The Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement: Looking Ahead to the Next Steps

Pressure has been building for the conclusion of the 12-country Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) negotiations. Getting the deal done is important, but the TPP is not just another free trade agreement (FTA). It represents the chance to set a trade agenda for the future across a wide range of topics for countries throughout the Asia-Pacific region. This means that the agreement should not be settled in haste. More importantly, it also means that key decisions need to be reached about broader issues related to the institutional structure of the TPP. These decisions must be made now, before the deal is closed, on issues such as how to create the TPP as a living agreement, the formation of a TPP Secretariat, and the clarification of entry conditions for future members such as the People’s Republic of China (PRC). These choices must be made deliberately and carefully even while officials are struggling with reaching closure on the most highly sensitive issues still remaining in the agreement. It will not be easy, but wise decisions are necessary now to ensure the long-term success of the TPP

Seismic Fluidization and Foundation Behavior

Field observations of seismic settlements of foundations on granular soils due to shear flow rather than densification or liquefaction are explained in terms of the concept of seismic fluidization. The theory is briefly reviewed and used to derive seismic bearing capacity factors for shallow foundations from the standard static formulas. The reduction of bearing capacity as accelerations increase triggers incremental settlement whenever the ground acceleration exceeds some critical level whose value depends on the static design factor of safety. The total seismic settlement can be computed for a particular earthquake record by a modified sliding block approach or related to standardized incremental displacement curves for generalized earthquakes

Droplet asymmetry and wetting dynamics on irregularly roughened surfaces

This study illustrates pervasive challenges in studying wetting dynamics, including dynamic contact angles, on irregularly roughened surfaces. We demonstrate that asymmetric water droplet shapes occur more than 50% of the time during static and dynamic contact angle measurements on sandblasted Zn-plated stainless steel with a polymeric overcoat. The pinning that causes the asymmetric drop shape distortion on horizontal surfaces also influences the sliding behavior on inclined surfaces. These effects lead to a poor correlation between the measured dynamic contact angles and the observed sliding angles (critical tilt angles). Our work emphasizes that large variations in the values of these dynamic wetting parameters are inherent to the heterogeneity of the surface roughness, and thus they limit the usefulness of standard dynamic wetting criteria. These findings have implications for academic and industrial research focused on making coated materials that have consistent wettability properties throughout their usage life cycle

Digital innovation for cancer risk assessment allows large-scale service redevelopment of regional cancer genetics service delivery.

Family-history assessment can identify individuals above population-risk for cancer to enable targeted Screening, Prevention and Early Detection (SPED). The online patient-facing cancer Family History Questionnaire Service (cFHQS) is a digitalised, resource efficient tool for family history data capture to facilitate this. The capturing of digital data from cFHQS allows for data interrogation of patients referred to Clinical Genetics for the purposes of service improvement. Digital data from 4,044 cFHQS respondents over a three-year period was collected and interrogated with respect to the number and type of familial tumour diagnoses to enable service improvement and streamlining of referral pathways. 81% of colorectal and 71% of breast screening assessments were population- or moderate-risk. Most patients who completed cFHQS reported more than one diagnosis of cancer/tumour/polyps in their family. 2.5% of family history assessment patients had a second indication that required assessment that would have been missed if single tumour type assessment was undertaken. Implementation of an innovative, digital family history data collection pathway has allowed large scale interrogation of referral patterns and assessment outcomes to enable service development. The high volume of inappropriate referrals to Clinical Genetics for population and moderate risk patients highlighted the need for dedicated secondary care pathway provision for these patients. The use of cFHQS streamlined family history assessment allows for redistribution of resources to improve equity and access to genetic cancer risk assessment

Stakeholder Theory and Marketing: Moving from a Firm-Centric to a Societal Perspective

This essay is inspired by the ideas and research examined in the special section on “Stakeholder Marketing” of the Journal of Public Policy & Marketing in 2010. The authors argue that stakeholder marketing is slowly coalescing with the broader thinking that has occurred in the stakeholder management and ethics literature streams during the past quarter century. However, the predominant view of stakeholders that many marketers advocate is still primarily pragmatic and company centric. The position advanced herein is that stronger forms of stakeholder marketing that reflect more normative, macro/societal, and network-focused orientations are necessary. The authors briefly explain and justify these characteristics in the context of the growing “prosociety” and “proenvironment” perspectives—orientations that are also in keeping with the public policy focus of this journal. Under the “hard form” of stakeholder theory, which the authors endorse, marketing managers must realize that serving stakeholders sometimes requires sacrificing maximum profits to mitigate outcomes that would inflict major damage on other stakeholders, especially society

Decision-support system for safety and security assessment and management in smart cities

Counter-terrorism measures and preparedness play a critical role in securing mass gatherings, soft targets, and critical infrastructures within urban environments. This paper introduces a comprehensive Decision Support System developed as part of the S4AllCitites project, designed to seamlessly integrate with existing legacy systems in Smart Cities. The system encompasses urban pedestrian and vehicular evacuation, incorporating predictive models to anticipate the progression of incendiary and mass shooting attacks, alongside a probabilistic model for threat assessment in the case of improvised explosive devices. A notable achievement of this research is the successful implementation and deployment of the system in operational environments through pilot studies. It empowers public and private security operators with real time decision support capabilities during both prevention and intervention stages of potential attacks. The decision support information provided encompasses various aspects, including optimal evacuation strategies, estimated egress times, pedestrian movement profiles, probability assessments, and the potential impact of different terrorist threats in terms of casualties. Additionally, the system offers real-time insights into the status of the traffic network under normal and unusual conditions, enabling efficient emergency management throughout its progression. This includes the ability to identify optimal intervention routes and assess the impact of anomalous traffic resulting from evacuations

Spina bifida-predisposing heterozygous mutations in Planar Cell Polarity genes and Zic2 reduce bone mass in young mice

Fractures are a common comorbidity in children with the neural tube defect (NTD) spina bifida. Mutations in the Wnt/planar cell polarity (PCP) pathway contribute to NTDs in humans and mice, but whether this pathway independently determines bone mass is poorly understood. Here, we first confirmed that core Wnt/PCP components are expressed in osteoblasts and osteoclasts in vitro. In vivo, we performed detailed µCT comparisons of bone structure in tibiae from young male mice heterozygous for NTD-associated mutations versus WT littermates. PCP signalling disruption caused by Vangl2 (Vangl2Lp/+) or Celsr1 (Celsr1Crsh/+) mutations significantly reduced trabecular bone mass and distal tibial cortical thickness. NTD-associated mutations in non-PCP transcription factors were also investigated. Pax3 mutation (Pax3Sp2H/+) had minimal effects on bone mass. Zic2 mutation (Zic2Ku/+) significantly altered the position of the tibia/fibula junction and diminished cortical bone in the proximal tibia. Beyond these genes, we bioinformatically documented the known extent of shared genetic networks between NTDs and bone properties. 46 genes involved in neural tube closure are annotated with bone-related ontologies. These findings document shared genetic networks between spina bifida risk and bone structure, including PCP components and Zic2. Genetic variants which predispose to spina bifida may therefore independently diminish bone mass