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Abstract A shackle failure in the Far East in 2007, called into question the integrity of some processes used in the manufacture of longterm mooring systems. This paper reports the results, so far, from a joint First Subsea Ltd and University of Sheffield's Institute for Microstructural and Mechanical Process Engineering (IMMPETUS) research into larger scale metal forging processes and the resulting mechanical properties. The objective of the Large Scale Forging research project is to more fully understand what happens during the forging process and, in so doing, better characterise the micro structure of forged metals, its relation to Charpy toughness values (CVN), fracture toughness values and the design and integrity of mooring connectors. Large scale metal forging is a complex, and far less understood process, compared with many other metals treatment techniques. Mooring components need to exhibit high levels of strength and toughness, as well as outstanding fatigue behaviour over an extended period. While the latter relies heavily on established computer modelling techniques, the factors governing strength and toughness are less well understood. The paper reports on the different aspects of the forging process including: chemical composition of the steel material, heat treatment processes, quenching and cooling rates and test procedures. In particular it will focus on the role and importance of heat treatment, cooling rate and geometry of the material on the mechanical performance of the finished forged connector. Forging trials have been extensively carried out, comparing parameters like soak and quench times as well as cooling rates and durations. The results of the forging trials, so far, has been a better understanding of the optimum conditions for metals forging with respect to chemical composition and the relevance of microstructure due to internal thermo-couples and thermal imaging cameras. In addition, improved testing methodologies have been reviewed together with the development of a heat transfer model used to predict toughness properties along the ingot. Introduction Forged metals are widely used for chains, shackles and other mooring line accessories in offshore mooring systems. The failure of a mooring shackle in 2007 called into question the integrity of some processes used in the manufacture of long-term mooring systems. Moreover it highlighted significant gaps in the knowledge of manufacturing large scale forged items and the influence on their mechanical properties. First Subsea Ltd, The University of Sheffield and Somers Forge Ltd have undertaken a project to identify best practice for the specification and manufacture of large scale forging and heat treatment for its subsea mooring connectors. The project is also intended to have wider implications for other forged metal mooring components such as chains and shackles.

Studies into the impact of top manager change on organization performance have revealed inconsistent findings. Using longitudinal data over a 12-year period on football organizations, we test for the short-term and long-term effects of manager change in comparison to the tenures of incumbent top managers. We find that long incumbent tenures are associated with performance far above the average. But when looking at change events, contrary to theoretical expectations, we find that change in the short term leads to a brief reprieve in poor performance only for performance to deteriorate in the long term as underlying weaknesses once again take hold. Our findings reveal the illusion of a short-term reprieve and the long-term consequences of this illusion. We map several implications for research and practice from our work.

We estimate national health expenditures on prevention using precise definitions, a transparent methodology, and a subdivision of the estimates into components to aid researchers in applying their own concepts of prevention activities.We supplemented the National Health Expenditure Accounts (NHEA) with additional data to identify national spending on primary and secondary prevention for each year from 1996 to 2004 across eight spending categories.We estimate that NHEA expenditures devoted to prevention grew from $83.2 billion in 1996 to $159.8 billion in 2004, in current dollars. As a share of NHEA, this represents an increase from 7.8 percent in 1996 to 8.6 percent in 2004. This share peaked at 9 percent in 2002 and then declined due to reductions in public health spending as a percent of NHEA between 2002 and 2004. Primary prevention represents about half the expenditures, consisting largely of public health expenditures--the largest prevention element. ORIGINALITY/VALUE OF PAPER: Our 2004 estimate that 8.6 percent of NHEA goes to prevention is nearly three times as large as the commonly cited figure of 3 percent, but depends on the definitions used: our estimate falls to 8.1 percent when the research component is excluded, 5.1 percent when consideration is limited to primary prevention plus screening, 4.2 percent for primary prevention alone, and 2.8 percent if we count only public health expenditures. These findings should contribute to a more informed discussion of our nation's allocation of health care resources to prevention.

Recent environmental turbulence including financial crisis, intensified competitive forces, rapid technological change and high market turbulence have dramatically changed the current business climate. The managers firms have to plan and decide what the best approaches that best fit their firms in order to pursue superior performance. This research aims to examine the influence of strategic reasoning and top level managers- individual characteristics on the effectiveness of organizational improvisation and firm performance. Given the lack of studies on these relationships in the previous literature, there is significant contribution to the body of knowledge as well as for managerial practices. 128 responses from top management of technology-based companies in Malaysia were used as a sample. Three hypotheses were examined and the findings confirm that (a) there is no relationship between intuitive reasoning and organizational improvisation but there is a link between rational reasoning and organizational improvisation, (b) top level managers- individual characteristics as a whole affect organizational improvisation; and (c) organizational improvisation positively affects firm performance. The theoretical and managerial implications were discussed in the conclusions., {"references":["Beinhocker, E.D. and Kaplan, S. 2002. Tired of strategic planning? The\nMcKinsey Quarterly 2002 Special Edition: Risk and Resilience: 49-56.","Mintzberg, H. 1987. The strategy concept I: Five Ps for strategy.\nCalifornia Management Review, 30(1): 11-24.","Stacey, R. 1993. Strategy as order emerging from chaos. Long Range\nPlanning, 26(1):10-17.","Brews, P.J. and Hunt, M.R. 1999. Learning to plan and planning to\nlearn: Resolving the planning school/learning school debate. 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Appropriate strength barricades and fill fences are a necessary component of underhand cut and fill mining operations and stoping operation in general. These important structures are subject to a number of stresses and strains as a result of the deposition, and curing of the backfill material. Parametric monitoring of fill fences gives the engineer the required data to predict not only the behaviour of the paste backfill as it is being deposited but also the ability to predict the deformation and eventual failure of the barricade. A study was undertaken to determine the performance of the paste barricades at Goldcorp Inc.’s Red Lake Mine using real time instrumentation to monitor the stresses, strains and deformation of paste and paste barricades during placement. The barricades at the mine are a standardised barricade comprised of 10 cm of shotcrete applied to a rebar skeleton spaced nominally 60 cm apart. In total eight fill barricades were instrumented to determine the behaviour of the paste during the loading. Complementing the eight barricade tests, an instrumented destructive test was carried out to determine the ultimate capacity of the composite barricade. It was determined that the paste backfill behaves as a Rankine-like soil in the initial stages of placement with an average coefficient of lateral earth pressure, Ka, of 0.56. The destructive test determined that the yielding stress of a paste barricade is approximately 100 kPa. The results of the investigation have resulted in operational changes in the placement of paste at the mine.

This article examines how the American political tradi tion both constrains and enables voter turnout in United States presidential elections. Specifically I examine the impact of the American Creed, defined as the intersection of beliefs in equal opportunity, market preference, and individual responsibility, on voter turnout. Using data from the 1996, 2000, and 2004 Ameri can National Election Surveys, I develop a unified vote choice model and test it using multinomial logistic regression. While the idea that people will choose to vote when theyfeel strongly about an issue or value is intuitive, my findings show that the American Creed acts as "master frame, " or "lens, " that both constrains and enables turnout by limiting the "acceptable" motivations to vote. Specifically, I find that support for equality increases Democratic turnout but has no effect on Republican turnout. Similarly, support for market preferences increases Republican turnout but has no effect on Democratic turnout. I close with a discussion of the implications on the health of U.S. democracy, and the importance of including the choice of abstention in vot ing behavior research.

Purpose: We estimate national health expenditures on prevention using precise definitions, a transparent methodology, and a subdivision of the estimates into components to aid researchers in applying their own concepts of prevention activities. Methodology/Approach: We supplemented the National Health Expenditure Accounts (NHEA) with additional data to identify national spending on primary and secondary prevention for each year from 1996 to 2004 across eight spending categories. Findings: We estimate that NHEA expenditures devoted to prevention grew from $83.2 billion in 1996 to $159.8 billion in 2004, in current dollars. As a share of NHEA, this represents an increase from 7.8 percent in 1996 to 8.6 percent in 2004. This share peaked at 9 percent in 2002 and then declined due to reductions in public health spending as a percent of NHEA between 2002 and 2004. Primary prevention represents about half the expenditures, consisting largely of public health expenditures – the largest prevention element. Originality/Value of Paper: Our 2004 estimate that 8.6 percent of NHEA goes to prevention is nearly three times as large as the commonly cited figure of 3 percent, but depends on the definitions used: our estimate falls to 8.1 percent when the research component is excluded, 5.1 percent when consideration is limited to primary prevention plus screening, 4.2 percent for primary prevention alone, and 2.8 percent if we count only public health expenditures. These findings should contribute to a more informed discussion of our nation's allocation of health care resources to prevention.

Our climate is set to change significantly over the next century. The Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) has recognised the importance of climate change and have introduced the Building Knowledge for a Climate Change (BKCC) programme, this has now been followed up by the Sustaining Knowledge for Climate Change (SKCC) programme. EPSRC and the UK Climate Impacts Programme (UKCIP) are working together to fund consortia (academia and stakeholders) to study the potential long term impacts of climate change in the UK on the built environment, transport and utilities. BIONICS is concerned with the establishment of a research facility (a full-scale embankment) which will be fundamental to improving the understanding of the long-term impact of climate change on infrastructure embankments and inform industry and stakeholders of the adaptation strategies required to mitigate the effects. The initial research programme utilising the BIONICS embankment is assessing the impact of climate change on embankment vegetation, developing a modelling capability for the prediction of long-term behaviour of embankments subjected to a changing climate and beginning to develop a methodology for identifying at-risk sections of the transport infrastructure. This paper will describe the design, construction, and testing of the test embankment. Testing data demonstrates the difficulties encountered in trying to reproduce older less effective compaction techniques with modern plant and equipment and the effects of different compaction methods on construction generated pore water pressures.

Geotechnical asset owners need to know which parts of their asset network are vulnerable to climate change induced failure in order to optimise future investment. Protecting these vulnerable slopes requires monitoring systems capable of identifying and alerting to asset operators changes in the internal conditions that precede failure. Current monitoring systems are heavily reliant on point sensors which can be difficult to interpret across slope scale. This paper presents challenges to producing such a system and research being carried out to address some of these using electrical resistance tomography (ERT). Experimental results show that whilst it is possible to measure soil water content indirectly via resistivity the relationship between resistivity and water content will change over time for a given slope. If geotechnical parameters such as pore water pressure are to be estimated using this method then ERT systems will require integrating with more conventional geotechnical instrumentation to ensure correct representative information is provided. The paper also presents examples of how such data can be processed and communicated to asset owners for the purposes of asset management.

In this paper we contribute to the strategic execution literature by empirically exploring ways middle managers (MMs) as strategic actors in product-market strategy making are enabled or constraine...

A novel punching press work-cell has been developed. It incorporates many innovative features that are based around continuous production using coiled metal. The punching system within the overall work-cell has such a high productivity that problems associated with material handling became apparent. These problems prevented the work-cell from operating as its theoretical maximum production efficiency. A collaborative design team was formed, including academic and industry representatives, to review the existing punching press work-cell prototype in a systematic fashion. This review discovered weaknesses within the existing systems and functional elements, and quantified them. A detailed research and development program has been completed on the least efficient functional elements, resulting in a series of design enhancement recommendations. Some enhancements will be incorporated in an upcoming prototype due to the substantial mechanical and structural changes required. Others have been fully implemented and tested in the existing prototype, in particular, those associated with the existing control system. A computer simulation has been developed to assist in determining suitable speed settings (feeder rate and bottom/top decoiler speed) of the punching press work-cell. The simulation enables: • a reduction in the set-up time for new products, and • the speed setting for existing actuators to be improved, offering higher productivity rates. Redesign proposals of the least efficient automated systems and functional elements have been completed. An enhanced control system methodology has been recommended for the decoiler/catenary system and the feeder material flow system. The finished product handling system to the post-production bay is the only fully manual process in the existing punching press work-cell prototype. Substantial efficiency gains can be achieved by the automation of the material handling system at the post-production bay. Four alternate design strategies have been proposed for an automated material handling system, which have been evaluated against pre-defined criteria. A “staged automation” design proposal (i.e. semi-automatic initially, with the facility to become a fully-automatic system in the future) was the preferred solution for the material handling system at the post-production bay and will be incorporated in the next prototype. This collaboration, between a university engineering department and a small innovative company, provided benefits to both organizations. The company is still in its infancy and, as such, is without substantial human and technical resources. A research project, sponsored in part by government, provided a stipend for a full time graduate worker (working on a specified research and development project towards a Master of Engineering Science degree) within the company [1]. This enabled the company to have access to an academic mentor and supervisor, and university resources such as libraries and computer based modelling tools. The university gained access to a practical case study where opportunities were available to review and further develop a leading-edge technology and assist in the optimisation of the associated prototype work-cell.Copyright © 2004 by ASME

Motivated by the resource-based view of the firm and its Penrose-inspired views on resource orchestration, we seek to disentangle how resource availability might affect the emergence of an entrepreneurial orientation within firms, and how firms might redress the resource absorption effects of EO to enhance firm performance. Using a sample of 607 German small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), we investigate: 1) the influence of slack resource availability on the EO of SMEs, 2) the mediating effect of networking effectiveness on the relationship between EO and firm performance, and 3) the influence of firm performance on slack resource availability. The results suggest that slack resource availability positively influences EO, networking effectiveness partially mediates the relationship between EO and firm performance, and the firm performance achieved to date positively influences slack resource availability. Our work reconciles EO with the RBV and contributes new knowledge to understand the resource absorption effects and resource refuelling needs contained within the EOperformance relationship a hitherto ignored consideration.

A 62-year-old lady presented with thunderclap onset, severe, bi-occipital headache with associated motion sensitivity and vomiting on a background of gradually worsening, constant bi-temporal throbbing pain over a two year period. CT brain demonstrated acute superior frontocortical subarachnoid blood but CT venogram, angiogram and brain MRI were all normal. Peripheral autoimmune and inflammatory serology was unremarkable, as were initial results from CSF analysis. Cerebral vasculitis was suspected and the patient underwent formal catheter angiography. This found multifocal irregularity of the intracranial medium and small sized vessels in addition to both superficial temporal arteries, the latter revealing intimal thickening and elastic lamina disruption on biopsy. Despite no previous shingles, viral polymerase chain reaction on CSF returned positive for Varicella zoster DNA prompting commencement of intravenous acyclovir and methylprednisolone. Within 24 hours, she developed expressive dysphasia and left-sided hemiparesis. A second CT brain showed fresh haemorrhage and low densities within the cerebellar hemispheres with MRI now revealing a flurry of cortical and subcortical infarctions bilaterally particularly within occipital and parietal lobes. Although no new lesions have occurred, she continues to experience visuoperceptual difficulties including simultagnosia. This case highlights several manifestations of intracranial Varicella vasculopathy in the absence of previous or current shingles.

In this paper we report on an empirical study of middle managers as strategic actors in product-market strategizing. Taking a Strategy as Practice (SaP) lens, we focus on the social dynamics within the work environment conducive to the continuous practices and processes through which strategy is conceived, maintained, renewed and executed. We show and explain that procedural justice perceptions and participation in strategy making are two social processes that provide insights into encouraging middle managers’ organizational citizenship behaviour (OCB) and we explore the mediating role of reward mechanisms in shaping middle manager practice with implications for strategy performance. The paper addresses calls within the SaP literature for greater awareness of the need for appropriate organizational configurations to support strategy. As such the study emphasizes the importance of an assessment of micro-level activities and their consequence for organizational outcomes.

1. The effects of antagonism of the maternal renin-angiotensin system (RAS) with either an angiotensin II type 1-(AT1) specific receptor blocker (GR138950) or an angiotensin-converting enzyme (ACE) inhibitor (captopril) were compared in chronically-catheterised ewes and their foetuses during late gestation. 2. Daily from 127 +/- 1 days of gestation until parturition at 145 +/- 2 days, each ewe received i.v. either GR138950 (3 mg kg-1; n = 10), captopril (3 mg kg-1; n = 6) or an equivalent volume of vehicle solution (0.9% w/v saline; n = 10). 3. Within 2 h of drug administration, GR138950 abolished the maternal, but not the foetal, pressor responses to angiotensin II (AII; 100-188 ng kg-1, i.v.; P < 0.05), whereas captopril abolished both the maternal and foetal pressor responses to angiotensin I (AI; 400-750 ng kg-1, i.v.; P < 0.05). 4. On the first day of treatment, maternal blood pressure decreased in all GR138950-treated (-21 +/- 4 mmHg; P < 0.05) and captopril-treated (-13 +/- 5 mmHg; P > 0.05) ewes at 2 h after drug administration. Captopril also significantly decreased foetal blood pressure by 5 +/- 1 mmHg (P < 0.05). However, foetal blood pressure in the GR138950-treated animals remained unchanged. Maternal and foetal heart rates were unaffected by any treatment. Uterine blood flow was significantly reduced within 2 h of both GR138950 (-130 +/- 20 ml min-1; P < 0.05) and captopril (-72 +/- 16 ml min-1; P < 0.05) administration. 5. On the first day of treatment, maternal arterial haemoglobin (Hb) concentration and oxygen (O2) content increased at 2 h in all GR138950-treated and captopril-treated ewes. Foetal arterial pH and oxygenation (O2 content, O2 saturation and Pao2) were reduced by a similar extent in both groups of drug-treated ewes. 6. After one week of daily GR138950 administration, maternal blood pressure decreased from a pretreatment value of 96 +/- 5 mmHg on day 1 to 79 +/- 2 mmHg by day 7 (P < 0.05). Captopril treatment had no long-term effect on maternal blood pressure. Although foetal blood pressure increased by 3 +/- 1 mmHg over a week of vehicle treatment (P < 0.05), no significant differences were observed between the long-term changes in foetal blood pressure in all three groups of animals. 7. There were no long-term effects of drug administration on maternal Hb concentration or oxygenation, or on the foetal haematological parameters. However, changes in maternal PaCo2 observed in the GR138950-treated (+1.4 +/- 0.5 mmHg; P < 0.05) and captopril-treated (+3.3 +/- 1.1 mmHg; P > 0.05) ewes were significantly different from those seen in the vehicle-treated animals (P < 0.05). 8. There were no apparent adverse effects of maternal GR138950 or captopril treatment on foetal viability. 9. The present study demonstrated that administration of either GR138950 or captopril to pregnant ewes effectively blocked the maternal RAS, and caused hypotension and a decrease in uterine blood flow. However, only captopril appeared to cross the placenta to influence directly the RAS of the sheep foetus. This suggests that the fall in foetal oxygenation observed after AT1-specific receptor blockade and ACE inhibition originates primarily from changes in the maternal and/or placental vasculature. Despite these changes, neither GR138950 nor captopril were detrimental to the outcome of pregnancy when foetal blood loss was kept to a minimum.

Despite recent conceptual and theoretical insights into social capital, little is known about the behaviours that generate social capital and how social capital influences organisational learning. The difficulty this gap creates for young entrepreneurial firms is that their managers understand little about how to strategically develop firm behaviour in an effort to create social capital, which is expected to be a powerful means for such firms to overcome their liabilities of newness. Adopting a business incubation context, we present data from UK business incubates testing relationships among network behaviours (resource sharing, shared beliefs, tolerance of incubator management, and strategic network participation), social capital (localised and externalised), and organisational learning (accelerated learning and knowledge assimilation). We find that network behaviours have contrasting effects in generating localised and externalised social capital and both types of social capital differentially influence accelerated learning and knowledge assimilation.

A tactile aid for deaf individuals includes a conveniently wearable array of vibration transducers mounted on a flexible carrier strip so as to be positionally biased toward the individuals's skin. Each transducer includes an enclosed magnetically vibratable cantilevered beam, an angled mounting slot to effect the positional bias mounting on the strip, and contact pads rather than conventional pin connectors to both reduce mass and facilitate electrical connection to contact pads on carrier strips in the form of printed circuit boards. Received acoustic signals are processed in at least first and second formant circuits each sub-divided into plural sub-bands corresponding to the number of transducers. In each formant circuit the corresponding formant frequency and amplitude are measured, averaged over a predetermined number of cycles, and a voltage corresponding to the measured amplitude is provided on a corresponding sub-hand channel to pulse width modulate a pulse train employed to excite the transducers. Spectral resolution can be increased by averaging the amplitude/frequency measurements over fewer cycles. Glottal pulses in the speech signal are monitored to provide a glottal rate signal at a stepped down frequency related to the actual glottal rate. The channel amplitude is modulated by the glottal signal to cause alternation of transducer excitation at the related glottal rate. Additional formants may be detected to derive additional information in the excitation signal.

The percentages of positive lymphocytes stained with OKT3 (total), OKT4 (helper/inducer) or OKT8 (suppressor/cytotoxic) monoclonal antibodies have been determined in normal individuals. Under a variety of experimental conditions, the results were found to be unaffected by cryopreservation, paraformaldehyde fixation or incubation regime. In contrast, the results were affected, both quantitatively and qualitatively, by the choice of fluorescein-conjugated anti-mouse IgG as the second step reagent.

In previous research, multiple demands and consequences were manipulated simultaneously to examine methods for pressure training. Building on literature, in this study a single demand or consequence stressor was manipulated in isolation. Specifically, in a matched within-subject design, 6 international shooters (mean age 28.67 yr) performed a shooting task while exposed to a single demand (task, performer, environmental) or consequence (reward, forfeit, judgment) stressor. Perceived pressure, anxiety (intensity and direction), and performance were measured. Compared with baseline, manipulating demands did not affect pressure or anxiety. In contrast, pressure and cognitive anxiety significantly increased when judgment or forfeit consequence stressors were introduced. Thus, the findings lack support for manipulating demands but strongly support introducing consequences when pressure training. Compared with baseline, the judgment stressor also created debilitative anxiety. Hence, in terms of introducing a single stressor, judgment appeared most impactful and may be most effective for certain athlete populations.

Upcycling has become an important concept and practice in creative industries for artists, craftspeople, designers and makers as evidenced by increasing number of practitioners and businesses in the UK and beyond, especially under the COVID-19 pandemic situation. Despite the potential, many upcycling businesses are often craft-oriented and small-scale with financial struggles, which calls for scaling-up in order to overcome such liabilities. This paper provides multiple exploratory case studies with successful upcycling businesses to shed light on how small, craft-oriented upcycling businesses could be scaled up to have bigger impact on the environment and society while being financially viable. Three successful upcycling businesses were selected: (i) ChopValue in Canada; (ii) Freitag in Switzerland; and (iii) Pentatonic in the UK. Online contents (official websites, news and magazines, and other media information) were qualitatively analysed using grounded thematic analysis. The results revealed five common themes as success factors across the three case studies: (i) sustainability values or philosophy at the centre of the business; (ii) product and service offers competitive on the market; (iii) partnerships/collaborations for business effectiveness; (iv) innovation in production for competitive edge; and (v) sustainable/circular supply chain management.

Civil engineering research is increasingly focusing on the development of sustainable and energy-efficient building materials. Among these materials, raw (unfired) earth constitutes a promising option for reducing the environmental impact of buildings over their entire service life from construction to demolition. Raw earth has been used since old times but only recently has acquired prominence in mainstream building practice. This is mainly because of the development of novel methods to enhance the mechanical, hygroscopic and durability properties of compacted earth without increasing carbon and energy footprints. In this context, the present paper studies the dependency of the strength, stiffness, moisture capacity and water durability of compacted earth on particle grading. Results indicate that the particle size distribution is a key variable in defining the hygromechanical characteristics of compacted earth. The effect of the particle size distribution on the hygromechanical properties of compacted earth may be as important as that of dry density or stabilisation. This study suggests that a fine and well-graded earth mix exhibits higher levels of strength, stiffness, moisture capacity and water durability than a coarse and poorly-graded one.