Fredholm Operators and Einstein Metrics on Conformally Compact Manifolds

The main purpose of this monograph is to give an elementary and self-contained account of the existence of asymptotically hyperbolic Einstein metrics with prescribed conformal infinities sufficiently close to that of a given asymptotically hyperbolic Einstein metric with nonpositive curvature. The proof is based on an elementary derivation of sharp Fredholm theorems for self-adjoint geometric linear elliptic operators on asymptotically hyperbolic manifolds.Comment: Latex; 83 + vi pages. Fixed an error in the proof of Lemma 3.7(b

Praeludium et fuga VII

Thesis (M.M.)--Boston Universit

Understanding the construction of marketers’ credibility by NZ senior managers: An interpretive study

Academics report that marketers are losing their influence in the boardroom due in part to serious challenges to marketing’s credibility. Although the credibility of marketing sources has received much attention since the early 1950s, research into how individuals in business organisations construct the credibility of marketers is scarce. This study, using in-depth interviews, describes how seven senior managers from different New Zealand businesses construct the credibility of marketers. For these senior managers, the credibility of marketers is grounded in their performance in delivering commercial outcomes. The findings also suggest that senior managers construct credibility in terms of a work aspect and a social aspect of a marketer’s performance, and that both these aspects have to be present if the marketer is to be considered credible. The work aspect of performance is made up of a marketer’s Pedigree, Projects, and Pervasive Influence. The Pedigree of a marketer includes their qualifications, skills and background. A degree is usually the minimum qualification required, particularly for more senior marketing roles. Skills expected from marketers include leadership, management, sales and intuition. With regard to background, the marketer needs to demonstrate they have achieved commercial outcomes in previous employment to be considered credible. Projects describes how marketers must design and implement cogent marketing plans, work effectively without supervision, achieve commercial outcomes in a clever or creative way, and provide evidence that their projects have contributed to commercial outcomes. Pervasive Influence describes how marketers influence others in the organisation toward customer-centricity. Marketers can lose credibility in the work aspect of their performance when they have no structured purpose to their marketing research, are unable to execute marketing plans or are unable to demonstrate the results of a marketing project. The social aspect of a marketer’s performance is made up of Personal Integrity and Professional Conduct. Personal Integrity describes marketers who are respected, take pride in their work, strive to improve themselves and are not precious. Professional Conduct describes a marketer who relates and collaborates competently and professionally with others, and is a team fit. Marketers lose credibility in the social aspect of their performance when they are precious, flighty, argumentative, and only out for themselves. This paper contributes a framework that describes the construction of a marketer’s credibility from a senior manager’s perspective. It also introduces a new understanding of credibility, grounded in performance terms, which is distinct from past conceptualisations of credibility found in the literature, which is based on expertise and trustworthiness. These findings demonstrate that while a marketer might be considered an expert and trustworthy, if they are not delivering commercial outcomes then they may not be considered credible, from a senior manager’s perspective

The importance of India: restoring sight to Australia's strategic blind spot

 Executive summary Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has invited leading politicians and opinion makers in the region to a conference in early December in Sydney to discuss his vision of an Asia-Pacific Community and building inclusive institutions to discuss the full spectrum of security matters in the region. Besides wanting to ensure that Australia remains relevant rather than sidelined in any future setup, the main impetus behind Canberra’s push for top-down security architecture is to take a proactive approach in order to manage China’s rise and build institutions that can help ease current and future tensions. When Canberra looks northwards to Asia, it mainly sees China’s presence and ignores the other rising giant of the region: India. In important respects, India’s economic and strategic prospects appear more favourable than China’s. Even if we accept that the continued and rapid rise of China will be the most significant driver of change and potential instability in Asia, India’s role and its strategic weight in helping to ‘structurally’ constrain and manage a potentially disruptive China is poorly appreciated by Canberra. The paper traces the rise of ‘strategic India’ in Asia, the significance of the remarkable improvement in the US-India relationship, and the rapid progress made in bringing India into the existing regional security order. Image: brucetct / Flick

Traumatic Brain Injury Screening Tools in Primary Care

Traumatic brain injuries are a significant health concern, being responsible for over 52,000 deaths each year. Unfortunately, many traumatic brain injuries often go misdiagnosed or undiagnosed. Primary care providers are the principal and first source of medical contact for individuals, meaning that they are vital in the diagnosis of previous traumatic brain injuries in order to prevent future sequelae. There are currently several well-validated screening tools currently available for use by primary care providers. This study uses a self-reported survey to determine which of these tools are used by primary care nurse practitioners from a northern New England state and to compare the results to the suggestions made in current literature. The tools chosen by different primary care providers vary greatly, as do the indications used for initiation of traumatic brain injury screening. There were a total of 17 participants in the study, all of whom were at least masters level prepared nurse practitioners. The average number of years spent in practice was 11.7, with an average of 10.4 of those years in primary care. The most commonly used screening tool was the Mini Mental Status Exam, followed by the Montreal Cognitive Assessment and the CDC Acute Concussion Evaluation tool. Screening tools developed specifically for TBI assessment, such as the Ohio State University TBI ID Method and the Brief Traumatic Brain Injury Questionnaire were found to be seldom used (17% of total participants). Many primary care providers do not feel confident in their ability to diagnose such injuries, often due to lack of expertise in the area, which was reflected in the self-reported survey. As new screening tools become available, it is imperative that they are tested for validity, and then utilized in practice. Due to the complexity of diagnosing traumatic brain injuries, the most simple and accurate screening tools are often the ones preferred by providers. Moving forward, simple new screening tools need to be evaluated for effectiveness and ease of use. These tools should then be introduced to primary care practitioners, with suggestions as to how to best supplement them with other parts of an exam. Since TBIs are becoming an increasingly more common diagnosis in primary care, future advanced nursing evidence-based practice should focus on the recommended screening tools so as to better identify and guide treatment. Future research is needed to evaluate the extent to which part of an exam yield the most pertinent and accurate findings, as well as to compare the effectiveness of screening models utilized in civilian and military settings

Weakly-supervised appraisal analysis

This article is concerned with the computational treatment of Appraisal, a Systemic Functional Linguistic theory of the types of language employed to communicate opinion in English. The theory considers aspects such as Attitude (how writers communicate their point of view), Engagement (how writers align themselves with respect to the opinions of others) and Graduation (how writers amplify or diminish their attitudes and engagements). To analyse text according to the theory we employ a weakly-supervised approach to text classification, which involves comparing the similarity of words with prototypical examples of classes. We evaluate the method's performance using a collection of book reviews annotated according to the Appraisal theory

Tests on duralumin columns for aircraft construction

The following paper is based on the results of tests, upon duralumin columns, contained in two theses presented to the Department of Civil and Sanitary Engineering of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology