The future for African air transport: learning from Ethiopian Airlines

The African air transport market has been a laggard in development, remaining encircled by a plethora of problematic issues that curtailed its expansion and prosperity for decades. Regulatory restrictions, protectionism, inadequate infrastructure and prolonged loss making periods are regularly correlated with the plights of African carriers. Ethiopian Airlines is disrupting this negative manifestation and is exponentially expanding its African and international network footprint, enshrined in continuously profitability. The research quantifies that it is Africa’s most successful airline through a POA analysis by aggregating a series of pertinent airline indices to derive its prominence from amongst its peers. Three key pillars were deduced that specifically correlated with Ethiopian Airlines’ continued prosperity and can be used as template, which included a large intra-African network, a strong hub with multiple wave permutations for onward connecting traffic and forging a deep strategic partnership with a regional based African carrier

The strategic impact of airline group diversification: the cases of Emirates and Lufthansa

The airline industry is a diverse sector, requiring the support of a varied range of ancillary businesses such as maintenance, catering and travel agencies to carry out its activities. Many of these supporting businesses demonstrate the potential to drive wider profit margins despite generating lower revenues than the airlines themselves, making them attractive investment opportunities in a sector prone to volatile and often lacklustre trading. This study investigates two of the largest diversified airline groups, Germany's Lufthansa Group and Dubai's Emirates Group, each adopting a distinct approach towards diversification that may serve as a model for airline groups worldwide. The areas investigated were Cargo, Maintenance, Catering and Travel Services. The research found that whilst diversification may not always present the most attractive option financially, strategic factors can often outweigh such concerns. Business units studied were found to have variable prospects; particularly in the case of Catering, a sector on the rise – versus in-house Maintenance, which for airlines, is likely to see decline. The pursuit of third party revenue streams to offset weak internal trading and growth in competencies were found to be the key drivers of success. Interplay between segments was also apparent, showing that a well-organised diversification strategy can achieve robust cross-functional benefits and deliver significant value to the parent organisation

Appraisal of an iterative method for bound states

Iterative method for calculating bound state eigenvalues and properties of radial Schroedinger equatio

Creating the ‘ethics industry': Mary Warnock, in vitro fertilization and the history of bioethics in Britain

Recent decades have seen a shift in the management and discussion of biomedicine. Issues once considered by doctors and scientists are now handled by a diverse array of participants, including philosophers, lawyers, theologians and lay representatives. This new approach, known as ‘bioethics', has become the norm in regulatory committees and public debate. In this article, I argue that bioethics emerged as a valued enterprise in Britain during the 1980s because it fulfilled, and linked, the concerns of several groups. My analysis centres on the moral philosopher Mary Warnock, who chaired a government inquiry into human fertilization and embryology between 1982 and 1984, and became a strong advocate of bioethics. I detail how Warnock's promotion of bioethics tallied with the Conservative government's desire for increased surveillance of hitherto autonomous professions – while fulfilling her own belief that philosophers should engage in public affairs. And I also show that Warnock simultaneously promoted bioethics to doctors and scientists as an essential safeguard against declining political and public trust. This stance, I argue, framed bioethics as a vital intermediary between politics, the public, and biomedicine, and explains the growth and endurance of what the Guardian identified as an ethics industry

Gene Profiling of Aortic Valve Interstitial Cells under Elevated Pressure Conditions: Modulation of Inflammatory Gene Networks

The study aimed to identify mechanosensitive pathways and gene networks that are stimulated by elevated cyclic pressure in aortic valve interstitial cells (VICs) and lead to detrimental tissue remodeling and/or pathogenesis. Porcine aortic valve leaflets were exposed to cyclic pressures of 80 or 120 mmHg, corresponding to diastolic transvalvular pressure in normal and hypertensive conditions, respectively. Linear, two-cycle amplification of total RNA, followed by microarray was performed for transcriptome analysis (with qRT-PCR validation). A combination of systems biology modeling and pathway analysis identified novel genes and molecular mechanisms underlying the biological response of VICs to elevated pressure. 56 gene transcripts related to inflammatory response mechanisms were differentially expressed. TNF-α, IL-1α, and IL-1β were key cytokines identified from the gene network model. Also of interest was the discovery that pentraxin 3 (PTX3) was significantly upregulated under elevated pressure conditions (41-fold change). In conclusion, a gene network model showing differentially expressed inflammatory genes and their interactions in VICs exposed to elevated pressure has been developed. This system overview has detected key molecules that could be targeted for pharmacotherapy of aortic stenosis in hypertensive patients

Repositioning of special schools within a specialist, personalised educational marketplace - the need for a representative principle

This paper considers how notions of inclusive education as defined in the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) Salamanca Agreement (1994) have become dissipated, and can be developed and reframed to encourage their progress. It analyses the discourse within a range of academic, legal and media texts, exploring how this dissipation has taken place within the UK. Using data from 78 specialist school websites it contextualises this change in the use of the terms and ideas of inclusion with the rise of two other constructs, the 'specialist school' and 'personalisation'. It identifies the need for a precisely defined representative principle to theorise the type of school which inclusion aims to achieve, which cannot be subsumed by segregated providers. It suggests that this principle should not focus on the individual, but draw upon a liberal/democratic view of social justice, underlining inclusive education's role in removing social barriers that prevent equity, access and participation for all

Candida dubliniensis fungemia: the first four cases in North America.

We report the first four North American cases of Candida dubliniensis fungemia, including the first isolation of this organism from the bloodstream of an HIV-infected person. All isolates were susceptible in vitro to commonly used antifungal drugs. This report demonstrates that C. dubliniensis can cause bloodstream infection; however, the incidence of disease is not known

Stratigraphy of Lake Vida, Antarctica: hydrologic implications of 27 m of ice

Lake Vida, located in Victoria Valley, is one of the largest lakes in the McMurdo dry valleys and is known to contain hypersaline liquid brine sealed below 16 m of freshwater ice. For the first time, Lake Vida was drilled to a depth of 27 m. Below 21 m the ice is marked by well-sorted sand layers up to 20 cm thick within a matrix of salty ice. From ice chemistry, isotopic composition of δ18O and δ2H, and ground penetrating radar profiles, we conclude that the entire 27 m of ice formed from surface runoff and the sediment layers represent the accumulation of surface deposits. Radiocarbon and optically stimulated luminescence dating limit the maximum age of the lower ice to 6300 14C yr BP. As the ice cover ablated downwards during periods of low surface inflow, progressive accumulation of sediment layers insulated and preserved the ice and brine beneath, analogous to the processes that preserve shallow ground ice. The repetition of these sediment layers reveals hydrologic variability in Victoria Valley during the mid- to late Holocene. Lake Vida is an exemplar site for understanding the preservation of subsurface brine, ice, and sediment in a cold desert environment

Ultrafast optical generation of coherent phonons in CdTe1-xSex quantum dots

We report on the impulsive generation of coherent optical phonons in CdTe0.68Se0.32 nanocrystallites embedded in a glass matrix. Pump probe experiments using femtosecond laser pulses were performed by tuning the laser central energy to resonate with the absorption edge of the nanocrystals. We identify two longitudinal optical phonons, one longitudinal acoustic phonon and a fourth mode of a mixed longitudinal-transverse nature. The amplitude of the optical phonons as a function of the laser central energy exhibits a resonance that is well described by a model based on impulsive stimulated Raman scattering. The phases of the coherent phonons reveal coupling between different modes. At low power density excitations, the frequency of the optical coherent phonons deviates from values obtained from spontaneous Raman scattering. This behavior is ascribed to the presence of electronic impurity states which modify the nanocrystal dielectric function and, thereby, the frequency of the infrared-active phonons