The Fort Dodge Line: Iowa\u27s Feisty Interurban

Review of: The Fort Dodge Line: Iowa\u27s Feisty Interurban, by Don L. Hofsommer

The Iowa Route: A History of the Burlington, Cedar Rapids & Northern Railway

Review of: The Iowa Route: A History of the Burlington, Cedar Rapids & Northern Rail-way, by Don L. Hofsommer

Precise laser poration to control drug delivery into and through human nail

Drug treatment of diseases of the human nail remains a difficult challenge; topical therapy, in particular, is limited by very poor transport of active agents across the nail itself. The objective of this research was to examine the potential of controlled, and fibre-optic delivered, femtosecond laser light pulses to provide new pathways and opportunities for drug access to targets within and beneath the nail plate. Optical, confocal fluorescence and scanning electron microscopies demonstrated partial and complete laser poration of human nail samples, with the energy per pore and the exposure duration being the key modulating parameters that determined the extent of ablation achieved. Parallel measurements of the penetration of a model drug across laser-treated nails showed that complete poration resulted in essentially complete circumvention of the diffusion barrier, an array of 100 pores in 0.2 cm2 area of nail permitting a 103-fold increase in initial drug uptake. Partial ablation of the nail created pores that extended to a range of depths; the nail material adjacent to the ablated area was rendered porous in appearance presumably due to local thermal perturbation of the nail structure. These openings offer, as a result, potential sites in which topical drug formulations might be sequestered post-poration and from which slow, sustained delivery of the active agent into and through the nail may be envisaged

Charity registration and reporting:a cross-Jurisdictional and theoretical analysis of regulatory impact

Increasingly governments worldwide regulate charities, seeking to restrict the number of organizations claiming taxation exemptions, reduce abuse of state support and fraud. Under public interest theory governments may increase philanthropy through public trust and confidence in charities. Under public choice theory regulators will maximize political returns, ‘manage’ charity-government relationships, and avoid regulatory capture. Phillips and Smith (2014) suggest that charities’ regulatory regimes should coalesce, despite jurisdictional diversity. We analyse charity regulatory regimes against underlining theories of regulation, and assess regulatory costs and benefits. Thus regulators can reduce regulatory inefficiency, and balance accountability and transparency demands with charities’ abilities to deliver

Differentiated Regulation:the case of charities

The increasing number and influence of charities in the economy, evidence of mismanagement and the need for information for policymaking are all reasons for establishing charity regulators. Public interest and public choice theories explain charity regulation which aims to increase public trust and confidence in charities (and thus increase voluntarism and philanthropy) and to limit tax benefits to specific organisations and donors. Nevertheless, regulation is resource intensive, and growing pressure on government budgets requires efficiencies to be found. This study proposes regulation differentiated according to charities' main resource providers, to reduce costs and focus regulatory effort, and provides a feasible segmentation

Human Resource Flexibility as a Mediating Variable Between High Performance Work Systems and Performance

Much of the human resource management literature has demonstrated the impact of high performance work systems (HPWS) on organizational performance. A new generation of studies is emerging in this literature that recommends the inclusion of mediating variables between HPWS and organizational performance. The increasing rate of dynamism in competitive environments suggests that measures of employee adaptability should be included as a mechanism that may explain the relevance of HPWS to firm competitiveness. On a sample of 226 Spanish firms, the study’s results confirm that HPWS influences performance through its impact on the firm’s human resource (HR) flexibility

The Fort Dodge Line: Iowa\u27s Feisty Interurban

Review of: "The Fort Dodge Line: Iowa\u27s Feisty Interurban," by Don L. Hofsommer

Beneath the all-seeing eye: fraternal order and friendly societies' banners in nineteenth- and twentieth-century Britain

To succeed, nineteenth-century friendly societies – mutual aid organizations designed to help people protect themselves against problems which arose because of the illness or death of a breadwinner – needed the trust of members, patrons, and potential members. Banners carried on orderly church and civic parades helped to counter opponents' claims of extravagance, trade union activity, or the likelihood of collapse. The words and images on the societies' banners linked them to mutuality, loyalty, mythology, history, trades, locality, empire, and the Bible. They also showed members as a trustworthy and vigilant fictive fraternity with the capacity and willingness to help their brethren