A critical appraisal of WinEcon and its use in a first‐year undergraduate Economics programme

This is an extended review of WinEcon, a CAL package for introductory economics. Our comments are based on a survey of staff and students involved in the first large‐scale (n = 300+) attempt to integrate WinEcon into a teaching and assessment programme

Microbiology managers: managerial training in the RItrain project

Leaders of research infrastructures (RIs) in Europe who are scientists require competencies in management. RItrain has addressed this issue by identifying skills required, locating relevant courses and finding gaps, whilst establishing a Master of Management programme. We describe how one contributing microbiology RI determined the most relevant skills.The RItrain project is funded by the European Commission, grant agreement number 654156.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Division, adjoints, and dualities of bilinear maps

The distributive property can be studied through bilinear maps and various morphisms between these maps. The adjoint-morphisms between bilinear maps establish a complete abelian category with projectives and admits a duality. Thus the adjoint category is not a module category but nevertheless it is suitably familiar. The universal properties have geometric perspectives. For example, products are orthogonal sums. The bilinear division maps are the simple bimaps with respect to nondegenerate adjoint-morphisms. That formalizes the understanding that the atoms of linear geometries are algebraic objects with no zero-divisors. Adjoint-isomorphism coincides with principal isotopism; hence, nonassociative division rings can be studied within this framework. This also corrects an error in an earlier pre-print; see Remark 2.11

The relationship between the nitric oxide synthase gene and the risk of hypertension defi ned according to ambulatory blood pressures

Although nitric oxide (NO) plays an important role in blood pressure (BP) control, whether variation of genes involved in regulating the synthesis of NO infl uences BP is uncertain. As the heritability of BP is stronger for ambulatory than it is for conventional BP, we assessed the independent association of the well described functional exon 7 Glu298Asp variant of the eNOS gene with the presence of hypertension in 511 randomly selected normotensive control participants and 503 hypertensives with a diagnosis of hypertension confi rmed with 24-hour ambulatory BP profiles whilst off therapy. We also assessed the relationship between eNOS genotype and 24 hour ambulatory BP. Comparisons of genotype and allele frequencies indicated a lack of association of the exon 7 Glu298Asp gene variant with hypertension (Odds ratio of genotype predicting the presence of hypertension=0.97, confidence interval=0.70-1.30, p=0.92). However, patients with the Glu/Glu genotype of the Glu298Asp variant (n=424) had increased 24-hour systolic and diastolic blood pressures (152±1/97±1 mm Hg) in comparison to patients heterozygous for the Glu298Asp variant or homozygous for the 298Asp allele (n=79) (145±1/94±1 mm Hg, p‹0.005 for systolic BP and p‹0.001 for diastolic BP after multiple adjustments including age, gender, body mass index and the presence of diabetes mellitus). Differences in systolic and diastolic BP between genotype groups were noted during the day as well as at night. The association of eNOS genotype with ambulatory BP translated into an increased risk of more severe grades of hypertension in patients with the Glu/Glu genotype (grade II and III vs. grade I, Odds ratio=2.20, confidence interval=1.34-3.59, p‹0.0002). In conclusion, a functional gene variant (Glu298Asp) at the eNOS locus contributes ~1.4-2.5% to the variation in ambulatory blood pressure within hypertensives, but is not associated with the presence of hypertension in patients in whom the diagnosis has been confirmed by 24-hour ambulatory BP values. The relationship between eNOS genotype and 24-hour ambulatory BP and the severity of hypertension warrants further study

Volatility Studies of Some Fission Product Fluorides

A preliminary study of the volatility behavior of molybdenum indicated that MoF/sub 5/ was converted to MoF/sub 6/ by F/sub 2/; MoF/sub 6/ and Tc fluoride are absorbed on NaF at 100; technetium fluoride is more strongly held than molybdenum fluoride on NaF; MoF/sub 6/ may not be completely trapped by a dry ice trap. The behavior of volatile fission product fluorides was such that (a) Ru and Nb fluorides were volatile from fused salts during fluorination, (b) Mo and technetium were not volatile during hydrofluorination but were in excess F/ sub 2/> 100 deg C(auth)

Persistent Homology Over Directed Acyclic Graphs

We define persistent homology groups over any set of spaces which have inclusions defined so that the corresponding directed graph between the spaces is acyclic, as well as along any subgraph of this directed graph. This method simultaneously generalizes standard persistent homology, zigzag persistence and multidimensional persistence to arbitrary directed acyclic graphs, and it also allows the study of more general families of topological spaces or point-cloud data. We give an algorithm to compute the persistent homology groups simultaneously for all subgraphs which contain a single source and a single sink in $O(n^4)$ arithmetic operations, where $n$ is the number of vertices in the graph. We then demonstrate as an application of these tools a method to overlay two distinct filtrations of the same underlying space, which allows us to detect the most significant barcodes using considerably fewer points than standard persistence.Comment: Revised versio

An appropriate tool for entrepreneurial learning in SMEs? The case of the 20Twenty Leadership Programme

The 20Twenty Leadership Programme was developed by Cardiff Metropolitan University as an executive education programme to be delivered within South Wales to small businesses. It is funded by the European Social Fund (ESF) and administered by the Welsh European Funding Office and has the key aim of developing SME’s growth potential via a range of leadership and management skills, including a focus on ‘soft’ skills. The focus of this paper is to place the 20Twenty Leadership Programme within the wider context of entrepreneurship policy and SME training initiatives in particular, and then to examine the rationale and delivery methods of the Programme in relation to these. It also reflects on the Programme’s success (or otherwise) to date where possible. Finally, the paper seeks to suggest fruitful areas of further research both in terms of the 20Twenty Leadership Programme itself, but also with regard to evaluation in relation to other parallel programmes, and to SME training initiatives more generally

The role of corticosterone in human hypothalamic– pituitary–adrenal axis feedback

Objective  In humans, the glucocorticoid corticosterone circulates in blood at 10–20-fold lower levels than cortisol, but is found in higher relative amounts in postmortem brain samples. Access of cortisol and corticosterone to the central nervous system may not be equal. Additionally, the relative affinities for the glucocorticoid and mineralocorticoid receptors differ, such that corticosterone may play a significant role in human brain function. Design  We measured cortisol and corticosterone levels in paired plasma and cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) samples. To test the relative potency of cortisol vs. corticosterone on hypothalamic–pituitary–adrenal (HPA) feedback, subjects underwent a three-phase, single-blind, randomized study assessing the postmetyrapone ACTH response over 3 h to an intravenous bolus of vehicle, cortisol or corticosterone (0·15 mg/kg and 0·04 mg/kg). Participants  Outpatients undergoing diagnostic lumbar puncture who were subsequently deemed to be free of disease. Feedback was tested in healthy male volunteers. Measurements  Plasma and CSF corticosterone to cortisol ratio was calculated and the ACTH response over time after the bolus glucocorticoid measured. Results  Plasma corticosterone : cortisol was 0·069 ± 0·007; CSF corticosterone : cortisol was 0·387 ± 0·050 ( P <  0·001). Cortisol and corticosterone (0·15 mg/kg) suppressed ACTH vs. vehicle ( P =  0·002); there was no difference between corticosterone and cortisol. The 0·04 mg/kg dose had no effect on ACTH despite supraphysiological plasma corticosterone levels. Conclusions  Corticosterone contributes almost 40% of total active glucocorticoids (cortisol and corticosterone) in the CSF. Significant effects on HPA axis suppression were only seen with supraphysiological levels of corticosterone, suggesting that corticosterone is not important in this model of nonstress-induced ACTH hypersecretion, in which the effect of cortisol predominates.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/72329/1/j.1365-2265.2006.02540.x.pd

Constructing female entrepreneurship policy in the UK : is the US a relevant benchmark?

Successive UK governments have introduced a range of policy initiatives designed to encourage more women to start new firms. Underpinning these policies has been an explicit ambition for the UK to achieve similar participation rates as those in the US where it is widely reported that women own nearly half the stock of businesses. The data underlying these objectives are critically evaluated and it is argued that the definitions and measures of female enterprise used in the UK and the US restrict meaningful comparisons between the two. It is suggested that the expansion of female entrepreneurship in the US is historically and culturally specific to that country. UK policy goals should reflect the national socioeconomic context, while drawing upon good practice examples from a range of other countries. The paper concludes by discussing the economic and social viability of encouraging more women in the UK to enter self-employment without fully recognising the intensely competitive sectors in which they are often located