Current International Research Research Articles

Research Progress of On-Line Measurement and Compensation Technology about Grinding Wheel Wear

According to the characteristics of grinding wheel wear in the grinding process, the grinding wheel wear forms and their reasons are analyzed. At the same time, as the grinding wheel wear will affect the size of components, the procedures of on-line measurement and compensation technology about grinding wheel wear are summarized. The current domestic and international research status of on-line measurement and compensation methods about grinding wheel wear are introduced, such as position calibration based method, machine vision based method, laser displacement based method, acoustic emission based method, grinding force based method, cutting vibration based method, grinding acceleration based method and pressure based method. Finally, the current research difficulties of grinding wheel wear’s on-line measurement and compensation technology are analyzed, and the further research direction is made.

ADL 3D Character Animation Design Table Research and Application

3D character animation has into every aspect of our lives, How to raise the efficiency of development is still current domestic and international research one of the hot issues. This paper, based on the rehabilitation medicine ADL standard, Puts forward 3d characters ADL action based action split standards,According to the software engineering layered development and atom model thought, Design realize the ADL 3d character animation design table, Applied to the simulation training construction of action of oil field development, Effectively improve the oil workers 3d action role construction the efficiency of the development.

Interaction of aerodynamic roughness length and windflow conditions and its parameterization over vegetation surface

Surface aerodynamic roughness length is usually taken as a constant. In fact, it displays a remarkable dynamic change over underlying vegetation surfaces, because of the coupling of land surface roughness elements and windflow conditions. Current international research on this dynamic change and associated mechanisms is very limited. Using observations from different underlying surfaces (including forest, farmland and grassland) provided by a northern China coordinated observation test, the variation of aerodynamic roughness length, along with wind speed and friction velocity, is analyzed. We introduce two relationship fits, between aerodynamic roughness length and wind speed u, and dynamic variable u 2/u*. Results show that aerodynamic roughness length has a clear dynamic change, and has complicated interactions with near-surface windflow. Further, the relationship fits between aerodynamic roughness length, u and u 2/u*, are not only related to the roughness properties of the underlying vegetation surface (e.g. plant height), but also to plant dynamic response characteristics (e.g. flexibility). Aerodynamic roughness length decreases with increasing wind speed, because near-surface windflow conditions can change both plant roughness properties and airflow. However, the change of aerodynamic roughness length with friction velocity is complicated, and its sensitivities and transition points significantly depend on vegetation type. For underlying surfaces of forest and corn, with relatively substantial vegetative cover, roughness length correlates well with wind speed. For a surface with short vegetative cover, like natural lawn, the correlation is low. However, for all of the three vegetative surfaces, there is a close relation between roughness length and u 2/u*, and their coefficients of fit from testing essentially represent the plant height and flexibility of different vegetation types. The test results also indicate that the parameterized relationships of roughness length over the underlying vegetation surface hold prospects for application.

Gender Diversity und Organisationserfolg — Eine kritische Bestandsaufnahme

In the context of human resource management in German organizations, diversity management has been established as an indispensible element. The reasons for diversity management are various, ranging from a response to political or normative needs to the expectation of positive economic effects. Against this background, the paper presents empirical results of the current international research on the relationship between gender diversity and organizational performance, including moderators of this relationship. Our analysis reveals that positive economic main effects of gender diversity cannot be confirmed; moreover, only few moderators of the diversity-performance relationship could be identified. Extant research suffers from a lack of consistent theoretical reasoning and methodological heterogeneity; moreover, studies in the German context are particularly rare. The paper provides implications for further research on gender diversity and practical implications for gender diversity management.

Inpatient Care in the 21st Century: Who Needs It?

Inpatient Care in the 21st Century: Who Needs It?

Inpatient Care in the 21st Century: Who Needs It?

Inpatient Care in the 21st Century: Who Needs It?

The First Tianjin, China Forum on Tumor Microenvironment

Although it is well recognized that the tumor microenvironment plays a key role in regulating tumor progression, the mechanisms through which this occurs need to be defined. Current international research activities toward defining the role of the tumor microenvironment in cancer progression were the subject of the first Tianjin Forum on Tumor Microenvironment held at Nankai University in Tianjin, China, July 2 to 4, 2010. The importance of variety of processes, such as inflammation and angiogenesis, in the role of tumor progression was described for multiple tumor types including breast, prostate, and hepatic cancers, as well as the process of bone metastasis. Identification of novel signaling pathways that impact both angiogenesis and bone remodeling were presented. Several themes emerged from this meeting, such as: (i) tumor cells modify the microenvironment to enhance their own survival and progression; (ii) targeting host factors, in addition to targeting tumor cells, will have important therapeutic effects; and (iii) host cells distribution within the tumor has both prognostic and therapeutic significance. Several priorities for future research were defined including use of a systems biology approach to define the role of host factors in tumor progression, to define the importance of targeting both arms of the bone remodeling process for therapy of bone metastasis, and to determine how different cell subsets contribute to microenvironment-mediated regulation of tumor progression.

Durability of Concrete Structure Research and Development Direction

Currently, durability of concrete structures is a hot area of civil engineering. This paper reviews the background to the study of concrete and the current international research developments. Recent accomplishments in the world are summarized on four levels—environment, materials, components, structure. Finally, directions of future research are also proposed.

Media use and school achievement – boys at risk?

In work done at the German Criminological Research Institute of Lower Saxony (KFN) various methods have been used to investigate how specific inappropriate media usage patterns affect academic performance in children and adolescents. The findings are paralleled by current international research indicating a negative relationship between these two variables. Based on a cross-sectional survey of 5,529 fourth grade students and a longitudinal panel study with 1,157 primary schoolchildren, a key finding can be demonstrated: the more time students spend on consuming media and the more violent its contents are, the worse are their marks at school, even when controlling for vital factors such as family, educational, or immigrant background. In particular, boys who gender-specifically are better equipped with electronic media devices, who partially have extensive media usage times and who strongly prefer violent media content, are at the risk of showing poor school performance. In fact, a decrease in academic performance of boys can be observed in German school statistics. By presenting first results of a school-based intervention programme, a promising approach to the reduction of detrimental effects of electronic media use on school performance is introduced.

A multicriteria model for planning agricultural regions within a context of groundwater rational management

Current international research focuses on topics like sustainable development, regional planning, environmental decision making and implementation, biodiversity conservation plus a number of other relevant issues, especially at times of economic crisis as today. Economic growth and environmental protection can go hand in hand, provided that decision makers develop and use tools and insights targeting in the implementation of successful and robust long term policies. This paper was developed in the framework of a European research project and implements a Multicriteria Mathematical Programming model that optimises the sustainable management of agricultural regions taking in account the available resources (land, labour, capital) and environmental parameters (agrochemicals, water consumption). The model achieves the optimum farm plan in the area combining different criteria to a utility function under a set of constraints and the spatial integration of the vulnerability maps of the regions into the model enables the regional authorities to design policies for the optimal agricultural development and the groundwater protection from the agricultural land uses. Furthermore, the model is used to simulate different scenarios and policies by the local stakeholders, due to changes on different social, economic and environmental parameters. In this way the decision makers can achieve alternative farm plans and agricultural land uses as well as to estimate economic, social and environmental impacts of different policies. The model has been applied to an agricultural region in Northern Greece and proved to be a valuable tool in the implementation of environmental policies and actions, especially in agricultural regions in a delicate balance as the study area.

Review: current international research into cellulose nanofibres and nanocomposites

This paper provides an overview of recent progress made in the area of cellulose nanofibre-based nanocomposites. An introduction into the methods used to isolate cellulose nanofibres (nanowhiskers, nanofibrils) is given, with details of their structure. Following this, the article is split into sections dealing with processing and characterisation of cellulose nanocomposites and new developments in the area, with particular emphasis on applications. The types of cellulose nanofibres covered are those extracted from plants by acid hydrolysis (nanowhiskers), mechanical treatment and those that occur naturally (tunicate nanowhiskers) or under culturing conditions (bacterial cellulose nanofibrils). Research highlighted in the article are the use of cellulose nanowhiskers for shape memory nanocomposites, analysis of the interfacial properties of cellulose nanowhisker and nanofibril-based composites using Raman spectroscopy, switchable interfaces that mimic sea cucumbers, polymerisation from the surface of cellulose nanowhiskers by atom transfer radical polymerisation and ring opening polymerisation, and methods to analyse the dispersion of nanowhiskers. The applications and new advances covered in this review are the use of cellulose nanofibres to reinforce adhesives, to make optically transparent paper for electronic displays, to create DNA-hybrid materials, to generate hierarchical composites and for use in foams, aerogels and starch nanocomposites and the use of all-cellulose nanocomposites for enhanced coupling between matrix and fibre. A comprehensive coverage of the literature is given and some suggestions on where the field is likely to advance in the future are discussed.

Application of semi-structured and in-depth interview on optimization of clinical research program in traditional Chinese medicine

The paper aims to explore basic steps, regulation and data analysis methods of semi-structured and in-depth interview studies of clinical research in traditional Chinese medicine (TCM), and to provide some helpful information obtained from the examples for decision making in TCM research field. A pilot study was made with eight interviewees and, based on which, a formal one with twelve interviewees was done in this study. All the recordings were transcribed into verbal manuscripts, categorized into different archives and labeled by letter from A to T. Grounded theory for analyzing qualitative data was used in this study, and cross-case analysis was also made on the basis of case-by-case analysis results. Nine theories with central categories were constructed by three coding procedures from grounded theory. Three kinds of relationships, three types of optimized attitude, and three concerns were obtained from the example study. Nine analyzing conceptual graphs and nine theories related to optimization of TCM clinical research program were established finally. The researchers of large national studies were included as interviewees in the study. A comprehensive and critical data analysis from twelve interviewees for in-depth interview was conducted in accordance with current international qualitative research, and a response theory model focused on optimization of TCM clinical research program was established. The study laid the foundation for using semi-structured and in-depth interview for TCM clinical research.

What is the Best Standard for the Standard of Care in Clinical Research?

During the past decennium, one of the main issues discussed in research ethics has been focused on the care that should be provided to the control group in a clinical trial. This discussion is also called the standard of care debate. Current international research ethics guidelines contain a wide variety of standards for the standard of care—including the provision of the highest attainable, the best available, the best current, a proven, and an established effective treatment. In this article, we systematically review the currently used standards and argue that none of the current standards is adequate to serve as a universal standard for the standard of care. Alex London has made a substantial proposal for a universal standard, but universally adopting his standard is problematic. In this article, we propose a revised version of London's standard.

An Exploratory Study of Religiosity, Meaning in Life and Subjective Wellbeing in Muslim Students from Algeria

This study explores the relationships between religiosity, Meaning in Life and Subjective Wellbeing (SWB) in a sample of 495 Muslim students (330 Females, and 165 males) from Algeria. Their Mean age is 21.26 (SD2.30). Relying on experts’ judgments and pilot-testing, a Comprehensive Measure of Islamic Religiosity (CMIR) has been developed. It consists of 60 items covering four broad areas with high inter-correlations: Religious Belief, Religious Practice, Religious Altruism, and Enrichment of religious experience. A short version of the ‘Presence of Meaning in Life’ (PML) scale, Satisfaction With Life Scale (SWLS), and Personal Wellbeing Index (PWI) are also administered in one set of questionnaires, together with religiosity items. The results indicate that Religious Belief and Religious Altruism significantly contribute in providing subjects with meaning in life. Nevertheless, Hierarchical Regression Analyses show that only Religious Belief makes a significant contribution in both SWLS and PWI. But, this effect has almost totally been accounted for by Meaning in life in the second step. Comparisons on the basis of the demographic characteristics show that males marginally differ from females (p < .05) in Religious Altruism, but these latter are higher in SWLS (p < .05). Moreover, it has been shown that students of science score marginally higher in Belief and Practice and also in PML, and SWLS compared to their counterparts of Arts studies. Though no differences are found in the strength of religious belief in subjects from rural and urban location, the former have generally higher scores on other religiosity subscales. This trend is slightly reversed in PWI (p < .05). Furthermore, subjects from high income families are favoured in PML, SWLS, and PWI. These results are discussed on the light of current international research.

A Concordance between Ten-Digit U.S. Harmonized System Codes and SIC/NAICS Product Classes and Industries

This paper provides and describes concordances between the ten-digit Harmonized System (HS) categories used to classify products in U.S. international trade and the four-digit SIC and six-digit NAICS industries that cover the years 1989 to 2006. We also provide concordances between ten- digit HS codes and the five-digit SIC and seven-digit NAICS product classes used to classify U.S. manufacturing production. Finally, we briefly describe how these concordances might be applied in current empirical international trade research.

An assessment of opportunities to dissect host genetic variation in resistance to infectious diseases in livestock

This paper reviews the evidence for host genetic variation in resistance to infectious diseases for a wide variety of diseases of economic importance in poultry, cattle, pig, sheep and Atlantic salmon. Further, it develops a method of ranking each disease in terms of its overall impact, and combines this ranking with published evidence for host genetic variation and information on the current state of genomic tools in each host species. The outcome is an overall ranking of the amenability of each disease to genomic studies that dissect host genetic variation in resistance. Six disease-based assessment criteria were defined: industry concern, economic impact, public concern, threat to food safety or zoonotic potential, impact on animal welfare and threat to international trade barriers. For each category, a subjective score was assigned to each disease according to the relative strength of evidence, impact, concern or threat posed by that particular disease, and the scores were summed across categories. Evidence for host genetic variation in resistance was determined from available published data, including breed comparison, heritability studies, quantitative trait loci (QTL) studies, evidence of candidate genes with significant effects, data on pathogen sequence and on host gene expression analyses. In total, 16 poultry diseases, 13 cattle diseases, nine pig diseases, 11 sheep diseases and three Atlantic salmon diseases were assessed. The top-ranking diseases or pathogens, i.e. those most amenable to studies dissecting host genetic variation, were Salmonella in poultry, bovine mastitis, Marek’s disease and coccidiosis, both in poultry. The top-ranking diseases or pathogens in pigs, sheep and Atlantic salmon were Escherichia coli, mastitis and infectious pancreatic necrosis, respectively. These rankings summarise the current state of knowledge for each disease and broadly, although not entirely, reflect current international research efforts. They will alter as more information becomes available and as genome tools become more sophisticated for each species. It is suggested that this approach could be used to rank diseases from other perspectives as well, e.g. in terms of disease control strategies.

From emergency relief to livelihood recovery

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to investigate the issue of post‐disaster livelihood recovery through economic rehabilitation, with the illustration of post‐tsunami promotion of microentrepreneurship activities generating employment and income among the affected populations.Design/methodology/approachThe paper examines two field case studies in Aceh (Indonesia) and Tamil Nadu (India), where a well‐established European NGO carried out economic relief and microentrepreneurship rehabilitation in 2005‐2007.FindingsDespite unlimited trust in rapid reconstruction capacity, post‐tsunami livelihood recovery has been chaotic and uncoordinated. Contrary to humanitarian agencies in charge of emergency relief, only a few development agencies and NGOs were able to deliver a rapid rehabilitation of microeconomic activities existing locally before the disaster.Research limitations/implicationsThere are values but also obvious limits to comparing the micro‐level experiences of a major European NGO in two different locations such as Aceh and Tamil Nadu, and to deducing macro‐ and meso‐level lessons to be learned.Practical implicationsThere are difficulties in benchmarking the divison of labour but necessary coordination among development agencies and their humanitarian counterparts in the field of post‐disaster sustainable economic rehabilitation.Originality/valuePost‐disaster economic security and livelihood recovery are at the forefront of current international policy research in humanitarian and development cooperation circles. Documented case studies and lessons to be learned are still scarce for feeding possible best practices.

Danseterapeutiske spor - fra rituel dans til globale netværk og postmoderne udfordringer

Artiklen tager afsæt i om der eksisterer et uudnyttet potentiale i at inddrage krop og bevægelse i terapeutiske sammenhæng i forhold til både almen og personlig udvikling og psykiatriske behandlinger. Artiklen afdækker også hvordan danse- og bevægelsesterapier begyndte at arbejde med sammenhæng mellem krop psyke og samfund, samt de hastigt udviklende europæiske tiltag og postmoderne forskningsmæssige tendenser indenfor det danse- og bevægelsesterapeutiske fælt. Helle Winther: Dance Therapeutic Traces – from Ritual Dance to Global Networks and Postmodern Challenges While dance movement therapy (DMT) is a relatively new and unknown field in Denmark, it is a well-known profession used in both psychiatry and private practices in many other countries. In spite of many different theoretical views, today there is a large degree of agreement that the body and psyche, as well as one’s relationship to the surrounding world must be regarded as a cohesive dynamic and organic unit. The fundamental question of the article is, whether there is an unused potential in using body and movement in therapeutic settings and whether body, movement and dance can touch people when words are not enough. The text enlightens the historical roots and traces of DMT through a long time pe185 riod stretching from original ritual dances to the early modern dance personified in Mary Wigman, Isadora Duncan and Martha Graham. These three dancers inspired the next generation and the six pioneers of dance therapy – in the text portrayed through Marian Chace and Mary Whitehouse. The works of these pioneers have worldwide traces today, and these traces are shortly described. After that an actual dance therapy form Dansergia is introduced and finally the postmodern tendencies within the current international research field of DMT are mirrored in the past, the present and the possibilities for steps in the future.

ENGLISH

Without access to current international research information and without the ability to contribute national research findings, researchers in the developing countries have struggled to make an impact and to develop a strong and independent national science infrastructure. The cost of journals has continued to rise and the situation within this conventional access structure continues to deteriorate. However, a window of opportunity has opened wide since the establishment of the open access (OA) movement. The paper outlines the problems facing scholarly communication in developing countries and describes ways in which OA can provide a solution. The progress in developing countries regarding adoption of OA is discussed in detail focusing on various parameters. The current status shows that developing countries are beginning to recognise the value to their academic communities and to their national economies of free access to published research articles. http://dx.doi.org/10.14429/djlit.28.1.151

New Scattering Information Portal for the light-scattering community

Current international research needs efficient exchange of information. To constantly keep information for the light-scattering community up to date, a project for a new Scattering Information Portal has been proposed. The history and the concept of the project will be described to invite interested scientists to contribute to the project.