Dementia and cancer: a review of the literature and current practice

Age is a risk factor for dementia, and also for most cancers. Surprisingly, rates of cancer appear to be lower in individuals with dementia and vice versa. Genetic mechanisms could underpin this inverse relationship and are outlined, but underdiagnosis must also be taken into account. Individuals with cancer and dementia pose unique challenges to healthcare professionals owing to the potential for impaired decision-making capacity, poor communication and difficulties following medication regimes. Mild cognitive impairment and ‘chemo brain’ should be differentiated from progressive neurodegeneration.

MOOCs: a systematic study of the published literature 2008-2012

Massive open online courses (MOOCs) are a recent addition to the range of online learning options. Since 2008, MOOCs have been run by a variety of public and elite universities, especially in North America. Many academics have taken interest in MOOCs recognising the potential to deliver education around the globe on an unprecedented scale; some of these academics are taking a research-oriented perspective and academic papers describing their research are starting to appear in the traditional media of peer reviewed publications. This paper presents a systematic review of the published MOOC literature (2008-2012): Forty-five peer reviewed papers are identified through journals, database searches, searching the Web, and chaining from known sources to form the base for this review. We believe this is the first effort to systematically review literature relating to MOOCs, a fairly recent but massively popular phenomenon with a global reach. The review categorises the literature into eight different areas of interest, introductory, concept, case studies, educational theory, technology, participant focussed, provider focussed, and other, while also providing quantitative analysis of publications according to publication type, year of publication, and contributors. Future research directions guided by gaps in the literature are explored.

Through Jewish eyes: polemical literature and the medieval papacy

Although the medieval papacy's stance towards the Jews is a well-established area of research, Jewish ideas about the papacy remain a surprisingly underdeveloped historical topic. This article explores such ideas through the genre of polemic and disputational literature. Jewish writers were keen to ensure the safety of their communities in western Europe and grateful for statements of papal protection. They fully acknowledged that popes had always played and would continue to play an important role in safeguarding their well-being and determining their future. Yet although contemporary and later writers often valued papal protection more highly than that of monarchs, emperors or clergy, they also knew that it had its carefully circumscribed limits. Furthermore, although they were respectful of the papacy's power, both spiritual and temporal, they were dismissive of the scriptural and theological formulations on which Christian claims for apostolic authority rested and highly critical of Christian beliefs about the papacy, in particular that of apostolic succession. Jewish ideas about both individual popes and the medieval papacy as an institution are therefore nuanced and complex; they deserve rigorous and wide-ranging investigation and it is hoped that this article will contribute to their better understanding.

Ancillary narratives: maids, sleepwalking, and agency in nineteenth-century literature and culture

The limited coverage of servants in nineteenth-century literature may plausibly be ascribed to the tenuous nature of the roles they play in primary texts, and especially to the problematic nature of their agency. This idea is implicit in the arguments of Bruce Robbins, whose The Servant’s Hand remains the most cogent approach to giving servants a palpable role in critical narrative: for Robbins, the agency that acts through the servant ‘prosthesis’ rebounds on the master, granting the servant figure a sometimes exorbitant textual agency. The figure of the sleepwalking maid, and the analogies between sleepwalking and domestic service implicit in it, will help to complicate this picture. In anecdotes of spontaneous sleepwalking, and their subsequent appropriation by mesmerists, maids are cast as non-agents in terms of ownership of narrative: their subjectivity is immaterial to the public fate of the story which their acts generate. But this apparent non-agency is itself derived from their spontaneity; from an autonomous, albeit unconscious, self-will. As such, sleepwalking subjectivity is a gift to paternalism; a mastery it does not have to produce. In conclusion, it is this undetermined quality, rather than a simple lack of agency, that characterizes the maid in the novel, and which continues to exclude domestic servants from critical narrative.

Improved evaporative flux partitioning and carbon flux in the land surface model JULES: impact on the simulation of land surface processes in temperate Europe

The primary role of land surface models embedded in climate models is to partition surface available energy into upwards, radiative, sensible and latent heat fluxes. Partitioning of evapotranspiration, ET, is of fundamental importance: as a major component of the total surface latent heat flux, ET affects the simulated surface water balance, and related energy balance, and consequently the feedbacks with the atmosphere. In this context it is also crucial to credibly represent the CO2 exchange between ecosystems and their environment. In this study, JULES, the land surface model used in UK weather and climate models, has been evaluated for temperate Europe. Compared to eddy covariance flux measurements, the CO2 uptake by the ecosystem is underestimated and the ET overestimated. In addition, the contribution to ET from soil and intercepted water evaporation far outweighs the contribution of plant transpiration. To alleviate these biases, adaptations have been implemented in JULES, based on key literature references. These adaptations have improved the simulation of the spatio-temporal variability of the fluxes and the accuracy of the simulated GPP and ET, including its partitioning. This resulted in a shift of the seasonal soil moisture cycle. These adaptations are expected to increase the fidelity of climate simulations over Europe. Finally, the extreme summer of 2003 was used as evaluation benchmark for the use of the model in climate change studies. The improved model captures the impact of the 2003 drought on the carbon assimilation and the water use efficiency of the plants. It, however, underestimates the 2003 GPP anomalies. The simulations showed that a reduction of evaporation from the interception and soil reservoirs, albeit not of transpiration, largely explained the good correlation between the carbon and the water fluxes anomalies that was observed during 2003. This demonstrates the importance of being able to discriminate the response of individual component of the ET flux to environmental forcing.

EU agricultural policies and European integration: a thematic review of the literature

The purpose of this chapter is to review the academic literature that has contributed to the debate on the European Union’s (EU’s) common agricultural policy (CAP), and the close links between the CAP and the process of economic integration.

Determinants and measures of export performance – comprehensive literature review

As one of the key indicators of the firm’s ability to leverage successfully its resources and capabilities in the international context, export performance has been one of the most extensively studied phenomena. A plethora of studies have been conducted pertaining to provide better understanding of the factors (firm- or environment-specific) and behaviours (e.g., export strategy) that make exporting a successful venture. Following a comprehensive literature review undertaking in this study the current state of the export performance literature could be summarisedas (i) methodologically fragmented in that there is a variety of analytical and methodological approaches, (ii) conceptually diverse, a large number of determinants have been identified as having direct or indirect influence on the firm’s export performance, and a large number of indicators have been used to conceptualise and operationalise the export performance measures, and (iii) inconclusive, the studies have produced inconsistent results of the impact of different determinants on export performance.

The empirical literature on multinational enterprises, subsidiaries and performance

Purpose – This paper aims to provide a synthetic review of the empirical literature on the multinational enterprise (MNE), subsidiaries and performance. Design/methodology/approach – The paper examines the following: the theoretical and conceptual foundation of multinationality (M) and performance (P) measures; the impact of MNE strategic investment motives on performance; the influence of contextual external and internal environment factors on performance; the strategy to optimize value chain activities of the MNE by cooperating with external partners in an asymmetric network, the key drivers of enhanced shareholder value and the implications of performance; and the need to access primary data provided by firms and managers themselves when analyzing the internal functioning of the MNE and its subsidiaries. Findings – The overall message from this literature review is that empirical research should be designed on the basis of relevant theoretical and conceptual foundations of the performance construct. Originality/value – The paper provides a systematic and synthetic review of theoretical and empirical literature.