Within and without family in the Icelandic sagas

The Icelandic sagas reflect a deep social interest in the nature of family obligations. Narrative tension and drama often result from carefully plotted increases in competition between families,while considerable space is given over to family biographies and genealogical information. As a result, the saga authors’ conception of the historical seems closely bound to a desire to represent family life. In Gísla saga Súrssonar and Íslendinga saga, the representation of family life extends to the situation of internal family conflicts, when the strict ethical codes underpinning the centrality of family obligations seem to be complicated and perhaps even threatened by characters’ formation of stronger bonds outside the family. The portrayal of internal family conflicts in these two sagas enabled the authors to express complex and often conflicting ethical issues.

Gender equity in the professoriate : a cohort study of new women professors in Australia

According to statistics and trend data, women continue to be substantially under- represented in the Australian professoriate, and growth in their representation has been slow despite the plethora of equity programs. While not disputing these facts, we propose that examining gender equity by cohort provides a complementary perspective on the status of gender equity in the professoriate. Based on over 500 survey responses, we detected substantial similarities between women and men who were appointed as professors or associate professors between 2005 and 2008. There were similar proportions of women and men appointed via external or internal processes or by invitation. Additionally, similar proportions of women and men professors expressed a marked preference for research over teaching. Furthermore, there were similar distributions between the genders in the age of appointment to the professoriate. However, a notable gender difference was that women were appointed to the professoriate on average 1.9 years later than mens. This later appointment provides one reason for the lower representation of women compared to men in the professoriate. It also raises questions of the typical length of time that women and men remain in the (paid) professoriate and reasons why they might leave it. A further similarity between women and men in this cohort was their identification of motivation and circumstances as key factors in their career orientation. However, substantially more women identified motivation than circumstances and the situation was reversed for men. The open-ended survey responses also provided confirmation that affirmative action initiatives make a difference to women’s careers.

External auditors' reliance on internal auditing : further evidence.

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore whether internal audit’s reporting relationship with the audit committee and the client’s business risk environment impact external auditors’ reliance on the work of internal audit. Design/methodology/approach – An experiment is conducted using a 2 £ 2 between-subjects design where we manipulate the above two factors at strong and weak levels. Participants are 66 audit partners, managers and seniors, all experienced with clients having internal audit functions. Findings – The results indicate that both factors affect external auditors’ reliance on work already undertaken by internal audit and their use of internal auditors (IA) as assistants. The results also indicate that external auditors are more likely to use internal audit for control evaluation tasks than for substantive tests of balances. The study does not find any significant interaction effects between the two factors. Originality/value – No prior studies have examined the influence of reporting relationship and client business risk on external auditors’ reliance decisions in the current governance environment. Further, the paper examines the impact of these factors on reliance on work already undertaken by internal audit and on using IA as assistants, with respect to both control evaluation work and substantive testing of balances.

Influence of internal fixator stiffness on murine fracture healing : two types of fracture healing lead to two distinct cellular events and FGF-2 expressions

This study aimed to clarify the relationship between the mechanical environment at the fracture site and endogenous fibroblast growth factor-2 (FGF-2). We compared two types of fracture healing with different callus formations and cellular events using MouseFix(TM) plate fixation systems for murine fracture models. Left femoral fractures were induced in 72 ten-week-old mice and then fixed with a flexible (Group F) or rigid (Group R) Mouse Fix(TM) plate. Mice were sacrificed on days 3, 5, 7, 10, 14, and 21. The callus volumes were measured by 3D micro-CT and tissues were histologically stained with hematoxylin & eosin or safranin-O. Sections from days 3, 5, and 7 were immunostained for FGF-2 and Proliferating Cell Nuclear Antigen (PCNA). The callus in Group F was significantly larger than that in Group R. The rigid plate allowed bone union without a marked external callus or chondrogenesis. The flexible plate formed a large external callus as a result of endochondral ossification. Fibroblastic cells in the granulation tissue on days 5 and 7 in Group F showed marked FGF-2 expression compared with Group R. Fibroblastic cells showed ongoing proliferation in granulation tissue in group F, as indicated by PCNA expression, which explained the relative granulation tissue increase in group F. There were major differences in early phase endogenous FGF-2 expression between these two fracture healing processes, due to different mechanical environments.

Bridging the representation and interaction challenges of mobile context-aware computing: designing agile ridesharing

The increasing capability of mobile devices and social networks to gather contextual and social data has led to increased interest in context-aware computing for mobile applications. This paper explores ways of reconciling two different viewpoints of context, representational and interactional, that have arisen respectively from technical and social science perspectives on context-aware computing. Through a case study in agile ridesharing, the importance of dynamic context control, historical context and broader context is discussed. We build upon earlier work that has sought to address the divide by further explicating the problem in the mobile context and expanding on the design approaches.

Free convection in a triangular enclosure with fluid-saturated porous medium and internal heat generation

Unsteady natural convection inside a triangular cavity has been studied in this study. The cavity is filled with a saturated porous medium with non-isothermal left inclined wall while the bottom surface is isothermally heated and the right inclined surface is isothermally cold. An internal heat generation is also considered which is dependent of the fluid temperature. The governing equations are solved numerically by finite element method. The Prandtl number of the fluid is considered as 0.7 (air) while the aspect ratio and the Rayleigh number are considered as 0.5 and 105 respectively. The effect of the porosity of the medium and heat generation on the fluid flow and heat transfer have been presented as a form of streamlines and isotherms. The rate of heat transfer through three surfaces of the enclosure is also presented.

Using strategic movement to calibrate a neural compass : a spiking network for tracking head direction in rats and robots

The head direction (HD) system in mammals contains neurons that fire to represent the direction the animal is facing in its environment. The ability of these cells to reliably track head direction even after the removal of external sensory cues implies that the HD system is calibrated to function effectively using just internal (proprioceptive and vestibular) inputs. Rat pups and other infant mammals display stereotypical warm-up movements prior to locomotion in novel environments, and similar warm-up movements are seen in adult mammals with certain brain lesion-induced motor impairments. In this study we propose that synaptic learning mechanisms, in conjunction with appropriate movement strategies based on warm-up movements, can calibrate the HD system so that it functions effectively even in darkness. To examine the link between physical embodiment and neural control, and to determine that the system is robust to real-world phenomena, we implemented the synaptic mechanisms in a spiking neural network and tested it on a mobile robot platform. Results show that the combination of the synaptic learning mechanisms and warm-up movements are able to reliably calibrate the HD system so that it accurately tracks real-world head direction, and that calibration breaks down in systematic ways if certain movements are omitted. This work confirms that targeted, embodied behaviour can be used to calibrate neural systems, demonstrates that ‘grounding’ of modeled biological processes in the real world can reveal underlying functional principles (supporting the importance of robotics to biology), and proposes a functional role for stereotypical behaviours seen in infant mammals and those animals with certain motor deficits. We conjecture that these calibration principles may extend to the calibration of other neural systems involved in motion tracking and the representation of space, such as grid cells in entorhinal cortex.

Sacred cows and crashing boars : ethno-religious minorities and the politics of online representation in Malaysia

Starting with the incident now known as the Cow’s Head Protest, this article traces and unpacks the events, techniques, and conditions surrounding the representation of ethno-religious minorities in Malaysia. The author suggests that the Malaysian Indians’ struggle to correct the dominant reading of their community as an impoverished and humbled underclass is a disruption of the dominant cultural order in Malaysia. It is also among the key events to have has set in motion a set of dynamics—the visual turn—introduced by new media into the politics of ethno-communal representation in Malaysia. Believing that this situation requires urgent examination the author attempts to outline the problematics of the task.

The internal validity of web-based studies

Honing and Ladinig (2008) make the assertion that while the internal validity of web-based studies may be reduced, this is offset by an increase in external validity possible when experimenters can sample a wider range of participants and experimental settings. In this paper, the issue of internal validity is more closely examined, and it is agued that there is no necessary reason why internal validity of a web-based study should be worse than that of a lab-based one. Errors of measurement or inconsistencies of manipulation will typically balance across conditions of the experiment, and thus need not necessarily threaten the validity of a study’s findings.

Internal and external motivation factors in virtual and collocated project environments : a principal component investigation

In this study, we explore motivation in collocated and virtual project teams. The literature on motivation in a project set.,ting reveals that motivation is closely linked to team performance. Based on this literature, we propose a set., of variables related to the three dimensions of ‘Nature of work’, ‘Rewards’, and ‘Communication’. Thirteen original variables in a sample size of 66 collocated and 66 virtual respondents are investigated using one tail t test and principal component analysis. We find that there are minimal differences between the two groups with respect to the above mentioned three dimensions. (p= .06; t=1.71). Further, a principal component analysis of the combined sample of collocated and virtual project environments reveals two factors- ‘Internal Motivating Factor’ related to work and work environment, and ‘External Motivating Factor’ related to the financial and non-financial rewards that explain 59.8% of the variance and comprehensively characterize motivation in collocated and virtual project environments. A ‘sense check’ of our interpretation of the results shows conformity with the theory and existing practice of project organization

Free convection in a triangular enclosure with fluid-saturated porous medium and internal heat generation

Unsteady natural convection inside a triangular cavity has been studied in this study. The cavity is filled with a saturated porous medium with non-isothermal left inclined wall while the bottom surface is isothermally heated and the right inclined surface is isothermally cooled. An internal heat generation is also considered which is dependent on the fluid temperature. The governing equations are solved numerically by finite volume method. The Prandtl number, Pr of the fluid is considered as 0.7 (air) while the aspect ratio and the Rayleigh number, Ra are considered as 0.5 and 105 respectively. The effect of heat generation on the fluid flow and heat transfer have been presented as a form of streamlines and isotherms. The rate of heat transfer through three surfaces of the enclosure is also presented.

Reliance on internal autopsies in coronial investigations : a review of the issues

Internal autopsies are invasive and result in the mutilation of the deceased person’s body. They are expensive and pose occupational health and safety risks. Accordingly, they should only be done for good cause. However, until recently, “full” internal autopsies have usually been undertaken in most coroners’ cases. There is a growing trend against this practice but it is meeting resistance from some pathologists who argue that any decision as to the extent of the autopsy should rest with them. This paper examines the origins of the coronial system to place in context the current approach to a death investigation and to review the debate about the role of an internal autopsy in the coronial system.

Unusual scene detection using distributed behaviour model and sparse representation

The ability to detect unusual events in surviellance footage as they happen is a highly desireable feature for a surveillance system. However, this problem remains challenging in crowded scenes due to occlusions and the clustering of people. In this paper, we propose using the Distributed Behavior Model (DBM), which has been widely used in computer graphics, for video event detection. Our approach does not rely on object tracking, and is robust to camera movements. We use sparse coding for classification, and test our approach on various datasets. Our proposed approach outperforms a state-of-the-art work which uses the social force model and Latent Dirichlet Allocation.