Digital Commons Network^™

Family-Member And Non-Family-Member Managers In Family Firms: Adding A Seventh Country To The International Database - Kosovo, Robert Lussier, Matthew Sonfield, Robert J. Barbato

Articles

Extending earlier analyses of the authors in other countries with regard to the inclusion of family-member managers and non-family-member managers in family businesses, and the relationship of this variable to certain management activities, styles and characteristics, this current study analyzes data from Kosovo. Results of statistical testing indicate almost no changes in management attributes as the proportion of non-family-member managers increases in family firms. Implications for practitioners, consultants, and researchers are presented.

Characterisation Of The Humidity And Temperature Responses Of A Reflection Hologram Recorded In Acrylamide-Based Photopolymer, Izabela Naydenova, Raghavendra Jallapuram, Vincent Toal, Suzanne Martin

Articles

The humidity and temperature responses of a reflection hologram recorded in a self-processing photopolymer layer have been characterised by measurement of the position of the maximum intensity in the spectral response of the hologram. It has been demonstrated that such a hologram can be used for indication of the relative humidity (RH) in a specific temperature range. The operational range and reversibility of the holograms have been characterised in a controlled humidity and temperature environment. The humidity studies were carried out in the range from 10 to 80% RH and the temperature range under study was 15 – 50 ºC.

Preparation, Characterization And Ecotoxicological Evaluation Of Four Environmentally Relevant Species Of N-Isopropylacrylamide And N-Isopropylacrylamide-Co-N-Tert-Butylacrylamide Copolymer Nanoparticles, Pratap Naha, Alan Casey, Tiziana Tenuta, Iseult Lynch, Kenneth Dawson, Hugh Byrne, Maria Davoren

Articles

Poly N-isopropylacrylamide and N-isopropylacrylamide / N-tert-butylacrylamide copolymer nanoparticles of 50 to 70 nm were prepared by free radical polymerisation. The particle sizes of the copolymer nanoparticles were measured in the test media Milli-Q water, Algae Media, Daphnia Media and Microtox Diluent as a function of temperature. Whereas in Milli-Q water the particle size was seen to decrease above the lower critical solution temperature of the thermoresponsive polymer, in the test media it was seen to increase significantly, indicative of aggregation. At the temperatures employed for the ecotoxicological studies all particles, with the exception of the 50:50 copolymer existed as nanoparticles, …

Temperature Induced Instabilities In Macro-Bend Fiber Based Wavelength Measurement Systems, Ginu Rajan, Yuliya Semenova, Pengfei Wang, Gerald Farrell

Articles

An investigation of temperature-induced instabilities in a wavelength measurement system based on macro-bend fiber filter used in the ratiometric scheme are presented. Two wavelength measurement systems based on macro-bend fiber, a standard low bend loss single-mode fiber filter based system and a high bend loss fiber filter based system are considered. In the case of a low bend loss fiber filter based system, the oscillatory variation in the ratio response with temperature and the difference in the temperature-induced ratio variation at different wavelengths makes the temperature corrected calibration of the system unfeasible, which is essential for precise wavelength measurements. The …

Land Virtues, Eduardo Peñalver

Articles

This Article has two goals. First, I explore some of the descriptive and normative limitations of certain law-and-economics discussions of the ownership and use of land. These market-centered approaches struggle in different ways with features of land that distinguish it from other "commodities." The complexity of land-its intrinsic complexity, but even more importantly the complex ways in which human beings interact with it-undermines the positive claim that owners will focus on a single value, such as market value, in making decisions about their land. Adding to the equation land's "memory," by which I mean the combined impact of the durability …

Breaking The Mould 2 : An Analysis Of Single-Leaf Insulation Upgrades, Joseph Little

Articles

This article is the second in a series looking at thermal upgrades to single-leaf walls of existing houses. It compares a range of ways of upgrading masonry single-leaf walls, particularly the ubiquitous hollow block wall, and the impact of those decisions on moisture content, wind- and airtightness, cost and heating. Future articles will look at various drylining approaches for a range of walls including brick walls of various widths.

Evaluating The Impact Of Blade Server And Virtualization Software Technologies On The Rit Datacenter, Christopher Butler

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No abstract provided.

Do University Rankings Measure What Counts, Ellen Hazelkorn

Articles

The article discusses the impact of rankings on higher education.

Reflection Contributions To The Dispersion Artefact In Ftir Spectra Of Single Biological Cells, Paul Bassan, Hugh Byrne, Joe Lee, Franck Bonnier, Colin Clarke, Paul Dumas, Ehsan Gazi, Michael Brown, Noel Clarke, Peter Gardner

Articles

Fourier transform infrared spectra of a single cell in transflection geometry are seen to vary significantly with position on the cell, showing a distorted derivative-like lineshape in the region of the optically dense nucleus. A similar behaviour is observable in a model system of the protein albumin doped in a potassium bromide disk. It is demonstrated that the spectrum at any point is a weighted sum of the sample reflection and transmission and that the dominance of the reflection spectrum in optically dense regions can account for some of the spectral distortions previously attributed to dispersion artefacts. Rather than being …

Extrinsic Control Parameters For Ozone Inactivation Of Escherichia Coli Using A Bubble Column, Sonal Patil, Patrick J. Cullen, Bridget Cullen, Jesus Maria Frias, Paula Bourke

Articles

Aims: To investigate the effect of extrinsic control parameters for ozone inactivation of E. coli in a bubble column. Methods and Results: Ozone inactivation of Escherichia coli ATCC 25922 in Tryptic Soya Broth was examined. The parameters studied included temperature (ambient, 20, 25 and 30°C), exposure time (up to 30 min), gas flow rate (0·03, 0·06, 0·12, 0·25, 0·5 and 0·75 l min−1) and concentration level (five different levels). The efficacy of ozone treatment was a function of the parameters investigated and optimum control parameters of flow rate (0·12 l min−1), temperature (ambient) and ozone concentration (75 μg ml−1) resulted …

Breaking The Mould 1 : A Study Of Condensation In Single-Leaf Concrete Wall Upgrades, Joseph Little

Articles

This article is the first of a series looking at upgrade options and issues associated with single-leaf walls of existing houses. This article will focus on insulated drylined concrete block walls of the ubiquitous housing estate house. This will include the findings of software that dynamically models moisture movement through the wall over several years. The article following this will look at a range of options for replacing existing drylining or installing drylining where it never was before, be that for a solid block wall of a 1950s house or a solid brick wall of an 1850s house.

Swcnt Suppress Inflammatory Mediator Responses In Human Lung Epithelium In Vitro, Eva Herzog, Hugh Byrne, Maria Davoren, Anke-Gabriele Lenz, Albert Duschl, Gertie Janneke Oostingh

Articles

Single walled carbon nanotubes have gained enormous popularity due to a variety of potential applications which will ultimately lead to increased human and environmental exposure to these nanoparticles. This study was carried out in order to evaluate the inflammatory response of immortalised and primary human lung epithelial cells (A549 and NHBE) to single walled carbon nanotube samples (SWCNT). Special focus was placed on the mediating role of lung surfactant on particle toxicity. The toxicity of SWCNT dispersed in cell culture medium was compared to that of nanotubes dispersed in dipalmitoylphosphatidylcholine (DPPC, the main component of lung lining fluid). Exposure was …

Self-Addressable Memory-Based Fsm: A Scalable Intrusion Detection Engine, Benfano Soewito, Lucas Vespa, Atul Mahajan, Ning Weng, Haibo Wang

Articles

One way to detect and thwart a network attack is to compare each incoming packet with predefined patterns, also called an attack pattern database, and raise an alert upon detecting a match. This article presents a novel pattern-matching engine that exploits a memory-based, programmable state machine to achieve deterministic processing rates that are independent of packet and pattern characteristics. Our engine is a self-addressable memory-based finite state machine (SAMFSM), whose current state coding exhibits all its possible next states. Moreover, it is fully reconfigurable in that new attack patterns can be updated easily. A methodology was developed to program the …

Locus Interactions Underlie Seed Yield In Soybeans Resistant To Heterodera Glycines, U B. Karangula, M A. Kassem, Lalit Gupta, Hany A. El-Shemy, David A. Lightfoot

Articles

In soybean (Glycine max L. Merr.) combining resistance to cyst nematode (SCN; Heterodera glycines I.) with high seed yieldremains problematic. Molecular markers linked to quantitative trait loci (QTL) have not provided a solution. Sets of markers describing a collection of favorable alleles (linkats) may assist plant breeders seeking to combine both traits. The objective of this analysis was to identify linkats in genomic regions underlying seed yield and root SCN resistance QTL. Used were groups of cultivars selected from a single recombinant inbred (RIL) population derived from 'Essex' by 'Forrest' (ExF). The yield was measured at four locations. SCN resistance …

A Mixed-Effects Height-Diameter Model For Pinus Densiflora Trees In Gangwon Province, Korea, Young Jin Lee, Dean W. Coble, Jung Kee Pyo, Sung Ho Kim, Woo Kyun Lee, Jung Kee Choi

Articles

A new mixed-effects model was developed that predicts individual-tree total height for Pinus densiflora trees in Gangwon province as a function of individual-tree diameter (cm). The mixed-effects model contains two random-effects parameters. Maximum likelihood estimation was used to fit the model to 560 height-diameter observations of individual trees measured throughout Gwangwon province in 2007 as part of the National Forest Inventory Program in Korea. The new model is an improvement over fixed effects models because it can be calibrated to a local area, such as an inventory plot or individual stand. The new model also appears to be an improvement …

Challenges In Incorporatins Sustainability Into Product Development: An Exploratory Study, S. Athalye, S. Govindarajan, C. Lopez

Articles

Despite decades of disaggregated initiatives aimed at improving the well-being and quality of life of its employees, their families, communities and stakeholders, many high-technology firms are still struggling to develop an integrated approach to address the triple bottom line aspects of sustainability. In particular how sustainability is being integrated into the product development process, and the challenges that result, is of interest to this work. A literature review into the role of internal factors of how a firm implements a sustainability strategy revealed that it was too normative to guide the implementation of a corporate sustainability strategy at the level …

Representations Of The Knowledge Economy: Irish Newspapers’ Discourses On A Key Policy Idea, Brian Trench

Articles

FROM TIME TO TIME, notions take hold in society in such a way that they become reference ideas across diverse social sectors, and terms associated with these reference ideas proliferate in public discourses and media of various kinds. This is notably true for the ‘knowledge economy’ and ‘knowledge society’; these terms have largely displaced other terms to describe the particular character of advanced economies and societies in the early 21st century. Other terms have struggled to co-exist: ‘information society’ seems passé; ‘services society’, ‘audit society’ and ‘risk society’ are marginal or niche terms; ‘innovation society’ has had intermittent periods of …

Operation Armageddon: Doomsday For Irish Armed Forces, Tom Clonan

Articles

Lynch’s Invasion Plans Exactly forty years ago, in August and September of 1969, intense rioting and civil unrest prevailed throughout Northern Ireland – violence that would ultimately lead to the outbreak of the Troubles. As the violence reached fever pitch the then Taoiseach, Jack Lynch made a televised speech to the nation on RTE in which he used – the now immortal and much misquoted phrase – ‘We will not stand by’. For almost forty years, historians and political pundits alike have argued over the precise meaning of this provocative – and yet somewhat ambiguous phrase. Had Jack Lynch intended …

Talking Bodies: Sensitivity To Desynchronization Of Conversations, Rachel Mcdonnell, Cathy Ennis, Simon Dobbyn, Carol O'Sullivan

Articles

In this article, we investigate human sensitivity to the coordination and timing of conversational body language for virtual characters. First, we captured the full body motions (excluding faces and hands) of three actors conversing about a range of topics, in either a polite (i.e., one person talking at a time) or debate/argument style. Stimuli were then created by applying the motion-captured conversations from the actors to virtual characters. In a 2AFC experiment, participants viewed paired sequences of synchronized and desynchronized conversations and were asked to guess which was the real one. Detection performance was above chance for both conversation styles …

Impact Of Global Rankings On Higher Education Research And The Production Of Knowledge, Ellen Hazelkorn

Articles

No abstract provided.

Attitudes To Rankings: Comparing German, Australian And Japanese Experiences, Ellen Hazelkorn

Articles

Drawing on an international survey of HE leaders during 2006, and interviews with HE leaders and stakeholders in Germany, Australia and Japan during 2008, it describes and compares the reaction and response to rankings by HEIs in Germany, Australia and Japan, with particular attention to institutional strategy and planning, benchmarking and quality assurance, student admissions and faculty recruitment and morale. The chapter argues cross-national comparisons/global rankings are an inevitable feature of globalisation, the international battle for talent, and strategies for national competitiveness.

Energy Efficient, Cost Effective, Passive Solar House, James A. Mathias, Duane M. Mathias

Articles

A house was constructed in Carbondale, IL, in the mixed humid climate region, using the best current construction methods with commonly available materials. Good passive solar characteristics were obtained by properly orientating the house to have many south-facing windows with proper overhangs which provided 23% of the energy needed for heating. The house also included 15 cm (6 in) thick insulated walls, insulated concrete forms for foundation walls, insulated rim joist, a ground-source heat pump, Energy-Star windows, clothes washer, refrigerator, and compact fluorescent bulbs (CFLs).

Electrical usage data was metered separately for heating, air conditioning, hot water, lights and appliances. …

A Macrobending Singlemode Fiber Based Refractometer, Pengfei Wang, Yuliya Semenova, Qiang Wu, Gerald Farrell, Yungqiang Ti, Jie Zheng

Articles

A novel macrobending based all-fiber refractometer sensor with a simple optical configuration is proposed and investigated both theoretically and experimentally. The proposed fiber refractometer sensor consists of a single loop structure of bare macrobending standard singlemode fiber (SMF28) with a selected bending radius and reduced cladding diameter. The well-known scalar approximation theory is employed to theoretically predict the characteristics of the proposed fiber refractometer sensor. An approach to improve the resolution of the refractometer is presented, which shows that the refractometer with a reduced cladding diameter of 81 μm has an experimentally verified resolution of 5.75105 for a refractive index …

Analysis And Performance Evaluation Of An All-Fiber Wide Range Interrogation System For A Bragg Grating Sensor Array, Ginu Rajan, Yuliya Semenova, Gerald Farrell

Articles

Analysis and performance evaluation of a macro-bend ¯ber based interrogation system for a Bragg grating sensor array is presented. Due to the characteristic properties of the macro-bend ¯ber ¯lter such as polarization and temperature dependence and the total noise associated with the ratiometric system, a best ¯t ratio slope is required to interrogate multiple FBGs whose peak wavelengths are spread over a wide wavelength range, rather than the optimal slope for individual FBG. In this paper for investigation we have used an FBG array with 5 FBGs with peak re°ected wavelengths lying between 1525 nm and 1575 nm. The analysis …

Localised Laser Joining Of Glass To Silicon With Bcb Intermediate Layer, Qiang Wu, N. Lorenz, Duncan Hand

Articles

The use of a laser to provide localised heating is an ideal solution to the problem of packaging microelectro- mechanical-systems (MEMS) whilst maintaining a low device temperature to avoid changes in temperaturesensitive materials in the device. In this paper we present localised laser bonding of glass to silicon (normally used as the MEMS substrate) by using a fibre-delivered high power laser diode array to cure an intermediate layer of the thermosetting polymer Benzocyclobutene (BCB). In our experiments, we use two techniques to realise localised heating: one is to use an axicon together with a conventional positive lens to generate a …

Pathway Of Professionalism - The First Day Of Law School At The University Of Idaho, Donald L. Burnett Jr.

Articles

No abstract provided.

White Collar Crime's Gray Area: The Anomaly Of Criminalizing Conduct Not Civilly Actionable, Wendy Gerwick Couture

Articles

Substantive and procedural differences between criminal and civil treatment of conduct sounding in securities fraud combine to cause the following anomaly: certain false statements to investors may be actionable criminally-subjecting individual defendants to imprisonment-but not civilly-leaving victims without remedy. The imposition of criminal punishment for conduct that does not invoke civil liability risks disrupting the current scheme of securities regulation, at the expense of considerations deemed important by Congress and the courts. Moreover, the extension of criminal liability beyond the scope of civil liability debunks the assumption, which underlies the current scholarship on the civil-criminal divide, that criminal liability is …

Different Responses Of Two Genes Associated With Disease Resistance Loci In Maize (Zea Mays L.) To 3-Allyloxy-1,2-Benzothiazole 1,1-Dioxide, Jiazheng Yuan, Jennifer Tedman, Liakat Ali, Jie Liu, Jeff Taylor, David A. Lightfoot, Michiaki Iwata, K. Peter Pauls

Articles

Probenazole (3-allyloxy-1,2-benzothiazole 1,1-dioxide, PBZ) is a bactericide and fungicide that acts by inducing plant defense systems. It has been shown to induce the expression of NBS-LRR genes like RPR1 (rice probenazole-response gene) in rice (Oryza sativa L.) and systemic acquired resistance (SAR)-like disease resistance. Two maize (Zea mays L.) genes Zmnbslrr1 (a NBS-LRR gene, cloned from a disease resistance analog PIC11 based) and Zmgc1 , (a putative guanylyl cyclase-like gene) have both been associated with quantitative resistance loci (QTL) for resistance to Fusarium graminearum . PIC11 was associated with Fusarium stalk rot and ZmGC1 showed resistance to Gibberella ear rot …

Antisense Phenotypes Reveal A Functional Expression Of Osarf1, An Auxin Response Factor, In Transgenic Rice, Kotb A. Attia, Amr F. Abdelkhalik, Megahed H. Ammar, Chun Wei, Jinshui Yang, David A. Lightfoot, Wagih M. El-Sayed, Hany A. El-Shemy

Articles

OsARF1 is the first full-length member of auxin response factor (ARF) gene family to be cloned from monocot plant. Using quantitative RT-PCR this study found that, the transcript abundance of OsARF1 was significantly higher in embryonic tissues than in vegetative tissues. To investigate the effect of OsARF1 on the phenotype of rice, a cDNA fragment of OsARF1 was inserted in inverse orientation to the 35S promoter in vector pBin438 to produce an antisense (AS) construction. The AS-OsARF1 construct was transferred into rice (Oryza sativa L. japonica ) calli via Agrobacterium tumefaciens -mediated transformation. Molecular analysis of transgenic plants showed that …

Is Religion The Environment’S Last Best Hope? Targeting Change In Individual Behavior Through Personal Norm Activation, Stephen M. Johnson

Articles

This Article explores the important role that religious organizations have played, and can play, in personal norm activation to influence change in individuals’ environmentally destructive actions. Part I of the Article describes the need for regulating or targeting individuals, in addition to industrial sources, in order to address many of the remaining significant environmental problems. Part II examines the advantages and disadvantages of targeting individual actions through command-and-control regulation, economic-based alternatives, and information disclosure programs. Part III outlines the concept of norm activation and details the manner in which information disclosure programs can be used to activate personal norms to …