Jakob Lothe, Beatrice Sandberg, and Ronald Speirs, eds. Franz Kafka: Narration, Rhetoric, and Reading. Columbus: Ohio State UP, 2011. x + 251 pp.

Review of Jakob Lothe, Beatrice Sandberg, and Ronald Speirs, eds. Franz Kafka: Narration, Rhetoric, and Reading. Columbus: Ohio State UP, 2011. x + 251 pp

An Evaluation of Customer Relationship Management (CRM) Practices among Agribusiness Firms

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) has received much attention in the business press as a management process to enhance firm performance. This research highlights differences between groups of respondents who believe their firm's CRM program is performing at a high level, as compared to those not satisfied with the performance of their CRM initiative. Cluster analysis was used to develop a taxonomy of respondents based on their perceived CRM performance. The resulting clusters are then profiled on both demographic variables as well as a core set of activities/behaviors to better understand key differences in the CRM programs of agribusinesses.customer relationship management (CRM), marketing, strategy, information technology, cluster analysis., Agribusiness,

Forecasting the Population-Level Impact of Reductions in HIV Antiretroviral Therapy in Papua New Guinea

Papua New Guinea (PNG) recently did not secure external funding for the continuation of its antiretroviral treatment (ART) programs meaning that supplies of HIV drugs for the estimated 38,000 people living with HIV in PNG could be completely depleted during 2010. Using a mathematical model of HIV transmission calibrated to available HIV epidemiology data from PNG, we evaluated the expected population-level impact of reductions in ART availability. If the number of people on ART falls to 10% of its current level, then there could be an approximately doubling in annual incidence and an additional 12,848 AIDS-related deaths (100.7% increase) over the next 5 years; if ART provision is halved, then annual incidence would increase by ~68%, and there would be an additional ~10,936 AIDS-related deaths (85.7% increase). These results highlight that maintenance of ART and associated services through external funding is essential for the health and well-being of HIV-positive people in PNG

25 years of the WHO essential medicines lists: progress and challenges.

The first WHO essential drugs list, published in 1977, was described as a peaceful revolution in international public health. The list helped to establish the principle that some medicines were more useful than others and that essential medicines were often inaccessible to many populations. Since then, the essential medicines list (EML) has increased in size; defining an essential medicine has moved from an experience to an evidence-based process, including criteria such as public-health relevance, efficacy, safety, and cost-effectiveness. High priced medicines such as antiretrovirals are now included. Differences exist between the WHO model EML and national EMLs since countries face varying challenges relating to costs, drug effectiveness, morbidity patterns, and rationality of prescribing. Ensuring equitable access to and rational use of essential medicines has been promoted through WHO's revised drug strategy. This approach has required an engagement by WHO on issues such as the effect of international trade agreements on access to essential medicines and research and development to ensure availability of new essential medicines

Integrating biological knowledge into variable selection : an empirical Bayes approach with an application in cancer biology

Background: An important question in the analysis of biochemical data is that of identifying subsets of molecular variables that may jointly influence a biological response. Statistical variable selection methods have been widely used for this purpose. In many settings, it may be important to incorporate ancillary biological information concerning the variables of interest. Pathway and network maps are one example of a source of such information. However, although ancillary information is increasingly available, it is not always clear how it should be used nor how it should be weighted in relation to primary data. Results: We put forward an approach in which biological knowledge is incorporated using informative prior distributions over variable subsets, with prior information selected and weighted in an automated, objective manner using an empirical Bayes formulation. We employ continuous, linear models with interaction terms and exploit biochemically-motivated sparsity constraints to permit exact inference. We show an example of priors for pathway- and network-based information and illustrate our proposed method on both synthetic response data and by an application to cancer drug response data. Comparisons are also made to alternative Bayesian and frequentist penalised-likelihood methods for incorporating network-based information. Conclusions: The empirical Bayes method proposed here can aid prior elicitation for Bayesian variable selection studies and help to guard against mis-specification of priors. Empirical Bayes, together with the proposed pathway-based priors, results in an approach with a competitive variable selection performance. In addition, the overall procedure is fast, deterministic, and has very few user-set parameters, yet is capable of capturing interplay between molecular players. The approach presented is general and readily applicable in any setting with multiple sources of biological prior knowledge

Are the facial gender and facial age variants of the composite face illusion products of a common mechanism?

When the upper half of one face (‘target region’) is spatially aligned with the lower half of another (‘distractor region’), the two halves appear to fuse together perceptually, changing observers’ subjective perception of the target region. This ‘composite face illusion’ is regarded as a key hallmark of holistic face processing. Importantly, distractor regions bias observers’ subjective perception of target regions in systematic, predictable ways. For example, male and female distractor regions make target regions appear masculine and feminine; young and old distractor regions make target regions appear younger and older. In the present study, we first describe a novel psychophysical paradigm that yields precise reliable estimates of these perceptual biases. Next, we use this novel procedure to establish a clear relationship between observers’ susceptibility to the age and gender biases induced by the composite face illusion. This relationship is seen in a lab-based sample (N = 100) and replicated in an independent sample tested online (N = 121). Our findings suggest that age and gender variants of the composite illusion may be different measures of a common structural binding process, with an origin early in the face processing stream

How Shall We Manage Our Journals in the Future? A Discussion of Richard T. Watson\u27s Proposals at ICIS 2004

Journals are the lifeblood of all academic professions, including information systems. At the 2004 International Conference on Information Systems (ICIS), Rick Watson, then President of the Association for Information Systems (AIS), presented proposals for improving IS journal management that included accrediting reviewers, creating a market for journal articles, and moving our journals to the next level of Internet sophistication. This paper reports on a panel of journal editors convened at ICIS 2005 to discuss the Watson proposals and their implications. The editors were those of the Journal of the Association for Information Systems, the Journal of MIS, and Management Information Systems Quarterly in the United States and the Journal of Information and Technology in the United Kingdom. The paper presents their views and a reply by Watson

Chronologie de la déglaciation en Gaspésie : nouvelles données et implications

De nouvelles datations à l'accélérateur de particules des premiers macrorestes végétaux terricoles accumulés dans les sédiments postglaciaires d'une douzaine de lacs répartis en Gaspésie et au Bas-Saint-Laurent bouleversent entièrement la chronologie générale de la déglaciation de ces régions. Ces données indiquent que la Gaspésie est restée sous l'emprise des glaces jusque vers 10 500-10 000 ans BP sauf en bordure de la péninsule, notamment le long de la côte septentrionale où la déglaciation de l'arrière-pays date d'au moins 12 500 ans BP par endroits. La déglaciation finale se serait produite vers 9500-9000 ans BP dans la région de Murdochville. La chronologie de déglaciation qui se dégage de ces données s'accorde maintenant avec celle des provinces maritimes, notamment pour ce qui est de l'existence de masses glaciaires actives durant l'épisode du Dryas récent. Les conséquences sont importantes, tant pour la modélisation du retrait des glaces, la colonisation végétale et l'accessibilité du territoire aux populations humaines que pour les reconstitutions climatiques.The general chronology of ice retreat in the Lower-St. Lawrence and Gaspé Peninsula regions is drastically changed by new AMS dates on the first terrestrial plant macrofossils recovered from postglacial sediments from a dozen lakes throughout the area. The dates indicate that most of the Gaspé Peninsula was ice-covered until 10 500-10 000 year BP except along coasts, particularly the northern coast, where ice retreat on land dates back over 12 500 year BP in places. Final deglaciation occurred in the Murdochville area at around 9500-9000 year BP. The implied chronology of ice retreat is now in accordance with that from the Maritimes, especially with respect to active ice masses during the Younger Dryas episode. This finding has important implications for the modelling of ice retreat and for climatic reconstructions, as well as for accessibility of land to plant, animal and human populations.Neue Datierungen mit dem Teilchenbeschleuniger der ersten pflanzlichen Erd-Makroreste aus den postglazialen Sedimenten eines Dutzends von Seen der Gaspé-Halbinsel und des unteren Sankt-Lorenz-Gebiets haben die allgemeine Chronologie der Enteisung dieser Regionen drastisch veràndert. Diese Daten zeigen, daB die Gaspé-Halbinsel bis gegen 10 500 - 10 000 Jahre v.u.Z. unter dem EinfluB des Eises stand, auBer am Rand der Halbinsel, besonders entlang der nôrdlichen Kiiste, wo die Enteisung des Hinterlandes stellenweise mindestens vor 12 500 Jahren v.u.Z. stattfand. Die endgultige Enteisung soil gegen 9500 - 9000 Jahre v.u.Z. in der Gegend von Murdochville stattgefunden haben. Die so erhaltene Chronologie der Enteisung stimmt jetzt mit der der Atlantikprovinzen ùberein, vor allem was die Existenz der aktiven Eismassen der jungeren Dryas-Episode betrifft. Die Konsequenzen sind wichtig, sowohl fur das Modellieren des Eisrùckzugs, die Pflanzen-Ansiedlung und die Zuganglichkeit des Gebiets fur menschliche Populationen wie auch fur die klimatischen Rekonstruktionen