The competitive position achieved by the Japanese and Western industries during the 1970s to mid-1990s, and 1980s to mid-1990s, respectively, derived from understanding, implementing, and developing Total Quality Management (TQM) as a comprehensive management philosophy. Several research and/or company studies provided evidence of this development and its impact on leading companies’ efficiency an

Customer engagement is one of the hottest topics in the customer management area. Most of the customer engagement research focus on the customer with strong psychological connection with the focal object, however, the customer who is driven by external benefits, such as discounts and sense of being needed, also contribute significant engagement value to the firm. This paper proposes the constructs

To the Editor — Ecologists Gardner and Wordley1 recently argued that in the face of “interconnected planetary emergencies threatening our climate and ecosystems,” information on the severity and urgency of the problem is insufficient to promote the necessary social and political change. Thus, “scientists should join civil disobedience movements to fight these unprecedented crises”. That the realiz

This paper describes a study of techniques for identifying Higgs bosons at high transverse momenta decaying into bottom-quark pairs, H→ bb¯ , for proton–proton collision data collected by the ATLAS detector at the Large Hadron Collider at a centre-of-mass energy s=13 TeV. These decays are reconstructed from calorimeter jets found with the anti-ktR= 1.0 jet algorithm. To tag Higgs bosons, a combina

Double U-pipe boreholes are the second most used type of ground heat exchangers after single U-pipe boreholes. The borehole thermal resistance is a key design and performance parameter for the double U-pipe boreholes. Another parameter that is particularly important for double U-pipe boreholes is the internal thermal resistance between the U-pipes. There is, however, a general lack of methods that

Background: Smoking is a strong risk factor for the development of Graves’ ophthalmopathy (GO). Immediate early genes (IEGs) are overexpressed in patients with active GO compared to healthy controls. The aim of this study was to study the effects of tobacco smoking and simvastatin on preadipocytes and orbital fibroblasts (OFs) in the adipogenic process. Methods: Cigarette smoke extract (CSE) was g

The accuracy of the Mg/Ca paleothermometer is contested over the influences of secondary environmental parameters such as salinity and pH. Recent calibrations based on compiled sediment trap and laboratory culture data suggest moderate influences from salinity and pH. Core tops are the best analogues to downcore samples used for paleoceanographic reconstruction with well-constrained environmental

Temperaturändringar och krympning påverkar betongkonstruktioners volym, och i konstruktioner som hindras från av röra sig kan sådana volymändringar leda till så kallade tvångseffekter, som i sin tur kan orsaka sprickbildning. När detta sker kan emellertid konstruktionen deformeras till viss del, vilket gör att tvångsspänningarna och därmed också sprickvidderna minskar. Uppsprickningsförloppet är sThermal actions and shrinkage cause volume changes in concrete structures. In structures which are restrained from movements, the restraint effects can cause cracking. However, when cracking occurs, the structure can deform to some extent, which reduces the restraint stresses and thus also the crack widths. As the exact crack development is hard to predict beforehand, the actual restraint and thus

We have measured B/Ca in four core-top planktonic foraminiferal species (Globigerinoides ruber (white), Globigerinoides sacculifer (without final sac-like chamber), Neogloboquadrina dutertrei, and Pulleniatina obliquiloculata) from three depth transects (the Caribbean Sea, the southwestern Indian Ocean, and the Ontong Java Plateau) to evaluate the effect of dissolution on planktonic foraminiferal

With growing tourism in natural areas, monitoring recreational impacts is becoming increasingly important. This paper aims to evaluate how di_erent trampling intensities a_ect some common Icelandic plant communities by using digital photographs to analyze and quantify vegetation in experimental plots and to monitor vegetation recovery rates over a consecutive three-year period. Additionally, it se

Atmospheric CO2 concentrations declined markedly about 70,000 years ago, when the Earth's climate descended into the last glaciation. Much of the carbon removed from the atmosphere has been suspected to have entered the deep oceans, but evidence for increased carbon storage remains elusive. Here we use the B/Ca ratios of benthic foraminifera from several sites across the Atlantic Ocean to reconstr

Abstract: This data on the age of metamorphism of rocks of the Yelabuga zone and the geochronological data on detrital zircon from paragneisses of the same zone are presented, and their correlation with the ages of rocks from the Middle Volga megablock is made. The rocks of the Yelabuga zone and Middle Volga megablock have similar geochemical characteristics and degrees of metamorphism, but demons

During the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM; ~20,000 years ago), the global ocean sequestered a large amount of carbon lost from the atmosphere and terrestrial biosphere. Suppressed CO2 outgassing from the Southern Ocean is the prevailing explanation for this carbon sequestration. By contrast, the North Atlantic Ocean—a major conduit for atmospheric CO2 transport to the ocean interior via the overturning

Aim: Patient reported outcome measures (PROMs) quantify various domains of health related quality of life (HRQOL) from the patient perspective. The overall aim of this thesis was to investigate patient reported outcomes (PROs) in patients with cleft lip and/or palate (CL/P). Method: PROs were investigated in the CL/P population with PROMs and interviews. Health care professional (HCP) experience o

Ett kapitel baserat på forskning om personlig assistans och rätten för en människamed normbrytande funktion att utveckla en egen sexualitet, med diskussion om hur dessa svenska förhållanden förhåller sig till liknande frågor i andra länder.