Factors of Trusting in International Business

The paper reports on an online survey that set out to identify some of the factors of trusting. The survey was open to all nationalities and asked a broad variety of questions regarding individual choices of trusting. The authors give a brief overview of trust in different disciplines and argue that defining trust as an action provides a new platform for examining our relationships inside and outside organisations. Trusting as action signals the possibility of individual choices, new decisions and the potential for building more meaningful relationships. This paper identifies a set of factors that can form a basis for personal reflection and also provide a starting point for an organisational review of relationships in the workplace. Such a review is particularly valuable when members of the organisation come from different cultural background. Understanding our factors of trusting is the first step towards appreciating the needs of others in long term relationship building. The authors suggest that a more in depth survey could ascertain the validity of this pilot study. Understanding our own factors of trusting will enable us to recognise and accommodate the needs of others and build trusting relationships both in national and in international business

Synchronization and fault-masking in redundant real-time systems

A real time computer may fail because of massive component failures or not responding quickly enough to satisfy real time requirements. An increase in redundancy - a conventional means of improving reliability - can improve the former but can - in some cases - degrade the latter considerably due to the overhead associated with redundancy management, namely the time delay resulting from synchronization and voting/interactive consistency techniques. The implications of synchronization and voting/interactive consistency algorithms in N-modular clusters on reliability are considered. All these studies were carried out in the context of real time applications. As a demonstrative example, we have analyzed results from experiments conducted at the NASA Airlab on the Software Implemented Fault Tolerance (SIFT) computer. This analysis has indeed indicated that in most real time applications, it is better to employ hardware synchronization instead of software synchronization and not allow reconfiguration

Artemether resistance in vitro is linked to mutations in PfATP6 that also interact with mutations in PfMDR1 in travellers returning with Plasmodium falciparum infections.

BACKGROUND: Monitoring resistance phenotypes for Plasmodium falciparum, using in vitro growth assays, and relating findings to parasite genotype has proved particularly challenging for the study of resistance to artemisinins. METHODS: Plasmodium falciparum isolates cultured from 28 returning travellers diagnosed with malaria were assessed for sensitivity to artemisinin, artemether, dihydroartemisinin and artesunate and findings related to mutations in pfatp6 and pfmdr1. RESULTS: Resistance to artemether in vitro was significantly associated with a pfatp6 haplotype encoding two amino acid substitutions (pfatp6 A623E and S769N; (mean IC50 (95% CI) values of 8.2 (5.7 - 10.7) for A623/S769 versus 623E/769 N 13.5 (9.8 - 17.3) nM with a mean increase of 65%; p = 0.012). Increased copy number of pfmdr1 was not itself associated with increased IC50 values for artemether, but when interactions between the pfatp6 haplotype and increased copy number of pfmdr1 were examined together, a highly significant association was noted with IC50 values for artemether (mean IC50 (95% CI) values of 8.7 (5.9 - 11.6) versus 16.3 (10.7 - 21.8) nM with a mean increase of 87%; p = 0.0068). Previously described SNPs in pfmdr1 are also associated with differences in sensitivity to some artemisinins. CONCLUSIONS: These findings were further explored in molecular modelling experiments that suggest mutations in pfatp6 are unlikely to affect differential binding of artemisinins at their proposed site, whereas there may be differences in such binding associated with mutations in pfmdr1. Implications for a hypothesis that artemisinin resistance may be exacerbated by interactions between PfATP6 and PfMDR1 and for epidemiological studies to monitor emerging resistance are discussed

A THEORETICAL DEVELOPMENT AND EMPIRICAL TEST ON THE CONVERGENCE OF AGRICULTURAL PRODUCTIVITY IN THE USA

This study explores the evidence of convergence in the U.S agriculture sector by using the state level total factor productivity (TFP) data. The empirical investigation conducted in this study does not find any evidence of convergence while looking at the state level TFP. However, there seems to be some support for convergence at the regional level. Parametric and nonparametric models indicate significant role of human capital in explaining the regional discrepancies in agriculture productivity across states.Research Methods/ Statistical Methods,