bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Flora and vegetation of the Inner Hebrides
Authors: Currie A. , Murray C. W. 
Published: July 2012

SynopsisThe paper reviews the recent history and present state of knowledge of the flora and its geographical relationships. Key environmental factors are identified and the range of habitats is discussed, with some comment on plant communities. Recent accounts of island flora and plant communities are available for Skye, Rhum and Mull in contrast to the Outer Hebrides where none are available for the main islands. There is no checklist for the flora of the Inner Hebrides, since the islands are best described individually, not as a group.The geography of the flora and plant communities is discussed and related to that of the Outer Hebrides and the Scottish mainland. Inter-island relationships are described and related to habitat differences. Compared with the Outer Hebrides, machair and extensive wetland habitats are lacking through much of the Inner Hebrides, but there is a much greater extent of upland and mountain environment. There is much more woodland in the Inner Hebrides but the woodland development does not attain the levels of the adjacent mainland.Despite the greater extent of upland and mountain environments in the Inner than in the Outer Hebrides, many of the plant communities of central Scotland are absent while those of western character are well represented.
Evolution of animals and plants
Authors: Berry R. J. 
Published: July 2012

SynopsisFifty years ago James Ritchie declared that “in recent times we are looking in Scotland upon Evolution in its course”. The basis for Ritchie's remark was the large number of distinct taxa which have been described on Scottish islands, mainly on the Outer Hebrides. The most effective ingredient in producing taxonomic distinctiveness is isolation, particularly when the isolated form is founded by a small group of organisms which will almost inevitably differ genetically from its ancestral population. Subsequent adaptation may produce divergence between two related but isolated groups, but the process of differentiation will be fairly slow, since natural selection must depend upon the inherited variation present, never mind consideration of evolutionary ‘cost’, etc.The Inner Hebrides are ecologically very diverse, but the gene-flow between animals and plants living on them and on the mainland of Scotland must be much greater than is the case for Outer Hebridean populations. Notwithstanding, subspecifically distinct races of field mice, voles, shrews, and stoats have been described, and clinal variation shows that adaptive changes have taken place in several bird and lepidopteran species.The Inner Hebrides offer excellent experimental opportunities to measure gene-flow between different islands, and between islands and mainland. It should be possible to estimate some of the evolutionary forces involved in producing species differentiation, as well as in local extinctions.
Birds of the Inner Hebrides
Authors: Reed T. M. , Currie A. , Love J. A. 
Published: July 2012

SynopsisThe breeding and wintering birds of the Inner Hebrides are dealt with in this paper; seabirds and waterfowl have been described by Bourne and Harris (1979) and by Ogilvie and Atkinson-Willes (1983*). The bird populations of the Inner Hebrides are generally poorly documented, though Islay and the Small Isles are exceptions.Taking the Hebrides as a whole, stepwise regression analysis indicates that the number of landbird species to have bred on islands is significantly related to the following factors: the number of island habitats, island area, distance from the mainland and distance from the nearest large island. Islands near the mainland and large islands will contain more species than isolated islands of similar ecology and size. Agricultural change and island depopulation have resulted in the decrease of many bird populations. Plantations have increased the number of breeding bird species. Birds are treated either by species or by group. Appendices include work on corncrakes, Canna seabirds and sea eagles.
Coleoptera in the Inner Hebrides
Authors: Welch R. Colin 
Published: July 2012

SynopsisPublished studies on the Coleoptera of the Inner Hebrides from 1853–1981 are briefly reviewed and a full bibliography is provided. This is supplemented with data obtained from museum and private collections, unpublished manuscripts, etc., and the results of extensive surveys undertaken on eight of the islands during 1980 and 1981. Doubtful published records are discussed and records of 716 species are accepted. To these, 221 species have been added as new to the Inner Hebrides, together with numerous new island records. A comprehensive table lists the 937 species of Coleoptera and shows on which of the 15 largest, or best documented islands, they occur. Details of the limited known fauna for three of the remaining islands are also given. Our knowledge of the fauna of the Inner Hebrides remains very incomplete. Only 54% of the species recorded are known from the Outer Hebrides, whilst their faunal relationships with the Scottish mainland cannot be assessed until surveys of similar detail have been done on the west coast.
Onset of Melanophore Patterns in the Head Region of Chinook Salmon: A Natural Marker for the Reidentification of Individual Fish
Authors: Merz Joseph E. , Skvorc Paul , Sogard Susan M. , Watry Clark , Blankenship Scott M. , Van Nieuwenhuyse Erwin E. 
Published: July 2012

Abstract
We used pattern recognition algorithms and image processing to identify individual Chinook salmon Oncorhynchus tshawytscha. Using melanophore spot patterns located on the dorsal head region, algorithms ranked all database images against each other. We coupled this technology with a graphical user interface to visually confirm or reject top-ranked algorithm results and tested this process on 295 juvenile Chinook salmon in seven photo sessions over a 251-d period. Juveniles began developing spots, identifiable in photo images, between 167 and 197 d after conception (52.7-mm fork length [FL]). Unique spot patterns appeared 197–232 d from conception, beginning at approximately 104-mm FL. Of 254 fish surviving the experimental period, 106 (42%) demonstrated identifiable patterns, 102 (40%) developed spots but patterns were insufficient for identification, and 46 (18%) exhibited a complete lack of spots. Spot patterns continued developing on individual fish by study end. On average, fish that developed recognizable spot patterns did so at approximately 140-mm FL. Once they did, reidentification was 100% correct in up to four subsequent trials. Patterns remained identifiable even after a 25–32% size increase over a 55-d period and as juveniles went through smoltification. Although patterns occurred at sizes typically larger than salmon observed at some California Central Valley monitoring locations, this technique provides a potentially valuable, noninvasive method of identifying individual salmon during emigration. Improved image collection techniques and use of body areas exhibiting identifiable patterns at earlier developmental stages may increase fish available for pattern identification. These results demonstrate the indexing of a large database using pattern recognition algorithms for Chinook salmon. The utility of such an approach may be valuable for addressing specific biological questions associated with mass-produced (wild and hatchery), migratory salmonids, especially as individuals develop, grow, and move through the various habitats available to them.
Received November 21, 2011; accepted March 22, 2012
Cricket team selection using data envelopment analysis
Authors: Amin Gholam R. , Sharma Sujeet kumar 
Published: July 2012

AbstractThis paper suggests a new method for cricket team selection using data envelopment analysis (DEA). We propose a DEA formulation for evaluation of cricket players in different capabilities using multiple outputs. This evaluation determines efficient and inefficient cricket players and ranks them on the basis of DEA scores. The ranking can be used to choose the required number of players for a cricket team in each cricketing capability. A real dataset, Indian Premier League 4 (IPL 2011), cricket players having various capabilities is used to choose the best cricket team. The proposed method has the advantage of considering multiple factors related to the performance of players in multiple capabilities collected from IPL 4 and aggregates their scores using a linear programming DEA model. This DEA Aggregation gives the scores of players objectively instead of using subjective computations. The proposed DEA method can be used to form a national cricket team from several clubs or a team of top cricketers.
Meta-Storms: efficient search for similar microbial communities based on a novel indexing scheme and similarity score for metagenomic data
Authors: Su Xiaoquan , Xu Jian , Ning Kang 
Published: July 2012

Abstract
Background: It has long been intriguing scientists to effectively compare different microbial communities (also referred as ‘metagenomic samples’ here) in a large scale: given a set of unknown samples, find similar metagenomic samples from a large repository and examine how similar these samples are. With the current metagenomic samples accumulated, it is possible to build a database of metagenomic samples of interests. Any metagenomic samples could then be searched against this database to find the most similar metagenomic sample(s). However, on one hand, current databases with a large number of metagenomic samples mostly serve as data repositories that offer few functionalities for analysis; and on the other hand, methods to measure the similarity of metagenomic data work well only for small set of samples by pairwise comparison. It is not yet clear, how to efficiently search for metagenomic samples against a large metagenomic database.
Results: In this study, we have proposed a novel method, Meta-Storms, that could systematically and efficiently organize and search metagenomic data. It includes the following components: (i) creating a database of metagenomic samples based on their taxonomical annotations, (ii) efficient indexing of samples in the database based on a hierarchical taxonomy indexing strategy, (iii) searching for a metagenomic sample against the database by a fast scoring function based on quantitative phylogeny and (iv) managing database by index export, index import, data insertion, data deletion and database merging. We have collected more than 1300 metagenomic data from the public domain and in-house facilities, and tested the Meta-Storms method on these datasets. Our experimental results show that Meta-Storms is capable of database creation and effective searching for a large number of metagenomic samples, and it could achieve similar accuracies compared with the current popular significance testing-based methods.
Conclusion: Meta-Storms method would serve as a suitable database management and search system to quickly identify similar metagenomic samples from a large pool of samples.
Contact: ningkang@qibebt.ac.cn
Supplementary information: Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online.
Estimation of pleiotropy between complex diseases using single-nucleotide polymorphism-derived genomic relationships and restricted maximum likelihood
Authors: Lee S.H. , Yang J. , Goddard M.E. , Visscher P.M. , Wray N.R. 
Published: July 2012

Abstract
Summary: Genetic correlations are the genome-wide aggregate effects of causal variants affecting multiple traits. Traditionally, genetic correlations between complex traits are estimated from pedigree studies, but such estimates can be confounded by shared environmental factors. Moreover, for diseases, low prevalence rates imply that even if the true genetic correlation between disorders was high, co-aggregation of disorders in families might not occur or could not be distinguished from chance. We have developed and implemented statistical methods based on linear mixed models to obtain unbiased estimates of the genetic correlation between pairs of quantitative traits or pairs of binary traits of complex diseases using population-based case–control studies with genome-wide single-nucleotide polymorphism data. The method is validated in a simulation study and applied to estimate genetic correlation between various diseases from Wellcome Trust Case Control Consortium data in a series of bivariate analyses. We estimate a significant positive genetic correlation between risk of Type 2 diabetes and hypertension of ~0.31 (SE 0.14, P = 0.024).
Availability: Our methods, appropriate for both quantitative and binary traits, are implemented in the freely available software GCTA (http://www.complextraitgenomics.com/software/gcta/reml_bivar.html).
Contact: hong.lee@uq.edu.au
Supplementary Information: Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online.
Is spawning time of marine fish imprinted in the genes? A two-generation experiment on local Atlantic cod (Gadus morhua L.) populations from different geographical regions
Authors: Otterå H. , Agnalt A-L. , Thorsen A. , Kjesbu O.S. , Dahle G. , Jørstad K. 
Published: July 2012

Abstract
Otterå*, H., Agnalt, A-L., Thorsen, A., Kjesbu, O.S., Dahle, G., and Jørstad, K. 2012. Is spawning time of marine fish imprinted in the genes? A two-generation experiment on local Atlantic cod (Gadus morhua L.) populations from different geographical regions. – ICES Journal of Marine Science, 69: 1722–1728.
Spawning time (onset of spawning) in Atlantic cod (Gadus morhua L.) was monitored in an experimental setup and combined with modelled spawning time estimates from the wild. The experiment broodstock were collected from several geographical areas and kept in a common environment. Their spawning times in 2004 were compared with the spawning times of their daughters in 2009 and 2010. Daughter spawning time was highly correlated with that of the mother, indicating genetic regulation of spawning time. However, large individual variation in spawning time was observed. The modelling data suggests a north-south gradient in onset of spawning along the Norwegian coast, driven by differences in temperature, i.e. later dates of spawning in the north.
Perioperative Positioning Injuries
Authors: Warner Mark A. 
Published: July 2012

Abstract
Positioning-related injuries such as central and peripheral neuropathies, compartment syndromes, and soft-tissue injury can be reduced by considering preoperative and intraoperative factors. Preoperative considerations include normal joint range of motion, body habitus, and health status. Intraoperative considerations include compression by table attachments, duration of surgery, airway management, and use of pads and supports.
Intravenous Regional Anesthesia
Authors: Frie Edward D. 
Published: July 2012

Abstract
The intravenous injection of local anesthetic into an exsanguinated limb provides anesthesia by diffusion of the drug to peripheral nerves supplied by small vessels. Intravenous regional anesthesia is most commonly used for procedures on the hand, wrist, and digits; however, it may also be effective for minor surgery on the foot and ankle. The following aspects of the procedure are reviewed: clinical applications, relevant anatomy, patient position, technique (including neural localization techniques, needle insertion site, and needle redirection cues), and side effects and complications.
Femoral Nerve Blockade
Authors: Wynd Kimberly P. , Smith Hugh M. 
Published: July 2012

Abstract
Blockade of the femoral nerve provides surgical anesthesia and postoperative analgesia to the anterior aspect of the thigh and knee. The following aspects of the procedure are reviewed: clinical applications, relevant anatomy, patient position, technique (including neural localization techniques, needle insertion site, and needle redirection cues), and side effects and complications. A discussion of ultrasound guidance and peripheral nerve catheters completes the chapter
The effect of the ISO 9001 quality management system on the performance of SMEs
Authors: Sıtkı İlkay Mehmet , Aslan Emre 
Published: July 2012

PurposeThe purpose of this study is to examine whether there is a difference between ISO 9001 certified and non‐certified companies in terms of performance.Design/methodology/approachIn order to determine the effect of certification on performance, motivations for certification and companies' quality practices have been considered as factors. A survey was carried out with 255 small to medium‐sized enterprises (SMEs) in Turkey. The differences between certified and non‐certified companies in terms of performance and quality practices were examined by one‐way analysis of variance (one‐way ANOVA).FindingsThe results showed no statistically significant difference between certified and non‐certified companies in terms of performance. Certification showed no direct effect on performance. Also it has been claimed that the quality practices of certified companies was higher than those of non‐certified companies, according to results it is showing a statistically significant difference, in the 0.01 level of significance. However, higher quality practice does not necessarily mean higher performance. Motivations for certification also affect performance; it was found that companies that are internally motivated for certification have partially higher performance than companies externally motivated.Originality/valueTo the authors' knowledge, this is the first study examining the effect of the ISO 9001 quality management system on the performance of SMEs in Turkey.
Does cultural similarity matter? Extending the animosity model from a new perspective
Authors: Ma Jun , Wang Sijun , Hao Wei 
Published: July 2012

PurposeThis research seeks to extend the animosity model of foreign product purchase by examining the direct and moderating effects of cultural similarity in consumers' product judgment and willingness to buy foreign products.Design/methodology/approachEmpirical data were collected from a sample (n=225) of Taiwanese consumers. The data analysis used bivariate correlations, repeated general linear modeling, and structural equation modeling.FindingsCultural similarity between consumers' home country (region) and a foreign product's country of origin has: a positive impact on consumers' product evaluation and willingness to buy foreign products; a weakening effect on the negative impact of war and economic animosity on willingness to buy foreign products; and a weakening effect on the negative impact of consumer ethnocentrism on their willingness to buy foreign products.Originality/valueThis study not only enriches the animosity model of foreign product purchase, but also offers additional insights for international market entry and international marketing strategies.
Offshore outsourcing of customer services – boon or bane?
Authors: Sharma Piyush 
Published: July 2012

PurposeOffshore outsourcing of customer services is growing rapidly but there is little known about its impact on customer perceptions and behavior. This paper aims to combine the learnings from the country‐of‐origin and service research to address this gap.Design/methodology/approachAn online survey was conducted by contacting a sample of 5,000 customers randomly chosen out of a database of over 100,000 customers provided by a large American retail financial services company, immediately after they had an interaction with an offshore service representative, resulting in 548 complete and usable questionnaires.FindingsConsumer ethnocentrism has a negative influence on the attitude towards offshore outsourcing and the perceived service quality and customer satisfaction with offshore call centers. Customer satisfaction also mediates the influence of perceived service quality on customer complaint behavior, brand image, brand loyalty, and repeat purchase intentions.Research limitations/implicationsThis paper focuses on the effects of consumer ethnocentrism and attitudes towards offshore outsourcing on several perceptual and behavioral variables in a B2C context with American customers and Indian customer service executives. Hence, its findings may not apply to the B2B context and other country settings.Practical implicationsThe findings highlight the need for greater employee training as well as customer education for firms using offshore customer service centers, to minimize customer complaints and protect their brand image, loyalty, and repeat purchase intentions.Originality/valueThe study offers new insights on the impact of consumer ethnocentrism and attitude towards offshore outsourcing on customer perceptions and behavioral intentions, mediated by customer satisfaction and perceived service quality.
Interactions and consequences of inertia and switching costs
Authors: Lee Richard , Neale Larry 
Published: July 2012

PurposeService research typically relates switching costs to customer loyalty, and portrays them as effective switching deterrents that engender harmful word‐of‐mouth (WOM). Rather than to customer loyalty, this paper aims to relate switching costs to consumer inertia, and show that while switching costs may result in customer retention, they can engender positive and negative WOM. This depends on whether the inertia stems from satisfaction or indifference.Design/methodology/approachA mall‐intercept survey investigated 518 customers' perceptions of their mobile phone service providers. Structural equation modelling fitted the data to the conceptual model.FindingsSwitching costs deterred switching and engendered negative WOM, but only with low‐inertia customers. With high‐inertia customers, retention and WOM behaviours depended on whether the inertia stemmed from satisfaction or indifference. Satisfied customers with high switching costs tended to stay, gave more positive and less negative WOM. With indifferent customers, switching costs were unrelated to retention or WOM behaviours.Research limitations/implicationsWhile they may be perceived negatively, switching costs can engender PWOM. Hence, research should not consider switching costs alone without considering the context that produces them.Practical implicationsService providers should segment their customers into low‐inertia, high‐inertia/satisfied and high‐inertia/indifferent, and target each segment differently. By converting customers into the high‐inertia/satisfied segment, service providers can make the best use of switching costs – not only in the traditional sense as a barrier to defection, but also as a way of generating positive WOM.Originality/valueThis study is the first to consider the role of inertia with switching costs, positive WOM, and negative WOM. The findings suggest that past studies portraying switching costs as negative impediments that evoke only negative WOM might be misleading.
Electron beam effect on poly (ethylene terephthalate) fibres
Authors: Gisbert J. , Bonet M. , Díaz P. , Montava I. , Monllor P. 
Published: July 2012

PurposeElectron beam is a way of radiation that can induce different reactions on polymers. The purpose of this work is to analyze the effect that the electron beam can produce on polyester fabrics.Design/methodology/approachPoly(ethylene terephthalate) (PET) fibres were treated at 0, 50, 100, 150, and 200 KGy. Later on surface modification was analyzed by Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM) and Atomic Force Microscopy (AFM). Colorimetric and thermal measurements were studied too, as well as traction resistance.FindingsTraction resistance showed no significant variations. As a result the authors could observe some changes in fabric witnesses and cristallinity increase, but no changes in traction resistance were observed. Moreover, when surface was studied, roughness was increased as oligomers moved towards fibre surface because of radiation dose.Originality/valueThe authors could appreciate roughness increased with radiation dose as well as yellowness and crystallinity.