The art of SME export marketing: a case study

In this paper, it is proposed that integrating arts and culture into international trade missions will stimulate arts and crafts, as well as SME exports. It can also help to package trade missions so that they appeal to a wider audience and build SMEs’ relationships with international partners. Arts and cultural organisations – as well as individual artists – share features and interests with other SMEs. A case study illustrates that by piggy-backing on each others’ unique skill sets, industry, tourism and the arts can together successfully contribute to trade missions that promote a region and the products produced there. Lessons that the primary author has learnt from organising and participating in numerous trade missions are used to develop a framework that could potentially be utilised to develop similar programmes. The results should be of value to policy-makers, export development organisations, arts and cultural development organisations, and individual SME managers and artists

Minimal flavor-changing Z′Z' models and muon g−2g-2 after the RK∗R_{K^*} measurement

There has been a steady interest in flavor anomalies and their global fits as ideal probes of new physics. If the anomalies are real, one promising explanation is a new $Z'$ gauge boson with flavor-changing coupling to bottom and strange quarks and a flavor-conserving coupling to muons and, possibly, electrons. We point out that direct production of such a $Z'$, emerging from the collision of $b$ and $s$ quarks, may offer a complementary window into these phenomena because collider searches already provide competitive constraints. On top of that, we analyse the same $Z'$ scenario in relation to another long-standing discrepancy between theory and experiment that concerns the anomalous magnetic moment of the muon. By scanning the allowed $Z'$ coupling strengths in the low-mass region, we assess the compatibility of the signals from LHCb with the $Z'$ searches in the high energy LHC data and the measurements of the anomalous magnetic moment of the involved leptons. We also argue that observations of the latter can break the degeneracy pattern in the Wilson coefficients $C_9$ and $C_{10}$ presented by LHCb data. The $Z'$ model we consider is compatible with the new measurement of $R_{K^*}$, therefore it can potentially account for the long-standing deviations observed in $B$-physics.Comment: 13 pages, 5 figures. Missing factors corrected in eqs. 2.7-2.9 with slight updates in fig.

Methylation status of the Runx2 p2 promoter in a family with ectopic maxillary canines

Genetic factors contribute to the aetiology of the ectopic canine (EC) (OMIM 189490), the inheritance pattern being autosomal dominant with variable expression and incomplete penetrance. However there is also evidence for an epigenetic component. The Runx2 gene is intimately involved in the mechanism of tooth eruption. It controls differentiation and maturation of osteoblasts and is expressed in the dental follicle and alveolar bone at all stages of development [2,3]. Mutations of this gene result in delayed and ectopic eruption of teeth. There is a large CpG island spanning its proximal promoter, first exon and part of the first intron. Similarities between the inheritance patterns of EC and other methylation disorders raises the hypothesis that differential methylation of the Runx2 promoter may contribute to EC. This study investigates the methylation status of the Runx2 P2 promoter in ectopic canine subjects and unaffected controls. There was no evidence of differential methylation between the groups.peer-reviewe

Xwnt-5A: a maternal Wnt that affects morphogenetic movements after overexpression in embryos of Xenopus laevis

To contribute to an understanding of the roles and mechanisms of action of Wnts in early vertebrate development, we have characterized the normal expression of Xenopus laevis Wnt-5A, and investigated the consequences of misexpression of this putative signalling factor. Xwnt-5A transcripts are expressed throughout development, and are enriched in both the anterior and posterior regions of embryos at late stages of development, where they are found primarily in ectoderm, with lower levels of expression in mesoderm. Overexpression of Xwnt-5A in Xenopus embryos leads to complex malformations distinct from those achieved by ectopic expression of Xwnts −1, −3A, or −8. This phenotype is unlikely to result from Xwnt-5A acting as an inducing agent, as overexpression of Xwnt-5A does not rescue dorsal structures in UV-irradiated embryos, does not induce mesoderm in blastula caps, and Xwnt-5A does not alter the endogenous patterns of expression of goosecoid, Xbra, or Xwnt-8. To pursue whether Xwnt-5A has the capacity to affect morphogenetic movements, we investigated whether overexpression of Xwnt-5A alters the normal elongation of blastula cap explants induced by activin. Intriguingly, Xwnt-5A blocks the elongation of blastula caps in response to activin, without blocking the differentiation of either dorsal or ventral mesoderm within these explants. The data are consistent with Xwnt-5A having the potential activity of modifying the morphogenetic movements of tissues

Why is Impact Measurement Abandoned in Practice? Evidence use in evaluation and contracting for five European Social Impact Bonds

Despite broad consensus on the importance of measuring “impact,” the term is not always understood as estimating counterfactual and causal estimates. We examine a type of public sector financing, “Social Impact Bonds,” a scheme where investors front money for public services, with repayment conditional on impact. We examine five cases in four European countries of Social Impact Bonds financing active labor market programs, testing the claim that Social Impact Bonds would move counterfactual causal impact evaluation to the heart of policy. We examine first how evidence was integrated in contracts, second the overall evidence generated and third, given that neither contracts nor evaluations used counterfactual definitions of impact, we explore stakeholders’ perspectives to better understand the reasons why. We find that although most stakeholders wanted the Social Impact Bonds to generate impact estimates, beliefs about public service reform, incentives, and the logic of experimentation led to the acceptance of non-causal definitions

African-American Land Loss and Sustainable Forestry in the Southeast: An Analysis of the Issues, Opportunities, and Gaps

African-Americans\u27 connection to the land is rapidly disappearing, and with it goes the cultural, political, and socio-economic capital that has helped this population, especially in southern states. There has been a severe decline in black landownership since 1910, resulting in rural counties with predominantly black populations becoming pockets of enduring poverty. Judicious investments in efforts to solve black land loss may lead to solutions to a larger problem: engagement of non-industrial private forestland owners in sustainable land management. Strengthening black forest-based communities as places to invest and live can build on this rich Southern heritage

Creation of orbital angular momentum states with chiral polaritonic lenses

Controlled transfer of orbital angular momentum to exciton-polariton Bose-Einstein condensate spontaneously created under incoherent, off-resonant excitation conditions is a long-standing challenge in the field of microcavity polaritonics. We demonstrate, experimentally and theoretically, a simple and efficient approach to generation of nontrivial orbital angular momentum states by using optically-induced potentials -- chiral polaritonic lenses.Comment: 5 pages, 5 figure

The EDGES 21 cm Anomaly and Properties of Dark Matter

The recently claimed anomaly in the measurement of the 21 cm hydrogen absorption signal by EDGES at $z\sim 17$, if cosmological, requires the existence of new physics. The possible attempts to resolve the anomaly rely on either (i) cooling the hydrogen gas via new dark matter-hydrogen interactions or (ii) modifying the soft photon background beyond the standard CMB one, as possibly suggested also by the ARCADE~2 excess. We argue that solutions belonging to the first class are generally in tension with cosmological dark matter probes once simple dark sector models are considered. Therefore, we propose soft photon emission by light dark matter as a natural solution to the 21 cm anomaly, studying a few realizations of this scenario. We find that the signal singles out a photophilic dark matter candidate characterised by an enhanced collective decay mechanism, such as axion mini-clusters.Comment: 7 pages, 2 figure