When west meets Middle East: the missing link in values evolution

This research explores the relationship between the culture of the Arab Gulf State of Oman and Omani employee attitudes towards the workplace. A review of the organisational literature suggests that members of a traditional Middle Eastern culture, such as Oman’s, are likely to experience difficulty with Western management practices, due to the Western cultural values embedded in those practices. On the other hand, it is proposed in the literature that, given the region’s transitional stage of development, not all Gulf employees would necessarily resist management practices embedded with Western cultural values. A key objective of this research then is to explore the ways in which Arab Gulf employees are currently experiencing, and reacting to, organisational situations where traditional culture intersects in challenging ways with Western management practices. An inductive qualitative research design and an interpretive ethnography methodology were employed by the researcher. Thirty-five semi-structured interviews with employees in Oman were conducted. All interviews were conducted away from the workplace, and an interview protocol was followed. Values-based data analysis and interpretation, in conjunction with cognitive mapping, was used to arrive at the findings. An initial key finding was that the local cultural values, although rather traditional, are nevertheless informing positive attitudes towards the contemporary workplace in a somewhat surprising way. The thesis then draws on the crossvergence account of values evolution, and on ‘possible self’ theory in conjunction with the qualitative data to explain why and when contemporary workplace practices which conflict with traditional sociocultural values will be accepted by employees, and when they will be rejected. A further key finding is that there has been a missing link, not previously understood and included, in values evolution. Brought to the surface in this research as a discovery is the finding that cultural values which emphasise rules and duties can produce an ‘ought self’ which influences perception and behaviour. This finding demonstrates that researchers cannot rely upon a straightforwardly direct link between cultural values and employee attitudes.The author suggests strategies for managers to frame the introduction of new workplace practices in ways that assist employees to see those practices as aligning with traditional sociocultural values. This thesis makes a significant and original contribution to cross-cultural theory, particularly as it attempts to explain the processes of values evolution by providing an explanatory ‘missing link’ model of the values-evolution process. In this way, the study goes beyond previous research into Gulf States' culture by thoroughly and deeply characterising that culture, and by uncovering and explaining its dynamic interactions with the self-concept and resultant attitudes toward the workplace

Seismic velocity structure of seaward-dipping reflectors on the South American continental margin

Seaward dipping reflectors (SDRs) are a key feature within the continent to ocean transition zone of volcanic passive margins. Here we conduct an automated pre-stack depth-migration imaging analysis of commercial seismic data from the volcanic margins of South America. The method used an isotropic, ray-based approach of iterative velocity model building based on the travel time inversion of residual pre-stack depth migration move-out. We find two distinct seismic velocity patterns within the SDRs. While both types show a general increase in velocity with depth consistent with expected compaction and alteration/metamorphic trends, those SDRs that lie within faulted half grabens also have high velocity zones at their down-dip ends. The velocity anomalies are generally concordant with the reflectivity and so we attribute them to the presence of dolerite sills that were injected into the lava pile. The sills therefore result from late-stage melt delivery along the large landward-dipping faults that bound them. In contrast the more outboard SDRs show no velocity anomalies, are more uniform spatially and have unfaulted basal contacts. Our observations imply that the SDRs document a major change in rift architecture, with magmatism linked with early extension and faulting of the upper brittle crust transitioning into more organised, dike-fed eruptions similar to seafloor spreading

The role of the ER stress response protein PERK in rhodopsin retinitis pigmentosa

Mutations in rhodopsin, the light sensitive protein of rod cells, are the most common cause of dominant retinitis pigmentosa (RP), a type of inherited blindness caused by the dysfunction and death of photoreceptor cells. The P23H mutation, the most frequent single cause of RP in the USA, causes rhodopsin misfolding and induction of the unfolded protein response (UPR), an adaptive ER stress response and signalling network that aims to enhance the folding and degradation of misfolded proteins to restore proteostasis. Prolonged UPR activation, and in particular the PERK branch, can reduce protein synthesis and initiate cell death through induction of pro-apoptotic pathways. Here, we investigated the effect of pharmacological PERK inhibition on retinal disease process in the P23H-1 transgenic rat model of retinal degeneration. PERK inhibition with GSK2606414A led to an inhibition of eIF2α phosphorylation, which correlated with reduced ERG function and decreased photoreceptor survival at both high and low doses of PERK inhibitor. Additionally, PERK inhibition increased the incidence of inclusion formation in cultured cells overexpressing P23H rod opsin, and increased rhodopsin aggregation in the P23H-1 rat retina, suggesting enhanced P23H misfolding and aggregation. In contrast, treatment of P23H-1 rats with an inhibitor of eIF2α phosphatase, salubrinal, led to improved photoreceptor survival. Collectively, these data suggest the activation of PERK is part of a protective response to mutant rhodopsin that ultimately limits photoreceptor cell death

Nutrient transporter expression in both the placenta and fetal liver are affected by maternal smoking

ACKNOWLEGDEMENTS Authors would like to thank the nurses of ward 309 (Aberdeen Royal Infirmary) for consenting participants and NHS Grampian Biorepository staff. Also, Gary Cameron for performing the LC-MS/MS cotinine analyses and Ms Linda Robertson for technical assistance. The authors state there are no conflicts of interest. Author contributions: NW, PF and PAF designed the research; NW conducted research, analysed data and wrote paper; PAF responsible for ethics (SAFeR study). All authors read and approved the final manuscript. Authors would like to thank the study funders: Glasgow Children’s Hospital Charity YRSS/PHD/2016/05 and UK Medical Research Council: MR/L010011/1, to PAF & PJOS and MR/P011535/1 to PAF. The funders played no role in the conduct, analysis or publication of the studyPeer reviewedPublisher PD

Autonomous four-dimensional mapping and tracking of a coastal upwelling front by an autonomous underwater vehicle

© The Author(s), 2015. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. The definitive version was published in Journal of Field Robotics 33 (2016): 67-81, doi:10.1002/rob.21617Coastal upwelling is a wind-driven ocean process that brings cooler, saltier, and nutrient-rich deep water upward to the surface. The boundary between the upwelling water and the normally stratified water is called the “upwelling front.” Upwelling fronts support enriched phytoplankton and zooplankton populations, thus they have great influences on ocean ecosystems. Traditional ship-based methods for detecting and sampling ocean fronts are often laborious and very difficult, and long-term tracking of such dynamic features is practically impossible. In our prior work, we developed a method of using an autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) to autonomously detect an upwelling front and track the front's movement on a fixed latitude, and we applied the method in scientific experiments. In this paper, we present an extension of the method. Each time the AUV crosses and detects the front, the vehicle makes a turn at an oblique angle to recross the front, thus zigzagging through the front to map the frontal zone. The AUV's zigzag tracks alternate in northward and southward sweeps, so as to track the front as it moves over time. This way, the AUV maps and tracks the front in four dimensions—vertical, cross-front, along-front, and time. From May 29 to June 4, 2013, the Tethys long-range AUV ran the algorithm to map and track an upwelling front in Monterey Bay, CA, over five and one-half days. The tracking revealed spatial and temporal variabilities of the upwelling front.This work was supported by the David and Lucile Packard Foundation

Endemic trees in a tropical biodiversity hotspot imperilled by an invasive tree

Non-native plants invade some tropical forests but there are few long-term studies of these invasions, and the consequences for plant richness and diversity are unclear. Repeated measurements of permanent plots in tropical montane rain forests in the Blue and John Crow Mountains National Park in Jamaica over 24 to 40 years coincided with invasion by a non-native tree, Pittosporum undulatum. By 2014, P. undulatum comprised, on average, 11.9% of stems ≥ 3 cm diameter and 10.4% of the basal area across 16 widespread plots within c. 250 ha of the forests. Across these plots, the more P. undulatum increased in basal area over 24 years, the greater the decline in local, plot-scale tree species richness, and the greater the reduction in the percentage of stems of endemic tree species. Plot-scale tree diversity (Shannon and Fisher\u27s alpha) also declined the more P. undulatum basal area increased, but beta diversity across the plots was not reduced. Declines in local-scale tree species diversity and richness as the invasion progresses is especially concerning because Jamaica is a global biodiversity hotspot. Native birds disperse P. undulatum seeds widely, and future hurricanes will probably further increase its invasion by reducing canopy cover and therefore promoting growth rates of its established shade-tolerant seedlings. Remedial action is needed now to identify forest communities with greatest endemism, and to protect them through a continuing programme of control and removal of P. undulatum