Choosing to make an effort: the role of striatum in signaling physical effort of a chosen action.

The possibility that we will have to invest effort influences our future choice behavior. Indeed deciding whether an action is actually worth taking is a key element in the expression of human apathy or inertia. There is a well developed literature on brain activity related to the anticipation of effort, but how effort affects actual choice is less well understood. Furthermore, prior work is largely restricted to mental as opposed to physical effort or has confounded temporal with effortful costs. Here we investigated choice behavior and brain activity, using functional magnetic resonance imaging, in a study where healthy participants are required to make decisions between effortful gripping, where the factors of force (high and low) and reward (high and low) were varied, and a choice of merely holding a grip device for minimal monetary reward. Behaviorally, we show that force level influences the likelihood of choosing an effortful grip. We observed greater activity in the putamen when participants opt to grip an option with low effort compared with when they opt to grip an option with high effort. The results suggest that, over and above a nonspecific role in movement anticipation and salience, the putamen plays a crucial role in computations for choice that involves effort costs.

Sense and sensibility: The role of business incubator client advisors in assisting high-technology entrepreneurs to make sense of investment readiness status

For high-technology entrepreneurs, attaining an appropriate level of investment to support new ventures is challenging as substantial investment is usually required prior to revenue generation. Consequently, entrepreneurs must present their firms as investment ready in the context of an uncertain market response and an absence of any trading history. Gaining tenancy within a business incubator can be advantageous to this process given that placement enhances entrepreneurial contact with potential investors whilst professional client advisors (CAs) use their expertise to assist in the development of a credible business plan. However, for the investment proposal to be successful, it must make sense to fund managers despite their lack of technological expertise and product knowledge. Thus, this article explores how incubator CAs and entrepreneurs act in concert to mould innovative ideas into plausible business plans that make sense to venture fund investors. To illustrate this process, we draw upon empirical evidence which suggests that CAs act as sense makers between venture fund managers (VFMs) and high-technology entrepreneurs, yet their role and influence appears undervalued. These findings have implications for entrepreneurial access to much needed funding and also for the identification of investment opportunities for VFMs. © 2011 Taylor & Francis.

Thin catalytic coatings on microreactor walls A way to make industrial processes more efficient

Current trends in the development of microstructured reactors with thin catalytic films (from 100 nm up to several microns) that have self-assembled nanostructures are discussed. A major technique that is used to prepare such films is sol-gel processing. This involves depositing a complex fluid on a microstructured substrate by dip, spin, or spray coating, followed by surfactant removal to form the porous nanostructures. A novel methodology has been developed by which a uniform coating containing controlled amounts of (poly) metallic nanoparticles can be obtained. This elegant strategy is based on the condensation of metal oxide species by self-assembly in the presence of metallic colloids. The potential microreactor applications brought forth by this innovative protocol are placed in perspective in the light of its versatility.

Unmasking the ‘Elderly Mystique’: why it is time to make the personal political in ageing research

This article uses feminist scholarship to investigate ‘the elderly mystique’ – which contends that the potential of old age is masked by a set of false beliefs about ageing (i.e. ageism) which permeate social, economic and political life (Cohen, 1988).
The article presents a theoretical model which explores the extent to which institutionalised ageism shapes the trajectory of life after 60. The hypothesis under-pinning the model is simple: The challenge for ageing societies is not the average age of a given population but, rather, how age is used to structure economic, social and political life. An inter-disciplinary framework is used to examine how biological facts about ageing are used to segregate older from younger people, giving older people the status of “other”; economically through retirement, politically through assumptions about ‘the grey vote’ and socially through ageist stereotyping in the media and through denial and ridicule of the sexuality of older people. Each domain is informed by the achievements of feminist theory and research on sexism and how its successes and failures can inform critical investigations of ageism.
The paper recognises the role of ageism in de-politicising the lived experience of ageing. The paper concludes that feminist scholarship, particularly work by feminists in their seventies, eighties and nineties has much to offer in terms of re-framing gerontology as an emancipatory project for current and future cohorts of older people.

How to reduce energy consumption on pultrusion

The global warming due to high CO2 emission in the last years has made energy saving a global problem nowadays. However, manufacturing processes such as pultrusion necessarily needs heat for curing the resin. Then, the only option available is to apply all efforts to make the process even more efficient. Different heating systems have been used on pultrusion, however, the most widely used are the planar resistances. The main objective of this study is to develop another heating system and compares it with the former one. Thermography was used in spite of define the temperature profile along the die. FEA (finite element analysis) allows to understand how many energy is spend with the initial heating system. After this first approach, changes were done on the die in order to test the new heating system and to check possible quality problems on the product. Thus, this work allows to conclude that with the new heating system a significant reduction in the setup time is now possible and an energy reduction of about 57% was achieved.

How to increase and attract more tourists into Kenya throught experiental marketing

This marketing plan project is a culmination of extensive strategies with the use of experiential marketing to address issues confronting the Kenyan tourism industry in order to have a sustainable tourism sector. Following the terrorist attack carried out by Islamist militants’ belonging to al-Shabaab terrorist organization on Nairobi’s Westgate shopping mall in September 2013, tourist forecast has gone down sharply with an average of 20% fall in tourists’ arrivals which is likely to have an impact on the tourism sector in Kenya. Even before the deadly attack on Westgate, the most lethal attack by Islamist terrorists in 15 years in Kenya, the government through the Kenya tourist board had announced that in 2013 tourist arrivals were down by 12%, at 495,978, according to an October 2013 report by Bloomberg. Tourism revenues were also down by 7.4%, over FY12/13 (July-June) to reach KES96.24bn, according to a September 2013 report on the local Capital FM website. Beyond 2013, much will depend on how quickly the Kenya tourist board can regain control of the situation. The Kenyan government believes that the Westgate mall attack was a 'one-off' incident, with a low probability of a similar event happening again over the short term period. Germany, United States, United Kingdom, Australia, Italy, France and Canada continue to be the key source market however; the Kenya tourist board can make continued growth stronger from new emerging markets in order to increase new arrivals into the country. The marketing plan outlines the objectives to be implemented and provides the implementation strategy, activity plans, monitoring and evaluation plans, financial requirements projections and proposes a new structure of experiential marketing. A number of regional forces are identified that will impact tourism into the country including global, social and economic forces, emerging trends in visitor motivations and behavior, emerging forces in experiential marketing. A major component of the strategy identifies target markets for Kenya to commensurate with the level of resources that will be available for marketing and promotion, in keeping with the forces and trends identified and the nature of the Kenya tourism environment. The agreed upon target market segments are: generic/mass travel, experiential travel, creative travel, adventure seeking travel, senior/extended/long stay travel, and business related travel. The strategy phases the development of the target markets over the years of the marketing strategies in order to yield the best opportunity for results. A core activity in developing a marketing strategy is determining the nature of experiences Kenya offers in tourism. The strategy’s experience development process will continue to develop within the context of the products identified which will be promoted regionally: culture/heritage, nature, community-based. Each county in the country has a significant number of attractions and experiences and the challenge of the country is to bring these together in a creative and innovative way in order to encourage tourists to visit more than one county in Kenya.

Chute Losses Aren't Accidents! Most Injuries can be Avoided. Here's How to Rate the Performance of Your Chute and Crew

The conclusion of the article reads "good handling during processing and re-implanting could mean the difference between a going operation and financial disaster. But it's up to you to make certain your crew understands and follows proper chute practices. When they do, it will mean more money in your pocket."

How to do a dissertation

The role of the supervisor• agree a timetable of meetings at the start of your project and stick to it;• make sure that each meeting has a focus eg “setting a research problem”,“analysing the data”;• send something that can form the basis of a discussion about your progress to your supervisor before each meeting. This could include your research plan, early results of your data collection or draft chapters;• turn up on time to each meeting you have arranged. Do not assume that your supervisor is available at all times to see you;• at the end of each

Panopto lecture capture: How to control access to your recordings

This short 3-minute video show how you can make a recording available to anyone on the internet and how to restrict access again. It also shows how to disable and re-enable student access to a specific recording.

Using the Table of Authorities functionality to make a Glossary in Word 2010

Word does not contain a Glossary creation tool, you may find it easiest to just create a the list yourself manually. If you want to use Word then the only tool that can be co-opted to help is the Table of Authorities and this document sets out step by step instructions on how to do this.

Using the Table of Authorities functionality to make a Glossary in Word 2011

Word does not contain a Glossary creation tool, you may find it easiest to just create a the list yourself manually. If you want to use Word then the only tool that can be co-opted to help is the Table of Authorities and this document sets out step by step instructions on how to do this in Word 2011.

How to quantify the resolution of surface climate by circulation types: an example for Alpine precipitation

A novel approach is presented for the evaluation of circulation type classifications (CTCs) in terms of their capability to predict surface climate variations. The approach is analogous to that for probabilistic meteorological forecasts and is based on the Brier skill score. This score is shown to take a particularly simple form in the context of CTCs and to quantify the resolution of a climate variable by the classifications. The sampling uncertainty of the skill can be estimated by means of nonparametric bootstrap resampling. The evaluation approach is applied for a systematic intercomparison of 71 CTCs (objective and manual, from COST Action 733) with respect to their ability to resolve daily precipitation in the Alpine region. For essentially all CTCs, the Brier skill score is found to be higher for weak and moderate compared to intense precipitation, for winter compared to summer, and over the north and west of the Alps compared to the south and east. Moreover, CTCs with a higher number of types exhibit better skill than CTCs with few types. Among CTCs with comparable type number, the best automatic classifications are found to outperform the best manual classifications. It is not possible to single out one ‘best’ classification for Alpine precipitation, but there is a small group showing particularly high skill.

Predicting how many animals will be where: how to build, calibrate and evaluate individual-based models

Individual-based models (IBMs) can simulate the actions of individual animals as they interact with one another and the landscape in which they live. When used in spatially-explicit landscapes IBMs can show how populations change over time in response to management actions. For instance, IBMs are being used to design strategies of conservation and of the exploitation of fisheries, and for assessing the effects on populations of major construction projects and of novel agricultural chemicals. In such real world contexts, it becomes especially important to build IBMs in a principled fashion, and to approach calibration and evaluation systematically. We argue that insights from physiological and behavioural ecology offer a recipe for building realistic models, and that Approximate Bayesian Computation (ABC) is a promising technique for the calibration and evaluation of IBMs. IBMs are constructed primarily from knowledge about individuals. In ecological applications the relevant knowledge is found in physiological and behavioural ecology, and we approach these from an evolutionary perspective by taking into account how physiological and behavioural processes contribute to life histories, and how those life histories evolve. Evolutionary life history theory shows that, other things being equal, organisms should grow to sexual maturity as fast as possible, and then reproduce as fast as possible, while minimising per capita death rate. Physiological and behavioural ecology are largely built on these principles together with the laws of conservation of matter and energy. To complete construction of an IBM information is also needed on the effects of competitors, conspecifics and food scarcity; the maximum rates of ingestion, growth and reproduction, and life-history parameters. Using this knowledge about physiological and behavioural processes provides a principled way to build IBMs, but model parameters vary between species and are often difficult to measure. A common solution is to manually compare model outputs with observations from real landscapes and so to obtain parameters which produce acceptable fits of model to data. However, this procedure can be convoluted and lead to over-calibrated and thus inflexible models. Many formal statistical techniques are unsuitable for use with IBMs, but we argue that ABC offers a potential way forward. It can be used to calibrate and compare complex stochastic models and to assess the uncertainty in their predictions. We describe methods used to implement ABC in an accessible way and illustrate them with examples and discussion of recent studies. Although much progress has been made, theoretical issues remain, and some of these are outlined and discussed.

Sour taste preferences of children relates to preference for novel and intense stimuli

Previous research has suggested that some children have a preference for sour tastes. The origin of this preference remains unclear. We investigated whether preference for sour tastes is related to a difference in rated sour intensity due to physiological properties of saliva, or to an overall preference for intense and new stimuli. Eighty-nine children 7–12 years old carried out a rank-order procedure for preference and category scale for perceived intensity for four gelatins (i.e. 0.0 M, 0.02 M, 0.08 M, 0.25 M added citric acid) and four yellow cards that differed in brightness. In addition, we measured their willingness to try a novel candy and their flow and buffering capacity of their saliva. Fifty-eight percent of the children tested preferred one of the two most sour gelatins. These children had a higher preference for the brightest color (P < 0.05) and were more likely to try the candy with the unknown flavor (P < 0.001) than children who did not prefer the most sour gelatins. Preference for sour taste was not related with differences in rated sour intensity, however those who preferred sour taste had a higher salivary flow (P < 0.05). These findings show that a substantial proportion of young children have a preference for extreme sour taste. This appears to be related to the willingness to try unknown foods and preference for intense visual stimuli. Further research is needed to investigate how these findings can be implemented in the promotion of sour-tasting food such as fruit.

Student researchers in the middle : using visual images to make sense of inclusive education

Using ‘visual narrative’ theoretically and practically, this paper explores issues of inclusive education, during a period of curriculum reform and renewal in Australia. In Australia, the middle years of schooling, Years 5 to 9, are well researched and known as a period when students disengage with learning and participation in schooling. Research in the middle years affirms the importance of engaging with ‘student voice’. In this special edition, we are aiming to highlight how the use of visual imagery can be a rich source of understanding, illustrating students’ self-knowledge of schooling. Methodologically we refer to our research approach as ‘visual narrative’. Other writers in this edition use the term ‘photo voice’. For researchers it is important to highlight the differing orientations that ‘visual narrative’ and ‘photo voice’ signify. The terms are not mutually exclusive but highlight differing research possibilities and emphasis. Our argument, through the use of visual narrative produced by middle years’ students, is that visual texts open out some innovative possibilities for understanding inclusive education and supporting new relationships with our research community. Such approaches are not new; however, in a field such as special education that purports to support marginalised groups, liberatory research methods are under-represented. This paper aims to open out these discussions and provide a way forwards for teachers and researchers interested in breaking apart why it is that inclusive education remains a never-ending struggle.