Exploring Dynamic Capabilities in Open Business Models: The Case of a Public-Private Sector Partnership

The case explores and offers insight into the boundary-spanning dynamic capabilities evidenced by the entrepreneurial CEO of a private-sector family-owned firm from the sensing, seizing and transforming/reconfiguring perspectives during the opportunity identification, evaluation and pursuit of the co-creation of a public-private sector partnership in collaboration with the CEO of a public-sector firm. This partnership, which is situated in a city-region in the North of England, is seen through the lens of an open business model whereby value is co-created and captured outside the boundary of a single firm, and which involves significant financial uncertainty being assigned from the public to the private sector

THE IMPACTS OF DAIRY CATTLE OWNERSHIP ON THE NUTRITIONAL STATUS OF PRE-SCHOOL CHILDREN IN COASTAL KENYA

Anthropometric measurements for children and household characteristics were collected form 198 households in coastal Kenya to examine the impacts of dairy technology adoption on nutritional status. Random effects models indicate that dairy technology adoption positively influences chronic malnutrition, but that dairy consumption has a larger impact than adoption per se.Food Consumption/Nutrition/Food Safety, Livestock Production/Industries,

MEDITATION, SLOW WAVE SLEEP AND ECSTATIC SEIZURES: The Etiology ofKundalini Visions

This paper describes phosphene images observed by a medical writer during the onset and evolution of a partial seizure with an ecsratic emotional accompaniment. This seizure was inadvertendy induced by rhe author's attempt to practice mediration during the early morning hours while in a sleep-deprived condition. A neurological workup did nor find evidence of epileptic lesions or interictal activiry. The phosphene sequence matches descriptions of light visions in the ancient Vedic scriptures and in yoga meditarion rexts of rhe Hindu and Tibetan Buddhist traditions. suggesting the possibiliry of a common etiology. Analysis of the phosphene spatiotemporal characteristics in light of recem research ill the neuroscience of sleep, vision, and epilepsy suggests that the images were generated by the following sequence of neural events: (1) acrivation of slow wave sleep rhythm oscillarors in conicorhalamocortical circuits (CTC); (2) destabilization of sleep rhythm oscillators, triggering emergence of hypersynchronous spike-waves and fast runs in CTC circuits; (3) a huild-up of rhythmical activity in the right hippocampus (H) due to the synergistic interaction of synchronous sharp waves, high-frequency ripples, and affcrem visual stimuli; (4) an outbreak of paroxysmal dischatges in the comralareral left H; and, (6) precipitation of a bilateral mesotemporal seizure

Comments on PHOSPHENE IMAGES OF THALAMIC SLEEP RHYTHMS INDUCED BY SELF-HYPNOSIS

Our investigations are proceeding to open up new areas in science, and uncertainty exists as to lines ofinquiry to pursue, and as to meaning of results obtained. In this section we invite two reviewers to respond to a ground breaking paper. When we receive those comments, we send copies to the original author, who then has opportunity to respond. Then comments and the author's response are published together in this Journal We hope that this section of dialogue will interest you, will be thought-provoking, that it will help us to think through the hidden assumptions and issues that underlie investigations in this field. [Editor

Arab consumer attitutes towards international marketing as a result of the ongoing Arab Spring : a systematic literature review

Paper from the International Conference on Contemporary Marketing Issues (ICCI), Thessaloniki, 13-15 June 2012 The Middle East has been recently and continues to be affected by a phenomenon referred to popularly as the ‘Arab Spring’. The phenomenon appears to have sparked a wave of candidness amongst Arab consumers in a way that hitherto was not apparent. A question as to whether the uprisings are about the pursuit of democracy, political reform or freedom of speech remains to be settled. The purpose of this discussion paper is to ask what effects the Arab Spring may have on marketing theory and practice. To that end, the paper presents the results of a systematic literature review pertaining to marketing in the Middle East. A quantitative bibliometric method of citation analysis is deployed to identify the range of themes that have been previously researched. From this review, the paper identifies the particular relevance of the Arab Spring phenomenon to international marketing theory and practice. Thus, this study makes the first attempt to conceptualize what the Arab Spring means for future international marketing theory and practice and marks the start of a first investigation, and potential beginning of a longitudinal study into the phenomenon as it continues to unfold, grounded firmly in the marketing discipline

The Smallest Particles in Saturn's A and C Rings

Radio occultations of Saturn's main rings by spacecraft suggest a power law particle size-distribution down to sizes of the order of 1 cm (Marouf et al., 1983), (Zebker et al., 1985). The lack of optical depth variations between ultraviolet and near-IR wavelengths indicate a lack of micron-sized particles. Between these two regimes, the particle-size distribution is largely unknown. A cutoff where the particle-size distribution turns over must exist, but the position and shape of it is not clear from existing studies. Using a series of solar occultations performed by the VIMS instrument on-board Cassini in the near-infrared, we are able to measure light forward scattered by particles in the A and C rings. With a model of diffraction by ring particles, and the previous radio work as a constraint on the slope of the particle size distribution, we estimate the minimum particle size using a truncated power-law size distribution. The C Ring shows a minimum particle size of $4.1^{+3.8}_{-1.3}$ mm, with an assumed power law index of q=3.1 and a maximum particle size of 10 m. The A Ring signal shows a similar level of scattered flux, but modeling is complicated by the presence of self-gravity wakes and higher optical depths. If q<3, our A Ring model requires a minimum particle size below one millimeter (< 0.34 mm for an assumed q=2.75, or $0.56^{+0.35}_{-0.16}$ mm for a steeper q=2.9) to be consistent with VIMS observations. These results might seem to contradict previous optical(Dones et al., 1993) and infrared (French and Nicholson, 2000) work, which implied that there were few particles in the A Ring smaller than 1 cm. But, because of the shallow power law, relatively little optical depth (between 0.03 and 0.16 in extinction, or 0.015 - 0.08 in absorption) is provided by these particles.Comment: 47 pages, 16 figures, 3 Table

EMPIRICAL STUDIES OF MEDITATION: DOES A SLEEP RHYTHM HYPOTHESIS EXPLAIN THE DATA?

This article reviews the findings of important empirical studies of meditators and shows that these findings can be explained by the hypothesis that meditation is generated by induction of slow wave sleep rhythms. This hypothesis explains why radionucleide imaging (PET, SPECT, and fMRI) studies report increases in neuronal activity in the thalamus (where sleep rhythms are generated) and in the hippocampus (which receives a barrage of vision-related signals caused by manipulations of attention and sleep rhythm activity). It also explains the diverse findings of EEG/QEEG studies, for example, the observed short-term increases in alpha band frequencies and coherence, the subsequent shifts to slower theta/delta frequencies, and the reports of a sudden frequency-splitting and amplitude-doubling concurrent with ecstatic raptures. The author suggests that existing studies of meditation do not account for the likelihood that the theta/delta frequency distribution associated with meditation can be generated by two very different mechanisms: (1) by induction of a drowsy, hypnagogic state ("stage 1" NREMS), an experience familiar to many people and thus easily achievable by novice meditators, and alternatively, (2) by inducing the full progression of thalamic sleep rhythms, an option available only to advanced meditators who are able to move beyond "stage 1" NREMS ro induce thalamic spindle-burst typical of "stage 2" NREMS, then beyond that to induce delta waves typical of "stage 3" NREMS. These thalamic delta waves, after augmentation by intracortical circuits, register in the cortical EEG as low-theta/high-delta band activity, making it easy to mistake the underlying mechanism as stage 1 NREMS

PHOSPHENE IMAGES OF THALAMIC SLEEP RHYTHMS INDUCED BY SELF-HYPNOSIS

A medical writer describes internally-generated light sensations (phosphenes) induced by a technique of self-hypnosis that combines relaxation, convergent eye movement, and attentive fixation. The phosphene images include: (1) a threshold sequence of receding annuli, (2) amorphous phosphene mists or clouds, and (3) phosphene clouds with two levels of brightness and color saturation. These images share some similarities with visions of light reported by religious mystics. Based on an analysis of the distinctive spatiotemporal characteristics exhibited by the phosphenes. the author proposes the hypothesis that they are generated by thalamic sleep rhythms oscillating in the lateral geniculate nucleus (LGN). Since humans usually lose consciousness at the onset of non-rapid-eye-movement sleep (NREMS), the author also proposes the hypothesis that his technique of phosphene induction preserves consciousness, despite the operation of thalamic sleep rhythms, because eye movements and attentive fixation send excitatory feedback to the visual pathways. This selective facilitation of visual neurons appears to preserve their signal-processing capacity even though synchronous sleep rhythms may be installed in the non-visual thalamus. The author speculates that this selective disruption of sleep rhythm activity in the visual pathways may be the mechanism that produces the cutaneous analgesia (hypnoanalgesia) he experiences when he induces phosphenes

EMPIRICAL STUDIES OF MEDITATION: DOES A SLEEP RHYTHM HYPOTHESIS EXPLAIN THE DATA?

This article reviews the findings of important empirical studies of meditators and shows that these findings can be explained by the hypothesis that meditation is generated by induction of slow wave sleep rhythms. This hypothesis explains why radionucleide imaging (PET, SPECT, and fMRI) studies report increases in neuronal activity in the thalamus (where sleep rhythms are generated) and in the hippocampus (which receives a barrage of vision-related signals caused by manipulations of attention and sleep rhythm activity). It also explains the diverse findings of EEG/QEEG studies, for example, the observed short-term increases in alpha band frequencies and coherence, the subsequent shifts to slower theta/delta frequencies, and the reports of a sudden frequency-splitting and amplitude-doubling concurrent with ecstatic raptures. The author suggests that existing studies of meditation do not account for the likelihood that the theta/delta frequency distribution associated with meditation can be generated by two very different mechanisms: (1) by induction of a drowsy, hypnagogic state ("stage 1" NREMS), an experience familiar to many people and thus easily achievable by novice meditators, and alternatively, (2) by inducing the full progression of thalamic sleep rhythms, an option available only to advanced meditators who are able to move beyond "stage 1" NREMS ro induce thalamic spindle-burst typical of "stage 2" NREMS, then beyond that to induce delta waves typical of "stage 3" NREMS. These thalamic delta waves, after augmentation by intracortical circuits, register in the cortical EEG as low-theta/high-delta band activity, making it easy to mistake the underlying mechanism as stage 1 NREMS