'You Complete The Masterpiece'

A young author is lost in obscurity until he is saved by an award bequeathed by Alberto Valdez; the highly controversial Surrealist Spanish author who first inspired him to write. Given Valdez’s unsolved disappearance his motives in giving Jude the award are a mystery. Jude soon learns that there is more to the award than he first realised. It requires him to complete Valdez’s final masterpiece. But why was he chosen? And can one person ever really know another- let alone complete their work? As he tries to find the beautiful and corrupt people key to understanding Valdez, Jude’s journey takes him to Barcelona, and the sun-drenched souks of Morocco. But as he learns the dark secrets revealed by the book he also learns that getting what you most crave from life requires you to face up to who you really are

Rational design and synthesis of novel quinazolinone N-acetohydrazides as type II multi-kinase inhibitors and potential anticancer agents

In the current investigation, a new class of quinazolinone N-acetohydrazides 9a-v was designed as type II multi-kinase inhibitors. The target quinazolinones were tailored so that the quinazolinone moiety would occupy the front pocket of the binding sites of VEGFR-2, FGFR-1 and BRAF kinases, meanwhile, the phenyl group at position 2 would act as a spacer which was functionalized at position 4 with an N-acetohydrazide linker that could achieve the key interactions with the essential gate area amino acids. The hydrazide moiety was linked to diverse aryl derivatives to occupy the hydrophobic back pocket of the DFG-out conformation of target kinases. The synthesized quinazolinone derivatives 9a-v demonstrated moderate to potent VEGFR-2 inhibitory activity with IC50 spanning from 0.29 to 5.17 µM. Further evaluation of the most potent derivatives on FGFR-1, BRAFwt and BRAFV600E showed that the quinazolinone N-acetohydrazides 9d, 9e, 9f, 9 L and 9 m have a potent multi-kinase inhibitory activity. Concurrently, 9b, 9d, 9e, 9 k, 9 L, 9o, 9q demonstrated potent mean growth inhibitory activity on NCI cancer cell lines with GI50 reaching 0.72 µM. In addition, compound 9e arrested the cell cycle progression in MDA-MB-231 cell line at the G2/M phase and showed the ability to induce apoptosis

Mapping the barriers to socio-economic freedom in internationalisation of women-owned SMEs: Evidence from a developing country

Internationalisation of women-owned firms is considered a new strategy for unlocking the full economic potential of a country. However, there has been a desultory work on gender and trade, particularly the epistemological and methodological approaches to explore this phenomenon, which has received inadequate attention. Drawing on the institution-based- theory and incorporating the feminist perspective, this study identifies barriers to socio-economic freedom as a multidimensional concept that influences the internationalisation of women entrepreneurship. Using mixed methods and based on findings from focus group discussion (study-1), in-depth interviews (study-2) and a survey (study-3) of SME women entrepreneurs, the study develops and validates a gender-specific model of barriers to socio-economic freedom that women entrepreneurs face in the internationalisation of their firms. The findings confirm that the additional barriers that women entrepreneurs face emerge from three dimensions (i.e. socio-interactional patterns, socio-psychological attachment and socio-cultural embeddedness) that influence the internationalisation of women-owned SMEs through the lack of foreign market knowledge and information and lack of international business experience. This study extends internationalisation and women entrepreneurship research by identifying novel dimensions of the barriers to socio-economic freedom landscape. Implications of our findings for theory, methods and practice with limitations and future research directions are discussed critically

Neighbourhood Policing: Context, Practices and Challenges

Neighbourhood policing has been called the “cornerstone of British policing” but changing demand, pressures on funding and the cyclical nature of political support mean that this approach is under considerable pressure. Locating neighbourhood policing in its social and political context, the book investigates whether this UK model - intended to build confidence and legitimacy - has been successful. Exploring effective policing strategies and the importance of funding and philosophical support, it concludes with an assessment of the model’s future, and the challenges that it needs to overcome

Operationalising integrity within supply chains

Organisational integrity, in terms of specific behaviours, processes or procedures or compliance with agreed standards, can be operationalised at both the individual business and the wider supply chain level. At the supply chain level, integrity is operationalised through collaboration via people and processes to deliver specified, mutual goals and outcomes. It is the consistent, repeatable delivery of agreed outcomes that drives supply chain performance. Interoperability reflects how supply chain collaboration supports business to business interactions being as seamless as possible both in terms of human-human communication, and the integration of technology. Organisational collaboration is influenced by trust. Trust can be achieved through mechanisms that provide greater visibility of activities and processes between supply chain actors. The aim of this chapter is to consider organisational integrity at supply chain level, exploring in particular the linkage between organisational integrity, operationalisation, interoperability, trust and supply chain performance

The threat of ransomware in the food supply chain: a challenge for food defence

In the food industry, the level of awareness of the need for food defence strategies has accelerated in recent years, in particular, mitigating the threat of ransomware. During the Covid-19 pandemic there were a number of high-profile organised food defence attacks on the food industry using ransomware, leading to imperative questions over the extent of the sector’s vulnerability to cyber-attack. This paper explores food defence through the lens of contemporary ransomware attacks in order to frame the need for an effective ransomware defence strategy at organisational and industry level. Food defence strategies have historically focused on extortion and sabotage as threats, but often in terms of physical rather than cyber-related attacks. The globalisation, digitalisation and integration of food supply chains can increase the level of vulnerability to ransomware. Ransomware is an example of an organised food defence threat that can operationalise both extortion and sabotage, but the perpetrators are remote, non-visible and often anonymous. Organisations need to adopt an effective food defence strategy that reduces the risk of a ransomware attack and can enable targeted and swift action in the event an incident occurs. Further collaboration between government and the private sector is needed for the development of effective governance structures addressing the risk of ransomware attacks. The novelty of this article lies in analysing the issue of ransomware attacks from the perspective of the food sector and food defence strategy. This study is of potential interest to academics, policy makers and those working in the industry

The Popular Wobbly: Selected Works of T-Bone Slim

This book is a collection of writings by the radical Finnish-American newspaper columnist and musician, T-Bone Slim (real name Matti Valentinpoika Huhta). A member of the radical grassroots union the Industrial Workers of the World (also known as the ‘Wobblies’), Slim was a transient worker who lived as a hobo, working many temporary jobs across the United States of America. Between 1920 and his death in 1942, he regularly contributed to radical newspapers, produced two pamphlets and wrote several songs that were published in the IWW’s ‘Little Red Songbook’. His writings have a scathing wit reminiscent of Mark Twain and play with language in surprising and innovative ways

Green Financial Derivatives - Option-Based Solutions Promoting Behaviour-Driven Household Energy Efficiency

Currently, there have been a large number of books focusing mainly on technical-based strategies to promote energy sustainability. These strategies aim to reduce inputs for production processes via enhancing resource productivity or achieving closed-loop material cycles (i.e., substitute unsustainable materials with materials consistent with nature), whereas few look into and address energy sustainability from the energy demand aspects. However, behavior-based strategies are more cost-effective as they usually require less initial investment. Therefore, it is necessary to publish a book proposing and investigating human behavioral-based energy-saving interventions that can tackle the issues. With comprehensive comparisons against conventional energy-saving strategies, the main aim of this book is to develop a holistic market-based household energy-saving intervention via energy behavior change to promote energy saving in the residential building sector. Specifically, the objectives of this book are as follows: 1. To develop the framework of well-structured household energy-saving intervention. 2. To identify relevant determinants of residents' decision-making towards the acceptance of the innovative intervention. 3. To investigate the influencing path of the intervention on changing households’ energy-related behaviors. 4. To propose optimization strategies for the proposed household energy-saving intervention

Einsteinian gravitational concepts throughout secondary school

Einstein’s theory of relativity is largely thought of as one of the most important discoveries of the 20th century and continues to pass observational tests over 100 years later. Yet, it is Newtonian gravity, a 350 year old formalism proven to be less accurate than relativity, which is taught in schools. It has been shown that Einsteinian gravitational concepts can be well understood by students in both primary and secondary education. In this paper, a cross-section of students from Yr 7-13 enrolled in an English secondary school took part in an intervention designed to introduce the idea of gravity from spacetime curvature. The overall aim of this work is to assess the viability of including relativity in the secondary curriculum and to ascertain which year this material would be best placed in. We determine that all year groups where able to appreciate the effects of curvature to some extent. Visual demonstrations aided conceptual understanding at Yr 7-8 level, but this does not have a strong effect on their ideas around the source of the gravitational force. Participants in Yr 9-13 were able to understand concepts beyond those introduced in the demonstrations. However, a deeper understanding of curvature as the source of the gravitational force is not seen until years 12 & 13. We find that those in Yr 13 have the best overall understanding of the concepts introduced during our intervention

Advancing scientific inquiry through data reuse: Necessary condition analysis with archival data

This article discusses the importance of reusing existing data in research. Next, to reuse data for replication of earlier findings and for answering extended or new research questions, we propose a third application of data reuse: studying the phenomenon from an alternative causal perspective. We focus on the reuse of data with a necessity causal perspective (‘if not X, then not Y’) as employed in Necessary Condition Analysis (NCA). Such reuse of data offers additional insights compared to those obtained from the conventional probabilistic causal perspective (‘if X, then probably Y’) as employed in regression analysis. NCA is gaining recognition in various fields, including strategic management. Reusing data for conducting NCA is an efficient way to get new causal insights. We provide recommendations on how to use NCA with existing data and emphasize the importance of transparency when reusing data