Ethics and Business

To many, the old adage that business and ethics never mix, has been reinforced by the constant revelations of the various tribunals set up since the early 1990’s. Laura Nash, Associate Professor at Boston University Graduate School of Management has stated “Many an executive today voices cynicism at the relevance of moral inquiry to managerial practice. For many reasons from the external fact of greed to the very different ways in which we tend to think about managing and morality, ethics and business have often seemed if not downright contradictory, at least several worlds apart” Commentators on Irish business practice might tend to agree with Nash as Irish company law has been characterised, by a culture of non compliance with only 13% of companies filing returns on time in 1997 to the Companies Office. Persistent breaches of the Companies Act, banking scandals, alleged payments to politicians, and company non compliance with many regulatory bodies, would lead most observers to believe that the question of business ethics has never been high on the agenda of certain Irish companies and entrepreneurs

An interprofessional, intercultural, immersive short-term study abroad program: public health and service systems in rome

The purpose of this paper is to describe a short-term study abroad program that exposes engineering and nursing undergraduate students from the United States and Italy to an intercultural and interprofessional immersion experience. Faculty from Purdue University and Sapienza Università di Roma collaborated to design a technical program that demonstrates the complementary nature of engineering and public health in the service sector, with Rome as an integral component of the program. Specifically, the intersection of topics including systems, reliability, process flow, maintenance management, and public health are covered through online lectures, in-class activities and case study discussions, field experiences, and assessments. Herein, administrative issues such as student recruitment, selection, and preparation are elucidated. Additionally, the pedagogical approach used to ensure constructive alignment among the program goals, the intended learning outcomes, and the teaching and learning activities is described. Finally, examples of learning outcomes resulting from this alignment are provided

Granite petrogenesis and crustal evolution studies in the Damara Pan-African orogenic belt, Namibia

Major and trace element data for Damara granitoids distinguish three geochemically distinct granitoid groups, - crustal-melt granitoids, calc-alkaline granitoids and within-plate granitoids. The overwhelming majority of the Oamara granitoids are peraluminous crustal-melt leucogranites which have elevated 87Sr/86Sr ratios (> 0.710) and old model Nd ages (~ 2.0 Ga). Calc-alkaline diorites are metaluminous and have the lowest 87Sr/86Sr ratios (0.704 - 0.707) and model Nd ages (OM) in the range 1.1 -1.7 Ga. Within-plate granitoids are characterised by elevated high-field strength (HFS) abundances and have model Nd ages (OM) in the range 1.1 - 1.6 Ga. All Damara granitoids have model Nd ages (OM) older than about 1.0 Ga suggesting that intracrustal reworking was the dominant process and crustal growth was negligible. Damara granitoids define a hyperbola on an ∈ Sr vs. ∈ Nd diagram but cannot be modelled as simple binary mixtures between old continental crust and depleted mantle end-members. An episodic intracrustal remobilisation model is proposed to explain the hyperbola defined by granitoid data on an ∈ Sr vs. ∈ Nd diagram. Within the 10 km thick Damara metasedimentary pile 87Sr/86Sr ratios increase systematically with depth. This trend is accompanied by a decrease in 143Nd/144Nd ratios. Model Nd ages (CHUR) for the stratigraphically oldest Damara metasediments (Nosib Group) are about 2.0 Ga whereas the younger metasediments (Kuiseb Formation and Nama Group) have model Nd ages (CHUR) about 1.0 Ga reflecting sediment input from younger source terrains. The ratio of model ages (TNdCHUR/TSrBE) is used as an index of intracrustal reworking since it provides a measure of Rb/Sr fractionation (increases) relative to SmlNd fractionation. The older Damara metasediments (Nosib Group) have the highest model age ratios suggesting that their source terrains have suffered the largest amount of intracrustal reworking. However, the rate of intracrustal reworking was greatest in source terrains sampled by the younger Damara metasediments (Kuiseb Formation and Nama Group). This suggests that the rate of intracrustal reworking increased through time in the interval (2.0 - 1.0 Ga) in this segment of continental crust

Intervención en un sistema de conducta

Los autores presentan algunos factores importantes que pueden ayudar a cambiar la interacción de pareja e interpersonal. Recuperando el concepto de sistema de conducta, insisten en identificar y sobre todo en modos de intervención en cada sistema a través de una serie de herramientas comunicativas e interpersonales.The authors present some important factors which can help to change interpersonal and couple interactions. Retrieving the concept of system of behaviour they insist on identifying and intervening in each system through a series of communicative and interpersonal tools.Les auteurs présentent quelques aspects d’importance que peuvent aider à changer les interactions du couple et interpersonnels. Récupérant le concept de système conductuel ils mettent l’accent dans l’identification et l’intervention sur ces systèmes, à travers d’une série d’éléments communicatifs et interpersonnels

Ratnakīrti's Apohasiddhi

Das Ziel dieser Dissertation ist es, einen bestimmten Punkt in der Entwicklung einer philosophischen Theorie festzustellen, und einen Überblick darüber zu geben, wie die Entwicklung bis zu diesem Punkt verlief. Diese Theorie ist die buddhistische Lehre der Sonderung von anderem (anyāpohavāda). Sie erklärt, wie völlig voneinander verschiedene Einzeldinge als gemeinsame Merkmale besitzende erkannt werden können. Die Basis für diese Untersuchung war die Apohasiddhi (“Nachweis der Sonderung”), ein Text des buddhistischen Mönchs Ratnakīrti (fl. 1000–1050 u. Z.). Er lebte im Nordosten des heutigen Indien während der letzten indischen Phase der buddhistischen logisch-epistemologischen Tradition, und somit ca. 500 Jahre nach Dignāga (480–540 u. Z.), dem Gründer dieser Tradition. Um das erste Ziel zu erreichen, mußte eine kritische Edition, eine annotierte Übersetzung und eine gründliche Analyse der Apohasiddhi erstellt werden. Damit ließ sich mit einiger Sicherheit feststellen, welche Form die Lehre der Sonderung zu Ratnakīrtis Zeit erhalten hatte. Für die kritische Edition wurden fünf Manuskripte verwendet, von denen drei bisher noch nicht ediert worden waren. Eine Antwort zur zweiten Frage wurde gesucht indem die Hauptpunkte der Apohasiddhi in den Texten von Ratnakīrtis buddhistischen Vorgängern verfolgt, und die Unterschiede bzw. Gemeinsamkeiten in deren Argumenten festgehalten wurden. Dies wurde durch eine Studie ergänzt, die die Lehre der Sonderung, wie sie Ratnakīrti verstand, nachzuzeichnen versuchte.The aim of this dissertation is, first, to fixate a specific point in the development of a philosophical theory, and, second, to give an overview of how it came to this point. The theory in question is the Buddhist theory of other-exclusion (anyāpohavāda), a theory about how radically unique particulars can be known to share common features. The principal textual basis for this investigation is a text called Apohasiddhi (“Proof of Exclusion”), written by the Buddhist monk Ratnakīrti (fl. 1000–1050 CE). Ratnakīrti lived in the north-east of modern-day India, during the last vibrant phase of the Buddhist epistemological tradition in India and approximately 500 years after Dignāga (480–540 CE), the founder of that tradition. To achieve the first aim it was necessary to critically edit, translate and analyse the Apohasiddhi in order to determine, as precisely as possible, the form of the Buddhist theory of other-exclusion in its last Indian phase. For the critical edition five manuscripts were compared, three of which had not been edited before. An answer to the second question was sought by tracing the Apohasiddhi’s central points in texts of Ratnakīrti’s Buddhist predecessors, and comparing their arguments to those of Ratnakīrti. This was augmented by a study that tries to reconstruct the theory of other-exclusion as understood by Ratnakīrti

Parallelization Strategies for Graph-Code-Based Similarity Search

The volume of multimedia assets in collections is growing exponentially, and the retrieval of information is becoming more complex. The indexing and retrieval of multimedia content is generally implemented by employing feature graphs. Feature graphs contain semantic information on multimedia assets. Machine learning can produce detailed semantic information on multimedia assets, reflected in a high volume of nodes and edges in the feature graphs. While increasing the effectiveness of the information retrieval results, the high level of detail and also the growing collections increase the processing time. Addressing this problem, Multimedia Feature Graphs (MMFGs) and Graph Codes (GCs) have been proven to be fast and effective structures for information retrieval. However, the huge volume of data requires more processing time. As Graph Code algorithms were designed to be parallelizable, different paths of parallelization can be employed to prove or evaluate the scalability options of Graph Code processing. These include horizontal and vertical scaling with the use of Graphic Processing Units (GPUs), Multicore Central Processing Units (CPUs), and distributed computing. In this paper, we show how different parallelization strategies based on Graph Codes can be combined to provide a significant improvement in efficiency. Our modeling work shows excellent scalability with a theoretical speedup of 16,711 on a top-of-the-line Nvidia H100 GPU with 16,896 cores. Our experiments with a mediocre GPU show that a speedup of 225 can be achieved and give credence to the theoretical speedup. Thus, Graph Codes provide fast and effective multimedia indexing and retrieval, even in billion-scale use cases

The Taxonomy of Demospongiae (Porifera) from the Bay of Plenty, New Zealand - Connecting Linnaean and Phylogenetic Classification

The ability to accurately identify species is prerequisite for assessing levels of biological diversity and a fundamental requirement for ecological research. In recent times, there has been a shortfall in biologists who practice traditional alpha taxonomy, leading to difficulties in assessment of biodiversity in some taxonomic groups. The use of a molecular DNA barcoding approach has been suggested as a tool that can be used to complement and accelerate traditional alpha taxonomy, without supplanting or invalidating existing taxonomic practices. Two different techniques were used to identify organisms, molecular and alpha taxonomy. This thesis addressees several questions relating to sponge systematics. Research was focused on three areas; (1) record sponge biodiversity from the Bay of Plenty region, (2) undertake a systematic revision of the fauna correlating ‘historical’ taxonomy with a modern phylogenetic assessment (3) determine whether identifications based on genetic barcoding are congruent with those produced via traditional morphological methods (alpha taxonomy), and to assess the use of molecular techniques for Demospongiae species identifications. This was the first focused research on sponge diversity in the Bay of Plenty region. Fifty five species are described in this research. Of these, there are up to three new families, three new genera and thirty four species which are un-described and deemed new to science. However, a more conservative estimate with grouped specimens suggests that there is a minimum of at least one new family, one new genus, and eighteen new species that are un-described and deemed new to science. In summary, we conclude that for New Zealand Demospongiae, sequence variation present in the barcoding region of the COI gene is sufficient to allow for the identification individuals to their nominate species. The use of mtDNA barcoding can without doubt complement classical morphological taxonomy and accelerate the identification process and may in fact revive an interest classical morphological taxonomy