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Antecedents of Effective Environmental Management in a Hotel Setting: A Test of the Value-Belief-Norm Theory
The purpose of this quantitative study is to test the validity of a behavioral theory in the context of environmental hotel management. The lack of theoretical consideration in previous studies on environmental attitudes of hotel/resort managers warrants an investigation of a theory with the potential to better explain behaviors that support the goals of environment management systems. The goal of this research was to document the values, beliefs, personal norms, and environmental management support behaviors of managers in a hospitality setting to test the behavioral theory. Data were collected from a sample of hotel and resort managers in the Phoenix metropolitan area by using a survey of well-documented items from previous research on the theory. Results suggest the theory is successful in explaining environmental management support behaviors. Implications for practitioners as well as researchers are discusse
Universal Behavior of Charged Particle Production in Heavy Ion Collisions
The PHOBOS experiment at RHIC has measured the multiplicity of primary
charged particles as a function of centrality and pseudorapidity in Au+Au
collisions at sqrt(s_NN) = 19.6, 130 and 200 GeV. Two kinds of universal
behavior are observed in charged particle production in heavy ion collisions.
The first is that forward particle production, over a range of energies,
follows a universal limiting curve with a non-trivial centrality dependence.
The second arises from comparisons with pp/pbar-p and e+e- data.
N_tot/(N_part/2) in nuclear collisions at high energy scales with sqrt(s) in a
similar way as N_tot in e+e- collisions and has a very weak centrality
dependence. This feature may be related to a reduction in the leading particle
effect due to the multiple collisions suffered per participant in heavy ion
collisions.Comment: 4 Pages, 5 Figures, contributed to the Proceedings of Quark Matter
2002, Nantes, France, 18-24 July 200
Global Observations from PHOBOS
Particle production in Au+Au collisions has been measured in the PHOBOS
experiment at RHIC for a range of collision energies. Three empirical
observations have emerged from this dataset which require theoretical
examination. First, there is clear evidence of limiting fragmentation. Namely,
particle production in central Au+Au collisions, when expressed as
(), becomes energy independent at high energy for a
broad region of around . This energy-independent region grows
with energy, allowing only a limited region (if any) of longitudinal
boost-invariance. Second, there is a striking similarity between particle
production in e+e- and Au+Au collisions (scaled by the number of participating
nucleon pairs). Both the total number of produced particles and the
longitudinal distribution of produced particles are approximately the same in
e+e- and in scaled Au+Au. This observation was not predicted and has not been
explained. Finally, particle production has been found to scale approximately
with the number of participating nucleon pairs for . This scaling
occurs both for the total multiplicity and for high \pT particles (3 <\pT<
4.5 GeV/c).Comment: QM2002 plenary talk, 10 pages, 11 figure
Recent Results from PHOBOS at RHIC
The PHOBOS experiment at RHIC has recorded measurements for Au-Au collisions
spanning nucleon-nucleon center-of-mass energies from 19.6 GeV to 200 GeV.
Global observables such as elliptic flow and charged particle multiplicity
provide important constraints on model predictions that characterize the state
of matter produced in these collisions. The nearly 4 pi acceptance of the
PHOBOS experiment provides excellent coverage for complete flow and
multiplicity measurements. Results including beam energy and centrality
dependencies are presented and compared to elementary systems.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figures, proceedings from PANIC02 in Osaka, Japa
Hydrodynamic Isotonic Fluid Delivery Ameliorates Moderate-to-Severe Ischemia-Reperfusion Injury in Rat Kidneys
Highly aerobic organs like the kidney are innately susceptible to ischemia-reperfusion (I/R) injury, which can originate from sources including myocardial infarction, renal trauma, and transplant. Therapy is mainly supportive and depends on the cause(s) of damage. In the absence of hypervolemia, intravenous fluid delivery is frequently the first course of treatment but does not reverse established AKI. Evidence suggests that disrupting leukocyte adhesion may prevent the impairment of renal microvascular perfusion and the heightened inflammatory response that exacerbate ischemic renal injury. We investigated the therapeutic potential of hydrodynamic isotonic fluid delivery (HIFD) to the left renal vein 24 hours after inducing moderate-to-severe unilateral IRI in rats. HIFD significantly increased hydrostatic pressure within the renal vein. When conducted after established AKI, 24 hours after I/R injury, HIFD produced substantial and statistically significant decreases in serum creatinine levels compared with levels in animals given an equivalent volume of saline via peripheral infusion (P<0.05). Intravital confocal microscopy performed immediately after HIFD showed improved microvascular perfusion. Notably, HIFD also resulted in immediate enhancement of parenchymal labeling with the fluorescent dye Hoechst 33342. HIFD also associated with a significant reduction in the accumulation of renal leukocytes, including proinflammatory T cells. Additionally, HIFD significantly reduced peritubular capillary erythrocyte congestion and improved histologic scores of tubular injury 4 days after IRI. Taken together, these results indicate that HIFD performed after establishment of AKI rapidly restores microvascular perfusion and small molecule accessibility, with improvement in overall renal function
Evaluation of the dystrophin carboxy-terminal domain for micro-dystrophin gene therapy in cardiac and skeletal muscles in the DMDmdx rat model
Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD) is a muscle wasting disorder caused by mutations in the gene encoding dystrophin. Gene therapy using micro-dystrophin (MD) transgenes and recombinant adeno-associated virus (rAAV) vectors hold great promise. To overcome the limited packaging capacity of rAAV vectors, most MD do not include dystrophin carboxy-terminal (CT) domain. Yet, the CT domain is known to recruit α1- and β1-syntrophins and α-dystrobrevin, a part of the dystrophin-associated protein complex (DAPC), which is a signaling and structural mediator of muscle cells. In this study, we explored the impact of inclusion of the dystrophin CT domain on ΔR4-23/ΔCT MD (MD1), in DMDmdx rats, which allows for relevant evaluations at muscular and cardiac levels. We showed by LC-MS/MS that MD1 expression is sufficient to restore the interactions at a physiological level of most DAPC partners in skeletal and cardiac muscles, and that inclusion of the CT domain increases the recruitment of some DAPC partners at supra-physiological levels. In parallel, we demonstrated that inclusion of the CT domain does not improve MD1 therapeutic efficacy on DMD muscle and cardiac pathologies. Our work highlights new evidences of the therapeutic potential of MD1 and strengthens the relevance of this candidate for gene therapy of DMD
Observation of hard scattering in photoproduction events with a large rapidity gap at HERA
Events with a large rapidity gap and total transverse energy greater than 5
GeV have been observed in quasi-real photoproduction at HERA with the ZEUS
detector. The distribution of these events as a function of the
centre of mass energy is consistent with diffractive scattering. For total
transverse energies above 12 GeV, the hadronic final states show predominantly
a two-jet structure with each jet having a transverse energy greater than 4
GeV. For the two-jet events, little energy flow is found outside the jets. This
observation is consistent with the hard scattering of a quasi-real photon with
a colourless object in the proton.Comment: 19 pages, latex, 4 figures appended as uuencoded fil
Measurement of the diffractive structure function in deep inelastic scattering at HERA
This paper presents an analysis of the inclusive properties of diffractive
deep inelastic scattering events produced in interactions at HERA. The
events are characterised by a rapidity gap between the outgoing proton system
and the remaining hadronic system. Inclusive distributions are presented and
compared with Monte Carlo models for diffractive processes. The data are
consistent with models where the pomeron structure function has a hard and a
soft contribution. The diffractive structure function is measured as a function
of \xpom, the momentum fraction lost by the proton, of , the momentum
fraction of the struck quark with respect to \xpom, and of . The \xpom
dependence is consistent with the form \xpoma where
in all bins of and
. In the measured range, the diffractive structure function
approximately scales with at fixed . In an Ingelman-Schlein type
model, where commonly used pomeron flux factor normalisations are assumed, it
is found that the quarks within the pomeron do not saturate the momentum sum
rule.Comment: 36 pages, latex, 11 figures appended as uuencoded fil
Homosexuality, politics and Pentecostal nationalism in Zambia
Building upon debates about the politics of nationalism and sexuality in post-colonial Africa, this article highlights the role of religion in shaping nationalist ideologies that seek to regulate homosexuality. It specifically focuses on Pentecostal Christianity in Zambia, where the constitutional declaration of Zambia as a Christian nation has given rise to a form of ‘Pentecostal nationalism’ in which homosexuality is considered to be a threat to the purity of the nation and is associated with the Devil. The article offers an analysis of recent Zambian public debates about homosexuality, focusing on the ways in which the ‘Christian nation’ argument is deployed, primarily in a discourse of anti-homonationalism, but also by a few recent dissident voices. The latter prevent Zambia, and Christianity, from accruing a monolithic depiction as homophobic. Showing that the Zambian case presents a mobilisation against homosexuality that is profoundly shaped by the local configuration in which Christianity defines national identity – and in which Pentecostal-Christian moral concerns and theo-political imaginations shape public debates and politics – the article nuances arguments that explain African controversies regarding homosexuality in terms of exported American culture wars, proposing an alternative reading of these controversies as emerging from conflicting visions of modernity in Africa
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