Courts-Martial Jurisdiction and Civilian Dependents: Constitutional Restrictions

Services are intangible in their nature. When product oriented companies seeks to expand their industrial offerings with services they encounter many problems, one of which is the challenge of selling these intangible services. The sales team needs to be able to show the value of the service in order to successfully reach out to the customers. Embracing “service logic” has proven successful for this type of company. Its perspective on value creation is very different from the perspective traditionally employed by product companies i.e. through “product logic”. One must turn to customer day-to-day activities and look at their value creating processes in order to understand what value can be created from a service. This is because customers will not be interested in complex, intangible aspects of an offering. They want to know how a supplier can improve their business. The purpose of this study is to develop a framework for value communication through value assessment (and segmentation) of a product related service in a B2B business relation. A qualitative single case study was employed involving the multinational Swedish garden and forestry company Husqvarna (i.e. the supplier) and their soon-to-be-released IT-based fleet management service called Husqvarna Fleet Services (i.e. the service). Seven customer interviews were held in France, one in Sweden. The value hierarchy is used as an approach to value creation and the laddering technique is consequently employed in order to assess the potential customer value deriving from use of the service. On an attribute level, the elements are approximated to the categories of information represented in the user interface. Primary ladders are comprised of 4 end‐states and 22 consequences that should be seen as potential benefits from use of the service. Screening them for low frequencies, 11 consequences and 2 end‐states (‘Productivity & Efficiency’ and ‘Cost Reduction/Control’) remain. Preliminary cost savings are given (as examples) in four cases although these lack significant information to be considered as important findings. Attempting value based segmentation, a basic non‐statistical segmentation gives rise to seven variables by which the identified benefits are thought to vary. Employing the idea of communicating through a resonating focus, the findings suggest that depending on customer characteristics the 11 identified benefits, each of which will have varying degrees of importance. Due to the fact that no realized value is found, these benefits are still regarded intangible. Finally, the complexity, novelty and intangibility of the offering point toward an increasing need for a communication strategy that serve the purpose of providing solutions to customers’ major issues. The results from our study suggest that the supplier rigorously attempts more pilot studies on a few selected targets in order to realize substantial value and develop business cases

Merging Resource Availability with Isotope Mixing Models: The Role of Neutral Interaction Assumptions

Background: Bayesian mixing models have allowed for the inclusion of uncertainty and prior information in the analysis of trophic interactions using stable isotopes. Formulating prior distributions is relatively straightforward when incorporating dietary data. However, the use of data that are related, but not directly proportional, to diet (such as prey availability data) is often problematic because such information is not necessarily predictive of diet, and the information required to build a reliable prior distribution for all prey species is often unavailable. Omitting prey availability data impacts the estimation of a predator's diet and introduces the strong assumption of consumer ultrageneralism (where all prey are consumed in equal proportions), particularly when multiple prey have similar isotope values. Methodology: We develop a procedure to incorporate prey availability data into Bayesian mixing models conditional on the similarity of isotope values between two prey. If a pair of prey have similar isotope values (resulting in highly uncertain mixing model results), our model increases the weight of availability data in estimating the contribution of prey to a predator's diet. We test the utility of this method in an intertidal community against independently measured feeding rates. Conclusions: Our results indicate that our weighting procedure increases the accuracy by which consumer diets can be inferred in situations where multiple prey have similar isotope values. This suggests that the exchange of formalism for predictive power is merited, particularly when the relationship between prey availability and a predator's diet cannot be assumed for all species in a system.National Science Foundation (NSF) [DEB-0608178]U.S. Environmental Protection AgencyDepartment of EducationSigma XiUniversity of ChicagoFundacao de Amparo a Pesquisa do Estado de Sao Paulo (FAPESP)(CAPES) Coordenacao de Aperfeicoamento de Pessoal de Nivel Superiori

Variability and connectivity of plaice populations from the Eastern North Sea to the Western Baltic Sea, and implications for assessment and management

An essential prerequisite of sustainable fisheries is the match between biologically relevant processes and management action. Various populations may however co-occur on fishing grounds, although they might not belong to the same stock, leading to poor performance of stock assessment and management. Plaice in Kattegat and Skagerrak have traditionally been considered as one stock unit. Current understanding indicates that several plaice components may exist in the transition area between the North Sea and the Baltic Sea. A comprehensive review of all available biological knowledge on plaice in this area is performed, including published and unpublished literature together with the analyses of commercial and survey data and historical tagging data. The results suggest that plaice in Skagerrak is closely associated with plaice in the North Sea, although local populations are present in the area. Plaice in Kattegat, the Belts Sea and the Sound can be considered a stock unit, as is plaice in the Baltic Sea. The analyses revealed great heterogeneity in the dynamics and productivity of the various local components, and suggested for specific action to maintain biodiversity

Means-end value assessment

Services are intangible in their nature. When product oriented companies seeks to expand their industrial offerings with services they encounter many problems, one of which is the challenge of selling these intangible services. The sales team needs to be able to show the value of the service in order to successfully reach out to the customers. Embracing “service logic” has proven successful for this type of company. Its perspective on value creation is very different from the perspective traditionally employed by product companies i.e. through “product logic”. One must turn to customer day-to-day activities and look at their value creating processes in order to understand what value can be created from a service. This is because customers will not be interested in complex, intangible aspects of an offering. They want to know how a supplier can improve their business. The purpose of this study is to develop a framework for value communication through value assessment (and segmentation) of a product related service in a B2B business relation. A qualitative single case study was employed involving the multinational Swedish garden and forestry company Husqvarna (i.e. the supplier) and their soon-to-be-released IT-based fleet management service called Husqvarna Fleet Services (i.e. the service). Seven customer interviews were held in France, one in Sweden. The value hierarchy is used as an approach to value creation and the laddering technique is consequently employed in order to assess the potential customer value deriving from use of the service. On an attribute level, the elements are approximated to the categories of information represented in the user interface. Primary ladders are comprised of 4 end‐states and 22 consequences that should be seen as potential benefits from use of the service. Screening them for low frequencies, 11 consequences and 2 end‐states (‘Productivity & Efficiency’ and ‘Cost Reduction/Control’) remain. Preliminary cost savings are given (as examples) in four cases although these lack significant information to be considered as important findings. Attempting value based segmentation, a basic non‐statistical segmentation gives rise to seven variables by which the identified benefits are thought to vary. Employing the idea of communicating through a resonating focus, the findings suggest that depending on customer characteristics the 11 identified benefits, each of which will have varying degrees of importance. Due to the fact that no realized value is found, these benefits are still regarded intangible. Finally, the complexity, novelty and intangibility of the offering point toward an increasing need for a communication strategy that serve the purpose of providing solutions to customers’ major issues. The results from our study suggest that the supplier rigorously attempts more pilot studies on a few selected targets in order to realize substantial value and develop business cases

Bisphosphonate nanoclay edge-site interactions facilitate hydrogel self-assembly and sustained growth factor localization

Nanoclays have generated interest in biomaterial design for their ability to enhance the mechanics of polymeric materials and impart biological function. As well as their utility as physical cross-linkers, clays have been explored for sustained localization of biomolecules to promote in vivo tissue regeneration. To date, both biomolecule-clay and polymer-clay nanocomposite strategies have utilised the negatively charged clay particle surface. As such, biomolecule-clay and polymer-clay interactions are set in competition, potentially limiting the functional enhancements achieved. Here, we apply specific bisphosphonate interactions with the positively charged clay particle edge to develop self-assembling hydrogels and functionalized clay nanoparticles with preserved surface exchange capacity. Low concentrations of nanoclay are applied to cross-link hyaluronic acid polymers derivatised with a pendant bisphosphonate to generate hydrogels with enhanced mechanical properties and preserved protein binding able to sustain, for over six weeks in vivo, the localized activity of the clinically licensed growth factor BMP-2

Kodiak brown bears surf the salmon red wave: direct evidence from GPS collared individuals

One of the goals of Ecosystems Base Fisheries Management (EBFM) is recognizing and mitigating indirect effects of fisheries on trophic interactions. Most research on indirect effects has considered how the abundance of managed fishes influences trophic interactions with other species. However, recent work has shown that attributes besides abundance, such as life history variation, can strongly mediate species interactions.  For example, phenological variation within prey species may enhance foraging opportunities for mobile predators by increasing the duration over which predators can target vulnerable life stages of prey.  Here, we present direct evidence of individual brown bears (Ursus arctos middendorffi) exploiting variation in sockeye salmon spawning phenology by tracking salmon runs across a 2,800 km2 region of Kodiak Island.  Data from 40 GPS collared brown bears show bears visited multiple spawning sites in synchrony with the order of spawning phenology.  The average time spent feeding on salmon was 67 days, while the average duration of spawning for one population was only 40 days.  The number of sites used was correlated with the number of days a bear exploited salmon, suggesting phenological variation in the study area influenced bear access to salmon, a resource which strongly influences bear fitness.  These results suggest fisheries managers attempting to maximize harvest while minimizing impacts on brown bears should strive to protect the population diversity that underlies the phenological variation used by wildlife consumers.  These results underscore the need to understand how fisheries affect life history diversity in addition to abundance in order to minimize negative effects of fisheries management on non-target species, a goal of EBFM