bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Genetics: The Not-So-New New Thing
Authors: Davis Dena S.
Published: January 2007

ABSTRACT Practical knowledge of heredity predates history. Indigenous peoples laid the foundations of modern agriculture by developing plants such as corn. However, the language and metaphors of the Human Genome Project treat modern genetics as if it had no historical antecedents and fail to acknowledge these early contributions to the science of heredity. The results of this blindness are twofold: it exacerbates reluctance of native peoples to take part in genetic research and to garner the benefits of genetic medicine, and it encourages "biopiracy," as modern scientists "discover" and patent native plants.
From the Great Barrier Reef to a "Cure" for the Flu: tall tales, but true
Authors: Laver William Graeme
Published: January 2007

How we discovered that sea birds on the Great Barrier Reef are riddled with influenza viruses, and how one of these led to a new drug now being used in the battle against the flu.
Evolutionary Neurobiology and Aesthetics
Authors: Smith C. U. M. (Christopher Upham Murray)
Published: January 2007

If aesthetics is a human universal, it should have a neurobiological basis. Although use of all the senses is, as Aristotle noted, pleasurable, the distance senses are primarily involved in aesthetics. The aesthetic response emerges from the central processing of sensory input. This occurs very rapidly, beneath the level of consciousness, and only the feeling of pleasure emerges into the conscious mind. This is exemplified by landscape appreciation, where it is suggested that a computation built into the nervous system during Paleolithic hunter-gathering is at work. Another inbuilt computation leading to an aesthetic response is the part-whole relationship. This, it is argued, may be traced to the predator-prey "arms races" of evolutionary history. Mate selection also may be responsible for part of our response to landscape and visual art. Aesthetics lies at the core of human mentality, and its study is consequently of importance not only to philosophers and art critics but also to neurobiologists.
Disparities and Discrimination in Health Care: An Introduction
Authors: Weisfeld Alix , Perlman Robert L
Published: January 2007

Racial disparities in health care and health outcomes are a disturbing feature of the American health care system. Efforts to reduce or ameliorate these disparities must be informed by an understanding of the factors that underlie and contribute to them. The papers in this issue are based on a recent conference that was held at the University of Chicago to address this problem. Socioeconomic status is an important determinant of health, and socioeconomic disparities are major determinants of the racial disparities in health. These socioeconomic disparities are complicated by access to health insurance, geographic factors, and unhealthy behaviors. Geographic disparities, both regional and local, also contribute to racial disparities in health. Moreover, current disparities in the health of adult populations may reflect socioeconomic disparities that prevailed during their intrauterine or early infant development. There seems little evidence that either overt or unconscious discrimination on the part of physicians is an important cause of racial disparities in health; blaming physicians for this problem is counterproductive. Improving the quality of medical care holds the promise not only of improving health for all Americans, but of decreasing the racial disparities in health care that are so troubling today.
American Medicine and the Politics of Race
Authors: Bloche Maxwell Gregg
Published: January 2007

Straw men play a major role in the debate over racial disparity in American medicine. Most have been deployed by the disparities-denying right, but progressives intent on "outing" racism have sent forth their share. This essay flushes out the straw men while attempting to understand the competing moral premises that drive the politics of health care disparity. At bottom, arguments about the scope of disparity and discrimination in medical care are disputes about the appropriate scope of personal responsibility for life circumstances. Further research into the factors that correlate with racial differences in health care can shed light on the circumstances that bring about these differences. Whether these circumstances, once understood, should be deemed acceptable is a moral and political matter, and sharp differences over the scope of personal and public responsibility for these circumstances are inevitable. Such disagreements, however, distract us from efforts to reach common ground solutions to agreed-upon inequities in health care.
Full Disclosure: Telling Patients When Not Being a Research Subject is a Good Choice
Authors: Menikoff Jerry
Published: January 2007

Informed consent to participation in research generally requires giving a person information about the alternatives to being in the research study. It is quite common, however, for research subjects not to be given one particularly significant piece of information: the possibility of obtaining the "new" treatment being studied directly from a doctor without participating in the study. Since many people enroll in studies precisely to get such a new treatment, they frequently would prefer that option—which guarantees them that new treatment—to enrolling in a study where there is only a 50% chance of getting the new treatment. This issue becomes more complicated in the context of pediatric oncology research, since physician-researchers in this field have entered into a unique informal agreement not to offer such new treatments outside of research studies.That agreement, which in effect forces physicians to behave in a manner that subordinates the well-being of some of their current patients to that of future patients, is ethically and legally questionable.
Modernity, Disenchantment, and the Ironic Imagination
Authors: Saler Michael T.
Published: January 2007

Western "modernity" has often been identified with the "disenchantment of the world." But if this is true, how do we account for the millions of sober adults who nevertheless delight in Elvish grammar or Elvis sightings? Perhaps these are manifestations of the dialectic of Enlightenment, an alternate view that perceives modernity's faith in reason as itself a myth, and mass culture the exemplification of how the irrational has come to dominate everyday life. This essay, however, locates in mass culture an attempt to reconcile the rational and secular tenets of modernity with the wonders and marvels that modernity was thought to supercede: a specifically modern enchantment.
Against Intertextuality
Authors: Irwin William
Published: January 2007

Julia Kristeva coined the term intertextuality in 1966, and since that time intertextuality has come to have almost as many meanings as users. No small task, I clarify what intertextuality means for Kristeva and her mentor/colleague, Roland Barthes before criticizing their concept of intertextuality and its application in interpretation. Because no rational and coherent concept of intertextuality is offered by Kristeva, Barthes, or their Epigoni, I conclude that intertextuality should be stricken from the lexicon of sincere and intelligent humanists.
Measurement and Analysis of Electronic Reserve Usage: Toward a New Path in Online Library Service Assessment
Authors: Jacoby JoAnn , Laskowski Mary S
Published: January 2007

This article identifies problems and issues in assessment of electronic
reserves and investigates usage measures, particularly Web server logs,
for after-hours and off-campus usage. Findings indicate that electronic
reserves are heavily used during non-traditional service hours and from
outside the library's physical walls.
Scaling Users' Perceptions of Library Service Quality Using Item Response Theory: A LibQUAL+ TM Study
Authors: Wei Youhua , Thompson Bruce , Cook C. Colleen
Published: January 2007

LibQUAL+TM data to date have not been subjected to the modern measurement theory called polytomous item response theory (IRT). The data interpreted here were collected from 42,090 participants who completed the "American English" version of the 22 core LibQUAL+TM items, and 12,552 participants from Australia and Europe who completed the "British English" version of the 22 core LibQUAL+TM items. Results suggest that the LibQUAL+TM protocol has psychometric integrity, that American English participants tend to be somewhat less critical of library service quality, and that students and faculty have fairly similar views of library service quality.
Digital Authenticity and Integrity: Digital Cultural Heritage Documents as Research Resources
Authors: Bradley Rachael
Published: January 2007

This article presents the results of a survey addressing methods of securing digital content and ensuring the content's authenticity and integrity, as well as the perceived importance of authenticity and integrity. The survey was sent to 40 digital repositories in the United States and Canada between June 30 and July 19, 2003. Twenty-two institutions responded, the majority of which felt that ensuring authenticity and integrity represented a low priority compared to increasing access and preserving content. Technology for securing content and ensuring the authenticity and integrity of individual digital items has not yet been implemented at the majority of the responding institutions; however, the responses indicate that the number of institutions incorporating this type of technology will increase. The low level of concern and lack of implementation signify the need for additional research and interest in these issues, as the value of repository content for research purposes directly relates to the researcher's ability to trust the content's authenticity and integrity.
Web Citation by Graduate Students: A Comparison of Print and Electronic Theses
Authors: Kushkowski Jeffrey D
Published: January 2007

This article reports on the Web citation behavior of print and electronic thesis authors at Iowa State and Virginia Tech from 1997 to 2003. Citations from print theses were compared with those submitted as an electronic thesis or dissertation (ETD). This study suggests that students who are required to publish their theses digitally exhibit citation behavior that is no different from students who produce their theses in print. Web citations accounted for 2.2 percent of citations in print theses and 5.4 percent of citations in ETDs. Persistence of Web citations was uniformly poor. The implications for library services and future research directions are discussed.
Integrating Information Literacy with a Sequenced English Composition Curriculum
Authors: Holliday Wendy , Fagerheim Britt
Published: January 2007

This article details the process of implementing a sequenced information literacy program for two core English composition courses at Utah State University. Anextensive needs assessment guided the project, leading to a curriculum design process with the goal of building a foundation for deeper critical thinking skills. The curriculum development and implementation process highlights several of the advantages of using the course-integrated model of instruction to develop a more comprehensive information literacy program.
The Unity and Disunity of Agency
Authors: Kennett Jeanette , Matthews Steve
Published: January 2007

Effective agency, according to contemporary Kantians, requires a unity
of purpose both at a time, in order that we may eliminate conflict
among our motives, and over time, because many of the things we do form
part of longer-term projects and make sense only in the light of these
projects and life plans. Call this the unity of agency thesis.
This thesis can be regarded as a normative constraint on accounts of
personal identity and indeed on accounts of what it is to have the life
of a person in the broad, rather than narrowly biological sense. It is
also a fundamental condition of social life that persons within society
fulfill a range of longitudinal roles: parenthood is one such obvious
example, as are teachers, health professionals, engineers, artists,
and many others. The fulfillment of these and other valuable social
roles requires that agents have the capacity to rationally conceive
of themselves as engaged in these roles and subject to the demands
of them. To be unable to fulfill any such longitudinal social roles
is to have a life deficient in value. The unity of agency is thus, we
argue, something we rationally strive for, and something to be morally
promoted. Psychiatric states that undermine the unity of agency are
morally and rationally disvaluable. Using the example of dissociation,
we explain how one such state may have this undermining or disruptive
effect on the unity of agency. The therapeutic ends for psychiatry in
conditions involving such states are thus seen more globally as the
restoration of effective agency, that is, unified agency.
When Narrative Fails
Authors: Woody J. Melvin
Published: January 2007

Lloyd Wells' four examples of loss of self challenge both philosophers
and clinicians to ponder just what it is that has been lost in such
cases. If a self has been lost, who lost it? And how can personal
identity be so insecure that it can be lost in so many different
ways? Empiricist thinkers, both Western and Eastern, have questioned
the very existence of a self; much recent thought about the nature of
the self has converged on notions that it is not a substantial reality,
but a narrative, the product of the stories that we tell ourselves
about our lives so that we can knit together our experiences into a
continuous plot. Owen Flanagan and Valerie Hardcastle have already
brought one version of this theory to bear on one of Wells' cases and
James Phillips explores the capacity of narrative theory to account
for each of these cases in an accompanying essay. In this essay, I
challenge the adequacy of narrative theories of the self in general
and their application to these particular cases. The details of Wells'
cases highlight the limitations of narrative theories to discursive,
secondary process thought by directing attention to the richer and
more expressively forceful resources of metaphor and nondiscursive
forms of symbolism. Narrative unity or continuity is no guarantee
against experiences of the loss of self. The monological character
of narrative masks the sociality of the self, the ways in which each
individual self is constituted and threatened by interactions with
other selves. I argue for the power of drama, opera, music, dance, and
spatial forms of symbolism to cope with the diversity of what Flanagan
has dubbed the multiplex self, (Flanagan 1994) especially when
narrative fails. Language and narrative certainly play a crucial role in
human self-consciousness. But human imagination and art command other
resources as well and a theory that acknowledges their contributions
can accept and incorporate the insights of narrative theories without
confining itself to the limitations of story telling.
Externality in Psychiatry and the Paradox of Agency
Authors: Rego Mark D
Published: January 2007

Within common mental health treatments there exists a paradox, in which personal agency over a problem appears to increase by disownership of the problem. I endeavor to explain this paradox and by doing so, shed light on the relationships among identity, psychopathology, and therapeutic agency. The work of the philosopher Harry Frankfurt, with emphasis on his concept of externality, is used as the model for unraveling the paradox of agency.
Thinking about Rethinking Life and Death: The Character and Rhetorical Function of Dramatic Irony in a Life Ethics Discourse
Authors: Kenny Robert Wade
Published: January 2007

This essay examines the manner in which Peter Singer exceeds the
boundaries of ethical reasoning in arguing his position on life
ethics. Specifically, it probes a narrative aesthetic that functions as
rhetorical proof in his work. Attention is given to demonstrating the
presence of ironic aesthetics in this narrative. Thereafter two conceptual
structures—consubstantiality and ironic catharsis—are
elaborated in order to show how Singer uses irony in an attempt to shape
audience attitudes toward the traditional life ethics position.
"Our Mission and Our Moment": George W. Bush and September 11th
Authors: Murphy John M
Published: January 2007

This essay explores the ways in which President George W. Bush explained
the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. Through his choice of genre,
use of visual imagery, and creation of an American people, Bush crafted
the authority to dominate public interpretation of those events and the
appropriate response to them.
Suffrage, Self-Determination, and the Women's Christian Temperance Union in Nebraska, 1879-1882
Authors: Heider Carmen
Published: January 2007

This essay explores the interplay between Nebraska suffrage and temperance rhetoric from 1879 to 1882. Nebraska activists used a wide range of arguments, including conventional gender ideas, to construct a conception of womanhood that was more radical than the late nineteenth-century convention. Through their woman suffrage periodical and local newspaper column, suffrage and temperance reformers centralized religion as the tactical framework through which they argued for self-determination.
Rhetoric, Public Opinion, and Policy in the American Debate over the Japanese Emperor during World War II
Authors: Brands Hal
Published: January 2007

During World War II, American public observers debated the Japanese emperor's political and social role, his culpability in Japanese "aggression," and his proper status in the postwar settlement. Reflecting broader themes and developments of war and diplomacy, the focus of this discussion shifted at various points between December 1941 and August 1945, alternating between different levels of hostility toward the emperor. Though this public debate was often prominent in the minds of U.S. officials, the effects of the discussion on American policy were uneven. This being the case, the emperor question provides an excellent opportunity to study the complex relationship between rhetoric, policy, and public opinion.
Behold the Corpse: Violent Images and the Case of Emmett Till
Authors: Harold Christine , DeLuca Kevin Michael
Published: January 2007

The widely disseminated image of Emmett Till's mutilated corpse rhetorically transformed the lynched black body from a symbol of unmitigated white power to one illustrating the ugliness of racial violence and the aggregate power of the black community. This reconfiguration was, in part, an effect of the black community's embracing and foregrounding Till's abject body as a collective "souvenir" rather than allowing it to be safely exiled from public life.
Interpreting the Discursive Field of the Montgomery Bus Boycott: Martin Luther King Jr.'s Holt Street Address
Authors: Wilson Kirt H.
Published: January 2007

Widely recognized for its historical significance, the Montgomery bus boycott is understudied as a rhetorical phenomenon. This essay analyzes the protest's first oration, King's Holt Street Address, arguing that the text interacts with a rich discursive field, interprets that field to unify the black community and constrain its modes of protest, and anticipates a metaphysical foundation in King's philosophy of nonviolence. Although King's "interpretive persuasion" was instrumental in the boycott's success, it also effaced the protest's gender and class tensions.
The College-Choice Process for Asian Pacific Americans: Ethnicity and SocioEconomic Class in Context
Authors: Teranishi Robert T , Ceja Miguel , Antonio Anthony Lising , Allen Walter Recharde , McDonough Patricia M.
Published: January 2007

This study examines differential college-choice behavior and outcomes among Asian Pacific American (APA) student subpopulations with the goal of examining the extent to which the Asian American population is, in fact, a homogeneous "model minority" in college destinations and decision-making processes. The results suggest that their postsecondary decisions, opportunities, and destinations vary across and within ethnic and socioeconomic class subpopulations, challenging common assumptions about these students and their participation in U.S. higher education.
Boundaries and Quandaries: How Professors Negotiate Market Relations
Authors: Slaughter Sheila , Archerd Cynthia Joan , Campbell Teresa I. D
Published: January 2007

Closer university-market relations are evidenced in increased university patenting, the formation of start-up companies, and partnerships with industry.
They are part of a state and policy effort to link science and engineering to the market, thereby developing new technologies, stimulating economic growth,
and creating new jobs. Yet the blurring of boundaries between the two institutions creates quandaries for faculty and administrators. Using a National
Science Foundation database and interviews, this article explores the effects
of redrawn boundaries, the need to negotiate disputed boundaries, and the
role of start-up companies in the new academic environment.
Testing Race-Neutral Admissions Models: Lessons from California State University-Long Beach
Authors: Rendon Laura I , Novack Vincent , Dowell David
Published: January 2007

This policy analysis article examines how California State University-Long Beach, an institution where upward of 22,000 student applied for roughly 3,400 freshman slots and where the transfer class had to be reduced because of mandatory enrollment reductions, tested race-neutral admissions models in accordance with Proposition 209, which prohibits race/gender preferences. Testing occurred in the fall of 2002 and 2003 within a complex context where escalating demand for access came at a time of budget reductions and enrollment downsizing.
Editor as Good Steward of Manuscript Submissions: 'Culture,' Tone, and Procedures
Authors: Fischer Charles C
Published: January 2007

This article examines the issue of fair treatment of authors of manuscripts submitted to academic journals. Criteria of fairness and the means to achieve them are set forth. The latter include the 'culture' established with referees by the journal editor, the nature and tone of correspondence, and procedures employed. Further, indicators of the success of these efforts are presented, as well as the position that treating authors fairly is not only the right thing to do but also is good for the journal. This is done in the context of a sixteen-year case study of an academic management journal that uses a double-blind referee process.
"Excuse the inconvenience, but this is a revolution": Zapatista Paradox and the Rhetoric of Tourism
Authors: Martin Desiree A
Published: January 2007

This essay examines the conflation of various practices of tourism, such as eco-tourism and so-called "revolutionary tourism," surrounding the EZLN and the indigenous groups that they represent. Both eco-tourism and revolutionary tourism seek authentic versions of indigenous difference, yet they also carry the threat that such difference will fracture the myth of Mexican national unity. It is precisely this indigenous difference that both thrills and repels the tourist, and by extension, the Mexican state. While the Mexican state manipulates the idea of tourism in order to delegitimize neo-Zapatismo, the EZLN symbolically reclaims the power of political praxis by utilizing tourism as a rhetorical device to represent and analyze the construction of national and indigenous identity. I argue that the EZLN's mock tourist guides and travel narratives demonstrate the confluence and inversion of supposedly "non-modern" and "modern" temporalities, in which both the nation-state and indigenous groups alternately appropriate and reject official national discourse and stereotypically authentic indigenous identity. As such, tourism becomes a space not to access potential national unity, but rather to rewrite the terms of indigenous difference and national inclusion.
Public Justice and Private Mercy in Measure for Measure
Authors: Magedanz Stacy
Published: January 2007

Measure for Measure is informed by contemporary debates about interpretation of the Sermon on the Mount, from which the play takes its title. The Anabaptists interpreted "judge not" to mean that no Christian could pass judgment upon another, and therefore they argued that Christians must not serve as magistrates. Moderate reformers argued that while Christians could not judge others in the private, spiritual realm, they were obliged to use their public authority to uphold social order. Shakespeare examines this debate in the characters of Angelo and Isabella, and attempts to unite these opposed standards of conduct in the Duke.
Vision, Metamorphosis, and the Poetics of Allegory in the Mutabilitie Cantos
Authors: Freeman Louise Gilbert
Published: January 2007

The Mutabilitie Cantos treats the inability of allegory to image ideal truth. In the Faunus episode, Spenser critiques his own program of allegory by associating poetic invention with metamorphosis. Here Diana, who for Giordano Bruno represents unmediated truth, gains only Faunus's laughter because he sees the difference between what she should represent and what she is: a naked woman. Faunus becomes a paradoxical figure of liberation from the pursuit of ecstatic vision. Nature's veil in 7.7 stands as an image of allegory itself, always blinding the reader, keeping him or her at one remove from the truth.
Recent Studies in the English Renaissance
Authors: Guibbory Achsah
Published: January 2007

An assessment of recent scholarly work treating the literature of the English Renaissance and some general observations on the state of the profession. A full bibliography and price list of the works received by SEL for consideration follow.
Foreign Asia / Foreign Shakespeare: Dissenting Notes on New Asian Interculturality, Postcoloniality, and Recolonization
Authors: Bharucha Rustom
Published: January 2007

Decanonizing the larger monolithic and Orientalist associations of Shakespeare and
Asia, this essay problematizes their diverse relationships by focusing on three discrete,
yet politically and economically linked, sites of investigation: New Asian explorations
of Shakespeare in which the dramatic text is subsumed within ostensibly deconstructive
scenarios exploring inter-Asian cultural difference; postcolonial critiques of
Shakespearean adaptation in traditional performances like Kathakali; and the neo-
Orientalist attempt to seek an authentic and vibrant Shakespeare in the living
traditions of non-Western cultures. Even while de-provincializing the Bard and
affirming that there are not just other Shakespeares but different Shakespeares, the
essay also demonstrates that Asicacentricity could be the other side of the same coin as
Eurocentricity.
"sneakin' and spyin'" from Broadway to the Beltway: Cold War Masculinity, Brick, and Homosexual Existentialism
Authors: Bak John
Published: January 2007

Tennessee Williams spent the better part of his career defending Brick's heterosexuality, and yet critics and scholars alike are still debating the fallout from Walter Kerr's 1955 polemic concerning Brick's homosexual "mystery." This essay reopens that debate, not with the intent of siding for or against Williams in his response to Kerr and others but rather with trying to understand what Williams meant by refusing to label Brick's "mystery" as homosexuality. In reading the play against its Cold War and existential contexts, the essay argues that Williams was �nally less interested in outing a gay character and more in demonstrating how that character's sexual uncertainty could belie his model heteromasculinity, both for himself and for his society. Such a message, one upheld by the play's original ending, is for WiIlliams more socially signi�cant (and politically subversive) because it debunks society's myth of polarized sexual identities. Though undoubedly queer, Brick in the play is not gay, and for Williams that fact is more troubling for audiences who need to see that Brick is �nally not one of them.
Outside the Box: The Female Spectator, The Fair Penitent, and the Kelly Riots of 1747
Authors: Harris Susan C. (Susan Cannon)
Published: January 2007

This essay investigates the participation and agency of women performers and spectators in the eighteenth-century playhouse through an examination of a protracted conflict known as the Kelly Riots that took place in Dublin in 1747. This conflict, which was sparked by actor-manager Thomas Sheridan's attempt to end the custom of allowing male spectators access to the area behind the scenes during the performance, has traditionally been read as part of a renegotiation of the conception of the "gentleman." This article examines the role that women played in this conflict—not, as the standard interpretation has it, as endangered victims, but as members of a new constituency that appeared to be forming across lines of class, religion, and ethnicity, and which for that brief historical moment suggested an alternative model of identity that might threaten some of the power structures that were supporting and supported by the legitimate theater. The essay concludes with an extended reading of the performance that ended the first phase of the riots—the 19 March 1747 benefit performance of Nicholas Rowe's The Fair Penitent—which offers a new perspective on the play as well as on the impact that the imposition of a stable and unbreakable curtain line had on the agency of the female spectator.
"How Do I Rent a Negro?": Racialized Subjectivity and Digital Performance Art
Authors: Catanese Brandi Wilkins
Published: January 2007

This essay is an examination of conceptual artist damali ayo's Web-art performance, www.rent-a-negro.com, and the function of race within the interactive features of the site. By employing and subverting the normative racial tropes of cyberculture, ayo's project also exposes the ethical and performative dimensions of race in material practice. Ultimately, the spaces of confessional and dark play that are created online with digital performance art enable an advancement of racial discourse in our society.
Ender's Game and Ender's Shadow: Orson Scott Card's Postmodern School Stories
Authors: Doyle Christine , Stewart Susan Louise
Published: January 2007

The school story has a long tradition in children's literature. Orson Scott Card dramatically revises and rewrites the tradition in two "school stories in space," Ender's Game and Ender's Shadow. Doyle and Stewart find that Card's innovations in the school story form and his departures from conventional narrative structures are inextricably linked to the need to escape narrowly defined perceptions about narrative, about education, and about the relationships between adults and children. Ultimately and essentially, the novels reconsider what it means to be human, with its attending successes and failures, in a postmodern world.
Is There Any Such Thing as Children's Science Fiction?: A Position Piece
Authors: Mendlesohn Farah
Published: January 2007

This paper argues that there is a paucity of fiction for children which fits the definition of science fiction as commonly accepted by adult science fiction readers; that much of what is marked as "science fiction" for children carries the trappings of science fiction but does not fulfill the cognitive demands of the genre; and that much that is currently written within the YA sf genre uses science fiction scenarios to deal with every day emotional issues, turning the child towards the family and socialization, rather than offering a challenge and directing the child outwards
Explaining Patterns of Corruption in the Russian Regions
Authors: Dininio Phyllis , Orttung Robert
Published: January 2007

Corruption is one of the key problems facing the Russian state as it seeks to evolve out of its socialist past. Naturally, regional patterns of corruption exist across a country as large and diverse as the Russian Federation. To explain these variations, the authors analyze 2002 data from Transparency International and the Information for Democracy Foundation that provide the first effort to measure differences in the incidence of corruption across forty Russian regions. They find that corruption in Russia is fueled by the size of government and by the level of development. Within each region, the amount of corruption increases as the number of bureaucrats grows and gross regional product per capita decreases. Russian policymakers can therefore work to reduce corruption by effectively reforming or scaling back bureaucracies and by encouraging economic development outside of the key centers of Moscow and St. Petersburg.
Presurgical Nasoalveolar Molding Therapy for the Treatment of Unilateral Cleft Lip and Palate: A Preliminary Study
Authors: Ezzat Christopher F. , Chavarria Carmen , Teichgraeber John F. , Chen Jung-Wei , Stratmann Robin G. , Gateno Jaime , Xia James J.
Published: January 2007

Objective:

To evaluate the outcome of presurgical nasoalveolar molding (PNAM) therapy in the treatment of patients with nonsyndromic unilateral cleft and palate (UCLP).

Design:

A prospective study with blinded measurements.

Patients:

Twelve patients with UCLP treated from 1997 to 2003.

Interventions:

The starting age for PNAM therapy was 26 days and the average length of the therapy was 110 days.

Main Outcome Measures:

Measurements of intraoral and extraoral casts were made, and statistical analyses were used to compare the differences between pre- and posttherapy measurements.

Results:

After PNAM therapy, there was a statistically significant decrease in both intersegment alveolar cleft distance and columellar deviation (p < .05). There was also a statistically significant increase in cleft nostril height, maxillary width, and columellar width (p < .05). Moreover, although there was no statistically significant reduction of the affected nostril width, it demonstrated on average 1.7-mm reduction after PNAM therapy. The length of the time the patient utilized the appliance and postmolding nostril height were found to have a statistically significant positive correlation (p < .05).

Conclusions:

PNAM therapy decreases intersegment alveolar cleft distance while permitting an increase in posterior maxillary arch width. It also increases nasal symmetry by decreasing columellar deviation, increasing nostril height on the affected side, maintaining bialar width of nose, increasing columellar width, and creating more symmetrical nostril heights and widths. The improvement of the height of the cleft nostril was correlated with the time the appliance was applied.
EphB/Ephrin-B Interaction Mediates Adult Stem Cell Attachment, Spreading, and Migration: Implications for Dental Tissue Repair
Authors: Stokowski Agnieszka , Shi Songtao , Sun Tao , Bartold Peter Mark , Koblar Simon Andrea , Gronthos Stan
Published: January 2007

Human adult dental pulp stem cells (DPSCs) reside predominantly within the perivascular niche of dental pulp and are thought to originate from migrating neural crest cells during development. The Eph family of receptor tyrosine kinases and their ligands, the ephrin molecules, play an essential role in the migration of neural crest cells during development and stem cell niche maintenance. The present study examined the expression and function of the B-subclass Eph/ephrin molecules on DPSCs. Multiple receptors were primarily identified on DPSCs within the perivascular niche, whereas ephrin-B1 and ephrin-B3 were expressed by the surrounding pulp tissue. EphB/ephrin-B bidirectional signaling inhibited cell attachment and spreading, predominately via the mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK) pathway for forward signaling and phosphorylation of Src family tyrosine kinases via reverse ephrin-B signaling. DPSC migration was restricted through unidirectional ephrin-B1-activated EphB forward signaling, primarily signaling through the MAPK pathway. Furthermore, we observed that ephrin-B1 was downregulated in diseased adult teeth compared with paired uninjured controls. Collectively, these studies suggest that EphB/ephrin-B molecules play a role in restricting DPSC attachment and migration to maintain DPSCs within their stem cell niche under steady-state conditions. These results may have implications for dental pulp development and regeneration.
Differential invariants of generic hyperbolic Monge-Ampère equations
Authors: Marvan Michal , Vinogradov Alexandre , Yumaguzhin Valery
Published: January 2007

In this paper basic differential invariants of generic hyperbolic Monge-Ampère equations with respect to contact transformations are constructed and the equivalence problem for these equations is solved.
Distribution of larval anisakids in blue whiting off Portuguese fish market
Authors: Cruz C. , Barbosa C. , Saraiva A.
Published: January 2007

Specimens of Micromesistius poutassou (n=238) obtained in a fish market of Oporto, Portugal, were examined for the presence of larval anisakids. Anisakis sp. L3 larvae (prevalence = 77.7 %; mean intensity = 5.8; mean abundance = 4.5) and Hysterothylacium sp. L3 larvae (prevalence = 5 %; mean intensity = 4.1; mean abundance = 0.2) were found in body cavity, mesenteries, liver and muscles. The Anisakis sp. intensity and abundance were significantly related to the host body length. The percentage of Anisakis sp. in muscle was inversely related to the host length.
Reverberant auditory environments: the effects of multiple echoes on distraction by ‘irrelevant’ speech
Authors: Beaman C. Philip , Holt Nigel J.
Published: January 2007

Two experiments examine the effect on an immediate recall test of simulating a reverberant auditory environment in which auditory distracters in the form of speech are played to the participants (the ‘irrelevant sound effect’). An echo‐intensive environment simulated by the addition of reverberation to the speech reduced the extent of ‘changes in state’ in the irrelevant speech stream by smoothing the profile of the waveform. In both experiments, the reverberant auditory environment produced significantly smaller irrelevant sound distraction effects than an echo‐free environment. Results are interpreted in terms of changing‐state hypothesis, which states that acoustic content of irrelevant sound, rather than phonology or semantics, determines the extent of the irrelevant sound effect (ISE). Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
A Kelvin Probe Force Microscopy Study of the Photogeneration of Surface Charges in All‐Thiophene Photovoltaic Blends
Authors: Palermo V. , Ridolfi G. , Talarico A. M. , Favaretto L. , Barbarella G. , Camaioni N. , Samorì P.
Published: January 2007

Light‐induced generation of charges into an electron acceptor–donor phase‐segregated blend is studied. The blend is made of highly ordered nanoscopic crystals of 3″‐methyl‐4″‐hexyl‐2,2′:5′,2″:5″,2‴:5‴,2″″‐quinquethiophene‐1″,1″‐dioxide embedded into a regioregular poly(3‐hexylthiophene) matrix, acting as acceptor and donor materials, respectively. Kelvin probe force microscopy investigations reveal a tendency for the acceptor nanocrystals to capture the generated electrons whereas the donor matrix becomes more positively charged. The presence of particular positively charged defects, i.e., nanocrystals, is also observed within the film. The charging and discharging of both materials is studied in real time, as well as the effect of different acceptor–donor ratios. Upon prolonged thermal annealing at high temperatures the chemical structure of the blend is altered, leading to the disappearance of charge separation upon light irradiation. The obtained results allow a better understanding of the correlation between the nanoscopic structure of the photoactive material and solar‐cell performance.
1,3‐Dipolar Cycloadditions of Azides and Alkynes: A Universal Ligation Tool in Polymer and Materials Science
Authors: Lutz Jean‐François
Published: January 2007

In 2001, Sharpless and co‐workers introduced “click” chemistry, a new approach in organic synthesis that involves a handful of almost perfect chemical reactions. Among these carefully selected reactions, Huisgen 1,3‐dipolar cycloadditions were shown to be the most effective and versatile and thus became the prime example of click chemistry. Hence, these long‐neglected reactions were suddenly re‐established in organic synthesis and, in particular, have gained popularity in materials science. The number of publications dealing with click chemistry has grown exponentially over the last two years. The Minireview discusses whether click chemistry is a miracle tool or an ephemeral trend.
Semi‐implicit methods, nonlinear balance, and regularized equations
Authors: Reich Sebastian , Wood Nigel , Staniforth Andrew
Published: January 2007

A regularized time‐staggered discretization of the shallow‐water equations has recently been proposed. The form of the regularization operator is chosen such that linear equivalence with the semi‐implicit method can be achieved. Here, we present a further generalization of the regularization that also takes into account nonlinear balance. The performance of the improved regularization procedure is demonstrated for a simple nonlinear test problem. © Crown Copyright 2007. Reproduced with the permission of the Controller of HMSO. Published by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Implementation of mixed precision in solving systems of linear equations on the Cell processor
Authors: Kurzak Jakub , Dongarra Jack
Published: January 2007

This paper describes the design concepts behind implementations of mixed‐precision linear algebra routines targeted for the Cell processor. It describes in detail the implementation of code to solve linear system of equations using Gaussian elimination in single precision with iterative refinement of the solution to the full double‐precision accuracy. By utilizing this approach the algorithm achieves close to an order of magnitude higher performance on the Cell processor than the performance offered by the standard double‐precision algorithm. The code is effectively an implementation of the high‐performance LINPACK benchmark, as it meets all of the requirements concerning the problem being solved and the numerical properties of the solution. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Nonprice antecedents of consumer preference for cyber and extension brands
Authors: Sääksjärvi Maria , Samiee Saeed
Published: January 2007

Price is an important factor affecting consumer preference for online brands and, not surprisingly, has played a dominant role in the Internet marketing literature. Concurrently, important nonprice factors that account for individual online brand preferences have received scant attention. This research examines nonprice influences on preferences for online brands and demonstrates that brand character, brand offerings, prior Internet shopping experience, brand familiarity, and brand evaluation affect online brand preference. Using data from cyber and extension brands, our results show that influences on consumer preference for the types of brands examined are different. In the case of cyber brands, familiarity, character, and brand offerings are related to brand preference. In contrast, extension brands benefit from having market-based counterparts, and for these firms, brand familiarity is not a predictor of consumer preference. Breadth of offerings is the most important predictor for both cyber- and extension-brand preference. Future research and managerial implications are discussed.
Thumbnails as online product displays: How consumers process them
Authors: Lam Shun Yin , Chau Albert Wai-Lap , Wong Tsunhin John
Published: January 2007

Thumbnails are typically miniature product images displayed on one page of a Web site and hyperlinked to other pages in the site. As a type of online product display, thumbnails are used to attract Web surfers to enter the internal environment (i.e., internal pages) of a virtual store. Thumbnails are often organized in rectangular arrays; when consumers view such an array, the rectangular configuration is likely to activate an eye-movement (scanning) routine in the consumers’ memory that causes them to scan the array in a manner similar to their reading of text. The presence of the routine and its influence on consumers’ scanning of thumbnails are supported by the results of an eye-tracking experiment reported in this article. The experiment shows that consumers process information in the middle and left regions of a thumbnail array to a greater extent than they do in the right regions, and that they can find a particular product more quickly if it is placed in the middle and left regions. As expected, the results are consistent with the dominant reading direction of the participants in the experiment. In demonstrating differing levels of processing for items located across an array, the findings have significant marketing implications.
How to project customer retention
Authors: Fader Peter S. , Hardie Bruce G.S.
Published: January 2007

At the heart of any contractual or subscription-oriented business model is the notion of the retention rate. An important managerial task is to take a series of past retention numbers for a given group of customers and project them into the future to make more accurate predictions about customer tenure, lifetime value, and so on. As an alternative to common “curve-fitting” regression models, we develop and demonstrate a probability model with a well-grounded “story” for the churn process. We show that our basic model (known as a “shifted-beta-geometric”) can be implemented in a simple Microsoft Excel spreadsheet and provides remarkably accurate forecasts and other useful diagnostics about customer retention. We provide a detailed appendix covering the implementation details and offer additional pointers to other related models.
Giving an “e-human touch” to e-tailing: The moderating roles of static information quantity and consumption motive in the effectiveness of an anthropomorphic information agent
Authors: Sivaramakrishnan Subramanian , Wan Fang , Tang Zaiyong
Published: January 2007

This study examines the impact of having an anthropomorphic information agent (a humanlike chatbot that acts as an interactive online information provider) in an online store on consumers’ attitude toward the Web site, product, and their purchase intentions. Using consumer experiments, we show that the impact of the anthropomorphic information agent is moderated by the amount of static product information available on the Web site and the consumer's consumption motive at the time of visiting the Web site. Our results indicate that the anthropomorphic information agent has a positive effect when static product information on the Web site is limited. Furthermore, we show that when detailed product information is readily available on the Web site, the anthropomorphic information agent can prove detrimental when the consumer has a utilitarian consumption motive.
A new error backpropagation learning algorithm for a layered neural network with nondifferentiable units
Authors: Naganuma Hidenori , Oohori Takahumi , Watanabe Kazuhisa
Published: January 2007

This paper proposes a new error backpropagation method (DBP) for a three‐layered neural network containing a nondifferentiable binary output unit. In contrast to the conventional simple perceptron, in which the teacher signal is given only to the output layer, in the DBP method the teacher signal is also given to the middle layer so that the output error is decreased. Consequently, it is possible in the DBP method to correct the coupling weights in both the lower layer and the upper layer. This makes it easy to construct a network composed only of binary output units, which results in high‐speed operation and is suitable for hardware implementation. When the DBP method is applied to linearly inseparable tasks such as XORing, the learning performance is greatly improved compared to learning by the simple perceptron, and almost the same learning performance as the conventional BP is obtained. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Electron Comm Jpn Pt 3, 90(5): 40– 49, 2007; Published online in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com). DOI 10.1002/ecjc.20318