The impact of occupational stress on psychological well-being in the fire service.

The research aimed to examine the impact of occupational stress on psychological well-being in the Fire Service. In particular, the research examined the impact of occupational stress (Uplifts and Hassles) and individual differences (Neuroticism, Extraversion, Mastery and Coping) on work and context free well-being and Work Performance as part of a model based on the work of Cooper (1986) and Williams and Cooper (1998). The research involved three stages, two of which were quantitative and the third qualitative. In stage one, cross sectional data was collected using a questionnaire from five samples (N=867). In stage two, data was collected at a second time point from two of these samples (i. e. longitudinal data, N=123). In stage three, semi structured interviews were conducted with six fire personnel taken from one of the longitudinal samples, and thematic analysis was conducted. The statistical analysis of the data was conducted via hierarchical multiple regression analyses. Path analyses were also conducted on both cross sectional and the longitudinal data. The quantitative results, in terms of work well-being and Work Performance suggested there was good well-being. However, the context free well-being measure indicated poor General mental health. Furthermore, stress and individual differences had important influences on work and context free well-being, as well as on Work Performance. Neuroticism and Mastery seemed to be particularly important for these Fire Service samples. This latter with respect to General mental health finding was supported by the qualitative research which suggested that Fire Service personnel were experiencing stress. The qualitative research also suggested possible interventions the Fire Service could put into practice to support its employees such as Coaching and mentoring' and `Support from colleagues'

An entropy-based class assignment detection approach for RDF data

The RDF-style Knowledge Bases usually contain a certain level of noises known as Semantic Web data quality issues. This paper has introduced a new Semantic Web data quality issue called Incorrect Class Assignment problem that shows the incorrect assignment between instances in the instance-level and corresponding classes in an ontology. We have proposed an approach called CAD (Class Assignment Detector) to find the correctness and incorrectness of relationships between instances and classes by analyzing features of classes in an ontology. Initial experiments conducted on a dataset demonstrate the effectiveness of CAD

Isolation and Characterization of Micro-organisms with Industrial Importance From Sisal Bole Rots

Investigation of microorganisms naturally acclimatized to Agave hybrid H 11648 (sisal bole rot) was conducted, with the aim of isolating and characterizing Aspergillus niger strains for industrial use. Microorganism were identified morphologically and then confirmation made by polymerase chain reaction (PCR). Results showed the existence of four major groups, listed in order of abundances as follows; Aspergilli (36.0±0.8) %, Penicillin (28.0±0.1) %, Yeast (15.0±1.6) %and Fusarium (10.0±0.12) %. The main groups of Aspergilli strains were A. nidulans, A. tamari and A. niger in ratios (3:2:2), respectively. Several endo-spore forming non-enteric gram (-) rods and coccid bacteria identified by API20 NE identification systemincluded,Brevundimonas diminuta sp, Shewanella putrefaciens sp, Brevundimonas vesicularis sp and Pasteurella sp. Results showed that sisal bole rot stems hosts a high bio-diversity of microorganism species other than A. niger. Exploitation of the individual strains is recommended. This could eventually produce strains forprecursors of industrially and therapeutically metabolites

Agrobacterium-mediated transformation of sorghum: factors that affect transformation efficiency.

The results presented in this work support the hypothesis that Agrobacterium-mediated transformation of sorghum is feasible, analogous to what has been demonstrated for other cereals such as rice, maize, barley and wheat. The four factors that we found most influenced transformation were: the sensitivity of immature sorghum embryos to Agrobacterium infection, the growth conditions of the donor plant, type of explant and co-cultivation medium. A major problem during the development of our protocol was a necrotic response which developed in explants after co-cultivation. Immature sorghum embryos proved to be very sensitive to Agrobacterium infection and we found that the level of embryo death after co-cultivation was the limiting step in improving transformation efficiency. The addition of coconut water to the co-cultivation medium, the use of vigorous and actively growing immature embryos and the removal of excess bacteria significantly improved the survival rate of sorghum embryos and was critical for successful transformation. Hygromycin phosphotransferase (hpt) proved to be a good selectable marker for sorghum. We also found that β-glucuronidase (GUS) activity was low in most of the transgenic plant tissues tested, although it was very high in immature inflorescences. Although promising, the overall transformation efficiency of the protocol is still low and further optimization will require particular attention to be given to the number of Agrobacterium in the inoculum and the selection of sorghum genotypes and explants less sensitive to Agrobacterium infection

Canonicalizing Knowledge Base Literals

Ontology-based knowledge bases (KBs) like DBpedia are very valuable resources, but their usefulness and usability is limited by various quality issues. One such issue is the use of string literals instead of semantically typed entities. In this paper we study the automated canonicalization of such literals, i.e., replacing the literal with an existing entity from the KB or with a new entity that is typed using classes from the KB. We propose a framework that combines both reasoning and machine learning in order to predict the relevant entities and types, and we evaluate this framework against state-of-the-art baselines for both semantic typing and entity matching

A long view of liberal peace and its crisis

The ‘crisis’ of liberal peace has generated considerable debate in International Relations. However, analysis is inhibited by a shared set of spatial, cultural and temporal assumptions that rest on and reproduce a problematic separation between self-evident ‘liberal’ and ‘non-liberal’ worlds, and locates the crisis in presentist terms of the latter’s resistance to the former’s expansion. By contrast, this article argues that efforts to advance liberal rule have always been interwoven with processes of alternative order-making, and in this way are actively integral, not external, to the generation of the subjectivities, contestations, violence and rival social orders that are then apprehended as self-evident obstacles and threats to liberal peace and as characteristic of its periphery. Making visible these intimate relations of co-constitution elided by representations of liberal peace and its crisis requires a long view and an analytical frame that encompasses both liberalism and its others in the world. The argument is developed using a Foucauldian governmentality framework and illustrated with reference to Sri Lanka