SHOULD I STAY OR SHOULD I GO: THE ROLE OF REFERRALS ON ONLINE COMMUNITY MEMBER TURNOVER AND TENURE

Communities are often faced with challenges associated with attracting and maintaining a membership base, which affects their ability to develop a pool of resources and ultimately impacts their sustainability. A potential resolution to this challenge lies in the members of the community referring non-members to the community – member referrals. While community joining has been acknowledged as important stage in the life cycle of community members; however, the way in which a member becomes aware of a community and its resulting influence on their engagement with the community has not been examined. This research-in-progress paper outlines the examination of the role of referrals on member turnover and tenure. Drawing upon theories of referrals from organizational behavior and marketing, the paper theorizes that referrals have the potential to facilitate the awareness of, and interest in, a community, which ultimately influences new members to return to, and stay, in a community

I Didn\u27t Know You Could See That: The Effect of Social Networking Environment Characteristics on Publicness and Self-Disclosure

Web 2.0 technologies have changed the way users interact with the Internet. Users play a growing role in the generation of content, and while doing so disclose a piece of themselves. We seek to provide a theoretical link between the boundary characteristics of a social networking website and self-disclosure. Utilizing Communication Privacy Management Theory, we focus on two forms of boundaries: mode of entry boundary and ingroup/outgroup boundary. We propose that these boundaries play a role in the implicit boundary coordination and negotiation between the users of the environment and the website. This negotiation influences users’ perceived publicness of the environment, which influences their self-disclosure behaviors due to their risk avoidance. It is believed that by recognizing the public aspect of participation in online social networks, we can provide suggestions on how its perception can be managed to encourage, or discourage, contributions and disclosures of information by users

The Natural History and Clinical Syndromes of Degenerative Cervical Spondylosis

Cervical spondylosis is a broad term which describes the age related chronic disc degeneration, which can also affect the cervical vertebrae, the facet and other joints and their associated soft tissue supports. Evidence of spondylitic change is frequently found in many asymptomatic adults. Radiculopathy is a result of intervertebral foramina narrowing. Narrowing of the spinal canal can result in spinal cord compression, ultimately resulting in cervical spondylosis myelopathy. This review article examines the current literature in relation to the cervical spondylosis and describes the three clinical syndromes of axial neck pain, cervical radiculopathy and cervical myelopath

Large-scale variations in ozone and polar stratospheric clouds measured with airborne lidar during formation of the 1987 ozone hole over Antarctica

A joint field experiment between NASA and NOAA was conducted during August to September 1987 to obtain in situ and remote measurements of key gases and aerosols from aircraft platforms during the formation of the ozone (O3) hole over Antarctica. The ER-2 (advanced U-2) and DC-8 aircraft from the NASA Ames Research Center were used in this field experiment. The NASA Langley Research Center's airborne differential absorption lidar (DIAL) system was operated from the DC-8 to obtain profiles of O3 and polar stratospheric clouds in the lower stratosphere during long-range flights over Antarctica from August 28 to September 29, 1987. The airborne DIAL system was configured to transmit simultaneously four laser wavelengths (301, 311, 622, and 1064 nm) above the DC-8 for DIAL measurements of O3 profiles between 11 to 20 km ASL (geometric altitude above sea level) and multiple wavelength aerosol backscatter measurements between 11 to 24 km ASL. A total of 13 DC-8 flights were made over Antarctica with 2 flights reaching the South Pole. Polar stratospheric clouds (PSC's) were detected in multiple thin layers in the 11 to 21 km ASL altitude range with each layer having a typical thickness of less than 1 km. Two types of PSC's were found based on aerosol backscattering ratios: predominantly water ice clouds (type 2) and clouds with scattering characteristics consistent with binary solid nitric acid/water clouds (type 1). Large-scale cross sections of O3 distributions were obtained. The data provides additional information about a potentially important transport mechanism that may influence the O3 budget inside the vortex. There is also some evidence that strong low pressure systems in the troposphere are associated with regions of lower stratospheric O3. This paper discusses the spatial and temporal variations of O3 inside and outside the polar vortex region during the development of the O3 hole and relates these data to other measurements obtained during this field experiment

Cross sectional survey of human-bat interaction in Australia: public health implications

Background Flying foxes (megachiroptera) and insectivorous microbats (microchiroptera) are the known reservoirs for a range of recently emerged, highly pathogenic viruses. In Australia there is public health concern relating to bats\u27 role as reservoirs of Australian Bat Lyssavirus (ABLV), which has clinical features identical to classical rabies. Three deaths from ABLV have occurred in Australia. A survey was conducted to determine the frequency of bat exposures amongst adults in Australia\u27s most populous state, New South Wales; explore reasons for handling bats; examine reported practices upon encountering injured or trapped bats or experiencing bat bites or scratches; and investigate knowledge of bat handling warnings. Methods A representative sample of 821 New South Wales adults aged 16 years and older were interviewed during May and June 2011, using a computer assisted telephone interview (CATI) method. Frequencies, proportions and statistical differences in proportion were performed. Using an alpha-value of 0.05 and power of 80%, it was calculated that a sample size of 800 was required to provide statistical significance of +/- 5% for dichotomous variables. Results One-hundred-and-twenty-seven (15.5%) respondents indicated that they had previously handled a bat, being 22% (48/218) rural and 13% (78/597) urban respondents (chi2 = 9.8, p = 0.0018). Twenty one percent of males (63/304) had handled bats compared with 12% (64/517) of females (chi2 = 10.2, p = 0.0014). Overall, 42.0% (n = 345) of respondents reported having seen or heard a warning about handling bats. If faced with an injured or trapped bat, 25% (206/821) indicated that they would handle the bat, with 17% (36/206) saying that they would use their bare hands. For minor scratches, 14% (117/821) indicated that they would ignore the injury while four respondents would ignore major scratches or bites. Conclusions Previous human-bat interactions were relatively common. Bat exposures most frequently occurred with sick or injured bats, which have the highest risk of ABLV. On encountering an injured or sick bat, potentially high risk practices were commonly reported, particularly among rural males. It is important to understand why people still handle bats despite public health warnings to inform future communication strategies

EFFECTS OF STATIC STRETCHING ON MAXIMAL ISOKINETIC TORQUE

The effects of 20 seconds of agonist (AGO), antagonist (ANT) or no (NO) pre-exercise stretch on concentric (CON) and eccentric (ECC) maximal isokinetic torque produced at the knee were examined. Twelve male semi-pro rugby players performed dominant isokinetic knee extension following the specified stretch protocol. One-way Repeated Measures ANOVA revealed AGO to be significantly less (p < 0.05) than the other protocols for both CON (270 28 Nm) and ECC (309 42 Nm) torque. There was no difference between the ANT or NO for either CON (303 35 Nm and 304 38 Nm, respectively) or ECC (341 40 Nm and 33644 Nm). The results support the theory that pre-exercise agonist stretching may lead to performance decrements in maximal concentric torque production

Use of short-tandem repeat (STR) fingerprinting to validate sample origins in hepatitis C virus molecular epidemiology studies

Sequence analysis is used to define the molecular epidemiology and evolution of the hepatitis C virus. Whilst most studies have shown that individual patients harbour viruses that are derived from a limited number of highly related strains, some recent reports have shown that some patients can be co-infected with very distinct variants whose frequency can fluctuate greatly. Whilst co-infection with highly divergent strains is possible, an alternative explanation is that such data represent contamination or sample mix-up. In this study, we have shown that DNA fingerprinting techniques can accurately assess sample provenance and differentiate between samples that are truly exhibiting mixed infection from those that harbour distinct virus populations due to sample mix-up. We have argued that this approach should be adopted routinely in virus sequence analyses to validate sample provenance

Maximum Running Speed of Captive Bar-Headed Geese Is Unaffected by Severe Hypoxia

While bar-headed geese are renowned for migration at high altitude over the Himalayas, previous work on captive birds suggested that these geese are unable to maintain rates of oxygen consumption while running in severely hypoxic conditions. To investigate this paradox, we re-examined the running performance and heart rates of bar-headed geese and barnacle geese (a low altitude species) during exercise in hypoxia. Bar-headed geese (n = 7) were able to run at maximum speeds (determined in normoxia) for 15 minutes in severe hypoxia (7% O2; simulating the hypoxia at 8500 m) with mean heart rates of 466±8 beats min−1. Barnacle geese (n = 10), on the other hand, were unable to complete similar trials in severe hypoxia and their mean heart rate (316 beats.min−1) was significantly lower than bar-headed geese. In bar-headed geese, partial pressures of oxygen and carbon dioxide in both arterial and mixed venous blood were significantly lower during hypoxia than normoxia, both at rest and while running. However, measurements of blood lactate in bar-headed geese suggested that anaerobic metabolism was not a major energy source during running in hypoxia. We combined these data with values taken from the literature to estimate (i) oxygen supply, using the Fick equation and (ii) oxygen demand using aerodynamic theory for bar-headed geese flying aerobically, and under their own power, at altitude. This analysis predicts that the maximum altitude at which geese can transport enough oxygen to fly without environmental assistance ranges from 6,800 m to 8,900 m altitude, depending on the parameters used in the model but that such flights should be rare