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Modelling the Propagation of Solar Energetic Particles Injected by a Shock-like Source using Test Particle Simulations
Get PDFSolar Energetic Particles (SEPs) are ions and electrons accelerated during flare and Coronal Mass Ejection (CME) events. SEP events increase the particle radiation that permeates the heliosphere and are harmful to spacecraft equipment as well as human health. For this reason, the study of energetic particle propagation is an area of vital importance in understanding the local radiation environment.
In this thesis we developed the first shock-like particle injection for a full-orbit test particle code and studied two distinct scenarios of SEP propagation. Firstly, we considered instantaneous injections of energetic protons at CME-driven shock heights. We modelled the particle back-precipitation to the solar surface to study whether protons injected from a CME shock can explain the -ray emission associated with Long Duration Gamma-Ray Flares (LDGRFs). We calculated precipitation fractions for each injection to determine the proportion of the injected population that could contribute to the -ray emission for a range of interplanetary scattering conditions mean free path, � = 0:0025 1:0 au). We estimated upper limits for the total precipitation fractions for eight LDGRF events and found that they were considerably smaller than the minimum requirements for back-precipitation from a CME-driven shock to be the dominant mechanism for -ray production during LDGRFs.
Secondly, we simulated a shock-like particle injection for a variety of injection functions to derive SEP intensity and anisotropy proles at 1 au. It has been proposed by several studies that the long duration of SEP events at 1 au is due to temporally extended acceleration at an interplanetary shock. We compared SEP intensity proles modelled from instantaneous and shock-like injections and found that the link between injection duration and event duration is very weak, unlike what is commonly assumed. In addition the variation of injection efficiency along the shock front was found to play a minor role in shaping intensity proles for gradual SEP events. We modelled SEP propagation with and without including the effects of corotation, considering the shock-like injection and found that corotation plays a dominant role in the decay phase of SEP events. Corotation reduces the decay time constant, , significantly for both eastern and western events and it makes 's dependence on the mean free path negligible, in contrast to results from 1D focussed transport models. The work presented in this thesis provides useful steps to model radiation within the inner heliosphere more accurately
COVID-19 pandemic: advancing international marketing theory and guiding practice
Get PDFPurpose
This paper has a dual purpose. The first is to provide a thorough analysis of developments in international marketing in relation to the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic; the second is to capitalize on these developments to set an agenda for future research in the field of international marketing.
Design/methodology/approach
This paper zooms in on and reviews the 18 papers published in International Marketing Review’s (IMR) Special Issue on “Covid 19: advancing international marketing theory and guiding practice” (2023, volume 40, issue 5). It also integrates recent research at the intersection of international marketing and the COVID-19 pandemic.
Findings
The paper highlights five areas that embody significant contemporaneous changes brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic and affect international marketing practice. These include (1) shifts in consumer behavior, (2) digitalization and artificial intelligence, (3) disruptions in supply chains, (4) communication and corporate social responsibility (CSR), and (5) international dynamic marketing capabilities. In order to advance international marketing theory in relation to pandemics and other external crises, the paper establishes research directions for each of these areas.
Originality/value
The paper provides a novel and comprehensive categorization of fundamental shifts caused by the COVID-19 pandemic and lays out a research roadmap to advance research in the field of International Marketing (IM). Important implications for practice are also discussed
Pathogenesis and Update on the Management of Melasma
Get PDFMelasma is a disfiguring skin disorder characterised by brown or grey-brown patches on the skin, often affecting the face. It is frequently recalcitrant to treatment. Melasma treatment options vary in mode and effectiveness, including topical creams, laser therapies, and systemic medications. Despite the array of available treatments, achieving consistent and satisfactory results remains difficult, which necessitates ongoing research to develop safer and more effective therapeutic strategies for treatment of melasma. The aim of the article is to provide a comprehensive review of the current understanding of melasma's complex pathogenesis, as well as to examine and evaluate existing and emerging treatment options to guide clinical approaches for more effective and individualized management of melasma
Oral tradition, ancient history and religious tourism knowledge
No full textReligious tourism is one of the most longstanding forms of leisure related travel in the world with a history dating back to antiquity. However, there has been a hesitation amongst many tourism scholars to critically assess the role of ancient religious texts to understand the attitudes and behaviours of religious tourists and tourism destinations. With reference to literature on oral traditions, the aim of this exploratory paper is to critically consider the insights that can be derived from the Christian Bible for the management and scholarly understanding of contemporary religious tourism. This paper suggests that Christianity’s oral traditions and their ensuing written representation in the Bible provide an important means of understanding religion ‘as lived’ in the ancient world. Religious tourists are often driven by a pilgrim’s mentality to tread in the footsteps of the first apostles and other religious leaders. From a historical perspective, the oral formulation of the New Testament and its subsequent influence on the formation of the Bible as a religious text offers religious tourists an insight into such people and the places/ experiences that were important in the faith of the early church
Transgender Entrepreneurs are Paving the Path of Social Entrepreneurship: Exploring Motivators of Entrepreneurial Intent
Get PDFThe primary aim of this study is to investigate the entrepreneurial motivators or drivers that transgender entrepreneurs experience prior to launching their business or getting self-employed. This study also look at the impact of social entrepreneurship on transgender entrepreneurship. The twenty-five (25) transgender entrepreneurs interviewed are included in the study, who had quit dancing, acting, begging, and commercial sex work and founded a business or got self-employed. The major findings of the grounded theory revealed seven (7) significant entrepreneurial motivators or drivers, including economic, upbringing, and social circle; social inclusion and empowerment; personal fulfillment and identity expression; community uplifting and advocacy; market opportunities and niche creation; and response to cultural and social exclusion. This article expands our understanding of social entrepreneurship and also magnifies the core forces that drive the intention of transgender individuals to start their own business venture or get self-employment. The findings of this study also suggest the effective role of policymakers, advocacy and support groups, and non-profit or non-governmental organizations, who can play an effective role in promoting entrepreneurship among this marginalized community. Finally, this study addresses the limitations of the study and future direction for potential research
Managing boundaries: exploring the experiences of line-managers who provide mental health support in the workplace
Get PDFThe increase in mental ill-health amongst the working population presents a serious challenge for organisations. Line-managers are an important provider of support to staff with psychological distress (PD), their experiences however, are under-researched. In response, we interviewed 15 line-managers from the private, public, and voluntary sector about their support provision to subordinates with PD. Drawing upon workplace social support and boundary management theory we explored line-manager confidence, boundaries of the manager/subordinate relationship, and how they navigate the competing demands of their role. We found that organisational psychosocial climate and context are key factors: a stressful or demanding working environment, and/or unsupportive colleagues can undermine the capacity of line-managers to provide social support. Theoretical contributions include focusing on the provider, rather than recipient, of social support and integrating social support and boundary management theory. Practical recommendations include removing the onus on line-managers to provide support and advocating shared organisational responsibility for support from multiple sources, underpinned by a wider remit of policies and procedures. This paper includes line-manager narratives around employee mental ill-health including reference to suicide, that some readers may find distressing
Introduction
Get PDFFootprints break the surface of the snow, heading towards the summit of Mount Everest. Who made them? For the past century, many people looking at such footprints have imagined a singular heroic figure, certainly male, probably Western, or perhaps a pair of climbers sharing a rope, such as George Mallory and Andrew (Sandy) Irvine in 1924 or Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay in 1953. The footsteps in the cover photograph of this book lead upwards on the snows of the ‘Hillary Step’, the imposing obstacle below the summit on the Nepali side of Everest, named after one of the pair who together made the first ascent of the world’s highest mountain.
In June 1924, Mallory and Irvine left similar footprints on the northern, Tibetan slopes of Everest that were visible to observers watching through telescopes below. After they disappeared near the summit, Mallory and Irvine were celebrated for embodying the spirit of man. Yet their deaths were not the first on the mountain. Two years before, in 1922, seven porters were killed in an avalanche on the slopes of the North Col. The porters’ names were later added to a memorial for Mallory and Irvine at Everest Base Camp in Tibet, but their contributions remained largely hidden in the Everest expedition archives, overshadowed by the stories of heroic white men.
Since the 1950s, ‘other Everests’ has implied a mountaineering metaphor to elevate the significance of other endeavours. ‘There are other Annapurnas in the lives of men’, Maurice Herzog famously concluded in Annapurna, his account of the first ascent of an 8,000-metre peak in 1950. Echoing Herzog, the leader of the successful 1953 British expedition, Sir John Hunt, thought the ascent of Everest was justified by the ‘seeking of their “Everests” by others’. Hunt concluded ‘the spirit of man’ could overcome any obstacle and the ascent should inspire enterprising explorers, mountaineers, and adventurers in climbing and other pursuits.
Since then, climbers have often followed the footsteps of Sherpas, the ethnic group in Nepal that became the leading porters and guides on Mount Everest. In the 2020s, fresh footprints in the snows of the Hillary Step were being made by Sherpas, both men and women, and the climbers following their footprints are as likely to be from India and China as from Europe or North America. By the first quarter of the twenty-first century, ‘other Everests’ highlights the contributions and perspectives of diverse communities on and beyond the mountain.
Other Everests is the culmination of a UK-funded research network initially concerned with the commemoration of the centenaries of the early British Mount Everest expeditions. The network examined multiple ethical, social, and political challenges raised by Mount Everest, with attention being given to the meaning of historical commemoration, the agency of Indigenous labour, and the evolution of contemporary mountaineering cultures. The earliest British expeditions were linked to a geostrategic ‘forward policy’, including the military invasion of Tibet, which aimed to realign Tibet away from Republican China towards British India. After the First World War, the assault on Everest became a gesture of imperial redemption, an effort to restore British morale and reassert the vitality of an imperial masculinity considered critical to ruling a multiethnic empire. The ‘epic of Everest’ became a metaphor for the expedition organisers and filmmakers who saw Mallory and Irvine embodying the ‘spirit of modern man’. This language persisted into the 1970s, when the global counterculture transformed relations with Sherpas, Junko Tabei became the first of many women to climb Mount Everest, and a new breed of climbers entered the scene who began to replace imperial masculinities with corporate masculinities drawn from transnational business boardrooms. With the advent of commercial guiding services and the discovery of Mallory’s body in the 1990s, older imperial narratives were exhumed and resurrected along with artefacts from the body. Mountaineering narratives still celebrate heroic men conquering mountains in ways that perpetuate racial and gender stereotypes and continue to inform quasi-colonial practices in contemporary Himalayan mountaineering.
Postcolonial scholars examining such stereotypes and practices highlight the role of ‘Othering’, whereby ‘individuals and groups are treated and marked as different and inferior from the dominant social group’. Since the 1920s, Everest expeditions have relied on vast pyramids of Indigenous labour, an embodied infrastructure that was seldom acknowledged, except when identifying Gurkhas or Sherpas as embodying a ‘martial race’ or ‘mountain’ people. While traditional Everest narratives often adopt such colonial perspectives, the ‘Other Everests’ research network attempted to invert and subvert this rhetoric and reintroduce a plurality of perspectives – a world of multiple or alternative Everests.
Other Everests attempts to clear a space to engage the many worlds that share the same mountain, the multiple ways of being-in-the-world, ‘a world where many worlds fit’. This introductory chapter highlights some of these ‘worlds’ and overlapping themes in Everest’s many names, nations, genders, tourists, climates, and stories. Throughout this volume, the international and interdisciplinary array of contributors reactivate old and new archives, engage with multimedia and live performances, and participate in historical or ethnographic fieldwork. They shed light on the different ways of being in relationship with the mountain and how these are navigated by climbers and high-altitude workers alike, from ritual ceremonies to the mountain’s immovable goddess through to contemporary digital practices, as global adventure tourists and guides curate their Everest experiences. The authors in the volume contribute to a plurality of new histories and perspectives. Everest can be viewed as a ‘fallen giant’ or the height of global prestige; a tourist’s quest for adventure or a commodified package in a global adventure tourism industry. Avalanches and natural disasters in the 2010s caused deaths that highlighted risks from a changing climate, but as many of our contributors make clear, these vulnerabilities co-emerged with inequalities in high-altitude labouring practice over the last century. The other Everests presented in this volume have shaped the present but do not determine the future approaches to the world’s highest mountain
Does Precision-Based Medicine Hold the Promise of a New Approach to Predicting and Treating Spontaneous Preterm Birth?
Get PDFBackground: Preterm birth (PTB) is a leading cause of childhood disability, and it has become a key public health priority recognized by the World Health Organization and the United Nations. Objectives: This review will: (1) summarize current practice in the diagnosis and management of PTB, (2) outline developments in precision-based medicine for diagnostics to improve the care provided to pregnant women at risk of PTB, and (3) discuss the implications of current research in personalized medicine and the potential of future advances to influence the clinical care of women at risk of PTB. Methodology: This is a narrative literature review. Relevant journal articles were identified following searches of computerized databases. Key Results: Current and emerging technologies for the utility of personalized medicine in the context of PTB have the potential for applications in: (1) direct diagnostics to identify and target infection as one of the main known causes of PTB, (2) identifying novel maternal and fetal biomarkers, (3) the use of artificial intelligence and computational modeling, and (4) combining methods to enhance diagnosis and treatment. Conclusions: In this paper, we show how current research has moved in the direction of the targeted use of biomarkers in the context of PTB, with many novel approaches
Systemic anticancer therapy for urothelial carcinoma: UK oncologists’ perspective
Get PDFUrothelial carcinoma (UC) is a common cancer associated with a poor prognosis in patients with advanced disease. Platinum-based chemotherapy has remained the cornerstone of systemic anticancer treatment for many years, and recent developments in the treatment landscape have improved outcomes. In this review, we provide an overview of systemic treatment for UC, including clinical data supporting the current standard of care at each point in the treatment pathway and author interpretations from a UK perspective. Neoadjuvant cisplatin-based chemotherapy is recommended for eligible patients with muscle-invasive bladder cancer and is preferable to adjuvant treatment. For first-line treatment of advanced UC, platinum-eligible patients should receive cisplatin- or carboplatin-based chemotherapy, followed by avelumab maintenance in those without disease progression. Among patients unable to receive platinum-based chemotherapy, immune checkpoint inhibitor (ICI) treatment is an option for those with programmed death ligand 1 (PD-L1)–positive tumours. Second-line or later treatment options depend on prior treatment, and enfortumab vedotin is preferred after prior ICI and chemotherapy, although availability varies between countries. Additional options include rechallenge with platinum-based chemotherapy, an ICI, or non–platinum-based chemotherapy. Areas of uncertainty include the optimal number of first-line chemotherapy cycles for advanced UC and the value of PD-L1 testing for UC