Everywhere and nowhere: Nearshore software development in the context of globalisation

Offshore software outsourcing, a major contributor to globally distributed work (GDW), has been identified as one of the most striking manifestations of contemporary globalisation. In particular, offshoring resonates with influential views that suggest that ICTs have rendered location irrelevant. Some research, however, has questioned this “placeless logic” and suggested that location may be significant to the success of offshoring ventures. In this paper, we draw on evidence from two nearshore software development ventures in the Caribbean to identify a number of locational characteristics relating to the physical, economic and cultural setting, local resources and government policy that may be important in influencing the suitability of offshore outsourcing venues. Some of these are recognised, even by companies pursuing placeless location strategies, while others were unanticipated. The cases also suggest that companies may be able to actively shape certain characteristics to their advantage. Implications for vendors and clients of nearshore information services, and potentially also for companies considering offshore ventures in non-traditional locations, are identified

Evaluation of touch trigger probe measurement uncertainty using FEA

Evaluation of measurement uncertainty is an essential subject in dimensional measurement. It has also become a dominant issue in coordinate measuring machine (CMM) even though its machine performance has been well accepted by many users. CMM probes, especially touch trigger probes which are commonly used, have been acknowledged as a key error source, largely due to pre-travel variations. The probe errors result in large measurement uncertainty in CMM measurement. Various methods have been introduced to estimate measurement uncertainty, but they tend to be time consuming and necessarily require a large amount of experimental data for analyzing the uncertainty. This paper presents the method of evaluation of CMM probe uncertainty using FEA modeling. It is started with the investigation of the behavior of probe by recording stylus displacement with vary triggering force. Then, those displacement results will be analyzed with sensitivity analysis technique to estimate the uncertainty of recorded results

Finite elements modeling and simulation of probe system

Coordinate measuring machines (CMMs) have been widely used for enhancing product quality, productivity and reliability. This powerful instrument assists the user by providing them with highly accurate and reliable measurement results. Many studies involving the application of various different methods have been carried out to enhance the performance of CMM. This paper discusses the application of finite element analysis (FEA) to study the probe system of CMM. Finite element modeling is utilized to investigate the displacement of the probe stylus, pre-travel variation (lobing effects) and the associated measurement uncertainty. Different characteristics of styli have been considered and the corresponding effects on the probe operation are reported

Experimental validation of FEA modelling of touch trigger probes

The authors have previously proposed the use of finite element method (FEM) for the modeling of coordinate measuring machine probes. Whilst the modeling results have been published previously, this paper presents the detailed experimental validation to compare the FEM and experimental results. The comparison shows that the agreement is generally good with probing contacts at lower latitudes near the equator of the reference sphere. The differences between the modeling and experimental results become large at higher latitudes. This is believed to be mainly caused by the sliding effects which occur during probing contact in the experiments

Symbolic computation for evaluation of measurement uncertainty

In recent years, with the rapid development of symbolic computation, the integration of symbolic and numeric methods is increasingly applied in various applications. This paper proposed the use of symbolic computation for the evaluation of measurement uncertainty. The general method and procedure are discussed, and its great potential and powerful features for measurement uncertainty evaluation has been demonstrated through examples

Clinics of Oblivion: Makeover Culture and Cosmetic Surgery

This paper examines cosmetic surgery tourism, arguing that it can be meaningfully analysed as part of makeover culture. It shows that while cosmetic surgery tourism sits at a junction of cosmetic surgery and medical tourism, it also has much in common with contemporary tourism practices. The paper posits cosmetic surgery tourism not only as an economic and globalised phenomenon but also as a set of practices that are experienced, and that take place on the body (see also Cook, 2010; Bell et al. 2011). Chris Rojeks work on contemporary tourist practices is deployed in order to argue that the cosmetic surgery tourists body is itself the `site to be visited and discovered; it is also the souvenir that is brought home. When body and site are brought together in cosmetic surgery tourism, they form a potent nexus that is unique to a contemporary moment tied up with globalisation and consumption, where both identity and self-transformation are managed through the body

Elm Farm Research Centre Bulletin 79 July 2005

Regular newletter from Elm Farm Research Centre (EFRC)covering research, technical and policy articles, views and comment

Adiposity is associated with blunted cardiovascular, neuroendocrine and cognitive responses to acute mental stress

This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited - Copyright @ 2012 Jones et al.Obesity and mental stress are potent risk factors for cardiovascular disease but their relationship with each other is unclear. Resilience to stress may differ according to adiposity. Early studies that addressed this are difficult to interpret due to conflicting findings and limited methods. Recent advances in assessment of cardiovascular stress responses and of fat distribution allow accurate assessment of associations between adiposity and stress responsiveness. We measured responses to the Montreal Imaging Stress Task in healthy men (N=43) and women (N=45) with a wide range of BMIs. Heart rate (HR) and blood pressure (BP) measures were used with novel magnetic resonance measures of stroke volume (SV), cardiac output (CO), total peripheral resistance (TPR) and arterial compliance to assess cardiovascular responses. Salivary cortisol and the number and speed of answers to mathematics problems in the task were used to assess neuroendocrine and cognitive responses, respectively. Visceral and subcutaneous fat was measured using T2*-IDEAL. Greater BMI was associated with generalised blunting of cardiovascular (HR:β=−0.50 bpm.unit−1, P=0.009; SV:β=−0.33 mL.unit−1, P=0.01; CO:β=−61 mL.min−1.unit−1, P=0.002; systolic BP:β=−0.41 mmHg.unit−1, P=0.01; TPR:β=0.11 WU.unit−1, P=0.02), cognitive (correct answers: r=−0.28, P=0.01; time to answer: r=0.26, P=0.02) and endocrine responses (cortisol: r=−0.25, P=0.04) to stress. These associations were largely determined by visceral adiposity except for those related to cognitive performance, which were determined by both visceral and subcutaneous adiposity. Our findings suggest that adiposity is associated with centrally reduced stress responsiveness. Although this may mitigate some long-term health risks of stress responsiveness, reduced performance under stress may be a more immediate negative consequence.This work is funded by the UK National Institute of Health Research (NIHR), Siemens Medical Systems, British Heart Foundation (BHF), NIHR Senior Research Fellowship & The Fondation Leducq, BHF Intermediate Fellowship

Sink particle radiative feedback in smoothed particle hydrodynamics models of star formation

This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from Oxford University Press via the DOI in this record.We present a new method for including radiative feedback from sink particles in smoothed particle hydrodynamics simulations of low-mass star formation, and investigate its effects on the formation of small stellar groups. We find that including radiative feedback from sink particles suppresses fragmentation even further than calculations that only include radiative transfer within the gas. This reduces the star-formation rate following the formation of the initial protostars, leading to fewer objects being produced and a lower total stellar mass. The luminosities of sink particles vary due to changes in the accretion rate driven by the dynamics of the cluster gas, leading to different luminosities for protostars of similar mass. Including feedback from sinks also raises the median stellar mass. The median masses of the groups are higher than typically observed values. This may be due to the lack of dynamical interactions and ejections in small groups of protostars compared to those that occur in richer groups. We also find that the temperature distributions in our calculations are in qualitative agreement with recent observations of protostellar heating in Galactic star-forming regions.This work was supported by the European Research Coun- cil under the European Commission's Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007-2013 Grant Agreement No. 339248). The calculations discussed in this paper were performed on the University of Exeter Supercomputer, Isca. The rendered plots shown were produced using SPLASH (Price 2007)

Trends in Juvenile Delinquency

ABSTRACT TRENDS IN JUVENILE DELINQUENCY By David L. Jones This is a study on trends in juvenile delinquency. The research proposal mentions, within the introduction, factors such as unemployment rates, high school dropout rates, poverty, and juvenile delinquency case rates in the United States, which are actually the variables that are used in the study to illustrate a relationship between them and the current trend in juvenile delinquency. In establishing the link, the paper does a brief literature review of various perspectives associated with juvenile delinquency and mentions some hypotheses that are relevant to the study. Further, the paper gives sample data types related to the mentioned methodologies that are used in performing the research together with their sources. Within the context of the research proposal, the method of longitudinal analysis is the main method of data assessment used in establishing the link. Towards the end of the proposal, the paper indicates that longitudinal analysis method is vital in the analysis of variables of the same type that are meant to be compared within a given range or period of time