MANAGING THE FINANCIAL FLOWS: GLOBALIZATION ASPECT

The basic trends in financial flows movement on the regional level have being examined in context of integration and globalization processes. The influence of financial flows on the financial potential of the region and its ability to develop own financial infrastructure have being analyzed. The directions for overcoming the negative influence of the institutional factors on the financial flows movement have being defined.The basic trends in financial flows movement on the regional level have being examined in context of integration and globalization processes. The influence of financial flows on the financial potential of the region and its ability to develop own financial infrastructure have being analyzed. The directions for overcoming the negative influence of the institutional factors on the financial flows movement have being defined

What are doctors’ views of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) and has this changed since 1970 until the present, 2009?

There are notable differences between the dominant Western medical model of health and the model of CAM, and looking at these differences may provide a greater understanding around doctors’ views towards CAM and its place in the wider health system. The purpose of this dissertation is to provide a systematic literature review into how doctors view complementary and alternative medicine, and to see if this has changed since the 1970s through to 2009. A systematic review of the literature was conducted, mainly using online original research Journal articles from medical databases. The internet was the main tool used in locating data, and literature was included or excluded based on relevance. This was evaluated on the relevance of time period, such as 1970, subject, such as chiropractic, or theme, such as attitudes of doctors to CAM. Literature from the 1970s was scarce on this research question, but this review noted a significant increase in literature on this topic since the 1990s, identifying this research area as a relatively new field of study, with much potential for further exploration into beliefs and attitudes of doctors towards CAM. Scientific research papers that were published highlighted a strong emphasis towards doctors’ requirement for further scientific research on the efficacy of CAM. Randomised controlled trials (RCTs) were the preferred method of testing; however this review also discusses appropriate methodology to test both CAM and doctors’ views and beliefs. The difference between the Western medical model and the CAM model highlights the differences between both concepts; from which this author provides a possible interpretation of doctors’ indifferent views towards CAM using the psychological theory of cognitive dissonance (Festinger, 1957). This theory suggests that a person cannot hold two conflicting beliefs simultaneously, without the presence of cognitive ‘dissonance.’ “The existence of dissonance, being psychologically uncomfortable, will motivate the person to try to reduce the dissonance and achieve consonance” (Festinger, 3: 1957). This systematic review then provides a discussion around how this could explain doctors’ views towards CAM. . This then leads to the question of whether ‘successful integration of Western medicine and CAM is therefore possible’? The systematic review concludes with the highlighting of important issues in regard to the study design and methodology on effectively testing CAM, and on effectively testing doctors’ beliefs: also, the issues around integration and further scientific literature on CAM in a bid to potentially reduce the ‘moderate tone of answering’ that is reported in the literature in regard to doctors’ views towards CAM

Investigations on the Experimental Setup for Testing the Centric Tensile Strength According to ASTM C307 of Mineral-based Materials

Centric tensile tests often exhibit high standard deviations due to various factors, hence various test setups have been developed in the past. Based on the specifications in ASTM C307-18, the experimental setup was further developed to reduce the standard deviation resulting from the test setup itself and thus to obtain reliable, reproducible test results. Furthermore, it has been investigated, whether the test setup is suitable for materials of low strength. In the further developed experimental setup three mineral-based materials with tensile strengths in the range of 0.4 to 5.9 MPa were examined and compared to ASTM C307-18. For this purpose, the optical 3D-measurement system ARAMIS® and a positioning adapter designed for the specimen geometry were used to validate and verify the developed experimental setup and to ensure a consistent position of the specimen.  For the low strength mineral-based materials tensile strength tests could be implemented and recommendations for the test parameters test speed, preload and required number of specimens could be developed

Irrational paratext : manipulated paratext in the gothic postmodern novels house of leaves, the adventuress, and the three incestuous sisters.

Mark Z. Danielewski's House of Leaves and Audrey Niffenegger's two visual novels The Three Incestuous Sisters and The Adventuress all contain examples of manipulated paratext - paratexts being the devices involved in the presentation of the text such as titles, author names, font, introductions, illustrations, appendices, advertising, and interviews. The emphasis these authors place on these usually inconspicuous devices is an expression of the irrational themes contained within these texts. The irrational is an underlying theme of the Gothic genre and through examining the use of manipulated paratexts this thesis demonstrates how these texts make use of the irrational Gothic elements that are present within the postmodern. While Danielewski and Niffenegger both have these similar themes, the effects they create are extremely different. Niffenegger creates écriture feminine, or feminine writing as described by Hélène Cixous, by prioritising illustrations that feature marginalised bodily expression in order to convey the narrative rather than text. Danielewski, on the other hand, produces a text that is a pure pastiche of Gothic and postmodern devices in order to emulate the postmodern media in its creation of hyperreality and to reproduce the sensation of a media that possesses and changes its consumers. House of Leaves is the instigator for a number of similar texts that have been published since the turn of the millennium which will be considered an emerging literary movement

Aspects of electromagnetic scattering.

An expression for the field scattered by a perfectly conducting wedge with a deformed apex is formulated as a finite matrix equation to illustrate the application of the current density replacement technique. This technique enables the scattering from any size of body to be determined to a given accuracy after the inversion of one finite matrix, provided that the shape of the body can be derived by inwardly deforming a finite part of a body from which the scattering is known explicitly. The size of only the deformed part of the body is limited by available computational facilities. The field scattered from truncated and rounded wedges is calculated. These results not only enable the effect of edge deformation to be studied, but are also used to evaluate the accuracy of the geometrical theory of diffraction and physical optics estimates of the diffracted field. Expressions for the field scattered by a perfectly conducting wedge in the presence of transversely polarized line sources are found. These results are used with an iterative current density replacement technique to formulate expressions for the field scattered by a truncated wedge, and thus derive a secondary edge diffraction coefficient for use with the geometrical theory of diffraction. This coefficient is applicable to perfectly conducting bodies with small or large separation between edges. The increased accuracy obtainable with this coefficient, and a modification to the physical optics representation of the current density on a body with edges, are discussed