An exploratory study looking at the relationship marketing techniques used in the music festival industry

There are current issues and trends in the music festival market, which may affect the success of an event, and market saturation is at the forefront of these issues. Previous literature, maintaining the need for a marketing approach to festivals, identifi es the need for maintaining strong stakeholder relationships in order to succeed in a business environment; attention has been focused to the theory of relationship marketing (RM) because of the recognition that this practice is complementary to the marketing of festivals. The very nature of the music festival as an annual, usually, 4-day event means that effective marketing is needed to keep connections with the consumer throughout the year. This article focuses on the RM techniques utilised within the music festival industry from the viewpoint of the festival organiser in an attempt to establish how festival organisations value and monitor organisational relationships. This article explores the extent to which these relationships are valued and managed; furthermore, the variations between these intricate relationships are considered by focusing on those held with the organisation ’ s consumers and sponsors, the results of which have provided the ability to establish the importance and relevance of RM to the industry and further identify the marketing communication methods employed to establish and maintain such relationships. In-depth, convergent interviews have been conducted with a segment of music festival organisers from a range of events. The results have been integrated with the study of current literature to best exemplify these issues. It has been established that RM has a strong role in today ’ s commercial and independent music festival industry; technological advances are enabling the organiser to support online relationships further and increase consumer loyalty. There is a need to expand the research further because of the complexity of organisational relationships and the varying categories of festivals

A framework to assist in the analysis of risks and rewards of adopting BIM for SMEs in the UK

© 2017 The Author(s) Published by VGTU Press and Informa UK Limited, [trading as Taylor & Francis Group]. Building information modelling (BIM) adoption amongst larger construction firms and innovators seems to be on the increase. However, there is evidence to suggest that small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) are currently lagging behind and are losing out in winning publicly funded projects. Guidance and frameworks to assist SMEs to make an informed decision about BIM adoption are currently lacking. There has been no systematic effort to date to bring together the results of research in SMEs’ BIM adoption. Consequently, this paper seeks to bridge this gap and provide a conceptual framework to give a theoretical foundation to the study of brokering risks and rewards in the adoption of BIM for project delivery. This framework is comprehensive and includes trading off risks and rewards associated with several criteria, such as stage of involvement, project value, funding, and the procurement route chosen. The approach has been validated by a representative sample of BIM users and the findings of the validation are also presented. The findings of the framework validation reveal that early design stage, project size between £5 m and £50 m, private funding, and integrated project delivery procurement are the best opportunities that enable SMEs to maximise the benefits and minimise the risks, when adopting BIM

Tyrannobdella rex N. Gen. N. Sp. and the Evolutionary Origins of Mucosal Leech Infestations

BACKGROUND: Leeches have gained a fearsome reputation by feeding externally on blood, often from human hosts. Orificial hirudiniasis is a condition in which a leech enters a body orifice, most often the nasopharyngeal region, but there are many cases of leeches infesting the eyes, urethra, vagina, or rectum. Several leech species particularly in Africa and Asia are well-known for their propensity to afflict humans. Because there has not previously been any data suggesting a close relationship for such geographically disparate species, this unnerving tendency to be invasive has been regarded only as a loathsome oddity and not a unifying character for a group of related organisms. PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: A new genus and species of leech from Perú was found feeding from the nasopharynx of humans. Unlike any other leech previously described, this new taxon has but a single jaw with very large teeth. Phylogenetic analyses of nuclear and mitochondrial genes using parsimony and Bayesian inference demonstrate that the new species belongs among a larger, global clade of leeches, all of which feed from the mucosal surfaces of mammals. CONCLUSIONS: This new species, found feeding from the upper respiratory tract of humans in Perú, clarifies an expansion of the family Praobdellidae to include the new species Tyrannobdella rex n. gen. n. sp., along with others in the genera Dinobdella, Myxobdella, Praobdella and Pintobdella. Moreover, the results clarify a single evolutionary origin of a group of leeches that specializes on mucous membranes, thus, posing a distinct threat to human health

Polymorphisms in the Receptor Tyrosine Kinase MERTK Gene Are Associated with Multiple Sclerosis Susceptibility

Multiple sclerosis (MS) is a debilitating, chronic demyelinating disease of the central nervous system affecting over 2 million people worldwide. The TAM family of receptor tyrosine kinases (TYRO3, AXL and MERTK) have been implicated as important players during demyelination in both animal models of MS and in the human disease. We therefore conducted an association study to identify single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) within genes encoding the TAM receptors and their ligands associated with MS. Analysis of genotype data from a genome-wide association study which consisted of 1618 MS cases and 3413 healthy controls conducted by the Australia and New Zealand Multiple Sclerosis Genetics Consortium (ANZgene) revealed several SNPs within the MERTK gene (Chromosome 2q14.1, Accession Number NG_011607.1) that showed suggestive association with MS. We therefore interrogated 28 SNPs in MERTK in an independent replication cohort of 1140 MS cases and 1140 healthy controls. We found 12 SNPs that replicated, with 7 SNPs showing p-values of less than 10−5 when the discovery and replication cohorts were combined. All 12 replicated SNPs were in strong linkage disequilibrium with each other. In combination, these data suggest the MERTK gene is a novel risk gene for MS susceptibility

Practice Induces Function-Specific Changes in Brain Activity

Practice can have a profound effect on performance and brain activity, especially if a task can be automated. Tasks that allow for automatization typically involve repeated encoding of information that is paired with a constant response. Much remains unknown about the effects of practice on encoding and response selection in an automated task.To investigate function-specific effects of automatization we employed a variant of a Sternberg task with optimized separation of activity associated with encoding and response selection by means of m-sequences. This optimized randomized event-related design allows for model free measurement of BOLD signals over the course of practice. Brain activity was measured at six consecutive runs of practice and compared to brain activity in a novel task.Prompt reductions were found in the entire cortical network involved in encoding after a single run of practice. Changes in the network associated with response selection were less robust and were present only after the third run of practice.This study shows that automatization causes heterogeneous decreases in brain activity across functional regions that do not strictly track performance improvement. This suggests that cognitive performance is supported by a dynamic allocation of multiple resources in a distributed network. Our findings may bear importance in understanding the role of automatization in complex cognitive performance, as increased encoding efficiency in early stages of practice possibly increases the capacity to otherwise interfering information

Developing work breakdown structure matrix for managing offsite construction projects

© 2018, © 2018 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. Offsite construction techniques continue to receive considerable attention in academic/research discourse. Whilst discourse in seminal literature critique the positive and negative aspects of offsite; on balance, the benefits outweigh the barriers, especially when fully integrated and managed. From a project management perspective, the techniques applied to construction projects typically commence in determining the project’s work breakdown structure (WBS). Whilst the WBS is applicable to offsite deliverables, reflecting site-based construction activities and concomitant dependencies with the manufacturing processes, there are slight discrepancies in processes, and equally, some areas of repetition and duplication. This mismatch has a fundamental impact on integration, creating pockets of confusion, where less seamless (sub-optimal) synergy between offsite and onsite works is lost. This is an acknowledged challenge. There is, therefore, a real need to retain the product breakdown structure, whilst ensuring a seamless interface with the onsite works is maintained. This is a challenge. Whilst the WBS-matrix has been implemented in the project management domain to bridge the ‘products’ and ‘activities’, this arrangement has not yet been developed for offsite building construction projects. This paper reports an on-going research project set up to implement WBS-matrix for offsite construction projects. Two cases of recently completed offsite construction building projects were studied to analyse current practices–to inform the way forward to further develop the WBS-matrix. Findings from this research provide clear guidance for practitioners involved in offsite construction projects; particularly on the development of the WBS-matrix for manufacturing deliverables/activities in order to more effectively manage offsite construction projects.Published versio

Are social innovation paradigms incommensurable?

This paper calls attention to the problematic use of the concept of social innovation which remains undefined despite its proliferation throughout academic and policy discourses. Extant research has thus far failed to capture the socio-political contentions which surround social innovation. This paper therefore draws upon the work of Thomas Kuhn and conducts a paradigmatic analysis of the field of social innovation which identifies two emerging schools: one technocratic, the other democratic. The paper identifies some of the key thinkers in each paradigm and explains how the struggle between these two paradigms reveals itself to be part of a broader conflict between neoliberalism and it opponents and concludes by arguing that future research focused upon local contextualised struggles will reveal which paradigm is in the ascendancy

Plasma phosphorylated-tau181 as a predictive biomarker for Alzheimer’s amyloid, tau and FDG PET status

Plasma phosphorylated-tau181 (p-tau181) showed the potential for Alzheimer’s diagnosis and prognosis, but its role in detecting cerebral pathologies is unclear. We aimed to evaluate whether it could serve as a marker for Alzheimer’s pathology in the brain. A total of 1189 participants with plasma p-tau181 and PET data of amyloid, tau or FDG PET were included from ADNI. Cross-sectional relationships of plasma p-tau181 with PET biomarkers were tested. Longitudinally, we further investigated whether different p-tau181 levels at baseline predicted different progression of Alzheimer’s pathological changes in the brain. We found plasma p-tau181 significantly correlated with brain amyloid (Spearman ρ = 0.45, P 18.85 pg/ml) at baseline had a higher risk of pathological progression in brain amyloid (HR: 2.32, 95%CI 1.32–4.08) and FDG PET (3.21, 95%CI 2.06–5.01) status. Plasma p-tau181 may be a sensitive screening test for detecting brain pathologies, and serve as a predictive biomarker for Alzheimer’s pathophysiology

Kuhnian revolutions in neuroscience: the role of tool development.

The terms "paradigm" and "paradigm shift" originated in "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions" by Thomas Kuhn. A paradigm can be defined as the generally accepted concepts and practices of a field, and a paradigm shift its replacement in a scientific revolution. A paradigm shift results from a crisis caused by anomalies in a paradigm that reduce its usefulness to a field. Claims of paradigm shifts and revolutions are made frequently in the neurosciences. In this article I will consider neuroscience paradigms, and the claim that new tools and techniques rather than crises have driven paradigm shifts. I will argue that tool development has played a minor role in neuroscience revolutions.The work received no fundin