Antecedents of task performance: An examination of transformation leadership,team communication,team creativity,and team trust

Higher education requires best leaders and collaborative environment to stimulate staff and student because of facing more challenges and to make the educational institutions remain relevant in a competitive global context. Considering the fruitful academic outcome, ideal leadership style and collaborative work are essential among teachers and students. Therefore, an empirical study was performed to investigate the effect of transformational leadership and team communication on task performance. The proposed model was verified by quantitative study to clarify the complex relationship between predicators and outcomes. Research data were collected from a sample of 273 master students from the University of Science and Technology of China. The collected data were examined through partial least square analysis technique. The results suggested that team perception of transformation leadership has positive effect on team communication and team trust to measure high task performance. In addition, team communication has positive effect on team trust, whereas team trust has a significant effect on team creativity, which enhances the task performance.     

Prevalence of alcohol in blood samples from traffic accident cases in Turkey

Alcohol is one of the main causes of traffic accidents worldwide. With a population of 70 million, 12 million vehicles, and 18 million drivers (16% women), Turkey is one of the European countries that has a high incidence of road traffic accidents.In accordance with Turkish laws, subjects were considered to be positive when alcohol blood concentration exceeded 50 mg/100 mL. The objective of the present study was to obtain reliable and comparable data about alcohol use in traffic cases in Turkey. All cases are admitted to the emergency department at Ege University Medical Faculty. The cases from police officers are described as traffic control cases. Alcohol was detected in the blood of about 54.4% of the traffic-related cases during October 2005 to March 2007. It has been observed that, in 17.4% of the traffic accident cases, the blood alcohol level was 50 mg/dL or less, which is the legal limit in Turkey for car drivers. Alcohol prevalence was 57.2% in male cases and 43.6% in female cases. In alcohol-positive cases; the ratios for males were 1.73 times more frequent in traffic-related cases. Prevalence data will help traffic safety professionals to adequately allocate resources and plan future efforts in reducing drinking-and-driving behavior and thereby reduce traffic accidents.     

The Campesino-to-Campesino agroecology movement of ANAP in Cuba: social process methodology in the construction of sustainable peasant agriculture and food sovereignty

Agroecology has played a key role in helping Cuba survive the crisis caused by the collapse of the socialist bloc in Europe and the tightening of the US trade embargo. Cuban peasants have been able to boost food production without scarce and expensive imported agricultural chemicals by first substituting more ecological inputs for the no longer available imports, and then by making a transition to more agroecologically integrated and diverse farming systems. This was possible not so much because appropriate alternatives were made available, but rather because of the Campesino-a-Campesino (CAC) social process methodology that the National Association of Small Farmers (ANAP) used to build a grassroots agroecology movement. This paper was produced in a 'self-study' process spearheaded by ANAP and La Via Campesina, the international agrarian movement of which ANAP is a member. In it we document and analyze the history of the Campesino-to-Campesino Agroecology Movement (MACAC), and the significantly increased contribution of peasants to national food production in Cuba that was brought about, at least in part, due to this movement. Our key findings are (i) the spread of agroecology was rapid and successful largely due to the social process methodology and social movement dynamics, (ii) farming practices evolved over time and contributed to significantly increased relative and absolute production by the peasant sector, and (iii) those practices resulted in additional benefits including resilience to climate change.     

Can hyperlinks and digital rights management secure affordable access to information?

Digital Rights Management Systems (DRMs) related control mechanism, which are analogous to and augment the exclusive rights, have been the subject of debate since the early 1980s. DRMs, which function like an electronic security guard that ‘never leaves its post, never takes a break and never sleeps,¹ can invade the privacy of individuals, prevent competition and/or control access to a work that is not or is no longer copyright protected. Hyperlinks are citations of an electronic address, but when clicked they navigate the user to the source of further information, including codes circumventing DRMs. This article accepts that the excesses of DRMs can outreach copyright and/or contract law, but argues that DRMs provide an opportunity for innovative business models, which can both protect digital works and promote free use of hyperlinks. Part 1 outlines the background and legislative provisions related to DRMs. It contrasts the WIPO Copyright Treaty (WCT) 1996,² Articles 11 and 12, with corresponding provisions found in the implementing legislation of the US Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) 1998,³ and the EU Copyright Directive (EUCD) 2001.⁴ It also examines the intellectual property aspects of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and Europe's Anti-counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA).⁵ Part 2 debates opposing academic opinion and comments on case law relating to DRMs, including the use of hyperlinks as a way of trafficking circumvention technology and/or facilitating unauthorised access to a copyright work. It assesses the extent to which DRMs might inhibits the development of new products, prevents competition, or invades the privacy of individuals, and points to the opportunities a consumer group-rightholder negotiated model end user licence can offer. Part 3 concludes that DRMs bolsters the clutches of the rightholder, but reduce unauthorised access to information thus minimising revenue loss, which can make hyperlinked ‘consumer’ access to information ‘affordable,’ or even free.     

An Administrative Manifesto for Survival in the Twenty-First Century

Professor Ali Farazmand has written a manifesto for administrative action in an effort to improve public governance and administration capacity not only for today but also for tomorrow, which is highly volatile and uncertain. Farazmand's earlier works, especially his essay "Globalization and Public Administration" (PAR, November/December 1999), are familiar to many students and scholars in public administration around the world.     

Distribution of HLA-DQA1, polymarker, CSF1PO, vWA, TH01, TPOX, D16S539, D7S820, D13S317, and D5S818 alleles in East Bengali and West Punjabi populations from Indo-Pak Subcontinent

Blood samples were collected from 115 individuals residing in the Pakistani state of West Punjab and 81 Bengali individuals residing in the state of East Bengal, India. These samples were analyzed for the loci HLA-DQA1, PM (LDLR, GYPA, HBGG, D7S8, and GC) and eight short tandem repeats: CSF1PO, TPOX, THO1, vWA, D16S539, D7S820, D13S317, and D5S818. Departures from Hardy-Weinberg (HWE) were observed in Punjabi population at LDLR, THO1, D13S317, D5S818, and D16S539 and at CSF1PO and THO1 in Bengali population.     

The bazaar in ruins: rent and fire in Barakholka,Almaty

ABSTRACT

Since 2013, there have been multiple fires in bazaars in Almaty, Kazakhstan. Most of these fires have occurred in Barakholka, the largest bazaar in Central Asia, known for wholesaling in apparel, shoes and low-quality household and office supplies. Ownership of Barakholka is opaque. Using recurrent Barakholka fires as my point of departure, this article contributes to scholarship by describing how the clearing of old bazaars is followed by new property developments and the imposition of new rent regimes. In doing so, I argue that fire – a form of ruination that not only destroys property but also severs networks and people's relationship to a place – is illustrative of how the bazaar, as a new institution within an emerging post-Soviet market economy, was moulded by private interests, and repeated, often ruinous assertions of control over property. I also argue that this process was embedded in a larger political economy that sought to ‘civilize’ the earlier marketplaces. This article is based on ethnographic interviews and repeated visits to the Barakhola between 2016 and 2018, and media accounts of the fires.