Inequality, discrimination, and the power of the status quo: Direct evidence for a motivation to see the way things are as the way they should be.

How powerful is the status quo in determining people’s social ideals? The authors propose (a) that people engage in injunctification, that is, a motivated tendency to construe the current status quo as the most desirable and reasonable state of affairs (i.e., as the most representative of how things should be); (b) that this tendency is driven, at least in part, by people’s desire to justify their sociopolitical systems; and (c) that injunctification has profound implications for the maintenance of inequality and societal change. Four studies, across a variety of domains, provided supportive evidence. When the motivation to justify the sociopolitical system was experimentally heightened, participants injunctified extant (a) political power (Study 1), (b) public funding policies (Study 2), and (c) unequal gender demographics in the political and business spheres (Studies 3 and 4, respectively). It was also demonstrated that this motivated phenomenon increased derogation of those who act counter to the status quo (Study 4). Theoretical implications for system justification theory, stereotype formation, affirmative action, and the maintenance of inequality are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Think Big for the Developing World

2005 was tagged the ‘year of Africa’. In fact, it should go down in history as the year Africa's development was firmly reined in by Western policy-makers, say Ceri Dingle and Viv Regan, director and assistant director of the education charity, NGO and NVYO WORLD. Africa needs development, but not the small-minded sustainable variety. Could it be that a lack of confidence and ambition in development among the industrialised nations is holding back the developing world?     

CTLA4-Ig inhibits optimal T helper 2 cell development but not protective immunity or memory response to Nippostrongylus brasiliensis

The B7 co-stimulatory pathway is critical to T cell activation, however its role in the generation of Th2 cells in vivo remains controversial. We have studied the role of B7 co-stimulation in the development of a Th2 immune response to the nematode parasite Nippostrongylus brasiliensis. Blockade of B7 co-stimulation with murine CTLA4-Ig (mCTLA4-Ig) resulted in decreased Th2 cell development as determined by IL-4 and IL-5 cytokine production in vitro. It also resulted in lowered Th2 cell effector function in vivo, with marked reductions in IgE production. Blood eosinophilia was variably affected by mCTLA4-Ig treatment, which resulted in both slight and very severe inhibition in different experiments. However, an effective immune response was still evident as demonstrated by the further reduction of cytokine production, IgE titers, and blood eosinophilia in mice treated with a combination of mCTLA4-Ig and anti-CD4 mAb, and by the ability of mCTLA4-Ig-treated mice to expel adult worms. In addition, mCTLA4-Ig treatment did not alter the development of a memory response following secondary infection with N. brasiliensis, with the exception of IgE production. We conclude from these results that B7 co-stimulation is required in this experimental model for optimal Th2 cell development and effector function in vivo but is not necessary for protective immunity.     

Influence of Composition and Preparation Method on the Continuous Performance of Sn-Beta for Glucose-Fructose Isomerisation

Topics in Catalysis - The stability, activity and selectivity of various Sn-Beta catalysts are investigated to identify how the composition of the catalyst, in addition to its method of...     

Event Trace Independence of active behavior

We present the Event Trace Independence (ETI), a novel property of active rules exhibiting a behavior independent of the specific event sequence that had caused a state transition. When employed in a distributed setting, this property supersedes the classical property of confluence, which is not sufficient herein. We show that ETI is in general undecidable and provide a sufficient condition, called invertibility, which offers a practical way to demonstrate ETI.     

Independent updates and incremental agreement in replicated databases

Update propagation and transaction atomicity are major obstacles to the development of replicated databases. Many practical applications, such as automated teller machine networks, flight reservation, and part inventory control, do not require these properties. In this paper we present an approach for incrementally updating a distributed, replicated database without requiring multi-site atomic commit protocols. We prove that the mechanism is correct, as it asymptotically performs all the updates on all the copies. Our approach has two important characteristics: it is progressive, and non-blocking.Progressive means that the transaction's coordinator always commits, possibly together with a group of other sites. The update is later propagated asynchronously to the remaining sites.Non-blocking means that each site can take unilateral decisions at each step of the algorithm. Sites which cannot commit updates are brought to the same final state by means of areconciliation mechanism. This mechanism uses the history logs, which are stored locally at each site, to bring sites to agreement. It requires a small auxiliary data structure, called reception vector, to keep track of the time unto which the other sites are guaranteed to be up-to-date. Several optimizations to the basic mechanism are also discussed. Recommended by: Ahmed Elmagarmid     

Software prototyping by relational techniques: experiences withprogram construction systems

A method for designing and prototyping program construction systems using relational databases is presented. Relations are the only data structures used inside the systems and for interfaces; programs extensively use relational languages, in particular relational algebra. Two large projects are described. The Ada Relational Translator (ART) is an experimental compiler-interpreter for Ada in which all subsystems, including the parser, semantic analyzer, interpreter, kernel, and debugger, use relations as their only data structure; the relational approach has been pushed to the utmost to achieve fast prototyping in a student environment. Multi-Micro Line (MML) is a tool set for constructing programs for multimicroprocessors' targets, in which relations are used for allocation and configuration control. Both experiences validate the approach for managing teamwork in evolving projects, identify areas where this approach is appropriate, and raise critical issues     

Model‐driven design of collaborative Web applications

This paper introduces a model‐driven approach to the design of collaborative Web‐based applications, i.e. applications in which several users play different roles, in a collaborative way, to pursue a specific goal. The paper illustrates a conference management application (CMA), whose main requirements include: (i) the management of users profiles and access rights based on the role played by users during the conference life cycle; (ii) the delivery of information and services to individual users; (iii) the management of the sequence of activities that lead to the achievement of a common goal. The presented approach is based on WebML, a conceptual modelling language for the Web. The paper also highlights some general properties—as understood by the practical experience of CMA development—that a Web modelling language should feature in order to fully support the development of collaborative applications. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.