Evidence has been accruing to indicate that young children are vulnerable to noise in their physical environment. A literature review identified that, in addition to hearing loss, noise exposure is associated with negative birth outcomes, reduced cognitive function, inability to concentrate, increased psychosocial activation, nervousness, feeling of helplessness, and increased blood pressure in...

How strongly and how quickly will the disruptive changes in auto manufacture impact on the plastics industry? This question lay at the heart of the 11th Akro Dia(hr)log conference held on May 9 and 10 in Niederzissen, Germany. Some 120 customers, development partners, and interested participants were welcomed by Akro-Plastic GmbH at their headquarters. With “Automotive industry, quo vadis?”, An...

This paper sets out a theoretical framework for analyzing board governance, and describes an empirical study of corporate governance practices in a subset of non-profit organizations (hospices in the UK). It examines how practices in hospice governance compare with what is known about effective board working. We found that key strengths of hospice boards included a strong focus on the mission a...

The present study examined whether women's testosterone levels are influenced by being with a sexual and romantic partner after a period of sexual abstinence. Women in long distance relationships (n=15) provided five saliva samples: at least 1 week before seeing their partner (and at least 2 weeks since their last visit), the day before seeing their partner, when they were with their partner bu...

Born in 1842 in Frankfurt an der Oder, Heinrich Irenaenus Quincke (figure 1) was the youngest of four sons of a titled physician, Hermann Quincke. His mother’s predecessors were of the Huguenot faith and had fled to Germany following the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685. They were textile merchants. At his baptism, Heinrich received his name Irenaeus as witnessed by 13 honourary god-fa...

We report the case of a 25-year-old women suffering from major depression who was treated with citalopram for several weeks with doses between 20 mg and 60 mg. She gradually developed marked mydriasis within 2 months after treatment and subsequently neuritis nervi optici. Moreover, abrupt galactorrhea occurred after 2 months of treatment. All neuro-ophthalmological, neurophysiological, clinical...

-This paper introduces an empirical study to investigate the use of multimodal metaphors in e-learning application in particular within the area of note-taking. The aim of the study is to measure and compare the level of usability of these metaphors. In order to carry out this comparative investigation, two experimental interfaces were built and performed by forty users. In the first interface ...

OBJECTIVES The qualitative subjective assessment has been exercised either by self-reflection (self-assessment (SA)) or by an observer (peer assessment (PA)) and is considered to play an important role in students' development. The objectivity of PA and SA by students as well as those by faculty examiners has remained debated. This matters most when it comes to a high-stakes examination. We exp...

Many production facilities generate and update production schedules. Rescheduling is necessary because the manufacturing system is dynamic and unexpected events occur. This paper discusses rescheduling policies and how they affect the performance of manufacturing systems. The benefits of proper rescheduling include improved manufacturing system performance with reduced cost due to computational...

Staphylococcus schleiferi is a new species of coagulase-negative staphylococcus first described in April 1988 (J. Freney, Y. Brun, M. Bes, H. Meugnier, F. Grimont, P. A. D. Grimont, C. Nervi, and J. Fleurette, Int. J. Syst. Bacteriol. 38:168-172, 1988). There are few data in the literature on its pathogenicity. We report two cases in which its role as an opportunistic nosocomial appears to be i...