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Major cardiotonics are now widely used in reviving patients and we are concerned with shock following cardiac surgery. It is, however, difficult to use the most efficient of them, e.g. isoprenalin, with required accuracy regarding its effects. We describe a model which simulates the haemodynamic response to variable doses of cardiotonics. Firstly, one has to identify the parameters of this model and to test it on experimental data. Then one has to use the resulting model in the frame of optimal control of time‐dependent systems in order to determine some doses nearest the optimum.

This study aims to investigate the motives for and the benefits of authorized economic operator (AEO) certification in the supply chain. Also, whether there are significant differences in the perception of the AEO status as a necessity or privilege among cargo owners and service providers.

The research design includes an international survey of 159 AEO-certified companies from four European Union (EU) countries performing various roles in the supply chain. The data are analyzed using quantitative methods, including factor analysis and analysis of variance.

Based on factor analysis, the research reveals the motives for and benefits of AEO certification. This reveals significant differences between two distinct groups of supply chain participants, namely, cargo owners and service providers. Service providers are mainly driven by the need to gain or maintain their competitive advantage and treat AEO certification as a standard that is required by customers. Cargo owners are relatively more focused on the improvement of internal processes and treat AEO certification as a privilege that helps them achieve a high level of efficiency.

The study fills the existing literature gap as it focuses on the differences between two distinct groups (cargo owners and service providers) in terms of their perception of the AEO certification. As empirical research in this area is scarce, especially at the cross-country level, this study also significantly complements knowledge on AEO certification in the EU.

This article seeks to introduce the concept of spiritual learning by exploring the value of human characteristics spiritual in nature with respect to their relationship to learning.

In developing this theme, the authors engage a systematic approach: defining terms; identifying representative human characteristics that are spiritual in nature; surfacing assumptions; and identifying emerging themes among the representative spiritual characteristics with respect to learning.

There appears to be a positive correlation between the representative spiritual characteristics and human learning. For better or worse, the material universe and non‐material universe are married in the conscious and unconscious learning of the human mind.

This work provides a new frame of reference for understanding the relationship between spirituality and learning.

“Spice” products are synthetic cannabimimetics (SC; also called “synthetic cannabinoids”)-based designer drugs used as a legal alternative to cannabis for their very strong tetrahydrocannabinol (THC)-like effects. The purpose of this paper is to provide an analysis of more recent clinical and pharmacology/toxicology findings relating to SC and describe how they could impact on health, with a particular focus on mental health.

A systematic search and descriptive analysis of the available evidence on psychopathological issues related to misuse was performed here, whilst taking into account the Pubmed/Medline databases, a range of conference proceedings and national/international agencies’ reports.

While THC is a partial agonist, SC are full agonists on the cannabinoid receptors (CB-rs) and the administration of multiple SC can produce additive and/or synergistic agonistic interaction effects on the endocannabinoid system. These levels of strong CB-rs’ activation may be high enough to produce severe physiological and psychological disturbances. The available evidence suggests an existing relationship between SC use and psychosis (“Spiceophrenia”). The acute SC intoxication is usually characterized by tachycardia/hypertension; visual/auditory hallucinations; mydriasis; agitation/anxiety; tachypnoea; nausea/vomiting; and seizures.

The absence of clinical trials and longitudinal studies, together with the heterogeneity of SC compounds does not facilitate a precise assessment of the health risks related to their use, with long-term effects being of particular concern.

Appropriate, non-judgemental, prevention campaigns with a special focus on the differences between SC and cannabis may need to be organized on a large scale. At the same time, clinicians need to be regularly updated about novel psychoactive substances, including SC, to promptly recognize signs/symptoms of intoxication.

This paper aims to describe the strategies being put in place to develop blood borne virus (BBV) services across prisons in Wales, UK, in response to the recommendations for prisons within the Welsh Government's Blood Borne Viral Hepatitis Action Plan for Wales.

A task and finish group was established to ensure multidisciplinary engagement between healthcare and custody staff. A service improvement package was developed focusing on awareness raising and/or development of clinical services for prisoners, prison officers and prison healthcare staff.

Prison healthcare staff have undergone training in BBVs and are being supported to deliver clinical services to prisoners. Training has been delivered in pre/post test discussion and dried blood spot testing; care pathways have been established between prison and community specialists for treatment referrals. An e‐learning module is being rolled out to raise awareness amongst custody staff and encourage occupational hepatitis B vaccination. Literature on “liver health” has been produced to be given to every prisoner across Wales.

It is envisaged that BBV services will become a routine part of prison care in Wales. Data on activity are being collected for evaluation and it is hoped that tackling BBVs in prisons will help reduce rates of infection both within prisons and in the wider community.

This paper describes new initiatives that have been established to tackle BBVs across Welsh prisons and will be relevant to any prison healthcare staff looking to develop similar services.

Research has shown that the current knowledge management (KM) practices are developed from the standpoint of the management and do not put enough emphasis on knowledge sharing from the non‐executive employees' perspective. However, it is important for organizations to understand – from the perspective of employees – the factors that motivate employees to share knowledge for successful implementation of any KM program. In this exploratory study, willingness of employees to share knowledge is the dependent variable. The purpose of this study is to explore the knowledge sharing factors from the employees' perspective.

Using survey methodology, two large IT service and consulting organizations were included in the study to examine cultural, technological, motivational and organizational factors, which influence knowledge sharing within an organization from the perspective of non‐executive employees.

The study results showed that issues related to availability and usability of technology, leadership support and motivating structures were shown to have influences on knowledge sharing. The study also revealed that employees' willingness to share knowledge was not affected by their concerns about the loss of power or job insecurity.

Self‐reporting bias is a limitation of the survey study. Self‐report bias occurs when individuals would bring in their experiences, self‐perception, and their work environment when completing a survey. Even though the present study clearly indicates to the participants that it is anonymous, it is possible that sometimes participants may misreport and misrepresent their perceptions to make themselves look better. The study was exploratory, and it was limited to two organizations. This would therefore restrict one from generalizing the outcomes of the study.

This exploratory study contributed to a deeper understanding of knowledge sharing with empirical data from two large IT organizations based on the non‐executive employees' perspective rather than that of management.

Effective and efficient software security inspection is crucial as the existence of vulnerabilities represents severe risks to software users. The purpose of this paper is to empirically evaluate the potential application of Stochastic Gradient Boosting Trees (SGBT) as a novel model for enhanced prediction of vulnerable Web components compared to common, popular and recent machine learning models.

An empirical study was conducted where the SGBT and 16 other prediction models have been trained, optimized and cross validated using vulnerability data sets from multiple versions of two open-source Web applications written in PHP. The prediction performance of these models have been evaluated and compared based on accuracy, precision, recall and F-measure.

The results indicate that the SGBT models offer improved prediction over the other 16 models and thus are more effective and reliable in predicting vulnerable Web components.

This paper proposed a novel application of SGBT for enhanced prediction of vulnerable Web components and showed its effectiveness.

The purpose of this study was to explore negative and stereotype-threatening depictions of career women in Hollywood films. The study draws on stereotype threat research to reflect on how such portrayals might undermine women’s career aspirations and contribute to the glass ceiling’s persistence, and proposes an agenda for future research.

Bridging social role theories with conceptual models of films as social “texts”, the author explored depictions of 165 career women presented by 137 films, focusing on negative and potentially stereotype-threatening personal and professional characteristics and contexts.

Thematic analyses of film portrayals revealed negative and stereotype-threatening characteristics and contexts of career women, including their mean and conniving personalities, promiscuity, isolation, failures at intimacy and inability to balance work and family.

Limitations include the subjective interpretations of a single author, a broad exploratory focus and no empirical evidence of connections between film portrayals and career attitudes. Researchers are encouraged to deepen analyses of film portrayals and examine linkages with stereotype threat and career behaviours sustaining the glass ceiling.

Given the pervasive reach of the media and the potential for consumers to internalize its messages, the negative depictions documented here could bear an adverse effect on women’s career aspirations, contributing to the glass ceiling’s survival.

Questioning the role of the media, in particular the portrayals of career women in film, provides an additional angle to understand why the glass ceiling endures.

Spam emails classification using data mining and machine learning approaches has enticed the researchers' attention duo to its obvious positive impact in protecting internet users. Several features can be used for creating data mining and machine learning based spam classification models. Yet, spammers know that the longer they will use the same set of features for tricking email users the more probably the anti-spam parties might develop tools for combating this kind of annoying email messages. Spammers, so, adapt by continuously reforming the group of features utilized for composing spam emails. For that reason, even though traditional classification methods possess sound classification results, they were ineffective for lifelong classification of spam emails duo to the fact that they might be prone to the so-called “Concept Drift”. In the current study, an enhanced model is proposed for ensuring lifelong spam classification model. For the evaluation purposes, the overall performance of the suggested model is contrasted against various other stream mining classification techniques. The results proved the success of the suggested model as a lifelong spam emails classification method.

Effective farmer participation in the rural land consolidation process has become increasingly important because it improves results in rural land consolidation and land use efficiency. The purpose of this paper is to examine the mechanism of farmers’ effective participation in Chinese rural land consolidation.

The authors empirically assess farmers’ effective participation in the rural land consolidation process in ten counties of China’s Hubei province. Focusing on an effective decision-making model, the authors comprehensively evaluated farmer participation using surveys that incorporated an index system and analyzed survey results using a structural equation model to examine factors that influenced farmer’s effective participation.

The results of the study suggest that the correlations between farmers’ effective participation and the impacting factors the authors proposed were particularly strong. In addition, participation ability, participation opportunity and participation incentive are strongly associated with effective farmer participation. Thus, the authors highlight that incentives should be provided to encourage farmers’ effective participation in rural land consolidation.

Because of the chosen approach and the set of the research object, the geographic context of the empirical survey work was limited; furthermore, the authors only studied the influencing factors at the individual level, leaving the interaction effects between governmental factors and farmer individual factors inadequately explained.

Despite those limitations, these results serve as an important reference for government agencies and stakeholder groups in rural land consolidation decision making.