Comparison of purebreds, crosses and hybrids for egg production

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Review of Orbiter Flight Boundary Layer Transition Data

In support of the Shuttle Return to Flight program, a tool was developed to predict when boundary layer transition would occur on the lower surface of the orbiter during reentry due to the presence of protuberances and cavities in the thermal protection system. This predictive tool was developed based on extensive wind tunnel tests conducted after the loss of the Space Shuttle Columbia. Recognizing that wind tunnels cannot simulate the exact conditions an orbiter encounters as it re-enters the atmosphere, a preliminary attempt was made to use the documented flight related damage and the orbiter transition times, as deduced from flight instrumentation, to calibrate the predictive tool. After flight STS-114, the Boundary Layer Transition Team decided that a more in-depth analysis of the historical flight data was needed to better determine the root causes of the occasional early transition times of some of the past shuttle flights. In this paper we discuss our methodology for the analysis, the various sources of shuttle damage information, the analysis of the flight thermocouple data, and how the results compare to the Boundary Layer Transition prediction tool designed for Return to Flight

Modern American populism: Analyzing the economics behind the Silent Majority, the Tea Party and Trumpism

This article researches populism, more specifically, Modern American Populism (MAP), constructed of white, rural, and economically oppressed reactionarianism, which was borne out of the political upheaval of the 1960’s Civil Rights movement. The research looks to explain the causes of populism and what leads voters to support populist movements and politicians. The research focuses on economic anxiety as the main cause but also examines an alternative theory of racial resentment. In an effort to answer the question, what causes populist movements and motivations, I apply a research approach that utilizes qualitative and quantitative methods. There is an examination of literature that defines populism, its causes and a detailed discussion of the case studies, including the 1972 election of Richard Nixon; the Tea Party election of 2010; and the 2016 election of Donald Trump. In addition, statistical data analysis was run using American National Election Studies (ANES) surveys associated with each specific case study. These case studies were chosen because they most represent forms of populist movements in modern American history. While ample qualitative evidence suggested support for the hypothesis that economic anxiety is a necessary condition for populist voting patterns that elected Nixon, the Tea Party and Trump, the statistical data only supported the hypothesis in two cases, 2010 and 2016, with 1972 coming back inconclusive. The data also suggested that both economic anxiety and racial resentment played a role in 2010 and 2016, while having no significant effect in 1972 in either case. This suggests that further research needs to be conducted into additional populist case studies, as well as an examination into the role economic anxiety and economic crises play on racial resentment and racially motivated voting behavior

Play at work, learning and innovation

Suggesting a virtuous triangle constituting public service innovation of new governances, innovation and learning, the paper examines how and why a particular mode of learning occurs: that of play. Having identified an absence of research literature on play as a catalyst for new ideas in public services, the paper argues that the diversified nature of public services and disciplinary intermixing offers fertile ground for playing with new service ideas. Our conception of play avoids functional interpretations, such as Amabile or individualizing the results of play and instead draws upon Vygotsky’s social learning theory to conceptualize play as a group activity from which new ideas emerge and suggest a new framework for understanding purposive play at work and the contribution it can make to public service innovation

Investigations of entrepreneurial activities in crowdfunding

Crowdfunding is heralded as ‘the next big thing’ in venture capital, advocating the democratisation of capital access for entrepreneurs through online mechanisms. However, current research indicates that entrepreneurs experience high failure rates in crowdfunding, similar to ‘traditional’ venture capital approaches. This stresses the need for investigations that unveil why some crowdfunding campaigns succeed and others fail. This thesis examines entrepreneurial activities associated with capital assembly through crowdfunding and comprises a portfolio of three empirical studies. These may be read independently or conjointly, the latter of which allows for a more nuanced understanding of entrepreneurial crowdfunding. The first study adopts an explorative quantitative research approach, utilising records of 421 crowdfunding campaigns published on Kickstarter, a leading reward-based online crowdfunding platform. Various crowdfunding campaign characteristics are investigated to analyse how these features drive fundraising performance and outcomes. Findings reveal that entrepreneurs can exploit particular online pitch elements to create a project narrative, which enables them to establish project legitimacy within the context of crowdfunding platform communities. The second study utilises a dataset of 81,829 crowdfunding campaigns and multivariate and probit analysis methods to examine the role of the entrepreneurs’ network size and the quality of the network relationship for capital assembly and fundraising outcome in crowdfunding. The analysis demonstrates that the quality of the network relationship, in addition to the size of the network, contributes to crowdfunding performance and outcomes. Results show that the relationship between the quality of the network relationship, the size of the network and capital assembly in crowdfunding are positive. Further, the results highlight that the addition of network relationship quality specifications improve the explanation of variation in capital assembly. This suggests that estimations that do not include network relationship variables are ineffective in explaining how entrepreneurs can facilitate capital assembly and achieve success in crowdfunding. Accordingly, the study emphasises the role and importance of network relationship quality activities as additional determinants of crowdfunding outcomes. This study enunciates the importance for entrepreneurs to form ‘project-syndicates’, a project-related community that co-creates the project narrative and legitimacy, leading to better fundraising performance and outcomes. The third study complements the two previously discussed quantitative studies by comprising qualitative data that elicits interpretations over a twenty-four month period in a longitudinal single case study. This study investigates the role, behaviour and experience of entrepreneurs during the crowdfunding process and relates entrepreneurial activities to fundraising performance. This study reveals three identity strategies, demonstrating how the entrepreneur can leapfrog from one side of the bimodal funding distribution in crowdfunding to the other extreme following an identity transition. This study sheds light on the entrepreneurial micro-foundations of crowdfunding by focusing on the entrepreneur’s processes pre-, during and post-crowdfunding. As such, this research provides valuable insights into entrepreneurial crowdfunding. This thesis, taken as a whole, contributes to the understanding of entrepreneurial capital assembly through crowdfunding, and develops new theory that advances the current knowledge of crowdfunding performance and outcomes. As such, this thesis contributes to entrepreneurship theory by investigating crowdfunding from three different perspectives, utilising theories related to entrepreneurial narratives and legitimacy, networking and role identity to study the unique context of crowdfunding, where much remains to be explored

Potential Use of Dopamine and Dopamine Agonists as Angiogenesis Inhibitors in the Treatment of Cancer

In recent years, there have been numerous developments in monoclonal antibodies used as anticancer drugs with a focus on reducing the ability of cancers to metastasize and produce new vasculature. These agents are called angiogenesis inhibitors and although these agents have been proven effective in treating certain types of cancers, production and administration of monoclonal antibodies comes at a steep cost with a severe side effect profile. Under normal physiologic conditions, angiogenesis is an important mechanism to create new blood vessels from preexisting vessels, usually occurring in adults. Tumor cells can hijack the angiogenesis pathway to produce new distant tumors sites, which may lead to poor prognosis. In an ongoing effort to discover alternative therapeutic options for cancer treatment, researchers have discovered that dopamine (DA) is able to inhibit angiogenesis through a mechanism involving vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) and the D2 receptors. When the D2 receptor is activated, this causes the VEGF receptor 2 (VEGFR2) to undergo endocytosis thereby preventing VEGF binding and stopping the creation of new vessels. Endocrine and gastrointestinal cancers have a high expression of D2 and VEGF receptors and therefore are potential targets of therapy. Although DA may provide better tolerability and cost benefits, future studies in humans must be conducted to clearly determine its safety and efficacy as a treatment for cancer

Confinement vs. range rearing for egg production

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