Many Years Of Preparation Research Articles

Poland’s Road to Membership in the European Union from the Perspective of the 20th Anniversary of the Accession Treaty

The purpose of this article is to show Poland’s path to European Union membership from the perspective of the 20th anniversary of the signing of the Accession Treaty. Joining the Community was proceeded by many years of preparation and efforts. Poland had to meet many necessary requirements to finally join the ranks of the member states. The negotiations, which began on April 3, 1998, were concluded on April 16, 2003, with the signing of the Accession Treaty in Athens. In Poland, the decision was also decided by the public expressing its opinion in a referendum held on June 7–8, 2003. On July 23, 2003 the Accession Treaty was ratified, and on May 1, 2004. Poland became a member of the European Union. Poland’s entry into the European Union made it possible to take a civilizational step. Poland benefited from its presence in the EU in many dimensions, primarily political, economic and social. The benefits of Poland’s accession to the EU far outweigh the costs. This assessment is also confirmed by the opinions of citizens expressed in surveys. In June 2022, the number of supporters of Poland’s EU membership reached a record 92%.

The strategic surprise of Russian information operations on social media in 2016 in the United States: mapping a blind spot

ABSTRACT Despite many years of preparation for cyber conflict against US critical infrastructure and military forces, the US government and cybersecurity industry were unprepared for Russian information operations targeting the 2016 US presidential election. While the Russian campaign had many components, this article focuses specifically on the covert use of social media accounts and online properties impersonating Americans for the purpose of manipulation. This article addresses the strategic blind spot around Russian information operations and the technocentric Western approach to cybersecurity that led to it. The authors explore three fields contributing essential insights to the understanding of information operations on social media: cyber conflict and cybersecurity studies, Internet and Society studies, and the Information Controls literature within human rights scholarship. Each conceptualizes cyberspace differently, but a theory of information operations on social media will bridge conceptual gaps. The article concludes that despite this initial blind spot, great tactical progress in addressing information operations on social media has been made by the US government and large US social media platforms since the 2017 ‘reckoning’. A more robust and foundational theory of information operations on social media remains to be built, integrating and synthesizing concepts from the three fields described in this article. 1

Huan Nuoyuan: Exorcism and Transformation in Miao Ritual Drama

Deep in the Wuling Mountains of southwest Hunan, China, a 3,000-year-old ritual, the huan nuoyuan, is performed by the Miao people. The elaborate event is the conclusion of many years of preparation; it evokes and embodies the mythical forces that are central to the worldview of the politically and ethnically marginalized Miao.

Is the introduction of innovative methods in cardiovascular diagnostics and therapy to quick?

Andreas Grüntzig can be regarded as the pioneer of modern cardiology. Based on the previous experiences of Charles Dotter in Portland, Oregon, and after many years of preparation as a young 38-year-old physician and consultant he carried out the first percutaneous transluminal coronary angioplasty (PTCA) in a 38-year-old patient in Zurich in 1977, supported by the cardiac surgeons A. Senning and M. Turina. Despite high ranking publications and early preparedness to share his experiences the development of PTCA stagnated and was met with great scepticism. The technique was new, technically difficult and aimed at aortocoronary bypass surgery, which was itself still in its infancy 10 years after the introduction in Cleveland in 1968. Even after several years only two patients per week were admitted for treatment in Zurich. In a similar way the young cardiac surgeon H.R. Andersen was a pioneer in Denmark whose ideas and own experiments with a balloon catheter-assisted aortic valve implantation were not initially taken up by the leading companies of the time and publication of the data suffered lengthy delays. It took 10 years before Prof. A. Cribier in Rouen followed up his ideas and carried out the first valve implantation again in pioneer work after many years of preparation in 2002. Again, the new method for treatment of very old and high risk patients needed many years before it was accepted. The breakthrough only became possible when this new technique began to be used in cardiac surgery after the introduction of hybrid cardiac catheter operating rooms. Despite evidence-based studies innovative methods are not subject to the same criteria throughout Europe with respect to the timely introduction of innovative and validated procedures also in consideration of reimbursement and this has become an important initiative of the European Society of Cardiology (ESC).

HIV treatment as prevention and HPTN 052.

This review summarizes the development and implementation of a large clinical trial, HIV Prevention Trials Network (HPTN) 052, whose initial results were recently presented and published. A randomized, clinical trial demonstrated that antiretroviral therapy reduces the sexual transmission of HIV in HIV-serodiscordant couples by more than 96%. The logistical challenges in preparing for and conducting such a trial were considerable. HPTN 052 required many years of preparation, considerable collaboration between National Institute of Health and six pharmaceutical companies, and careful ongoing consideration of a large number of ethical issues. HPTN 052 revealed the magnitude of benefit when using antiretroviral therapy to prevent the transmission of HIV, and served as proof of a concept. The results have proven central to the development of new global HIV-prevention efforts.

CMS Distributed Computing Integration in the LHC sustained operations era

After many years of preparation the CMS computing system has reached a situation where stability in operations limits the possibility to introduce innovative features. Nevertheless it is the same need of stability and smooth operations that requires the introduction of features that were considered not strategic in the previous phases. Examples are: adequate authorization to control and prioritize the access to storage and computing resources; improved monitoring to investigate problems and identify bottlenecks on the infrastructure; increased automation to reduce the manpower needed for operations; effective process to deploy in production new releases of the software tools. We present the work of the CMS Distributed Computing Integration Activity that is responsible for providing a liaison between the CMS distributed computing infrastructure and the software providers, both internal and external to CMS. In particular we describe the introduction of new middleware features during the last 18 months as well as the requirements to Grid and Cloud software developers for the future.

Grid today, clouds on the horizon

By the time of CCP 2008, the largest scientific machine in the world – the Large Hadron Collider – had been cooled down as scheduled to its operational temperature of below 2 degrees Kelvin and injection tests were starting. Collisions of proton beams at 5 + 5 TeV were expected within one to two months of the initial tests, with data taking at design energy ( 7 + 7 TeV ) foreseen for 2009. In order to process the data from this world machine, we have put our “Higgs in one basket” – that of Grid computing [The Worldwide LHC Computing Grid (WLCG), in: Proceedings of the Conference on Computational Physics 2006 (CCP 2006), vol. 177, 2007, pp. 219–223]. After many years of preparation, 2008 saw a final “Common Computing Readiness Challenge” (CCRC'08) – aimed at demonstrating full readiness for 2008 data taking, processing and analysis. By definition, this relied on a world-wide production Grid infrastructure. But change – as always – is on the horizon. The current funding model for Grids – which in Europe has been through 3 generations of EGEE projects, together with related projects in other parts of the world, including South America – is evolving towards a long-term, sustainable e-infrastructure, like the European Grid Initiative (EGI) [The European Grid Initiative Design Study, website at http://web.eu-egi.eu/]. At the same time, potentially new paradigms, such as that of “Cloud Computing” are emerging. This paper summarizes the results of CCRC'08 and discusses the potential impact of future Grid funding on both regional and international application communities. It contrasts Grid and Cloud computing models from both technical and sociological points of view. Finally, it discusses the requirements from production application communities, in terms of stability and continuity in the medium to long term.

The First Bilateral Arm Transplantation in the Klinikum rechts der Isar, Technische Universität München.

From July 25 through to July 26, 2008, after many years of preparation, the world-wide first transplantation of complete arms was carried out at the Klinikum rechts der Isar, Technische Universität München. The patient is as well as can be expected under the circumstances. The Clinic for Plastic Surgery and Hand Surgery (head: Hans-Günther Machens) was responsible for the operation. The operation in which a team of 40 members participated was headed by Christoph Höhnke (head of the transplantation team) and Edgar Biemer (former long-standing head of the Department for Plastic Surgery).

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This volume has been many years in preparation and accordingly numerous debts of gratitude have been incurred along the way. Three such debts should be warmly and gratefully acknowledged at the outset, for without them this project could not have proceeded. Firstly, the Henry Cromwell correspondence transcribed and annotated here is contained in three volumes of the Lansdowne Collection held by the Department of Manuscripts of the British Library and I am most grateful to the British Library in general, and to the Head of Administration of Western Manuscripts in particular, for granting permission for this material to be published. The correspondence formed the basis of a Master of Letters thesis by Clyve Jones, awarded by the University of Lancaster in 1969 and comprising in large part an annotated transcript of the majority of the letters. Having decided not to prepare a scholarly edition for publication himself, Dr Jones strongly supported my own proposal to work on the material afresh and to prepare an edition for publication. Thus, secondly, I am enormously grateful to Dr Jones not only for his approval and endorsement of my taking on this project – without it, I could not and would not have taken the idea any further, as he had undertaken detailed work on the manuscript well ahead of me – but also for his unfailing help and encouragement throughout its lengthy gestation. Thirdly, I am enormously grateful to a trio of senior academics for the encouragement, help, and support that they offered at the outset, as I framed a formal publication proposal and embarked upon the work: to the late Professor Austin Woolrych, who had himself worked on the correspondence and had supervised Dr Jones's Masters thesis; to Professor Ivan Roots, who supervised my own doctoral thesis on Protectoral central government and who has remained a valued friend and mentor ever since; and to Professor Blair Worden, who was the pre-1700 literary director for the Royal Historical Society at the time that my proposal was submitted and accepted and as serious work began.

Can we create gifted people?

Only in the light of specific theoretical frameworks for the development of superior performance can we productively ask to what extent that performance is due to controllable external factors and thus could potentially be engineered or 'created'. The popular view of talent acknowledges that instruction and practice are necessary but not sufficient for the attainment of élite performance. With extensive practice individuals are assumed to achieve all possible modification through learning, so that the ultimate level of performance is a function of the components that cannot be modified and are thus presumably innate. However, recent research shows that improvements in performance are possible even after extensive experience in a domain, and that performance at an international level requires over ten years of intense preparation. Furthermore, research has failed to specify and measure talent factors that predict performance. An alternative framework has been proposed on the basis of the amount of deliberate activities aimed at improving performance. The amount of deliberate practice accumulated during many years of preparation is found to be related closely to performance, even at the highest levels. This framework accounts for expert performance in terms of acquired characteristics and identifies new and different constraints on its attainment.

Analytical review on the major issues of the new bankruptcy (law) legislation

The bankruptcy law is an integral part of the legal system of societies with market economy. After many years of preparation, the draft of the new bankruptcy law in China was submitted to the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress twice and is waiting for the third approval to be enacted. Drawing on the experiences of other countries, the new bankruptcy law tries to carry out the concepts of market economy, eliminate the residual influences of planned economy that existed in the old law, protect lawful rights and interests of creditors and debtors, and maintain the order of socialist market economy. This thesis analyzes and researches on the major and controversial issues that emerged during the legislation of the new bankruptcy law from the aspects such as the principle of the legislation, criteria of bankruptcy, preservation or abolishment of policy-related bankruptcy, protection of the employees’ rights and interests of bankrupt enterprises, the creditors’ committee system, the trustee system, reorganization system to prevent bankruptcy, and the legal obligations of bankrupt, and so on. It also gives a comprehensive introduction to the innovation and modification of the new bankruptcy law.

Face‐Offs in Reproductive Immunology: The Montreal Forum Meeting Report

The combined 12th International Congress of Immunology (ICI) and the 4th Annual Conference of the Federation of Clinical Immunological Societies (FOCIS) was held in Montreal, Canada July 18-23, 2004 and attracted over 6000 immunologists and almost 4000 abstracts. The host society, the Canadian Society for Immunology (CSI) spent many years in preparation for this large meeting and encouraged its members to propose topics for symposia and mini-symposia and to sponsor satellite meetings. With sponsorship of CSI; the Canadian Institutes of Health Research; the University of Guelph, Guelph, ON; Queen's University, Kingston, ON; McGill University, Montreal, QU, Canada; and the American Society for Reproductive Immunology, a focused, highly successful, one day satellite meeting on human uterine immunology was held. The highlights of the presentations and discussions are reported.

Notes from underground

In these lectures, I will describe the exciting results that have been obtained by the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory (SNO), after many years of preparation and work. As many people believe, it is often the journey that is most rewarding and the arrival perhaps an anticlimax (perhaps, because the journey was long and eventful) so that I want to show a bit about the journey, the reason for starting on it and the arrival, of course. As we shall see the results from SNO and other neutrino experiments have turned out to be both surprising and exciting, and lead to many new questions about the nature of neutrinos and physics beyond the standard model.

Trends in the early careers of life scientists. Preface and Executive Summary.

Trends in the early careers of life scientists. Preface and Executive Summary.

The Enola Gay Fiasco: History, Politics, and the Museum

The Enola Gay Fiasco: History, Politics, and the Museum Otto Mayr (bio) To commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of the end of World War II, the Smithsonian Institution’s National Air and Space Museum (NASM) had planned to open an exhibition centering on the Enola Gay, the bomber that dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima. During its many years of preparation, the exhibit project became so controversial that the Smithsonian canceled it on 30 January 1995. In June of that year, the NASM opened another version of the exhibit, sharply reduced in size and radically expurgated in content. With the cancellation of the original Enola Gay exhibit, everyone lost. The NASM and the Smithsonian lost, not only for the obvious reasons of wasted effort and loss of prestige but also because the cancellation broke off, irreversibly so far as can be seen, a promising new direction for the NASM. The opposition forces who brought down the project lost, for history will view them poorly: the resulting literature will see to that. 1 Observers who watched the controversy unfold wasted their energies because they were not permitted to judge the end product for themselves. The public lost, too. It was deprived of the opportunity to discuss an issue of acute concern and left with the nagging memory of an illiberal thing happening before its eyes with virtually no one rising to prevent it. Clearly, the Enola Gay exhibit should have been presented to the public in the mature form forged by its creators during a long and painful gestation period. How good it would have been, we cannot know. I suspect that it would have been a decent exhibit, not without flaws, to be sure, but one that would have performed a useful and honorable role, and that would have offended nobody, not even those who so hysterically opposed it. [End Page 462] All that remains now is the opportunity to learn from the misadventure. 2 As usual in such cases, the cause of the Enola Gay fiasco was a coincidence of several adverse factors. No matter; for the curators, historians, and administrators of the Smithsonian the task was to succeed on behalf of their institution, and they failed. The failure is of interest here because it was a professional failure. The public has little understanding of what museums can and should do, the people who run them, and the conditions that govern their operation. The efforts of museums are subject to certain basic limitations that lie in their very nature. For the most part, these limitations stem from the obligations of museums to society, their dependence upon financial supporters, and the sources of their intellectual authority. Museums are not financially self-sufficient; they survive only with the help of large, regular subsidies (often three-quarters or more of their annual budgets), usually from the public. In return the institutions are understood to serve the public. Not only are they committed to perform two specific public services, collecting and education, they are also expected, within their area of specialization, to help with various minor tasks presented by almost anyone. These burdens must be borne; inadequate responses will gradually use up a museum’s credit of public goodwill. With regard to the main task, collecting and education, different museums interpret these mandates differently. Traditionally, the priority was on collecting; more recently, on education. A good museum, however, maintains a balance of both because the two activities stimulate and reinforce each other. If education, properly understood, is an essential duty of museums, then the chief instrument of education is the exhibit. Exhibits, everyone agrees, should not be boring; they should be—to list some adjectives frequently used in praise—interesting, amusing, entertaining, stimulating, provocative, controversial. In principle, then, there is nothing wrong with a controversial exhibit—quite the contrary. Still, it has its limits. In return for indispensable financial support, museums give up some autonomy. While the details of what and how much has to be given up will vary from case to case, museums inevitably owe their chief financial supporter some accountability. This obligation will be reflected in their corporate hierarchy, which always roughly displays three layers. At the bottom is the museum...

97/03195 Industry status of CFC chiller retrofits and replacements

The US ban on production of CFC refrigerants arrived on January 1, 1996 without much public attention thanks to many years of preparation by refrigerant producers and equipment manufacturers. Virtually all CFC equipment production lines have been retooled to produce equipment using non-CFC refrigerants. Producers of alternative refrigerants and equipment manufacturers worked closely for many years to develop non-CFC refrigerants for use in many types of air conditioning and refrigeration equipment. On-going research, such as the Materials Compatibility and Lubricants Research Program conduced by Air-Conditioning and Refrigeration Technology Institute, is examining the compatibility of equipment components with alternative refrigerants and lubricants. In 1993, US manufacturers of large tonnage liquid chillers stopped making CFC chillers and produced newly designed chillers using alternative refrigerants that are up to 40 percent more energy efficient than the chillers produced 20 years ago.

Holland's Wijker tunnel: a subsea solution to traffic congestion

After many years of preparation and political deliberation, the official starting signal was given on March 1, 1993, for the construction of the new A22 trunk road in The Netherlands, between Alkmaar and Amsterdam/Schiphol Airport to the east of the Velsen Tunnel. This section of road is about 11 km long, and runs from Uitgeest to the intersection with the A9 in the direction of Amsterdam and Schiphol. The most expensive part of the project is the construction of the Wijker Tunnel, which will run under the North Sea Canal. Après de nombreuses années de préparation et de discussions politique, le coup d'envoie officiel a été donnéle ler mars 1993 pour la construction du nouveau tronçon de l'A22 aux Pays-Bas entre Alkmaar et Amsterdam/Schipol à l'est du tunnel du Velsen. Cette section a une longueur d'environ 11 km, et part de Uitgeest jusqu'à l'intersection avec l'A9 en direction d'Amsterdam et de Schipol. La partie la plus onéreuse du projet est la construction du tunnel de Wijker, qui passera sous le canal de la Mer du Nord.

Geomorphology: the research frontier and beyond— Introduction

There appears to be something inherent in the thought processes of modern-day humans that, as the calendar turns (whether it be from one year to the next, one decade to the next, or one century to the next), it is appropriate to examine what has happened in the past and contemplate what is likely to happen in the future. Although the circumstances of the calendar may trigger these actions, there must be more justification to engaging seriously in such an exercise than just the calendar itself. Is such the case for geomorphology? Were the editors of this volume, John Vitek and John Giardino, wise in their picking our approach to the 21 st century as an appropriate point in time to consider geomorphology's research frontiers? As pointed out by J.B. Thornes (1978) ...geomorphology and associated scientific disciplines are undergoing rapid and accelerated development throughout the world. Interestingly, this comment appears in the introduction of a book entitled Geomorphology: Present Problems and Future Prospects (Embleton et al., 1978). Certainly, developments during the intervening 15 years have continued to accelerate. Vast changes have occurred in: ( 1 ) the specific geomorphic topics studied, (2) the number of scientists practicing geomorphology, (3) the techniques used in geomorphic research, (4) areal coverage (including that of extraterrestrial bodies), ( 5 ) the amount of interdisciplinary collaboration, (6) the extent of international involvement, (7) the number of scientific articles published, (8) the number of geomorphology organizations that have been formed around the world, and (9) the number of conferences devoted to geomorphologic topics. Indeed, the conference (the Third International Conference on Geomorphology, Hamilton, Canada, August 1993 ) at which the papers in this volume were presented, represents a turning point in geomorphology. Following a successful regional conference in Ankara, Turkey in 1991, it became the first international conference to be held under the auspices of the International Association of Geomorphologists ( IAG/IGA), an association that was officially founded in 1989. Its founding followed many years of preparation including the holding of the first (Manchester, England) and second (Frankfurt, Germany) international conferences on geomorphology. At both conferences, each attended by over 600 delegates from over 50 countries, a cornucopia of research papers gave testimony to both the breadth and depth of geomorphologic research. Further, they demonstrated the rapidity at which geomorphology is evolving and provided hints at what the future holds. Wanting to formalize such hints, Vitek and Giardino assembled a set of papers that illustrate: (1) the potentials for further development in some of geomorphology's well established subdisciplines, (2) the dynamism of

Biomechanics of the Normal and Diseased Hip

This elegantly illustrated atlas represents a lifetime of careful clinical observation by Professor Pauwels, who truly pioneered the application of mechanical principles to the pathophysiology and management of musculoskeletal disease. A text on biomechanics of the hip without a single equation? Welcomed by most clinicians, decried by bioengineers. Professor Pauwels initially lays a theoretical mechanical foundation, with a discussion of the effect of load and stress on skeletal structures. He then applies these principles to understanding of the etiology and management of hip joint disease, specifically, congenital coxa vara, pseudarthrosis of the neck of the femur, and osteoarthritis. This somewhat narrow focus allows a comprehensive discussion of the pathomechanics of these three hip problems. The author demonstrates the means by which appropriate osteotomies modify the forces acting about the hip so as to elicit favorable biological response from the skeleton. The text, many years in preparation, does not deal with

Aidjex begins main field season

The Arctic Ice Dynamics Joint Experiment (Aidjex) began its main field experiment on the sea ice north of Point Barrow, Alaska, during March 1975. This marks the start of fourteen months of intensive research activity after many years of preparation, including several trial experiments.C‐130 and R4D cargo aircraft landed on a sea ice runway to establish the main Aidjex camp. Three satellite camps with runways suitable for Twin Otter operations were also set up.