Lateinische Epigraphik zur Zeit des dreissigjährigen Krieges: Eine Trouvaille

Discussion of the epigraphical exploits of the Danish scholar Henrik Ernst during the Thirty-Years war.

Requirements for building information modeling based lean production management systems for construction

Smooth flow of production in construction is hampered by disparity between individual trade teams' goals and the goals of stable production flow for the project as a whole. This is exacerbated by the difficulty of visualizing the flow of work in a construction project. While the addresses some of the issues in Building information modeling provides a powerful platform for visualizing work flow in control systems that also enable pull flow and deeper collaboration between teams on and off site. The requirements for implementation of a BIM-enabled pull flow construction management software system based on the Last Planner System™, called ‘KanBIM’, have been specified, and a set of functional mock-ups of the proposed system has been implemented and evaluated in a series of three focus group workshops. The requirements cover the areas of maintenance of work flow stability, enabling negotiation and commitment between teams, lean production planning with sophisticated pull flow control, and effective communication and visualization of flow. The evaluation results show that the system holds the potential to improve work flow and reduce waste by providing both process and product visualization at the work face.

Meson properties in an extended nonlocal NJL model

We consider a non-local version of the NJL model, based on a separable quark-quark interaction. The interaction is extended to include terms that bind vector and axial-vector mesons. The non-locality means that no further regulator is required. Moreover the model is able to confine the quarks by generating a quark propagator without poles at real energies. Working in the ladder approximation, we calculate amplitudes in Euclidean space and discuss features of their continuation to Minkowski energies. Conserved currents are constructed and we demonstrate their consistency with various Ward identities. Various meson masses are calculated, along with their strong and electromagnetic decay amplitudes. We also calculate the electromagnetic form factor of the pion, as well as form factors associated with the processes γγ* → π0 and ω → π0γ*. The results are found to lead to a satisfactory phenomenology and lend some dynamical support to the idea of vector-meson dominance.

Le calunnie etniche nella lingua italiana

“Le calunnie etniche nella lingua italiana” (“Ethnic slurs in the Italian language”) is a very long chapter (c. 35.000 words) included in the second volume (pp. 513-587) of the multi-volume La cultura italiana, published by UTET in 2009-2010. (http://cultura.utet.it/cultura/catalogo/details.jsp?id=2076). La cultura italiana is an innovative multidisciplinary 12 volume (8.000 pages) work directed by the internationally acclaimed scientist Luigi Cavalli Sforza (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luigi_Luca_Cavalli-Sforza); each volume has been coordinated and edited by a very prominent Italian scholar, and every contribution has been written by academics with national and international reputations. The second volume of La cultura italiana has been coordinated by Professor Gian Luigi Beccaria, and is entirely devoted to language (“Lingue e linguaggi”). “Le calunnie etniche” brings together, for the first time in Italy, methodological issues and case studies on ethnic slurs in Italian and Italian dialects, and it particularly sheds new light on the semantic field of zingaro (gypsy), highlighting both the historical construction of the label, through the analysis of a huge amount of sources, and its social and political implication.

Maximising concurrency and scalability in a consistent, causal, distributed virtual reality system, whilst minimising the effect of network delays

The development of large scale virtual reality and simulation systems have been mostly driven by the DIS and HLA standards community. A number of issues are coming to light about the applicability of these standards, in their present state, to the support of general multi-user VR systems. This paper pinpoints four issues that must be readdressed before large scale virtual reality systems become accessible to a larger commercial and public domain: a reduction in the effects of network delays; scalable causal event delivery; update control; and scalable reliable communication. Each of these issues is tackled through a common theme of combining wall clock and causal time-related entity behaviour, knowledge of network delays and prediction of entity behaviour, that together overcome many of the effects of network delay.

Boundaries and Bridges: the influence of James Cooksey Culwick on the development of the teaching and learning of music in nineteenth century Ireland

James Cooksey Culwick (1845-1907) was born in England. Trained as chorister and organist in Lichfield Cathedral, he moved to Ireland at twenty- one and remained until his death in 1907. Although his reputation as scholar, musician and teacher was acknowledged widely during his lifetime - he received an honorary doctorate from University of Dublin (1893) - little is known about the contribution he made to music education. This paper addresses this gap in the literature and argues that it was Culwick's singular achievement to pay attention to music pedagogy at secondary level, by recognizing that music could be seen as a serious career option for girls, and by providing resources for teachers which emphasised the development of an 'art-feeling' in pupils of all abilities. In addition, he considered Irish music as an art which had significance as music first, and Irish music second, and advocated a 'laudable tolerance' for opposing views on matters of cultural identity to Ireland at the end of the nineteenth century.

Max Weber in the thought of Edward Shils (1910–1995) and Ernest Gellner (1925–1995): the paradox of two Weberian approaches to the understanding of nations and nationalism?

This article traces the paradoxical impact of Weber's oeuvre on two major scholars of nationalism, Ernest Gellner and Edward Shils. Both these scholars died in 1995, leaving behind a rich corpus of writings on the nation and nationalism, much of which was inspired by Max Weber. The paradox is that although neither scholar accepted Weber's sceptical attitude to the concept of ‘nation’, they both used his other major concepts, such as ‘rationality’, ‘disenchantment’, ‘unintended consequences’, the ‘ethic of responsibility’ and ‘charisma’, in their very analyses of the nation and nationalism. And they both saw, each in his own way, the nation and nationalism as constitutive elements of modern societies. However, the paradox ceases being a paradox if one sees the integration, by Shils and Gellner, of concepts of the nation and of nationalism in the analysis of modernity, as a development of Weber's ideas.

The research productivity of the AIB Farmer Award finalists

Purpose – This paper aims to analyze the research productivity and impact of the finalists of the AIB best dissertation award, now titled the Buckley and Casson Award, but from 1987 to 2012 the Farmer Award. Specifically, this paper examines whether there is a relationship between winning the best dissertation award and subsequent publication productivity and impact. Relationships between academic institution and institutional geographic location and finalists are also examined. Design/methodology/approach – The paper examines 25 years of citation counts and the number of publications in Google Scholar of Farmer Award winners and finalists of the AIB best dissertation award from inception in 1987 to 2009, with cited publications as a measure of productivity and citations as a measure of impact. Top performers in productivity and impact are identified, and the averages of winners and non-winners are analyzed in aggregate, over time and per year. Data on finalists' institution and geographic location of institution are analyzed to describe the importance of location and institution to the award. Findings – It is found that the overall average citations of the winners of the award is less than that of the non-winners, and that in the large majority of years the non-winners have an average citation count higher than that of the winners. However, taking averages in five year increments shows more mixed results, with non-winners performing better in two periods and winners performing better in two periods, with the remaining period being split as to research productivity and impact. Originality/value – Aggarwal et al. in this journal summarized a variety of data on Farmer Award finalists from the 1990s to gain insights on institutions represented by finalists, the publication record of finalists, and content of dissertations, among other characteristics. This paper updates some of the insights from that paper by examining data on award winners from 1987 to 2013, and adds further insight by examining for the first time cited publications and citation counts winners and non-winners for the same period excluding the last two years.

Progress report on longitudinal and cross-sectional study of carbon disclosure strategies: evidence from UK listed companies

Global warming has attracted attention from all over the world and led to the concern about carbon emission. Kyoto Protocol, as the first major international regulatory emission trading scheme, was introduced in 1997 and outlined the strategies for reducing carbon emission (Ratnatunga et al., 2011). As the increased interest in carbon reduction the Protocol came into force in 2005, currently there are already 191 nations ratifying the Protocol(UNFCCC, 2012). Under the cap-and-trade schemes, each company has its carbon emission target. When company’s carbon emission exceeds the target the company will either face fines or buy emission allowance from other companies. Thus unlike most of the other social and environmental issues carbon emission could trigger cost for companies in introducing low-emission equipment and systems and also emission allowance cost when they emit more than their targets. Despite the importance of carbon emission to companies, carbon emission reporting is still operating under unregulated environment and companies are only required to disclose when it is material either in value or in substances (Miller, 2005, Deegan and Rankin, 1997). Even though there is still an increase in the volume of carbon emission disclosures in company’s financial reports and stand-alone social and environmental reports to show their concern of the environment and also their social responsibility (Peters and Romi, 2009), the motivations behind corporate carbon emission disclosures and whether carbon disclosures have impact on corporate environmental reputation and financial performance have not yet to explore. The problems with carbon emission lie on both the financial side and non-financial side of corporate governance. On one hand corporate needs to spend money in reducing carbon emission or paying penalties when they emit more than allowed. On the other hand as the public are more interested in environmental issues than before carbon emission could also impact on the image of corporate regarding to its environmental performance. The importance of carbon emission issue are beginning to be recognized by companies from different industries as one of the critical issues in supply chain management (Lee, 2011) and 80% of companies analysed are facing carbon risks resulting from emissions in the companies’ supply chain as shown in a study conducted by the Investor Responsibility Research Centre Institute for Corporate Responsibility (IRRCI) and over 80% of the companies analysed found that the majority of greenhouse gas (GHG) emission are from electricity and other direct suppliers (Trucost, 2009). The review of extant literature shows the increased importance of carbon emission issues and the gap in the study of carbon reporting and disclosures and also the study which links corporate environmental reputation and corporate financial performance with carbon reporting (Lohmann, 2009a, Ratnatunga and Balachandran, 2009, Bebbington and Larrinaga-Gonzalez, 2008). This study would focus on investigating the current status of UK carbon emission disclosures, the determinant factors of corporate carbon disclosure, and the relationship between carbon emission disclosures and corporate environmental reputation and financial performance of UK listed companies from 2004-2012 and explore the explanatory power of classical disclosure theories.

Barabas's Fall

Early modern play-texts present numerous puzzles for scholars interested in ascertaining how plays were (or may have been) staged. the principal evidence of course for a notional "reconstruction" of practices is the apparatus of stage directions, augmented by indications in the dialogue. in conjunction a joining-of-the-dots is often possible, at least in broad-brush terms. But as is well known, the problem is that stage directions tend to be incomplete, imprecise, inaccurate ­ or missing altogether; more significantly, even when present they offer only slight and indirect evidence of actual stagecraft. Some stage directions are rather more "literary" than "theatrical" in provenance, and in any case to the extent that they do serve the reader (early modern or modern) they cannot be regarded as providing a record of stage practice. After all, words can be no more than imperfect substitutes for (and of another order from) the things they represent. For the most part directions serve as a guide that provides the basis for reasonable interpretation informed by our knowledge of theatre architecture, technology, and comparable play-situations, rather than concrete evidence of actual practice. Quite how some stage business was carried out remains uncertain, leaving the scholar little option but to hypothesize solutions. One such conundrum arises in christopher Marlowe's The Jew of Malta. the scenario in question is hardly an obscure one, but it has not been examined in detail, even by modern editors. the purpose of this essay is to explore what sense might be made of the surviving textual evidence, in combination with our knowledge of theatre architecture and playmaking culture in the late sixteenth century.

Consumer purchasing behaviour towards fish and seafood products: patterns and insights from a sample of international studies

The present systematic review was performed to assess consumer purchasing behaviour towards fish and seafood products in the wide context of developed countries. Web of Science, Scopus, ScienceDirect and Google Scholar engines were used to search the existing literature and a total of 49 studies were identified for inclusion. These studies investigated consumer purchasing behaviour towards a variety of fish and seafood products, in different countries and by means of different methodological approaches. In particular, the review identifies and discusses the main drivers and barriers of fish consumption as well as consumers’ preferences about the most relevant attributes of fish and seafood products providing useful insights for both practitioners and policy makers. Finally, main gaps of the existing literature and possible trajectories for future research are also discussed.