Lease Of Life Research Articles

The renewal of <I>Tales of the Lagle Naaba</i> on Burkina Faso's

Thanks to the action of the Lagle naab a Abga, the evenings of folktales in villages were given a new lease of life on Burkina’s National Radio from the sixties. His grandson, the Lagle naab a Tigre, in collaboration with Henriette Ilboudo (presenter in the Mooré language on Burkina’s National Television) initiated soirées of folktales on the small screen. The introduction of the folktale on television is part of the political desire to promote the national cultural heritage and regional integration. The strong Burkinabè and mooréphone diaspora who retain links with Burkina Faso listen to national cultural productions. But the fact of using a medium like television to broadcast folktales brings about the violation of certain taboos (time of the narration, length of the performance and television space). Unlike evenings of folktales in the village, programmes that are recorded during the day and broadcast at night have a greater ability to enter homes that have a television set, both in Burkina and elsewhere in the world, thanks to satellites. The participants in the soirées of folktales usually wear traditional clothes and take care with their use of the Mooré language, avoiding words borrowed from French and the presence of modern objects on the set. The soirées of tales are a school in which moral values are applauded and deviant behaviour condemned, in order to build a society of peace and justice.

The rise and rise of the keyloggers

Keyloggers come in different forms – both as covert software and as hardware devices designed to intercept and store keyboard strokes for later collection. They have been designed for legitimate purposes, such as preventing employees from entering sensitive information, but have been given a new lease of life by internet criminals. They deliver such software in trojan horse form and then use it without the victim's knowledge to steal account passwords and other information. Simon Heron of Network Box explores the various sub-categories of keylogging hard devices and software tools, and documents their installation and operating methods. He also explores techniques for retrieving information over public networks using techniques such as IRC and P2P relaying. The attractions of making money through extortion by carrying out denial of service (DoS) attacks are diminishing. The criminals who control botnets do not want to risk their network if a company calls their bluff. It takes some time and effort to create a botnet and if you are forced into launching an attack, you expose that botnet to discovery and decapitation.

Creating Competitive Advantages Through New Value Creation: A Reverse Logistics Perspective

Conventional wisdom in value chain strategy assumes a one-directional flow of primary activities, starting from inbound logistics to operations, outbound logistics, marketing and sales, and finally to service. Our recent study, extensive discussions with executives, and on-site visits suggest that this wisdom may not be complete for certain industries or products. Customers on average return about 6% of everything they buy. Companies need to view this as an opportunity to give this returns pile a new lease of life. Yet many companies are not used to thinking that the things they expel such as products, waste, and resources actually have value. In fact, few retailers and suppliers capture the wealth of information that is locked inside a box that has been returned to the warehouse. Elevating the returns process to a new marketing opportunity builds a loyal customer base and also attracts new ones. In this paper, we present a redefined value chain strategy that entails a closed-loop system for industries in which reverse chain activities (reuse, repair, refurbishing, recycling, remanufacturing, or redesign of returned products from the end user) may create additional competitive advantages for the firm. Firms that do not recognize the importance of an effective reverse logistics strategy as part of their value chain risk damaging customer relations and may seriously jeopardize their brand image and reputation. A good reverse logistics program can be a differentiator and provides a means of gaining market advantage. In our perspective, a redefined value chain should be a part of the overall business strategy for manufacturers or retailers who handle product returns.

Teaching silicon new tricks

Arguably the most important element for the electronics industry, silicon is now being given a new lease of life in the world of photonics.

Re-fighting the English Revolution: John Nalson (1637–1686) and the Frustrations of Late Seventeenth-Century English Historiography

The English Revolution of the mid-seventeenth century went on being re-fought and reinterpreted long after the original events were over. In the later part of the reign of Charles II, fuelled by the Exclusion Crisis and the Popish Plot and the early strivings of Whigs and Tories, histories of the Civil Wars, Interregnum and Restoration took on a new lease of life and gained added purpose and relevance. John Nalson (1637–1686) is firmly anchored in this period and took up his pen in the re-drawn political and religious battle-lines. This article offers a reassessment of this neglected polemicist and historian, placing him within the context of his times and the intense rhetoric and rivalries to which it gave rise. It examines Nalson's output in relation to other writers of the age—Hobbes, Filmer and Rushworth among them—and takes stock of his changing reputation.

Living with the wolf

Living with the wolf

Nuptials of the gods: Zulu Sofola and Zodwa Motsa compared

This article compares the works of Zulu Sofola and Zodwa Motsa, two playwrights who have written about the tribulations of the oppressed in the African society. One of the roles played by playwrights in society is that of a documentarist. In their plays, Wedlock of the gods and Of Heroes and Men, both playwrights have presented a documentation of Southern Nigeria and Swaziland of the colonial and early postcolonial period respectively. We discuss how both plays negotiate the relationship between the state and society, scrutinizing the protean and dynamic aspects of human nature as presented by the playwrights in the lives of the governor and the governed. The article posits that Zulu Sofola and Zodwa Motsa have, through their plays, examined the structures of the society, which promote oppression. They unequivocally stated that carnivorous traditions, undemocratic dictatorships and oppressive patriarchal structures should be demolished to give a new lease of life to the oppressed and to create an egalitarian society. Lwati: A Journal of Contemporary Research Vol. 2 2005: 43-52

Using a tablet PC has given my academic writing a new lease of life

Using a tablet PC has given my academic writing a new lease of life

An Exact FFT Recovery Theory: A Nonsubtractive Dither Quantization Approach with Applications

Fourier transform is undoubtedly one of the cornerstones of digital signal processing (DSP). The introduction of the now famous FFT algorithm has not only breathed a new lease of life into an otherwise latent classical DFT algorithm, but also led to an explosion in applications that have now far transcended the confines of the DSP field. For a good accuracy, the digital implementation of the FFT requires that the input and/or the 2 basis functions be finely quantized. This paper exploits the use of coarse quantization of the FFT signals with a view to further improving the FFT computational efficiency while preserving its computational accuracy and simplifying its architecture. In order to resolve this apparent conflict between preserving an excellent computational accuracy while using a quantization scheme as coarse as can be desired, this paper advances new theoretical results which form the basis for two new and practically attractive FFT estimators that rely on the principle of 1 bit nonsubtractive dithered quantization (NSDQ). The proposed theory is very well substantiated by the extensive simulation work carried out in both noise-free and noisy environments. This makes the prospect of implementing the 2 proposed 1 bit FFT estimators on a chip both practically attractive and rewarding and certainly worthy of a further pursuit.

Land Rovers get new lease of life – thanks to Humber Galvanizing Ltd

Land Rovers get new lease of life – thanks to Humber Galvanizing Ltd

An Invitation to Bolivia

An Invitation to Bolivia

‘Reconstruction’ before the Marshall Plan

As is often the case when a concept gets a new lease of life in the newspapers there has been a resurrection of interest in recent times in the concept of ‘reconstruction’. The current American administration has now undertaken not one but two major wars that have resulted in the need for reconstruction since 2001 when George W. Bush took up office in the White House. In the previous few years there were major reconstruction efforts undertaken in Bosnia (after the 1995 Dayton Accords) and in Kosovo (after the war of 1999), to name but the most obvious. Historians have to some extent taken up this cue and have been producing edited books and even full length monographs on the ‘lessons’ that we might learn from historical reconstruction efforts. There has also been a great use of conscious historical analogy by President George W. Bush. One classic example of the recent past by President Bush in a speech to the American Enterprise Institute elicited an indignant response from a number of historians in the Financial Times on the dangers of historical analogy.

Review: Administrative Devolution

Many will reach for the bookshop shelf eager to see a book by James Mitchell of the University of Strathclyde about Scottish government under devolution, only to feel disappointment not just in the prohibitive hardbackonly price but at the non-contemporary subject-matter. It is in fact based upon work done in the early 1980s for Mitchell's doctoral thesis and is a reminder that, as well as being one of the leading analysts of Scottish government and politics, he is also a master of the archives work in which is going to receive a new lease of life as the official work on devolution mark 1 in the 1970s becomes available after 30 years. The action in the present volume is mainly set in the period from the 1880s to the 1930s and has the appeal of a historical study of an age now retreating from memory, but it also has many resonances for our understanding of what has been happening since 1999.

Understanding consciousness

In Hanif Kureishi's short novel The Body , Adam is a playwright in his sixties who looks back on his life with a fair amount of regret (Kureishi, 2002). Ralph, an admirer of Adam's work, introduces him to an experiment that could offer a new lease of life. With the help of a confident doctor from a dubious but apparently sophisticated clinic, Adam is given the chance to have his mind transferred into the corpse of an unknown man. He simply goes shopping for a new body off the rack, undergoes a mysterious operation at a sterile facility and finds himself in a fresh and younger body that he will inhabit for a six‐month trial period. Adam enjoys the immediate consequences of his younger appearance, travels all over Europe, takes pleasure in various adventures and indulges in mindless sexual encounters. For some time, he feels as if he is finally living the life he never had. But Adam soon realizes that changing his body did not give him the privilege of escaping his mind. > It would be a mistake to claim that consciousness is exclusively an observable behaviour… The reader does not know whether Adam merely had his brain transplanted into the new body or whether his whole ‘self’ was somehow wired onto the young man's brain, but the story highlights the age‐old question of what is the repository for subjective consciousness and phenomenal experience. Kureishi's novel evokes the old dualism between flesh and spirit, body and mind, which runs deep through Western culture. But now that neuroscience is able to explain human nature and the mind in increasing detail, this dualism may soon be—or indeed, should be—dead and buried. Adam's story, although fictional and futuristic, prompts ethical considerations of progress in neuroscience research and offers us the chance to …

Les minilaiteries comme modèle d’organisation des filières laitières en Afrique de l’Ouest : succès et limites

En Afrique de l’Ouest, les entreprises artisanales de collecte et de transformation du lait ont connu un essor sans précédent depuis les années 1990. Cet article vise à analyser les raisons de cet engouement mais aussi d’en mesurer les limites. Sur la base d’exemples pris notamment au Sénégal et au Mali, les auteurs montrent que la réussite des minilaiteries est à nuancer sur le plan de l’économie nationale. Elle l’est davantage encore sur le plan social, en particulier dans la profitabilité de ces opérations pour les populations pastorales initialement ciblées.

Treatment of xerostomia in prosthetic patients

Xerostomia is a clinical condition caused by a decrease in the production of saliva, it may present itself as a local symptom, as part of a systemic disease such as Sjogren's syndrome, diabetics, alcoholism or as side effects of medications or following therapeutic radiation to the head and neck regions. Xerostomia can lead to difficulties in patients receiving prosthetic treatments. The comfort and retention of removable dentures depend largely on the lubricating ability of the saliva and dry mucosa that can compromise the retention of prosthesis. Furthermore, saliva flow facilitates mastication, formation of food bolos and swallowing, and plays an important role in articulation and speech. Blom et al[1] demonstrated a significant increase in salivary flow during and after acupuncture treatment in patients with severe xerostomia. In a long-term follow-up of patients treated with acupuncture for xerostomia, Blom and Lundeberg[2] showed that acupuncture could significantly result in improvement in salivary flow rate for up to 6 months. They also showed that additional acupuncture therapy could maintain such improvement in salivary flow rate for up to 3 years. Furthermore, Johnstone et al[3] demonstrated that acupuncture could provide palliation in patients with pilocarpine-resistant xerostomia following head and neck radiotherapy. Dawidson et al.[45] found the release of several neuropeptides in the saliva of healthy subjects could be increased by acupuncture. The same researchers also demonstrated that the increased release of calcitonin generated peptide (CGRP) could be one of the factors that increase the salivary flow rate in xerostomic patients treated with acupuncture. With more patients willing to try alternative treatment and with increasing published data available for clinicians, the ancient Chinese acupuncture has been given a new lease of life with the interpretation of Western science. Not only has it been shown that acupuncture provides more than just placebo effects, but also it has been demonstrated in various controlled trials to have a role in mainstream dentistry, especially in the management of gagging reflex, temporomandibular dysfunction and xerostomia. More standardized clinical trials are needed to demonstrate the effect of acupuncture. Serious adverse effects following acupuncture are rare, however, it is the responsibility of the clinicians wishing to practice acupuncture to have a good understanding of acupuncture philosophy and proper training in the field, and therefore be able to prevent, recognize and manage adverse effects when they occur.

Academic medicine: what's in it for me?

Endorsed by more than 40 journals and prominent organisations, the International Campaign to Revitalise Academic Medicine (ICRAM) aims to give a new lease of life to academic medicine. Timothy Underwood explains what it is and how you can get involved

Digital imaging: technical developments and UK perspective

A remarkable variety of designs for full-field digital mammography have been developed. Computed radiography systems, using laser-stimulated photo-stimulable phosphor technology, which are widely used for general radiography, are increasingly also used for mammography. Computed radiography has received a new lease of life with the introduction of dedicated dual reading technology at 50 μm pixel size. Other designs have integrated digital detector systems where the detector and read-out mechanism are built into the breast platform. The quality of display monitors is regarded as crucial and dual cathode ray tube displays with 2000 × 2500 resolution are becoming standard, but it is likely that high-resolution liquid crystal displays will supplant these. Although most systems demonstrate an image quality that is superior to existing film screens, some are inferior. New standards are being introduced for image quality to verify that new digital systems have a performance that is at least as good as current systems. While digital systems may be readily introduced into a symptomatic role, their use in screening is more problematic because of the high throughput required for both acquisition and display. A number of informal trials of digital systems in screening and assessment environments are taking place in the UK.

The Brenda field development: a multi-disciplinary approach

Ian F. Jones, Rod Christensen, Jamie haynes, John Faragher, Ika Novianti, Henry Morris, and Giles Pickering show how a multi-disciplinary combination of modern processing, imaging and inversion techniques can identify overlooked hydrocarbon prospects. Recent initiatives in the North Sea and UKCS such as the introduction of the Fallow Field initiative and offering of Promote licences have started to generate activity by attracting new entrants who can provide new capital and new ideas to focus on exploration and appraisal. Fields which had been abandoned, or considered of insufficient commercial interest, have been offered a new lease of life by allowing proactive companies to identify and exploit latent commercial prospects by tying in to existing infrastructure. Here, we showcase one such recent discovery, made by Oilexco, where a multi-disciplinary approach was taken to identify potential targets using state-of-the-art pre-processing and high resolution velocity model building and pre-stack imaging, combined with detailed calibrated reservoir attribute analysis based on elastic impedance inversion. This field could prove to be one of the largest finds in the North Sea for three years. Introduction Oilexco’s UK North Sea drilling programme on Licence P1042 (Block 15/25b) in the Outer Moray Firth, targeted oil in the Paleocene Upper Balmoral sandstone. Initially three wells were proposed: one on the structure previously drilled by the 15/25b-3 well, one on a structural high with classic four-way closure, and one on a channel sand feature, whose prospectivity was indicated by an anomalously low elastic impedance (EI) response on the far-offset stack. The surface location of the first new well, 15/25b-6 is approximately 150 m west of Conoco’s 15/25b-3 undeveloped discovery, which tested 2690 b/d of 39o oil from the Upper Balmoral sandstone from 20 ft of net pay in 1990. The 15/25b-6 well encountered the Brenda oil find announced by Oilexco on 26 January 2004. The well intersected a series of oil-bearing Paleocene Upper Balmoral sands, the thickest of which has 26 ft of high quality oil pay. In addition to this sand, several other thin bedded oil bearing sands were also intersected. The entire section was tested and yielded 40o API oil from the Upper Balmoral sandstone at an average rate of 2980 b/d, over an 18-hour test under stable flowing conditions, from 56 ft of perforations (evaluated with open-hole wire-line logs and formation fluid sampling tools). Associated natural gas flowed at an average rate of 600 million ft3/d throughout the test. No water or sand was produced during the test period. The surface location of the second well (15/25b-7) is approximately 4 km northwest of 15/25b-6. The vertical hole encountered ~ 50 ft of good quality Upper Balmoral sand which was logged as water bearing. The side-track (15/25b- 7Z) encountered another very porous clean Paleocene Upper Balmoral sand with a thin oil column at the top of the sand and a mud log gas response. The results of the well suggest that the Sheryl structure is separate from the Brenda oil accumulation which is at a structurally lower position. As a consequence, the well was abandoned. The third well, (15/25b-8) targeted the low EI anomaly. It was located 0.50 km west of the 15/25b-6 well, acting as an appraisal well to the Brenda oil accumulation. The well encountered 69ft of high quality oil pay in the Upper Balmoral sand, and also tested 40o API oil, but at rates up to 4785 b/d.

New lease of life for tropical medicine.

Born of necessity in the Victorian era, tropical medicine has been given a new impetus by genomics, philanthropy and an increasing awareness of the toll of tropical diseases. This is leading to new opportunities in tropical-disease research. Eugene Russo reports.