Guideline Policy for Snow and Ice Control

These Guidelines are a compilation of information given by several agencies, such as the National Cooperative Highway Research Program, the Salt Institute, American Public Works Association, AASHTO, and many others. Our goal was to was to gather all the information that could be useful for the Indiana Counties and Cities, add our own experience and expertise, and place it in one report. These Guidelines are Divided into three sections. The first section is the Guidelines. It gives information and suggestions on all aspects of snow and ice control. The second section is a template for a snow and ice control policy. The intent of this section is to give you a policy that is almost complete. You just need to fill in the blanks and check a few boxes that pertain to your county or city. We encourage you to add any information that is missing from this policy that would make it more specific for your county or city. The third section is a sample Snow and Ice Control Policy for Parke County, Indiana. We worked closely with their Highway Superintendent on this policy. He supplied us with information and maps, and we compiled a policy to give you an example

Success Factors for Effective Customer Interaction in Digital Sales: A Case from the Digital Investment Service Industry

In the off-line world, capable sales representatives align their advisory approach with their customer´s individual profile to improve the quality of the process and the likelihood of a positive outcome for both parties. However, we see a movement away from the classical advisory settings towards “omni-channel” strategies, where companies serve their customers through a combination of on-line and off-line channels. In this short paper, we undertake a first investigation of how specific characteristics in the customer profile could affect the advisory success and introduce the OPTI-model . We illustrate the application of our model using the example of Digital Investment Services, knowing that the financial services industry is one area where “omni-channel” strategies have become highly relevant

The scope and patterns of mobilization and conflict in EU interest group politics

The literature on interest group mobilization in EU legislative politics is heavily focused on organizations as much attention is concentrated on groups’ organizational characteristics, their activities towards different institutional venues, and their attempts to influence policies in one or a small set of policy cases. Yet, despite our growing knowledge about interest group politics, we know little about the pervasiveness of lobbying or the patterns of conflict and mobilization in EU interest group politics. How are conflict and mobilization in EU interest group politics structured? Can we speak of structural patterns of interest group conflict and mobilization or is the EU rather a balkanized lobbying arena? In order to analyze these questions we adopt a policy-centered account, instead of an organization-centered perspective, of interest group politics. More precisely, for a sample of 116 pieces of legislation we analyze the scope of interest group mobilization, the divisiveness of mobilization processes and the nature of conflict that is mobilized through the activities of lobbyists. For our empirical analyses, we triangulate evidence from different sources including media-analyses, interviews with 80 experts in the European Commission, interviews with 143 lobbyists and consultations. We conclude with a discussion of how our understanding of conflict structures complements policy field- and organization-based explanations of interest group politics

METHOD EVALUATION TO DETERMINE HYDRATION STATES OF TENDONS BY USING MRI

Due to the fact that water content is a determinant of the material properties of tendons and therefore might affect sports performance and the risk of injury, the purpose of this pilot study was to evaluate the reliabilityand sensitivity of a MRI based method to quantify content of a tendon. For this pilot study twenty porcine digital flexor tendons were chosen. All samples were examined on a MR scanner using three 3D ultra-short echo time sequences. With the applied sequences it was possible to determine a decrease in water content of the tendons. In addition, the methods showed a good inter session reliability. Further investigations are needed to improve the upper and lower limit of resolution regarding the physiological hydration state

The influence of the menstrual cycle and hormonal contraceptives on cardiorespiratory fitness in physically active women: A systematic review and meta-analysis.

OBJECTIVE To systematically review and summarize the existing evidence related to the influence of the menstrual cycle (MC) and hormonal contraceptive (HC) use on O2max in physically active women. METHODS This systematic review and meta-analysis conforms to the PRISMA statement guidelines. Four (sub-)meta-analyses were performed. Two focused on longitudinal studies examining the same women several times to compare the O2max during the different menstrual phases or oral contraceptive (OC) use and withdrawal. Two meta-analyses examined if there is a difference in O2max between OC users and normally menstruating women by analyzing cross-sectional studies assigning physically active women to one of these two groups as well as intervention-based studies (cross-over studies, randomized controlled trials considering only the data of the intervention group) comparing women intra-individually with and without OCs. RESULTS Nine of the included studies (107 women) evaluated the influence of the MC, five studies (69 women) the impact of OCs on O2max, and six studies investigated both topics (88 women). A mean difference of O2max -0.03 ml/kg/min (95%CI -1.06 to 1.01) between the early follicular and luteal menstrual phase was observed. Between the active and inactive phases of OCs, a mean difference of -0.11 ml/kg/min (95%CI -2.32 to 2.10) was found. The inter-individual comparison of naturally menstruating women and OC users showed a mean difference in O2max of 0.23 ml/kg/min (95% CI -2.33 to 2.79) in favor of OC use. The intra-individual comparison of the same women showed a mean decrease in O2max of -0.84 ml/kg/min (95% CI -2.38 to 0.70) after a new start with OCs. CONCLUSIONS Our meta-analyses showed no effects of the MC or the OCs on O2max. More high-quality studies are needed determining the MC phases more precisely, including OCs with the current standard formulations and comparing the influence of different progestins

Bound diquarks and their Bose-Einstein condensation in strongly coupled quark matter

We explore the formation of diquark molecules and their Bose-Einstein condensation (BEC) in the phase diagram of three-flavor quark matter at nonzero temperature, T, and quark chemical potential, mu. Using a quark model with a four-fermion interaction, we identify possible diquark excitations as poles of the microscopically computed diquark propagator. The quark masses are obtained by solving a dynamical equation for the chiral condensate and are found to determine the stability of the diquark excitations. The stability of diquark excitations is investigated in the T-mu plane for different values of the diquark coupling strength. We find that bound diquark molecules appear at small quark chemical potentials at intermediate coupling and that BEC of non-strange diquark molecules occurs if the attractive interaction between quarks is sufficiently strong.Comment: 7 pages, 6 figure