An unusually severe presentation of dolphin poxvirus in bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops aduncus) within the Swan-Canning Estuary

In 2009 two adult female bottlenose dolphins were found dead within the Swan-Canning Estuary. Both dolphins had severe ulcerative skin lesions covering over 70% of their skin surface area. Histological analyses identified viral inclusion bodies characteristic of poxvirus within these skin lesions. The severity and extent of the lesions were deemed to have caused terminal debilitation in the two dolphins. Infection with dolphin poxvirus is usually characterised by one to several mild skin lesions in juveniles that regress with time. Poxvirus infection has never been documented as the cause of death in adult dolphins; furthermore the severe skin lesions observed in the two dolphins mark a novel presentation of dolphin poxvirus infection. The definitive mechanisms by which the characteristic poxvirus lesions may have progressed to the unusually severe lesions is currently unknown but possible factors may include: the presence of a poxvirus strain possessing greater virulence; and/or the potentially immunosuppressive effects associated with living in a heavily utilised and inherently stressful estuarine environment. Dolphins are recognised as biosentinels for coastal and estuarine ecosystems, and atypical disease presentations such as this may be indicative of the environmental conditions of systems like the Swan-Canning Estuary

A framework for the analysis of the potential performance of Chief Information Officers

Information Systems Function is an organisational area of major importance in the context of the competitive development of organisations. At the centre of the Information Systems Function we find the Chief Information Officer (CIO), who is the main responsible for the organisation and leadership of this function. Given the nature of the duties assigned to the CIO, her/his work directly influences the development of an organisation, so it has become important to assess her/his potential performance before s/he finds herself/him in charge of the information systems function. This article proposes the CIO Performance Square - a framework for analysing the potential performance of CIOs based on their education and experience.- (undefined

Evidence of Color Coherence Effects in W+jets Events from ppbar Collisions at sqrt(s) = 1.8 TeV

We report the results of a study of color coherence effects in ppbar collisions based on data collected by the D0 detector during the 1994-1995 run of the Fermilab Tevatron Collider, at a center of mass energy sqrt(s) = 1.8 TeV. Initial-to-final state color interference effects are studied by examining particle distribution patterns in events with a W boson and at least one jet. The data are compared to Monte Carlo simulations with different color coherence implementations and to an analytic modified-leading-logarithm perturbative calculation based on the local parton-hadron duality hypothesis.Comment: 13 pages, 6 figures. Submitted to Physics Letters

On the Holographic RG-flow and the Low-energy, Strong Coupling, Large N Limit

From the AdS/CFT correspondence, we learn that the classical evolution of supergravity in the bulk can be reduced to a RG-flow equation for the dual low-energy, strongly coupled and large N gauge theory on the boundary. This result has been used to obtain interesting relations between the various terms in the gravitational part of the boundary effective action, in particular the term that affect the cosmological constant. It is found that once the cosmological constant is cancelled in the UV theory, the RG-flow symmetry of the boundary effective action automatically implies the existence of zero cosmological constant solutions that extend all the way into the IR. Given the standard (and well founded) contradiction between the RG-flow idea and the observational evidence of a small cosmological constant, this is considered to be an important progress, albeit incomplete, towards the final solution. Motivated by this success, it would be interesting to see whether this RG-stability extends outside the scope of strong 't Hooft coupling and large N regime that are implicitly assumed in the de Boer-Verlinde-Verlinde Hamilton-Jacobi formulation of the holographic RG-flow equations of the boundary theory. In this paper, we address this question. Taking into account the leading order corrections in the 1/N and $\alpha'/{R^2}$ parameters, we derive new bulk/boundary relations, from which one can read all the local terms in the boundary effective action. Next, we use the resulting constraints, to examine whether the RG-stability of the cosmological constant extends to the new coupling regime. It would be also interesting to use these constraints to study the Randall-Sundrum scenario in this case.Comment: 27 pages, LateX, no figures, minor changes, typos corrected and added more reference

Customer emotions in service failure and recovery encounters

Emotions play a significant role in the workplace, and considerable attention has been given to the study of employee emotions. Customers also play a central function in organizations, but much less is known about customer emotions. This chapter reviews the growing literature on customer emotions in employee–customer interfaces with a focus on service failure and recovery encounters, where emotions are heightened. It highlights emerging themes and key findings, addresses the measurement, modeling, and management of customer emotions, and identifies future research streams. Attention is given to emotional contagion, relationships between affective and cognitive processes, customer anger, customer rage, and individual differences

Search for electroweak production of single top quarks in ppˉp\bar{p} collisions.

We present a search for electroweak production of single top quarks in the electron+jets and muon+jets decay channels. The measurements use ~90 pb^-1 of data from Run 1 of the Fermilab Tevatron collider, collected at 1.8 TeV with the DZero detector between 1992 and 1995. We use events that include a tagging muon, implying the presence of a b jet, to set an upper limit at the 95% confidence level on the cross section for the s-channel process ppbar->tb+X of 39 pb. The upper limit for the t-channel process ppbar->tqb+X is 58 pb. (arXiv

Hard Single Diffraction in pbarp Collisions at root-s = 630 and 1800 GeV

Using the D0 detector, we have studied events produced in proton-antiproton collisions that contain large forward regions with very little energy deposition (``rapidity gaps'') and concurrent jet production at center-of-mass energies of root-s = 630 and 1800 Gev. The fractions of forward and central jet events associated with such rapidity gaps are measured and compared to predictions from Monte Carlo models. For hard diffractive candidate events, we use the calorimeter to extract the fractional momentum loss of the scattered protons.Comment: 11 pages 4 figures. submitted to PR

All-sky search for long-duration gravitational wave transients with initial LIGO

We present the results of a search for long-duration gravitational wave transients in two sets of data collected by the LIGO Hanford and LIGO Livingston detectors between November 5, 2005 and September 30, 2007, and July 7, 2009 and October 20, 2010, with a total observational time of 283.0 days and 132.9 days, respectively. The search targets gravitational wave transients of duration 10-500 s in a frequency band of 40-1000 Hz, with minimal assumptions about the signal waveform, polarization, source direction, or time of occurrence. All candidate triggers were consistent with the expected background; as a result we set 90% confidence upper limits on the rate of long-duration gravitational wave transients for different types of gravitational wave signals. For signals from black hole accretion disk instabilities, we set upper limits on the source rate density between 3.4×10-5 and 9.4×10-4 Mpc-3 yr-1 at 90% confidence. These are the first results from an all-sky search for unmodeled long-duration transient gravitational waves. © 2016 American Physical Society