Search results

The purpose of this article is to present a system dynamic model for studying the interconnections between human weight and health problems which cause various problems throughout life.

The paper reviews key points about system thinking, its theories, and system dynamics. Models in the form of causal loops presenting the interconnections between weight factor and health problems are developed and discussed. Thereafter, a flow model of the problem is constructed and deaths caused by heart attack are studied under two situations of regular and taught cases. The paper identifies key health problems related to weight by using causal loops that demonstrate the whole picture of the situation.

With the aid of systems thinking and dynamic modeling researchers can study the impacts of weight on the generation of various health problems such as heart disease, high blood pressure, blood sugar, knee problems and more. This study shows that teaching people about their health will have a significant impact on the number of deaths related to heart attack.

With the model proposed here various studies can be carried out that relates weight to health issues. A sample situation is presented where deaths related to heart attack are simulated.

This article makes a significant contribution to the health study issues due to the fact that it shows how a factor such as weight can impact on hearth attacks, blood pressure, and blood sugar, to mention a few. To the best of the author's knowledge, this is the first study that relates weight to health problems using systems thinking concepts and system dynamic and it therefore make a significant contribution to the health literature.

This paper aims to analyze the organization of storytelling and its role in creating and sharing practical knowledge for cancer diagnosis in a medical community in Italy.

The qualitative analysis draws upon different interactional data sets: naturally occurring diagnostic conversations among physicians in the ward, research interviews, video-based sessions in which physicians watch and discuss their diagnostic work.

The results highlight: the specific organization of storytelling practices in medical diagnostic work; three main functions that such storytelling practices play in supporting collaborative diagnostic work in the community of our study; and how storytelling practices are resources on which participants rely across settings, including ad hoc reflexive meetings.

This paper aims to contribute to the understanding of the role that storytelling plays in the diagnostic work in an understudied and yet life-saving site such as oncology.

Following an in‐depth study of gas usage at Metabrasive undertaken in 1981, it was decided to treat the reduction of hardening furnace gas consumption as a priority and a paper on hardening furnace gas savings was prepared. A detailed monitoring exercise of the “Wellman” conventionally designed furnace, with a 32 air/gas nozzle mix burner system and brick refractory lining, carried out by independent consultants, showed a net gas consumption of 485 kwh/tonne. The first furnace modification at Metabrasive consisted of the fitting of a recuperative burner system with 8 burners and 4 recuperators, a low density solid hearth and ceramic fibre lined walls and roof. Detailed monitoring by the same consultants showed that a combustion air pre‐heat to 350°C was possible yielding a saving of approximately 25% and a pay‐back period of 2 years. Good even heat distribution and shorter heat‐up and cool‐down times were achieved. The second modification was carried out in 1984, with only slight changes in detail. These were the use of fully proportional air/gas controllers instead of a 3‐step system and high density refractory pads in front of the lower burners to eliminate wear caused by high velocity gases. Problems have been experienced with both these units. The refractory inlet quarts to the recuperators were found to be particularly susceptible to oxide attack. They were made using a metallic fibre reinforced refractory which spalled due to growth of the fibres. Clean air is now ducted from outside the plant which has alleviated the problem. The air valve Honeywell control motors we found to be particularly affected by heat, in spite of being provided for this duty. Sheilding has solved this problem. It was planned to modify the third furnace in 1985 with the same, albeit improved, system. However, combustion technology had moved on rapidly and the regenerative burner systems had reached the proven stage. This method was, therefore, adopted for this furnace.

Cultural entrepreneurship research examines how actors upend the status quo by gaining the legitimacy and resources needed to advance novel ways of doing things. Extant studies, however, rarely spotlight an important tension: the pursuit of legitimacy and resources needed to advance adoption is often at odds with the desire to safeguard endeavors from external influence. While entrepreneurs are largely associated with the promotion of endeavors, they are also inclined to preserve meaningful values and practices, uphold family or ethnic legacies and traditions, and protect the integrity and authenticity of cultural products. Many of these valued outcomes are put at risk when endeavors diffuse beyond their cultural hearth and garner the interest of outsiders. How do entrepreneurs promote endeavors while protecting them from unwanted external influence? This paper sheds light on the motives, activities, and strategic approaches to entrepreneurship of actors that are both change-makers and culture-bearers. It elucidates trade-offs between evangelizing activities that promote rapid adoption of endeavors (i.e., the “hare”) and shepherding activities that safeguard the integrity of an endeavor (i.e., the “turtle”). It proposes and calls for research into alternative solutions that transcend the two approaches.

The purpose of this paper is to present and apply a methodology that optimally assigns emergency response services (ERS) stations in Peloponnesus, Greece that was severely hit by wildfires in 2007, in an effort to describe the actual emergency response in this disaster and identify disaster management possibilities that can arise from the optimal allocation of the existing fire stations.

The methodology concerns the development of an objective function that aims to minimize maximum and average response times of ERS stations and the evaluation of developed scenarios. Simulated annealing is used for the minimization of the objective function, providing near-optimal solutions with low computation times for medium-scale networks.

The findings concern the comparison of average and maximum response times of ERS stations to hearths of fire, based on their actual and optimal allocation. They reveal an overall reduction in the average and maximum response time by 20 and 30 percent, respectively, for the entire region, while there is a reduction of 15 and 35 percent in the average and maximum response time for the locations affected by the 2007 wildfires.

The methodology is formulated as a facility location problem with unitary demand and unlimited capacity in the stations, which means that the allocation does not take into account simultaneous events.

The paper fulfills an identified need to apply innovative research solutions to actual case studies in order to identify existing gaps and future disaster management possibilities.

The volume concludes by offering a number of policy recommendations that would help to improve morale in the ROC armed forces and make it a social institution that garners more respect from the public. While most such studies focus on strategic recommendations and weapons purchases, what is provided here is essentially about creating a new military ethic, one that makes the military more relevant to today’s society while meeting its purpose of defending against external attack. The ethic and character of the ROC military is very much focused on the ideals expounded by Dr. Sun Yat-sen and the Three Principles of the People. While these are laudable ethical underpinnings for an organization with its roots in China, they are anachronistic in today’s Taiwan, and do not represent the values of modern young people. While there is very little agreement among the nation’s ethnic groups and political philosophies, there is one thing that unites Taiwan people of all stripes, be they Hoklo or Hakka, Mainlander or Taiwanese, and indigenous person or modern urbanite: the land. It is the land of Taiwan that represents home and hearth, and thus the focus of any cultural shift within the organization that is the ROC military should be one that focuses on the military’s purpose of defending this land. All other policy recommendations described in this chapter stem from this paradigm, whether it be how to handle conscription and training, or the establishment of youth programs and ethnic indigenous regiments.

Our examination of accounting and violence aims to reinvigorate what it means to provide accountability and visibility given that knowledge and values are socially constructed. The authors follow the legacy of critical accounting research in this essay, using counter accounts, shadow accounting, and narratives to uncover the discipline’s relationship to violence, women, and migrants.

During this month the average librarian is given furiously to think over the estimates, and in this year, perhaps more than any other, will that adverb be applicable. The matter is so important that we do not apologise for dealing with it once more. In March in nearly every town there will be a determined effort by men who call themselves “economists” to reduce the appropriation for public libraries. The war is the most handsome excuse that the opponents of public culture have ever had for their attacks upon the library movement. It is obvious that these attacks will take the direction of an endeavour to reduce the penny rate, where this has not been done already. In the year that has passed retrenchment has been the watchword of all municipal work, and many librarians have either ceased to buy new books or have bought only those of vital importance. This has meant that a certain amount of money usually devoted to books has accumulated. Seeing that legally money which has been raised for library purposes cannot be expended in any other direction, the only way in which the “economists” can work is to propose a reduction of next year's rate by an amount corresponding to the balance. It is an extraordinary thing that after decades of demonstration the average local public man cannot or will not see that money taken from the funds of a public library cannot be restored to it later. The limitation of the penny rate is nearly always forgotten or ignored, and the common phrase of such men: “You must economise now and we will give you more money after the war,” has been heard by most librarians. An endeavour should be made to drive home the fact that retrenchment in books, or in other matters in connexion with libraries, now means so much actual irreparable loss to the libraries. We have dealt several times in these pages with the vexed question of balances. Practice differs so much in different localities that it seems impossible to get any universal ruling in connexion with this matter. Many libraries have been able to invest their balances in some form of war loan ; in others the librarian has been told emphatically that such investment is illegal. We can speak of towns within five miles of each other in one of which money has been invested, and in the other investment is banned in this way. Unfortunately librarians have been rather silent upon this point, and it is difficult to obtain any reliable information as to how many towns have investments. It would strengthen the hands of many librarians if they knew that in so many other municipalities the library funds were so invested.

LOST CAUSES.—They find a home in Oxford, we are told: “lost causes, and forsaken beliefs, and unpopular names, and impossible loyalties.” Every bookcase is haunted by some antic ghost, which peers fleetingly from your friend's shoulder as he talks of literature, and cannot be exorcised by aspersions of laughter. Here sits a phantom Galsworthy, toying with a gold albert; there flit the twin spirits of Mrs. Woolf and Miss Sackville‐West, and “like smoke vanish away, twittering”; my own room is beset, as you see, by the sober shade of Arnold; and the banshee shriek of Shaw is still loud in the land. These survivals have a piquant inconsistency, and we take a perverse pride, like Pater's Marius, in murmuring old rites and feeding the hoary Lar which drags its slow colubrine length about our hearth But not every author becomes a private deity. Millions now living are already dead: often, indeed, they themselves make it difficult to diagnose the continuance of life.

Introduction There are many elements in an alloyed combination with iron; some are present as ‘impurities’ and there are those which are added to confer specific properties to the material to improve either the mechanical or corrosion resisting properties, or both.