Between Heaven and a Hard Place: Inhabiting the Space Between an Enchanted Past and a Utopian Future

This essay looks at how devotees of Krishna in Mayapur, West Bengal experience the space between an ideal past and a prophesied future. Through an affective and imaginative engagement with Vaishnav cultural history, devotees learn to relocate themselves in a particular temporal flow, within which both the past and future become constitutive horizons of the ethical imagination. I will focus on how the tradition of katha (storytelling) facilitates a convergence of temporalities, within which devotees are encouraged to routinely participate in the past. Such engagement with an enchanted past, I will argue, in turn informs devotees’ imaginings of and aspirations for the ongoing development of an ‘Ideal Vedic City’

Excited states in lattice QCD with the stochastic LapH method

Progress in computing the spectrum of excited baryons and mesons in lattice QCD is described. Results in the zero-momentum bosonic I=1/2, S=1, T1u symmetry sector of QCD using a correlation matrix of 58 operators are presented. All needed Wick contractions are efficiently evaluated using a stochastic method of treating the low-lying modes of quark propagation that exploits Laplacian Heaviside quark-field smearing. Level identification using probe operators is discussed.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figures, talk presented at the 13th International Conference on Meson-Nucleon Physics and the Structure of the Nucleon (MENU 2013), Sept 30 - Oct 4, 2013, Rome, Ital

Seeing Market Orientation through a Capabilities Lens

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine how conceptualising market orientation within a capabilities framework may assist in developing further understanding of the construct. Design/methodology/approach – Compelling issues in the market orientation literature relating to the nature of the market orientation construct, the relationship of the construct with performance, and identifying antecedents to market orientation are discussed. The capabilities perspective is explored in the context of these issues. In particular, a perspective of market orientation based on the market-sensing capability is proposed, which may provide additional insights into the construct. Research limitations/implications – The capabilities framework facilitates a more comprehensive approach to understanding the nature of market orientation, which captures the complex interaction of behavioural and cultural factors in the conceptualisation of the construct. Originality/value – This paper addresses the need to examine how marketing capabilities may contribute to organisation performance. Keywords Market orientation, Performance management

Towards a Further Understanding of the Development of Market Orientation in the Firm: a Conceptual Framework Based on the Market-Sensing Capability

While the relationship between market orientation and performance has been examined extensively in the literature, relatively little attention has been given to the antecedents of market orientation. So the basic question of how to develop a market driven organisation remains to a large extent unanswered. The capabilities framework provides a useful conduit through which this issue can be approached, since it recognises that firms are innately heterogeneous because the different resources or capabilities they possess. However, this area has been accused of being tautological in nature, and requires further extensive empirical analysis. This paper presents a theoretical framework that uses the decomposition of the market-sensing capability as a way to facilitate understanding of the creation of market orientation. Thus it will not only add to the literature on the antecedents of market orientation, but also offers an empirical analysis of a significant capability. Furthermore, this model addresses the question of the relationship between market orientation and learning orientation, and proposes that a learning orientation precedes a market orientation. KEYWORDS: Market orientation; learning orientation; market-sensing capabilit

Incongruity between Expression and Experience: The Role of Imagery in Supporting the Positioning of a Tourism Destination Brand

Branding has a role to play in integrating efforts to promote tourism. The positioning strategy for the Tourism Brand Ireland initiative is based on the core values of friendly people and unspoiled beautiful scenery. Images on the main national tourism promotion websites are examined in the context of the expectations created for visitors to Ireland. As the nature of Ireland changes with increasing economic success, the sustainability of the current positioning for the Irish tourism brand may be questioned. Ongoing in-depth research into the perceptions and expectations of visitors, as well as the attitudes of the host population, is critical to guide strategic marketing planning for destinations

Cadherin-26 (CDH26) regulates airway epithelial cell cytoskeletal structure and polarity.

Polarization of the airway epithelial cells (AECs) in the airway lumen is critical to the proper function of the mucociliary escalator and maintenance of lung health, but the cellular requirements for polarization of AECs are poorly understood. Using human AECs and cell lines, we demonstrate that cadherin-26 (CDH26) is abundantly expressed in differentiated AECs, localizes to the cell apices near ciliary membranes, and has functional cadherin domains with homotypic binding. We find a unique and non-redundant role for CDH26, previously uncharacterized in AECs, in regulation of cell-cell contact and cell integrity through maintaining cytoskeletal structures. Overexpression of CDH26 in cells with a fibroblastoid phenotype increases contact inhibition and promotes monolayer formation and cortical actin structures. CDH26 expression is also important for localization of planar cell polarity proteins. Knockdown of CDH26 in AECs results in loss of cortical actin and disruption of CRB3 and other proteins associated with apical polarity. Together, our findings uncover previously unrecognized functions for CDH26 in the maintenance of actin cytoskeleton and apicobasal polarity of AECs