Congener profiles of polychlorinated biphenyls and the effect on marine mussels at an outfall site, Port Elizabeth, South Africa

This study investigated the effect of freshwater as a point source of PCBs contributing to a marine outfall region. Inflowing and outflowing water from the North End Lake, Port Elizabeth, was collected to determine the contamination levels of polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs). Mussels at the outflow to the sea were also sampled. The samples were analysed by an internal standard method for 6 indicator PCB congeners using gas chromatography/mass spectrometry (GC/MS) in selected ion monitoring (SIM) mode. The total PCB concentrations in the water (dissolved plus particulate phases) ranged from 0.180 to 0.355 ng∙L-1 and from 20.84 to 31.34 ng∙g-1 wet weight (ww) in mussels. Lighter PCB congeners exhibited highest concentrations in the water samples while heavier PCBs were dominant in mussels. PCB-52 was the most abundant in the water samples while PCB-153 was abundant in mussels. To protect human health from the possible effects of eating fish and shellfish contaminated with PCBs, the Environmental Protection Agency regulates that the level of PCBs in water be no greater than 0.17 ng∙L-1 of water. The levels of PCBs in water from the North End Lake were found to be high (0.180 – 0.355 ng∙L-1) compared to the levels recommended by EPA.Keywords: dissolved phase, GC/MS, North End Lake, particulate phase, sedentary organism

Responding to the Challenges and Opportunities of Workforce 2000

We report results of a national study examining the impact of demographic changes in the American workforce on small business management practices.    Telephone interviews with a national random sample of 94 small business owners explored a) if small business owners are aware of changing workforce demographics,  and b) if these small  business  owners are proactively responding to these changes by modifying their personnel practices.   Findings indicate that while small business managers are aware of changing workforce demographics, only a minority have changed their practices to take advantage of the new population available to them

Advantages of Bayesian monitoring methods in deciding whether and when to stop a clinical trial: an example of a neonatal cooling trial.

BackgroundDecisions to stop randomized trials are often based on traditional P value thresholds and are often unconvincing to clinicians. To familiarize clinical investigators with the application and advantages of Bayesian monitoring methods, we illustrate the steps of Bayesian interim analysis using a recent major trial that was stopped based on frequentist analysis of safety and futility.MethodsWe conducted Bayesian reanalysis of a factorial trial in newborn infants with hypoxic-ischemic encephalopathy that was designed to investigate whether outcomes would be improved by deeper (32 °C) or longer cooling (120 h), as compared with those achieved by standard whole body cooling (33.5 °C for 72 h). Using prior trial data, we developed neutral and enthusiastic prior probabilities for the effect on predischarge mortality, defined stopping guidelines for a clinically meaningful effect, and derived posterior probabilities for predischarge mortality.ResultsBayesian relative risk estimates for predischarge mortality were closer to 1.0 than were frequentist estimates. Posterior probabilities suggested increased predischarge mortality (relative risk > 1.0) for the three intervention groups; two crossed the Bayesian futility threshold.ConclusionsBayesian analysis incorporating previous trial results and different pre-existing opinions can help interpret accruing data and facilitate informed stopping decisions that are likely to be meaningful and convincing to clinicians, meta-analysts, and guideline developers.Trial registrationClinicalTrials.gov NCT01192776 . Registered on 31 August 2010

The politics of in/visibility: carving out queer space in Ul'yanovsk

<p>In spite of a growing interest within sexualities studies in the concept of queer space (Oswin 2008), existing literature focuses almost exclusively on its most visible and territorialised forms, such as the gay scene, thus privileging Western metropolitan areas as hubs of queer consumer culture (Binnie 2004). While the literature has emphasised the political significance of queer space as a site of resistance to hegemonic gender and sexual norms, it has again predominantly focused on overt claims to public space embodied in Pride events, neglecting other less open forms of resistance.</p><p> This article contributes new insights to current debates about the construction and meaning of queer space by considering how city space is appropriated by an informal queer network in Ul’ianovsk. The group routinely occupied very public locations meeting and socialising on the street or in mainstream cafés in central Ul’ianovsk, although claims to these spaces as queer were mostly contingent, precarious or invisible to outsiders. The article considers how provincial location affects tactics used to carve out communal space, foregrounding the importance of local context and collective agency in shaping specific forms of resistance, and questioning ethnocentric assumptions about the empowering potential of visibility.</p&gt

The quality of different types of child care at 10 and 18 months. A comparison between types and factors related to quality.

The quality of care offered in four different types of non-parental child care to 307 infants at 10 months old and 331 infants at 18 months old was compared and factors associated with higher quality were identified. Observed quality was lowest in nurseries at each age point, except that at 18 months they offered more learning activities. There were few differences in the observed quality of care by child-minders, grandparents and nannies, although grandparents had somewhat lower safety and health scores and offered children fewer activities. Cost was largely unrelated to quality of care except in child-minding, where higher cost was associated with higher quality. Observed ratios of children to adults had a significant impact on quality of nursery care; the more infants or toddlers each adult had to care for, the lower the quality of the care she gave them. Mothers' overall satisfaction with their child's care was positively associated with its quality for home-based care but not for nursery settings

Naturally Better? A Review of the Natural‐is‐Better Bias

People are frequently exposed to products and services that are labeled natural (e.g., Nature Made Vitamins or GoJo Natural Orange Hand Cleaner). The frequency with which this label is used suggests that it delivers an advantage in marketing and sales. Our review examines the preference for and perception of naturalness and reveals that people have a bias for items described as natural in many domains including foods, medicine, beauty products, cigarettes, and lighting. These preferences abound even when the natural item is identical or not objectively better than the non‐natural or synthetic item. We believe this bias may be driven by a natural‐is‐better default belief as well as the belief that natural items are safer than non‐natural items. Although a bias for natural items is apparent, this literature is in its infancy, and we suggest three areas that will help build and refine the empirical research base and theory: the measurement of behavior, the examination of individual differences, and the development of methods for reducing the bias. A better understanding of the naturalness bias relevant to these areas will lead to a more comprehensive understanding of the area, including factors that may cause and reduce it

Idea or Prime Opportunity? A Framework for Evaluating Business Ideas for New and Small Ventures

 Entrepreneurs and entrepreneurship educators recognize that only a small percentage of venture ideas actually represent viable business opportunities. This paper addresses the important issue of opportunity recognition using a framework designed with a mnemonic structure for easy recall and based on the extant literature on opportunity recognition. The framework prompts users to examine Product/service, Resource, Individual, Market, and Economic start-up issues. Thus, the PRIME analysis is a heuristic designed for initial opportunity evaluation of a business concept prior to preparing a full-blown business plan. We discuss and apply this framework, demonstrating its effectiveness in the classroom and in practice.

Financing Complexity and Sophistication in Nascent Ventures

Although scholars have considered the financing challenges facing small businesses for some time, little work has focused on financing issues at the venture's nascent stage. In this study, we investigate the sources of funding sought by nascent entrepreneurs and the relationship between the complexity of these funding sources, business plan formalization, and expectations of future firm growth. Using data from the Entrepreneurship Research Consortium/Panel Study of Entrepreneurial Dynamics, we find that nascent entrepreneurs, even those associated with high-growth ventures, favor simple rather than complex sources of funding at the nascent stage. Funding complexity and business plan formalization are also found related to expectation of firm growth. An additional contribution is the development of a funding complexity continuum scale, which should be useful in future studies of nascent as well as later stage entrepreneurial finance and firm growth

A Phylogenomic Study of Human, Dog, and Mouse

In recent years the phylogenetic relationship of mammalian orders has been addressed in a number of molecular studies. These analyses have frequently yielded inconsistent results with respect to some basal ordinal relationships. For example, the relative placement of primates, rodents, and carnivores has differed in various studies. Here, we attempt to resolve this phylogenetic problem by using data from completely sequenced nuclear genomes to base the analyses on the largest possible amount of data. To minimize the risk of reconstruction artifacts, the trees were reconstructed under different criteria—distance, parsimony, and likelihood. For the distance trees, distance metrics that measure independent phenomena (amino acid replacement, synonymous substitution, and gene reordering) were used, as it is highly improbable that all of the trees would be affected the same way by any reconstruction artifact. In contradiction to the currently favored classification, our results based on full-genome analysis of the phylogenetic relationship between human, dog, and mouse yielded overwhelming support for a primate–carnivore clade with the exclusion of rodents

Guest Editorial

This is an editorial which introduces original papers produced on the theme of the supervision of social work practiceThis is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in Practice: Social Work in Action on September 2015, available online: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09503153.2015.1048053This guest editorial introduces the special edition on the supervision of social work practic