IFN-γ production without requiring T-cell receptor (TCR) ligation. Additionally, Socs1null macrophages produced excessive amounts of IL-12 and TNF in response to other cytokines, including IFN-γ. A dysregulated cytokine network between T cells and macrophages is thus associated with this inflammatory disease. These findings indicate that SOCS-1 is critical in both T cells and macrophages for preventing uncontrolled inflammation. (Blood. 2005;106:1668-1675)
Bcl-xL prevents apoptosis of late-stage erythroblasts but does not mediate the antiapoptotic effect of erythropoietin
Authors: Rhodes Melissa M. , Kopsombut Prapaporn , Bondurant Maurice C. , Price James O. , Koury Mark J.
Published: May 2005

The long form of B-cell lymphoma-x (Bcl-xL), an outer mitochondrial membrane protein, has been proposed to mediate the antiapoptotic action of erythropoietin on erythroid progenitor cells and to be necessary for heme synthesis in erythroblasts. Mice with conditional knockout of Bcl-xL (conditional bcl-x-/- mice) develop severe anemia that has been attributed to hemolysis and is accompanied by splenomegaly. We characterized further the anemia of conditional bcl-x-/- mice and investigated the role of Bcl-xL in the action of erythropoietin and in heme synthesis. We analyzed peripheral blood cells and cultured splenic erythroblasts of conditional bcl-x-/- mice and littermates that were rendered anemic by bleeding. Although they had massive splenic erythroblastosis, conditional bcl-x-/- mice had decreased circulating reticulocytes compared to littermates even prior to bleeding the littermates. Compared to erythroblasts of bled littermates, bcl-x-/- erythroblasts cultured with erythropoietin underwent apoptosis during the later, hemoglobin-synthesizing stages of differentiation. The bcl-x-/- erythroblasts synthesized heme, but at reduced rates compared to bled littermate erythroblasts. When cultured without erythropoietin, bcl-x-/- erythroblasts underwent apoptosis at early stages of differentiation, prior to hemoglobin synthesis. Bcl-xL is not required for heme synthesis and does not mediate the antiapoptotic effects of erythropoietin, but it prevents ineffective erythropoiesis due to apoptosis in late-stage, hemoglobin-synthesizing erythroblasts. (Blood. 2005;106:1857-1863)
Identification of NKG2A and NKp80 as specific natural killer cell markers in rhesus and pigtailed monkeys
Authors: Mavilio Domenico , Benjamin Janet , Kim Diana , Lombardo Gabriella , Daucher Marybeth , Kinter Audrey , Nies-Kraske Elizabeth , Marcenaro Emanuela , Moretta Alessandro , Fauci Anthony S.
Published: May 2005

Investigations of natural killer (NK) cells in simian models of disease have been hampered by a lack of appropriate phenotypic markers and by an inadequate understanding of the regulation of NK cell activities. In the present study, a panel of monoclonal antibodies (mAbs) specific for various human NK receptors was screened for cross-reactivity with NK cells from rhesus macaques and pigtailed macaques. Flow cytometric analyses using anti-human NKG2A and anti-human NKp80 mAbs individually, and particularly in combination with anti-CD16 mAb, allowed for the identification of the entire NK cell population in both species. NK cells in monkeys were generally identified by negative selection of peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) for the absence of T-cell, B-cell, and monocyte markers. mAb-mediated ligation of NKp80 induced NK cell cytotoxicity, while in the case of NKG2A it displayed a clear capability to inhibit the lysis of target cells by NK cells from macaques, as well as from humans. This new phenotypic and functional characterization of NKG2A and NKp80 in rhesus and pigtailed macaque NK cells provides a new approach in the analysis of their innate immune system. (Blood. 2005;106:1718-1725)
On the use of haplotype phylogeny to detect disease susceptibility loci
Authors: Bardel Claire , Danjean Vincent , Hugot Jean-Pierre , Darlu Pierre , Génin Emmanuelle
Published: May 2005

Background

The cladistic approach proposed by Templeton has been presented as promising for the study of the genetic factors involved in common diseases. This approach allows the joint study of multiple markers within a gene by considering haplotypes and grouping them in nested clades. The idea is to search for clades with an excess of cases as compared to the whole sample and to identify the mutations defining these clades as potential candidate disease susceptibility sites. However, the performance of this approach for the study of the genetic factors involved in complex diseases has never been studied.

Results

In this paper, we propose a new method to perform such a cladistic analysis and we estimate its power through simulations. We show that under models where the susceptibility to the disease is caused by a single genetic variant, the cladistic test is neither really more powerful to detect an association nor really more efficient to localize the susceptibility site than an individual SNP testing. However, when two interacting sites are responsible for the disease, the cladistic analysis greatly improves the probability to find the two susceptibility sites. The impact of the linkage disequilibrium and of the tree characteristics on the efficiency of the cladistic analysis are also discussed. An application on a real data set concerning the CARD15 gene and Crohn disease shows that the method can successfully identify the three variant sites that are involved in the disease susceptibility.

Conclusion

The use of phylogenies to group haplotypes is especially interesting to pinpoint the sites that are likely to be involved in disease susceptibility among the different markers identified within a gene.
Selecting representative model micro-organisms
Authors: Holland BR , Schmid J
Published: May 2005

Background

Micro-biological research relies on the use of model organisms that act as representatives of their species or subspecies, these are frequently well-characterized laboratory strains. However, it has often become apparent that the model strain initially chosen does not represent important features of the species. For micro-organisms, the diversity of their genomes is such that even the best possible choice of initial strain for sequencing may not assure that the genome obtained adequately represents the species. To acquire information about a species' genome as efficiently as possible, we require a method to choose strains for analysis on the basis of how well they represent the species.

Results

We develop the Best Total Coverage (BTC) method for selecting one or more representative model organisms from a group of interest, given that rough genetic distances between the members of the group are known. Software implementing a "greedy" version of the method can be used with large data sets, its effectiveness is tested using both constructed and biological data sets.

Conclusion

In both the simulated and biological examples the greedy-BTC method outperformed random selection of model organisms, and for two biological examples it outperformed selection of model strains based on phylogenetic structure. Although the method was designed with microbial species in mind, and is tested here on three microbial data sets, it will also be applicable to other types of organism.
Blood cultures in ambulatory outpatients
Authors: Laupland Kevin B , Church Deirdre L , Gregson Daniel B
Published: May 2005

Background

Blood cultures are a gold standard specific test for diagnosing many infections. However, the low yield may limit their usefulness, particularly in low-risk populations. This study was conducted to assess the utility of blood cultures drawn from ambulatory outpatients.

Methods

Blood cultures drawn at community-based collection sites in the Calgary Health Region (population 1 million) in 2001 and 2002 were included in this study. These patients were analyzed by linkages to acute care health care databases for utilization of acute care facilities within 2 weeks of blood culture draw.

Results

3102 sets of cultures were drawn from 1732 ambulatory outpatients (annual rate = 89.4 per 100,000 population). Significant isolates were identified from 73 (2.4%) sets of cultures from 51 patients, including Escherichia coli in 18 (35%) and seven (14%) each of Staphylococcus aureus and Streptococcus pneumoniae. Compared to patients with negative cultures, those with positive cultures were older (mean 49.6 vs. 40.1 years, p < 0.01), and more likely to subsequently receive care at a regional emergency department, outpatient antibiotic clinic, or hospital (35/51 vs. 296/1681, p < 0.0001). Of the 331 (19%) patients who received acute care treatment, those with positive cultures presented sooner after community culture draw (median 2 vs. 3 days, p < 0.01) and had longer median treatment duration (6 vs. 2 days, p < 0.01).

Conclusion

Blood cultures drawn in outpatient settings are uncommonly positive, but may define patients for increased intensity of therapy. Strategies to reduce utilization without excluding patients with positive cultures need to be developed for this patient population.