In this fascinating study, Chris Messenger posits F. Scott Fitzgerald as a great master of sentiment in modern American fiction. Sentimental forms both attracted and repelled Fitzgerald while ...defining his deepest impulses as a prose writer. Messenger demonstrates that the sentimental identities, refractions, and influences Fitzgerald explores in Tender Is the Night define key components in his affective life, which evolved into a powerful aesthetic that informed his vocation as a modernist writer. In " Tender Is the Night" and F. Scott Fitzgerald' s Sentimental Identities, Messenger traces the roots of Fitzgerald' s writing career to the deaths of his two infant sisters a few months before his own birth. It was their loss, Fitzgerald wrote, that made him a writer. Messenger highlights how the loss of Fitzgerald' s siblings powerfully molded his relation to maternal nurturing and sympathy in Tender Is the Night as well as how it shaped the homosocial intimations of its care-giving protagonist, psychiatrist Dick Diver. A concomitant grief and mourning was fueled by Fitzgerald' s intimate and intense creative rivalry with his often-institutionalized wife, Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald. While sentiment is a discredited strain in high modernism, Fitzgerald nevertheless embraced it in Tender Is the Night to fashion this most poignant and beautiful successor to The Great Gatsby. Fitzgerald' s aesthetic and emotional preoccupations came most vividly to life in this major novel. Messenger describes how Fitzgerald, creating his character Nicole Warren Diver as a victim of paternal incest, finally found the sentimental key to finishing his novel and uniting his vision of the two narratives of " saving" the two sisters and reimagining the agony of his wife and their marriage. Fitzgerald' s productive quarrel with and through sentiment defines his career, and Messenger convincingly argues that Tender Is the Night should be placed alongside TheGreat Gatsby as a classic exemplar of the modern novel.
This paper uses pre-offer market valuations to evaluate the misvaluation and Q theories of takeovers. Bidder and target valuations (price-to-book, or price-to-residual-income-model-value) are related ...to means of payment, mode of acquisition, premia, target hostility, offer success, and bidder and target announcement-period returns. The evidence is broadly consistent with both hypotheses. The evidence for the Q hypothesis is stronger in the pre-1990 period than in the 1990-2000 period, whereas the evidence for the misvaluation hypothesis is stronger in the 1990-2000 period than in the pre-1990 period.
Aim
Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is a systemic inflammatory disease. In recent years, new drugs with novel targets have been developed to increase the efficacy of drugs in the treatment of RA. Curcumin ...has shown potent anti‐inflammatory effects and is considered an anti‐tumor necrosis factor. The present study was conducted to determine the effect of curcumin nanomicelle on the clinical symptoms of patients with RA.
Methods
This randomized, double‐blind, controlled trial selected 65 eligible RA patients and randomly divided them into a curcumin nanomicelle group (n = 30) and a placebo group (n = 35). Curcumin nanomicelle (40 mg) and placebo capsules were administrated to the RA patients 3 times a day for 12 weeks. The Disease Activity Score of 28 joints (DAS‐28) and erythrocyte sedimentation rate (ESR) were measured at baseline and after 12 weeks.
Results
The DAS‐28, tender joint count (TJC) and swollen joint count (SJC) at baseline and the end of the study were not significant between the curcumin nanomicelle and placebo groups. After the intervention, the within‐group DAS‐28, TJC and SJC in the curcumin nanomicelle and placebo groups reduced significantly compared to the baseline. The difference in changes between the two groups was not significant. Nonetheless, this change was greater in the case group than in the placebo group. No significant changes were observed in terms of ESR between the two groups of RA patients.
Conclusion
Adding curcumin nanomicelle to the RA patients’ medication led to some positive changes in the DAS‐28, IJC and SJC, although not significantly.
The cost for the recovery/disposal of residues produced by wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) represents a relevant aspect in the economics of WWTP management. We elaborated and applied a desk-based ...methodology to analyze tender processes and to investigate quantitatively and qualitatively the variability of unit costs for sewage sludge (EWC 190805) management in Northern Italy from 2015 to 2021. We conducted a qualitative survey for operators of the sector. Unit costs for sludge management increased over time. The unit cost was mostly affected by the type of sludge recovery/disposal being the cost for recovery in agriculture (direct or by composting) lower than incineration and landfilling. Other variables influencing the cost were the distance and discount offered by the contractor. Regulatory and judiciary events determined a sudden increase of sludge disposal costs in Italy between 2017 and 2019. Recovery in agriculture, when practicable, remains the preferable option. Results can orient and support the optimization of sludge management costs and be of interest for future studies at national or European level.
•We consider public procurement where quality is predetermined for each bidder.•We view a most economically advantageous tender as an asymmetric auction.•We determine the extent of competition in ...bidding.•We examine the influence of the quality score attributes in the competitive behavior.•We demonstrate how corruptive behavior can influence the outcome of procurement auctions.
In a multidimensional procurement auction, such as a most economically advantageous tender, asymmetric opponents, with different cost structure and predetermined quality, compete for the highest score, which combines price and quality. Production inefficiency characterizes each tenderer. We derive the equilibrium equations and boundary conditions, for which closed-form solutions are not available. We compare the bidding behavior of any pair of rival tenderers and demonstrate that equilibrium prices critically depend on the comparison of the cost difference Δc with respect to the increment of score attribute s. For the same production inefficiency, a tenderer with a relatively higher Δc compared to s, stands in weak competitive position and is forced to bid more aggressively. We show how the opposing advantage of each bidder with respect to cost or score attribute induces the extent of competition. Under a different perspective, we analyze bidding by a pair of tenderers for a given maximum score, achieved when pricing is at cost. Our analysis reveals that the player with consistently higher percentage change of the probability of being more efficient than the rival, is in a disadvantageous position and receives lower score in the awarding process. Our results are useful for tenderers in assessing their competitive position. The findings enable contracting authorities to evaluate competition at the preliminary stage of design and to examine the effects of the awarding criterion on pricing.
•Delicate images can be retrieved from tarnished daguerreotypes by tracking the Hg Lα XRF excited with a focused synchrotron X-ray beam at energy just above the Hg L3 -edge if the bulk of the image ...particles remains intact. Surface corrosion is not an issue.•While the risk of radiation damage is low, ultra bright X-ray can produce radiation damage in scattered spots, an upper bound of flux tolerance has been established.•Image can also be retrieved with tender X-rays (2.5–7 keV) using Ag L α and Hg Mα XRF; the shallow penetration depth of tender X-rays minimizes background.•Tender X-ray imaging in a high vacuum provides the added advantage of measuring the surface sensitive total electron yield and the bulk sensitive fluorescence yield, which in turn can be used for micro-spectroscopy and surface corrosion analysis.
We report recent observations using a synchrotron X-ray micro-beam to retrieve images from tarnished 19th century daguerreotypes. We confirm that high quality image can always be retrieved from tarnished plates using Hg Lα XRF as long as the bulk of the image particles and their distribution remains intact. We also report results from using tunable tender X-rays (2 - 7 keV) to conduct imaging in high vacuum at energy above the Ag L-edge and the Hg M-edge, extracting images using Ag Lα and Hg Mα, respectively among others (e.g., S to track corrosion). Images obtained with the surface sensitive total electron yield (TEY) and the bulk sensitive fluorescence yield (FLY) as well as corresponding micro-XANES are reported. Flux tolerance to high intensity X-beam is also explored. These results and their implications for cultural heritage research are discussed.
The procurement process is one of the most important phases in any project life cycle, particularly when it comes to selecting the right contractor for the job. Awarding the contract to the best bid ...proposal is a critical step to ensure the greatest value. BIM has been recognized as not only a geometric modelling of buildings, but also, it facilitates the different stages in management of construction projects. The purpose of this paper is to study the impact of using Building Information Modeling (BIM) in the tendering process from the contractor’s perspective, based on a probability model able to predict winning probability, regardless of relative weight. The main objective of this research is to measure the likelihood of winning a tender in the case of implementing BIM strategy, compared with contractors who do not use BIM. The research uses a literature review, surveys, and interviews with experts to develop a model that predicts the probability of winning a contract; this is determined by measuring the BIM impact on each selection criterion in a multicriteria selection process using the Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) to develop a probability-based model. The results of the survey and the interview show that BIM strategy has a variant influence on the score the contractor could have on each of them raising the probability of winning the tender. The main result of this paper is the property-based model, which is able to predict BIM winning probability regardless of relative weight, which can be applied in any country. Nonetheless, the Saudi case study shows that utilizing BIM when proposing could increase the winning probability by up to 9.42% in the case of Quality-Based Selection (QBS), and to 5.5% in the case of Cost-Based Selection (CBS).
Castle et al discuss the shortfalls of funding for general practice in deprived areas. In April 2019, the Haxby Group, through a contract tender process, acquired two surgeries in a deprived area of ...Hull, Yorkshire. These are specifically located in Calvert and Newington with approximately 10,000 patients. This, in addition to six sites in York and three other sites in Hull, with centralized administrative services, make up the Haxby Group. The transformative process that has followed has highlighted many positive outcomes from the use of at-scale general practice and diversifying the workforce but has become increasingly hindered by funding deficits. In particular, the use of the Carr-Hill formula and Quality and Outcomes Framework (QOF)-driven payments negatively impact a practice's ability to provide appropriate care in deprived populations. The population served by this new contract is predominantly young. The area, like most of Hull, is especially high on the Index of Multiple Deprivation, scoring 43.7, compared with 28.1 at another Haxby practice in Hull and 10.4 in York. As is often seen in deprived areas, there is a high incidence of drug and alcohol misuse plus mental health problems.
Under recurrent procurement, the awarding of a contract to a firm may put it in an advantageous position in future tenders, which may reduce competition over time. The objective of this paper is to ...study the dynamics of competition for tendered contracts, focusing on factors that may generate incumbent advantage. Particular attention is given to learning economies, sunk costs of entry and switching costs for the procurer. The paper then applies these insights to analyse empirically the evolution of competition in the market for local bus services in London.
•The dynamics of competition for tendered contracts under recurrent procurement.•What affects whether competition can be sustained over time.•Analysis of over 400 bus routes tendered at least twice by Transport for London.
Plant synthetic biology requires the design of plant expression vectors with multiple transcriptional units, which can be challenging. Here we describe the use of Plant X-tender toolbox complemented ...with a plant grammar implemented in GenoCAD for design, cloning and delivery of several transcriptional units into the plant genome. Plant X-tender toolbox consists of a set of plant expression vectors and the protocols for the most efficient cloning of multiple transcriptional units into this novel vector set. Together with the plant grammar implemented in GenoCAD, the presented strategy allows the users to quickly design genetic modules and assemble them into Plant X-tender expression vectors for in planta functional studies or synthetic biology applications.
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