Zeitschriftenartikel zum Thema „King Kong 2“

In order to rectify important gaps in scholarship, this article examines how Virginie Despentes’s documentary Mutantes: Féminisme Porno Punk (2009), her autobiographical essay King Kong Théorie (2006), and its theatrical adaptation play off one another to advance the argument that Despentes’s transnational feminism has its roots in the sex-positive movement that began in the United States in the early 1980s.1 At the heart of her work, this feminism influences King Kong Théorie and much of her fiction.2 Despentes, inspired by the sex-positive movement that began in the United States in the early 1980s, interviewed its American pioneers in 2005 for her documentary, Mutantes. These interviews articulate a sex-positive feminism that strives to destigmatize sex work by promoting it as a legitimate, lucrative, and often enjoyable way to earn a living. It resoundingly refutes the notion of the sex worker as victim. Mutantes also focuses on the performances by European postporn collectives trying to find non-binary ways to express sexuality and desire. This “pro-sexe” stance would shape both Despentes’s feminist manifesto King Kong Théorie one year later and her fiction, for she evokes it in brief references to sex workers in her Vernon Subutex trilogy. In a nod to the campy personalities and performers in Mutantes, Vanessa Larré’s production of King Kong Théorie (2018), that she adapted to the theater with Valérie de Dietrich, also aims to educate and challenge. With provocative and jocular scenes and shots, Mutantes and Larré’s play knock viewers and theatergoers off kilter to make them reflect on the ways gender-based and heteronormative binaries stifle both men and women in patriarchal societies. While some of the performances, images, and non-binary sex toys in Mutantes may be upsetting to viewers, that is exactly the point: to defy gender and sexual norms to open up new possibilities for individuals shut out by the binary. Both the documentary and the play tackle taboo subjects with ludic humor in a way that stimulates reflection on the part of the audience in a disarming, unthreatening manner. This paper uncovers the way the camp sensibilities in Mutantes rub off on the play’s adaptation since both capture the humor, joviality, playfulness, and oftentimes self-deprecation of the sex-positive American feminists that worked their way into Despentes’s writing. Mutantes and the play also concretely underscore the ways Despentes’s works are shaping contemporary feminist writers such as Chloé Delaume and Gabrielle Deydier and artists and actors such as Larré and Dietrich.

En este artículo se parte de la hipótesis de que el cine de terror —y King Kong de manera singular— prospera en las etapas agudas de crisis social. Concretamente, KingKong, con sus tres versiones más importantes —1933, 1975 y 2015—, representa una muestra paradigmática, en tanto que, estimulado por las importantes crisis económica de 1929, de 1973 y de 2011, crea imaginariamente un raro ser natural de tamaño descomunal, monstruoso, que encarna simbólicamente los miedos de la época, a la Historia, a la acción humana, al progreso y su correspondiente anhelo de un futuro mejor. Para desarrollar esta hipótesis de partida, este trabajo se apoya, fundamentalmente, en dos perspectivas de la Sociología —la comprensiva de Max Weber y la Sociología del Cine— que entroncan con dos métodos —el hermenéutico y el análisis iconológico—, así como con los conceptos de imaginario social y de crisis.

IntroductionCurrent international guidelines recommend non-vitamin K oral anticoagulants (NOACs) for stroke prevention among patients with non-valvular atrial fibrillation (AF) at significant ischaemic stroke risk given the superior safety and comparable efficacy of NOACs over warfarin. Nonetheless, the safety and effectiveness of NOACs have not been evaluated in patients with AF with underlying moderate or severe mitral stenosis (MS), hence the recommended stroke prevention strategy remains warfarin therapy.Method and analysisMS remains disproportionately prevalent in Asian countries compared with the developed countries. This prospective, randomised, open-label trial with blinded endpoint adjudication aims to evaluate the safety and efficacy of dabigatran for stroke prevention in AF patients with moderate or severe MS. Patients with AF aged ≥18 years with moderate or severe MS not planned for valvular intervention in the coming 12 months will be randomised in a 1:1 ratio to receive dabigatran 110 mg or 150 mg two times per day or warfarin with international normalised ratio 2–3 in an open-label design. Patients with estimated creatinine clearance <30 mL/min, or with a concomitant indication for antiplatelet therapy will be excluded. The primary outcome is a composite of stroke and systemic embolism. Secondary outcomes are ischaemic stroke, systemic embolism, haemorrhagic stroke, intracranial haemorrhage, major bleeding and death. The estimated required sample size is approximately 686 participants.Ethics and disseminationThe study protocol has been approved by the Institutional Review Board of the University of Hong Kong and Hong Kong West Cluster, Hospital Authority, Hong Kong for Fung Yiu King Hospital, Grantham Hospital, Queen Mary Hospital and Tung Wah Hospital in Hong Kong. Results will be published in peer-reviewed journals.Trial registration numberClinicalTrials.gov Registry (NCT04045093); pre-results.

Journal of Education and Training Studies (JETS) would like to acknowledge the following reviewers for their assistance with peer review of manuscripts for this issue. Many authors, regardless of whether JETS publishes their work, appreciate the helpful feedback provided by the reviewers. Their comments and suggestions were of great help to the authors in improving the quality of their papers. Each of the reviewers listed below returned at least one review for this issue.Reviewers for Volume 9, Number 2 Fathia Lahwal, Elmergib University, LibyaHerman Fukada, University of HKBP Nommensen, IndonesiaHossein Chaharbashloo, Kharazmi University, IranIntakhab Khan, King Abdulaziz University, Saudi ArabiaJohn Cowan, Edinburgh Napier University, UKKeyla Ferrari Lopes, UNICAMP, BrazilMan-fung Lo, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong KongMaria Rachel Queiroz, Universidade do Estado da Bahia, BrazilMeral Seker, Alanya Alaaddin Keykubat University, TurkeyMinh Duc Duong, Thai Nguyen University, VietnamRachel Geesa, Ball State University, USARima Meilita Sari, STKIP Al-Washliyah, IndonesiaSamah El-Sakka, Suez University, EgyptThada Jantakoon, Rajabhat Maha Sarakham University, ThailandTilanka Chandrasekera, Oklahoma State University, USA Robert SmithEditorial AssistantOn behalf of,The Editorial Board of Journal of Education and Training StudiesRedfame Publishing9450 SW Gemini Dr. #99416Beaverton, OR 97008, USAE-mail 1: jets@redfame.comE-mail 2: jets@redfame.orgURL: http://jets.redfame.com

By placing the Ark of the Covenant in the first Jewish Temple in the 10th century before the Common Era (BCE), King Solomon relieved Levite priests from carrying the Ark. Three centuries later, King Josiah of Judah asked the Levites to return that container to the Temple, implying that it was no longer there. The gold-plated Ark enclosed more than an unvarying law in the Decalogue and in the ‘obedience-classical-computing’ of the crystal Thummim sewed into the Ephod worn by Aaron, the first high priest. Aaron’s vest also contained the crystal Urim, or flexible variations between obedience and disobedience, in the quantum computing epitomized by the ‘tree-of-the-knowledge-of-good-and-evil’ (Genesis 2). Together, the Thummim and Urim crystals embody the Wisdom ascribed to nature’s Nature and to the Tree-of-Life. Solomon shared this Wisdom with the visiting Queen of Sheba. Although the Ark may have never followed Sheba’s return into Ethiopia, her mariners could have shared Solomon’s Wisdom with Greek, Hindu, Chinese, and Olmec sages. This hypothesis addresses the simultaneous rise in the 6th century BCE of the Logos posited by Heraclitus in Greek-Ionia; of Dharma in Hinduism, of the Buddhist-Sanskrit name “Tathāgatha”; of Social Intelligence in the meeting of Laozi with Kong-Fuzi in China; and, among the Mesoamerican Olmecs, of the legend about the bird-serpent that the Aztecs called later “Quetzal-coatl.” The power of the returning Quetzalcoatl to save humans and nonhuman species from obliteration matches the will of readers eager to catch the esoteric meaning of the vanished Ark.

International Business Research wishes to acknowledge the following individuals for their assistance with peer review of manuscripts for this issue. Their help and contributions in maintaining the quality of the journal are greatly appreciated.International Business Research is recruiting reviewers for the journal. If you are interested in becoming a reviewer, we welcome you to join us. Please find the application form and details at http://recruitment.ccsenet.org and e-mail the completed application form to ibr@ccsenet.org.Reviewers for Volume 11, Number 2 Ahmad Mahmoud Ahmad Zamil, King Saud University RCC, JordanAlina Badulescu, University of Oradea, RomaniaAlireza Athari, Eastern Mediterranean University, IranAtallah Ahmad Alhosban , Aqaba University of Technology , JordanBadar Alam Iqbal, Aligarh Muslim University, SwitzerlandBenjamin James Inyang, University of Calabar, NigeriaBrian Sheehan, Thaksin University, ThailandBruno Ferreira Frascaroli, Federal University of Paraiba, BrazilCarlo Alberto Magni, University of Modena and Reggio Emilia, ItalyCheng Jing, eBay, Inc. / University of Rochester, USACristian Marian Barbu, “ARTIFEX” University, RomaniaEunju Lee, University of Massachusetts Lowell, USAFederica De Santis , University of Pisa , ItalyFilomena Izzo, University of Campania Luigi Vanvitelli, ItalyFlorin Ionita, The Bucharest Academy of Economic Studies, RomaniaGianluca Ginesti, University of Naples “FEDERICO II”, ItalyGilberto Marquez-Illescas, Clarkson University, USAGuo Zi-Yi, Wells Fargo Bank, N.A., USAHanna Trojanowska, Warsaw University of Technology, PolandHongliang Qiu, Tourism College of Zhejiang, ChinaHsiao-Ching Kuo, Washington and Jefferson College, USAHung-Che Wu, Nanfang College of Sun Yat-sen University, ChinaIonela-Corina Chersan, “Alexandru Ioan Cuza” University from Iași, RomaniaIsam Saleh, Al-Zaytoonah University of Jordan, JordanJolita Vveinhardt, Vytautas Magnus University, LithuaniaKaren Gulliver, Argosy University, Twin Cities, USALadislav Mura, University of Ss. Cyril and Methodius in Trnava, SlovakiaM. Muzamil Naqshbandi, University of Dubai, UAEMarcelino José Jorge, Evandro Chagas Clinical Research Institute of Oswaldo Cruz Foundation, BrazilMaria Teresa Bianchi, University of Rome “LA SAPIENZA”, ItalyMaria-Madela Abrudan, University of ORADEA, RomaniaMichaela Maria Schaffhauser-Linzatti, University of Vienna, AustriaMiriam Jankalová, University of Zilina, SlovakiaMohsen Malekalketab Khiabani, University Technology Malaysia, MalaysiaMurat Akin, Omer Halisdemir University FEAS – NIGDE, TurkeyOnur Köprülü, Mersin University, TurkeyOzgur Demirtas, Turkish Air Force Academy, TurkeyRadoslav Jankal, University of Zilina, SlovakiaRafiuddin Ahmed, James Cook University, AustraliaRosa Lombardi, Sapienza University of Rome, ItalyRoxanne Helm Stevens, Azusa Pacific University, USAShun Mun Helen Wong, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong KongSumathisri Bhoopalan, SASTRA Deemed to be University, IndiaTariq Tawfeeq Yousif Alabdullah, University of Basrah, IraqValeria Stefanelli, University of Salento, ItalyVassili JOANNIDES de LAUTOUR, Grenoble École de Management (France) and Queensland University of Technology School of Accountancy (Australia), FranceYan Lu, University of Central Florida, USA

ABSTRAK Sampah makanan kapal dihasilkan dari sampah dapur dan atau restoran yang berasal dari kru kapal atau penumpang. Sampah makanan kapal laut internasional yang diturunkan di Pelabuhan Tanjung Priok berpotensi sebagai media pembawa virus African swine fever (ASF) ke Indonesia. Penelitian ini bertujuan untuk mendeteksi keberadan virus ASF dari sampah makanan kapal laut internasional yang berasal atau transit dari negara tertular ASF di Pelabuhan Tanjung Priok. Jumlah sampel dari setiap negara dihitung secara proporsional dari data jumlah frekuensi kedatangan kapal. Sebanyak 23 sampel pooling sampah makanan yang mengandung daging babi didapatkan dari 23 kapal yang berasal dari 5 negara tertular ASF yaitu China, Hong Kong, Vietnam, Filipina, dan Korea Selatan. Sampel diuji dengan real-time PCR di Balai Besar Uji Standar Karantina Pertanian menggunakan kit ekstraksi dan master mix komersial serta primer King seperti yang direkomendasikan oleh OIE. Hasil penelitian menunjukkan dari total 23 sampel yang diambil sebanyak 2 sampel positif (8,69%) mengandung virus ASF. Sampel positif tersebut berasal dari kapal China dan Filipina. Keberadaan virus ASF pada sampah makanan tersebut menunjukkan indikasi bahwa sampah makanan dari kapal laut internasional dapat menjadi jalur masuknya ASF ke Indonesia. Kata kunci: African swine fever, sampah makanan, kapal laut, real-time PCR ABSTRACT Ship’s food waste was generated from the kitchen and or the restaurant originating from ships crews or passengers. International ship’s food waste that is disposed at Tanjung Priok Port has the potential to carry African swine fever (ASF) to Indonesia. This study is aimed to detect the presence of the ASF virus from international ship’s food waste originating or transiting from ASF-infected countries at Tanjung Priok Port. The number of samples from each country which was calculated proportionally from the data on the frequency of ship arrivals. A total of 23 pooling samples of food waste containing pork were obtained from 23 ships from 5 ASF-infected countries, i.e., China, Hong Kong, Vietnam, Philippines, and South Korea. Samples were tested with real-time PCR at The Center for Diagnostic of Agricultural Quarantine using extraction kits and commercial master mixes and King’s primer as recommended by OIE. The results showed that from total of 23 samples, there were 2 positive samples (8.69%) containing the ASF virus. Those positive samples were from China and Philippines ships. The presence of the ASF virus in food waste indicates that food waste from international ships can be the entry route for ASF to Indonesia.

1. The novel peptide toxin delta-conotoxin-GmVIA, recently purified by us from the mollusk-hunting snail Conus gloriamaris, induces convulsive-like contractions when injected into land snails but has no detectable effects in mammals. 2. At concentrations of 0.5-0.75 microM, the toxin induces action potential broadening and increased excitability of cultured Aplysia neurons. 3. Whole cell patch-clamp experiments on cultured Aplysia neurons revealed that the toxin does not alter potassium or calcium currents, but induces action potential broadening by slowing the inactivation kinetics of the sodium current. Under control conditions, the inactivation kinetics of the sodium current follows a single exponential with tau = 0.47 +/- 0.14 (SE) ms. After toxin application the sodium current inactivation is composed of two phases: an early phase with tau = 0.86 +/- 0.12 ms and a late phase of slowly inactivating sodium current with tau = 488 +/- 120 ms. In addition, the toxin shifts the voltage-dependent steady-state inactivation curve to more positive values and the steady-state activation curve to more negative values. These alterations are not associated with changes in the rise time or the peak value of the sodium current. 4. The novel delta-conotoxin-GmVIA, and the previously described "King Kong peptide," purified from another mollusk-hunting cone (Conus textile), share a similar cystein framework also found in the calcium channel blocking peptide omega-conotoxin but represent a new class of conotoxins with unusual specificity for molluscan sodium channels.

ENGLISH ABSTRACT: Drawing on iconographic material in the form of a decora-tion of church frescoes from the year 1522 in the medieval parish church Vor Frue Kirke in Skive this article examines the Christian cult and mythology of saints in the Late Middle Ages as an expression of a polytheistic, systematizing world view. Tak-ing a theoretical departure point in Robert Bellah’s theory of religious evolution con-cerning archaic and axial forms of religion and within the medieval Christian world view the article performs an analysis of the catalogue of saints in Skive to determine which functions each saint seem to occupy in a pantheon and to uncover a grand scale hierarchy of the decoration as a whole. As a last thing the catalogue of saints is put further into the big comparative perspective within Bellah’s theoretical framework by a comparison to the ancient Mesopotamian kudurru of the Babylonian king Melishipak 2. as a typical archaic and analogistic system of gods. DANSK RESUMÉ: Med eksempel i ikonografisk materiale i form af en udsmykning af kalkmalerier fra år 1522 i den middelalderlige sognekirke Vor Frue Kirke i Skive bliver den senmiddelalderlige kristne helgenkult og -mytologi i denne artikel under-søgt som udtryk for en polyteistisk, systematiserende verdensopfattelse. Med teoretisk udgangspunkt i Robert Bellahs religionsevolutionære teori om arkaiske og aksiale religionsformer og i det middelalderkristne verdenssyn gives en analyse af helgenka-taloget i Skive med henblik på at kortlægge, hvilke funktioner hver helgen udfylder i et panteon, og at afdække en overordnet hierarkisering af udsmykningen. Afslut-ningsvis sættes helgenkataloget yderligere ind i et større komparativt perspektiv via en sammenligning med den babylonske kong Melishipak 2.’s kudurru som et typisk arkaisk-analogistisk system af guder.

AbstractRecent theory suggests that members of interdependent (collectivist) cultures prioritize in-group happiness, whereas members of independent (individualist) cultures prioritize personal happiness (Uchida et al. Journal of Happiness Studies, 5(3), 223–239 Uchida et al., 2004). Thus, the well-being of friends and family may contribute more to the emotional experience of individuals with collectivist rather than individualist identities. We tested this hypothesis by asking participants to recall a kind act they had done to benefit either close others (e.g., family members) or distant others (e.g., strangers). Study 1 primed collectivist and individualist cultural identities by asking bicultural undergraduates (N = 357) from Hong Kong to recall kindnesses towards close versus distant others in both English and Chinese, while Study 2 compared university students in the USA (n = 106) and Hong Kong (n = 93). In Study 1, after being primed with the Chinese language (but not after being primed with English), participants reported significantly improved affect valence after recalling kind acts towards friends and family than after recalling kind acts towards strangers. Extending this result, in Study 2, respondents from Hong Kong (but not the USA) who recalled kind acts towards friends and family showed higher positive affect than those who recalled kind acts towards strangers. These findings suggest that people with collectivist cultural identities may have relatively more positive and less negative emotional experiences when they focus on prosocial interactions with close rather than weak ties.

Background Smartphones and mobile applications have seen a surge in popularity in recent years, a pattern that has also been reflected in the health care system. Despite increased reliance among clinicians however, limited research has been conducted on the uptake and impact of smartphone usage in medical practice, especially outside the Western world. Objective This study aimed to identify the usage of smartphones and medical apps by doctors in the clinical setting in 2 culturally distinct countries: King Hamad University Hospital (KHUH), Bahrain and Queen Mary Hospital (QMH), Hong Kong. Methods A cross-sectional, comparative study was conducted where doctors in both hospitals were asked to take part in a 15-item online survey. The questions were categorized into the following groups: demographics of the study population, ownership and main use of smartphones, number and names of medical apps currently owned, rating usage of smartphones for medical purposes, time spent on a smartphone related to clinical use, clinical reliance on smartphones, and views on further integration of smartphones. The results were then tabulated and analyzed using SPSS Statistics 25 for Mac (IBM Corp Inc, Armonk, NY). Results A total of 200 doctors were surveyed, with a total of 99.0% (99/100) of the doctors owning a smartphone in both KHUH and QMH; 58% (57/99) and 55% (54/99) of the doctors from KHUH and QMH, respectively, identified communication as their main use of smartphones in the clinical setting (P=.004). Doctors from KHUH were likely to spend more time on medical apps than doctors from QMH (P=.002). According to the overall results of both hospitals, 48% (32/67) of the junior doctors claimed high reliance on smartphones, whereas only 32.3% (41/127) of the senior doctors said the same (P=.03). Of doctors in KHUH and QMH, 78.0% (78/100) and 69.0% (69/100), respectively, either strongly agreed or agreed that smartphones need to be integrated into the clinical setting. In terms of preferences for future apps, 48% (48/100) and 56% (56/100) of the doctors in KHUH and QMH, respectively, agreed that more medical applications need to be created in order to support smartphone use in the clinical setting. Conclusions These results suggest a substantial acceptance of smartphones by doctors in the clinical setting. It also elicits the need to establish policies to officially integrate smartphone technology into health care in accordance with ethical guidelines. More emphasis should be placed on creating medical applications that aid health care professionals in attaining their information from accurate sources and also regulate a system to monitor the usage of mobile devices within hospitals to prevent a breach of patient privacy and confidentiality.

11054 Background: Routine prophylactic administration of recombinant granulocyte colony-stimulating factor (G-CSF, filgrastim) has enabled more frequent scheduling of adjuvant cytotoxic drugs in primary breast cancer. Dose-dense chemotherapy of this kind has become popular in recent years, but few studies have compared the costs and benefits of this treatment approach. Methods: We conducted a retrospective comparison of 150 Hong Kong Chinese primary breast cancer patients treated with either conventional 3-weekly chemotherapy or G-CSF-supported 2-weekly (dose-dense) chemotherapy using similar cytotoxic regimens (four cycles of doxorubicin and cyclophosphamide, followed by four cycles of taxane) between April 2004 and May 2006 in two teaching hospitals. Assessments of treatment tolerance, toxicity, scheduling, and expense were applied to both patient cohorts. Results: Compared to conventionally treated patients (n = 117), dose-dense patients (n = 33) benefited from 52.3% fewer chemotherapy delays (21.2% vs. 44.4%; p = 0.02), 79.3% fewer hospital admissions for febrile neutropenia (3.0% vs. 14.5%; p = 0.07), and 54.8% enhancement of cytotoxic dose intensity (p < 0.001). Dose-dense patients also developed less nausea (p < 0.001) and stomatitis (p = 0.01) but more frequent bone pain (p < 0.001). After subtracting costs saved by fewer hospital admissions, dose-dense patients incurred higher total expenses approximating US$500 per cycle. Conclusion: Routine G-CSF administration to Hong Kong Chinese patients with primary breast cancer is associated with major improvements in cytotoxic drug delivery, which could plausibly translate into greater therapeutic efficacy in some patients. In addition, dose- dense treatment is shorter, safer, and more reliably scheduled, and is associated with unexpected improvements in nausea and stomatitis. The extent to which these gains justify the rise in net costs needs to be further defined in prospective randomized studies, both in different adjuvant patient subsets and in differently resourced socioeconomic contexts. No significant financial relationships to disclose.

Abstract Objectives: Studies on survival of people with clinical diagnosis of dementia can provide estimates of care outcomes of a health system and offer real-life insights on how to provide better support for the target population. This study aims to estimate survival from the point of recorded diagnosis of dementia, compared with people without dementia. Methods: This case-control study used data from Clinical Data Analysis and Reporting System (CDARS), a population-wide databased managed by Hong Kong Hospital Authority. All patients aged 60 years or over with a first-ever code for dementia from 2001 and 2010 (N=24,250) were matched with patients without dementia by sex and index date at a 1: 2 ratio. We adopted Cox proportional hazard model to estimate hazard ratios, with and without adjustment for age, sex, and comorbidities (diabetes, cardiovascular disease, hypertension, cerebrovascular disease, and high cholesterol). Results: A total of 5,847 patients have a diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease (AD), and 7,729 have vascular dementia (VaD). The median survival time, calculated based on the Kaplan-Meier estimator, for patients with dementia of any kind, AD, and VaD were 1163, 2448, and 1268 days, respectively. Compared with the control group, the raw and adjusted hazard ratios for dementia were 2.78 (95% CI, 2.71-2.84) and 1.14 (1.13-1.17), respectively. Conclusions: Median survival times were much lower than figures reported by other regions and in screened populations. The high risk of death may be an indicator of late diagnosis and hence call for promoting early diagnosis to ensure timely intervention.

In the 1960s - 1970s of the last century in East Asia, many new economies emerged, including Korea. The boom of growth and the spectacular success of South Korea, Singapore, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and to a smaller extent, Malaysia, Thailand attracted the attention of researchers and socio-political commentators. As a common phenomenon hard to be denied, the stage of high development (success in industrialization and modernization), except for that in Japan, was tied to a political structure model which enabled high concentration of state power into an individual or a group of individuals who used the power (violence) to carry out social management and socio-economic development programs. This was called dictatorship by academic circles. The question is that how could such a kind of undemocratic totalitarian dictatorship become the organizer, the motivation to promote the development of the society? The success of Korea in the authoritarian dictatorship Park Chung-Hee era (1961 - 1979) could give us an explanation. The paper focuses on two issues: 1. The appearance of dictatorship in Korea – the obviously choice of the management model of a totalitarian society? 2. Park Chung-Hee dictatorship with the process of social modernization – success and tragedy.

Nghiên cứu nhằm thành lập bản đồ thích nghi tự nhiên, kinh tế, và đề xuất vùng phát triển cho cây cao su và cà phê tại tỉnh Kon Tum sử dụng phương pháp hạn chế lớn nhất của FAO, phân tích lợi ích chi phí và Hệ thống Thông tin Địa lý (Geographic Information System - GIS). Dựa trên yêu cầu sinh thái của từng loại cây và điều kiện tự nhiên tại vùng nghiên cứu, các yếu tố được lựa chọn đánh giá gồm loại đất, tầng dày, độ cao, độ dốc, thành phần cơ giới, khả năng tưới, lượng mưa, độ ẩm, nhiệt độ, số tháng khô hạn, và số giờ nắng. Kết quả đánh giá thích nghi tự nhiên đối với cao su và cà phê cho thấy, trên 85% diện tích của tỉnh không thích nghi (do hạn chế về thổ nhưỡng, địa hình, và khí hậu), diện tích thích nghi kém chiếm dưới 15%, phân bố dọc theo các con sông lớn. Tuy nhiên, về khía cạnh kinh tế, trên 95% diện tích thích nghi tự nhiên có mức thích nghi kinh tế cao (B/C > 2) đối với cao su, cà phê vối và trung bình (1 ≤ B/C ≤ 2) đối với cà phê chè (Benefit/Cost - B/C). Đối chiếu với bản đồ hiện trạng sử dụng đất năm 2005 và định hướng phát triển cao su và cà phê đến năm 2020, nhận thấy tiềm năng mở rộng diện tích hai loại cây này trên địa bàn tỉnh còn khá lớn. Từ kết quả nghiên cứu, cho thấy việc tích hợp phương pháp đánh giá đất đai của FAO, phân tích lợi íchchi phí và GIS giúp xác định nhanh chóng, chính xác vùng thích hợp phát triển nhóm cây công nghiệp lâu năm, qua đó hỗ trợ công tác quy hoạch không gian phát triển nhóm cây này theo đúng định hướng đã đề ra của tỉnh.

Abstract T/NK “nasal type” lymphoma is a neoplasm that shows a peculiar geographical distribution. In fact most of the reported cases come from Far Eastern countries such as Hong Kong, and Central America, particularly from Mexico; this kind of lymphoma occurrs rarely in western countries. Between 1997 and 2004, 19 new cases of T/NK nasal type lymphoma were diagnosed in 7 Italian Hematology Division. Patients characteristics were as follows: all caucasian; 14 men and 5 women; median age 53 years (range 20–80). The presentation at the onset was in the nasal cavity or adjacent structures in 15 cases, who presented symptoms like nasal obstruction, dysphagia, orbital edema; in 2 cases, skin lesions were the first sign of disease, followed by oropharingeal involvement; in 1 case, the patient was studied because of migrating bone pain, and in the last patient lymphoma presented as a right leg tumor. Considering the stage of disease, 10 patients presented a I stage (in 8 cases IA, 1 IB, and 1 IE); 3 patients were in stage II (2 IIB, 1 IIE); 6 patients presented an advanced stage disease (3 IVA, 3 IVB). Thus, early stage patients were 13, while advanced stages were 6. The median time from the onset of signs, as skin lesions, or symptoms, as nasal obstruction to diagnosis was 3 months, ranging between 1 and 24. Diagnosis was based on the finding of a T/NK phenotype by the histological examination of oropharingeal or cutaneous lesions in 17 cases, bioptical examination of the leg tumor in another patient, and by a bone marrow biopsy in the patient who presented bone pain. All patients were treated with chemotherapy alone (8 cases), or associated to radiotherapy (10 cases); 1 patient underwent chemotherapy, radiotherapy, and surgery. Chemotherapy regimens usually adopted contained anthracyclines (11 cases); in the other cases patients were treated with CVP (2 cases), low dosages of cyclophosphamide (1), cyclophosphamide-vinblastine-mithoxantrone-bleomicine (1), DHAP (3). Radiation dosages ranged between 27.5 and 47.5 Gy, with a median dosage of 40 Gy. Eight patients reached a clinical improvement, while 11 patients resulted refractory or presented a limited response to therapy The overall median survival time was 5 months (range from 1 to 48): Eleven patients died within 14 months from diagnosis, and the median survival time of this group was 6 months. At last follow-up (June 2004) 8 patients are still alive, with a time from diagnosis ranging beteween 2 and 48 months. The preliminary results of this retrospective survey confirmed that T/NK nasal type lymphoma is a very rare lymphoma in italian population, and it is characterized by a very bad prognosis. The rarity of this disease cause a lacking of a standardized therapeutic approaches. More data are needed to know the epidemiology of this kind of lymphoma in Europe.

A Review of: Wong, G. K. W. (2010). Information commons help desk transactions study. Journal of Academic Librarianship, 36(3), 235-241. Objective - To develop an understanding of the types of technology questions asked at an information commons help desk for the purposes of staffing the desk and training. Specifically, the study looked to answer the following questions: 1. What kind of assistance do users seek from the help desk? 2. How complex is it to handle the technology questions? 3. What are the key competencies desirable of the help desk staff? Design - Qualitative analysis of transactions completed at an information commons help desk. Setting - A medium sized academic library located in Hong Kong. Data - 1,636 transactions completed at an information commons help desk between January 2007 and May 2009. Methods - From the opening in 2006, the staff of the information commons help desk recorded all transactions electronically using a modified version of the open source software LibStats. The author examined the transactions for roughly the second and third weeks of each month from January 2007 to May 2009 in an effort to determine the types of questions asked and their complexity. Main Results - In response to question one, 86.3% of questions asked at the help desk concerned technology; the majority of those questions (76.5%) were about printing, wireless connection, and various software operation. For question two, 82% of technology questions were determined to be of the lowest tier (Tier 1) of complexity, one-third of the questions required only “direct answers,” and 80% of questions could be answered consistently via the creation of a “knowledge base of answers for these foreseeable questions.” For question three, a list of fourteen competencies for help desk staff were created. Conclusion - With the low complexity of the technology questions asked, the creation of a knowledge base of common questions and answers, and proper training of staff based on the competencies identified in the study, an information commons could be effective with one integrated desk staffed by a librarian and paraprofessional staff member.

An Extraordinary GIRI Meeting took place on the 26 and 27 of November 2020. Due to the current situation, it was held on the ZOOM platform. It regarded the clinical and basic research on COVID-19 and the coronavirus exclusively. The meeting was organized in partnership with the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ) and the International Research Group on Very Low Dosis and High Dilution Effects (GIRI) as a pre-event to the V International Homeopathy Workshop of UFRJ, planned for 2-4 December 2021. During a pandemic, when there is a general lack of workers, equipment, and medicines, any kind of treatment capable of maintaining or improving people’s health should be considered by all medical facilities. Therefore, the GIRI meeting aimed to collect, discuss, and disseminate knowledge and medical experience gathered by homeopathy researchers and doctors around the world regarding the possibility of treating COVID-19 with homeopathy. The meeting lasted two days and was visited by a large number of participants from Brazil, India, Russia, Belgium, Hong Kong, Switzerland, and England, gathering so researchers, professionals, and many students from different fields of expertise, e.g. pharmacology, medicine, biology, physics, veterinary, chemistry. In total, 11 abstracts were approved by a Scientific Committee and presented in a 30-60 min oral contribution. The meeting was interactive, offering space for questions, answers, and for many discussions concerning the potential of homeopathy in the context of COVID-19. The conference provided the possibility to better understand the different homeopathic approaches in the treatment of COVID-19, such as the use of nosodes (prepared from virus particles), that showed a promising immunomodulatory and prophylactic potential. Further, the preliminary analysis of the Clificol COVID-19 support project was presented, revealing a vast international panorama concerning the use of homeopathy in different countries. There were other contributions regarding the use of homeopathy in adults and children for the treatment of COVID-19. To disseminate even further the findings presented at the Extraordinary GIRI Meeting 2020 related to the role of homeopathy in the COVID-19 pandemic, we are launching this special issue of the International Journal of High Dilution Research (IJHDR).

Background. The article is dedicated to the creative communication of two outstanding Chinese musicians – a pianist Hsu Fei Ping and a composer Huang An Lun. Complete mutual understanding facilitated their communication. Practically in all his programs, the pianist included the music of Western European and Chinese composers. Critics especially noted that Hsu Fei-Ping had the musical penetration, brilliance and poetry of interpretations. Among many Chinese pianists, he was recognized as the best interpreter of piano works by Huang An Lun. This musician has a special role in the work of Huan An Lun, being not only the “addressee” and the first performer, but also the inspirer of many composer’s opuses. The context of the creative intercourse of Huang An Lun and Hsu Fei Ping is also interesting because some of the composer’s works were written on the initiative of the outstanding Chinese pianist. Objectives. The purpose of the article is to reveal the role of the outstanding pianist Hsu Fei Ping in the creativity of Huang An Lun and the features of his performing interpretation the composer’s piano works. Methods. The research methodology necessary for disclosure of the selected theme is based on an integrated scientific approach combining the principles of musical-theoretical and performing analysis. Results. Hsu Fei-Ping is rightfully regarded as one of the most brilliant Chinese pianists who made themselves known in the 20th century. In this paper the life and career of the musician is considered, a general assessment of his creative achievements is given. It is argued that the creative cooperation and friendship of Hsu Fei-Ping with his compatriot and peer Huang An-Lun was due to life circumstances. The fate of both musicians had many common “points of intersection”: both musicians were of the same age, both in their youth showed uncommon interest in learning national and western musical art. The Cultural Revolution became a tragic watershed in their lives, which, however, made it possible to get even closer to the folklore environment and to feel the pain and suffering of the Chinese people at that time. Both musicians left China in the 1970s, having received education and achieved success in developed western countries: Hsu Fei-Ping – in the USA, Huang An Lun – in Canada. It is quite natural that the communication of such bright individuals, who have gone through the difficult path of development, provided an opportunity for mutual creative enrichment. The pianist promoted Huang An-Lun’s piano music in Israel, the USA, Canada, Russia and other countries, recorded CDs with works by the composer. In 2001, in Shanghai, and then in Hong Kong, discs with a recording of the piano cycle of Huang An-Lun’s “30 Pieces in the Popular Cybei Style” were released. In the same year, he recorded in Moscow the disc with Third Dance Poem, op. 40, by Huang An Lun. Hsu Pei Fing played the piece at the Rubinstein International Piano Competition in Israel, where he became the winner. In 1990, the piece by Huang An Lun created a similar sensation at a festival dedicated to the music of contemporary composers at the Walter Concert Hall in Toronto. A few years later, Hsu Pei Fing performed the piece at Carnegie Hall in New York. The largest composition by Huang An-Lun dedicated to Hsu Pei-Fing was Concerto No. 2 in C minor op. 57 for piano and orchestra. Its premiere took place on June 12, 1999 at the stage of the Shanghai Music Hall. The Shanghai Symphony Orchestra was conducted by Huang An-Lun himself, the piano part was performed by Hsu Fei-Ping. With the Russian Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Konstantin Krymets, the pianist performed the second edition of the Concerto. The poem for piano and orchestra “Gulangyuy” op. 66 was written in memory of Hsu Fei Ping. The composer embodied in music the image of the birthplace of the outstanding Chinese pianist, Gulangyu Island, also known as “Piano Island”. Conclusions. Hsu Fei-Ping was for Huang An-Lun a kind of “beacon” in the field of piano music. Most of the composer’s piano works were focused on the phenomenal pianism of his friend. Being an outstanding performer of the West European classical and romantic repertoire, Hsu Fei Ping remained in the memory of musicians, first of all, as the inspirer and the best interpreter of piano works by Huang An Lun. The image of this remarkable pianist is captured in “Dance Poem No. 3” op. 40, Concert No. 2 in C minor op. 57, Poem for piano and orchestra “Gulangyuy” op. 66. Hsu Fei Ping brilliantly embodied in his performance one of the main ideas of the work of Huang An-Lun – the theme of man’s collision with forces of reality hostile to him. At the core of his performing drama is the conflict between the sinister, aggressive and lyrically quivering human beginning. It is represented by the pianist through the sound realization of various types of melodies, rhythms, textures, and the richest timbre palette. Hsu Fei Ping’s deep interpretations of Huang An Lun’s music, built on maximum polarization of images and expressive means, are the best confirmation of the mutual enrichment of the artistic worlds of two musicians, whose creative ways and convictions evolved in a similar way, which allowed them to understand each other completely.

Facilitating the uptake of established methodologies for risk-based decision-making in product conformity assessment taking into account measurement uncertainty by providing dedicated software is the aim of the European project EMPIR CASoft(2018–2020), involving the National Measurement Institutes from France, Sweden and the UK, and industrial partner Trescal (FR) as primary supporter. The freely available software helps end-users perform the required risk calculations in accordance with current practice and regulations and extends that current practice to include bivariate cases. The software is also aimed at supporting testing and calibration laboratories in the application of the latest version of the ISO/IEC 17025:2017 standard, which requires that“…the laboratory shall document the decision rule employed, taking into account the level of risk […] associated with the decision rule and apply the decision rule.” Initial experiences following launch of the new software in Spring 2020 are reported.

The article begins with setting the South African educational context for a postgraduate early literacy research project in the foundation phase (ages 4–9). The research examines how philosophy with children (P4C) might be part of a solution to current problems in reading comprehension. The second author reports on her P4C action research with her own children as well as her observations of a Grade 2 classroom in a school near Johannesburg. The research shows how the picturebook Little Beauty by Anthony Browne opens up a philosophical space within which children are allowed to draw on their own life experiences and prior knowledge. The project reveals the depth of their thinking when making intra-textual connections between Little Beauty and the movie King Kong. The facilitated philosophical space also makes it possible for the children to make complex philosophical links between the emotion anger, destructive behaviour and the ethico-political dimensions of punishment. Central to this article are the second author’s critical reflections on how her literacy practices as a mother and foundation phase teacher have fundamentally changed as a result of this project. The article concludes with some implications for the teaching of early literacy in South Africa.

NB: Artiklen er på dansk, resuméet på engelsk. Erik Petersen: Wulfstan’s Codex and Schumacher’s List. On the Oldest Record of Manuscripts in the Royal Library. It has hitherto been assumed that the earliest list of manuscripts in the Royal Library is the section of manuscripts in the catalogue preserved in the library’s archive as E 8: Catalogus librorum typis exaratorum, pariter ac Manuscriptorum, quibus, curante Petro Schu­machero, aucta est Regia Bibliotheca. A total of 82 manuscripts are recorded at the end (f. 17v-20r) of the Catalogus E 8, which was made by Willum Worm who signed and dated it on the 4th of January 1671at his accession as librarian to the Danish king, Christian V. Worm succeeded Peter Schumacher, perhaps better known as Griffenfeld, who act­ed as librarian to king Frederik III from 1663 to 1670 and to Christian V until Worm took over. The Catalogus E 8 has been known for long as ‘Schumacher’s catalogue’. Thus Ellen Jørgensen, the author of the Catalogus codicum Latinorum medii ævi Bib­liothecæ Regiæ Hafniensis (1926), referred to it as cat. Schumacheri, and stated, on its authority, that a given manuscript found in the Catalogus E 8 had been acquired by the library between 1663 and 1670. Others followed her example. The manuscript section of Catalogus E 8 was published by Harald Ilsøe in 1999 in his book on the history of the Royal Library’s holdings until ca. 1780 (Det kongelige Bibliotek i støbeskeen. Studier og samlinger til bestandens historie indtil ca. 1780, 1999, p. 574-581). However, the Catalogus E 8 is not the catalogue of Schumacher. It is the catalogue of Willum Worm. And the catalogue of Worm does not cover the entire period 1663 to the end of 1670, but only the latter part of it, i.e. the period from the beginning of 1666 to the end of 1670. In fact, Peter Schumacher made his own list, which has never received the atten­tion it deserves – if at all noticed, its contents have been misinterpreted. It is pre­served in the RL Archive as E 8 a. Schumacher’s list is neither dated nor signed. It contains records for more than a hundred printed books. It also contains a list of 45 manuscripts, several of which have dedications to king Frederik III. An analysis of the years of publication of the printed books and of the dedications in the manuscripts makes it possible to date Schumacher’s list in E 8 a to the end of 1665. The 45 manu­scripts thus represent the nucleus of the manuscript collection of the king’s growing library. Apparently it is exactly the aim and ambition of creating such a collection that Schumacher’s list reflects. It is important also because Worm’s list of 1671does not repeat entries of manuscripts on Schumacher’s list; in other words, the two lists of manuscripts supplement each other. Most of the manuscripts recorded on the list were contemporary, and many of them directly related to the king either by contents or by dedications by authors or donators. Whereas the printed books reflect an able awareness of what was going on in the intellectual centres of Europe, the manuscripts reveal a more limited horizon. Not a single manuscript on Schumacher’s list seems to have been acquired by pur­chase, neither on the European market nor in Denmark. There are, however, manuscripts of great importance on Schumacher’s list, amongst them the following medieval manuscripts (with my identifications of their present call numbers in the Old Royal Collection, Gammel Kongelig Samling or GKS): 4 Den Islandske Lovbog udgiffvet aff Kong Magnus Haagensøn. fol. = GKS 1154 2° 26 Descriptio Eccles. Romanæ cum omnibus suis ceremoniis, ritibus etc. Sic inci­pit: Apollogus de ordine Romano. MS. Pergam. = GKS 1595 4° 29 Liber Daticus Ecclesiæ et Capituli Lundensis. fol. in membran. = GKS 845 2° 36 Thaumbachius de Consolatione Theologiæ chartâ pergamenâ. = GKS 1370 4° 39 Biblia Lat. MSS. in 8°. anno 1237. = GKS 3375 8° Items 4 and 29 were produced in medieval Denmark. Items 36 and 39 were both very common in the late Middle Ages; none of them are ‘royal’ in any sense of the word, and may well have been found among the remnants of the old church somewhere in Denmark. The same is true of the most remarkable item on the list, the Descriptio Ecclesesiæ Romanæ cum omnibus suis ceremoniis, ritibus etc. with the incipit: Apollogus de ordine Romano, the famous codex of Wulfstan, produced just after the turn of the first millennium under the supervision of Wulfstan, bishop of Worcester and arch­bishop of York, and containing his autograph notes in Anglo-Saxon and Latin. Next to nothing has been known about its history in Denmark until now. It has, in fact, only been possible to state that it was in The Royal Library in 1786, when the Old Royal Collection was established. Due to Schumacher’s list we now know that it was in the king’s library already in 1665, and that it is likely to have been in Denmark long before then. As to the protestant king’s interest in a medieval book of the old church such as Wulfstan’s, a glimpse on the medieval manuscripts recorded in Worms’ Catalogus E 8 may be enlightening. The focus of collecting did not change or changed very little. Nos. 37, 47, 73, 78, 79, 80 are described as lawbooks, written in Danish or Old Norse. A few may be medieval, but they are not described in sufficient detail to be identified. The provenance of a single manuscript in Greek is unknown. The follow­ing are all in Latin: 2 Fundation paae biskop Byrges Capel i Lund 1518. = GKS 846 2° 11Evangelistæ in Membranâ. Probably = GKS 1347 4° (Ilsøe: GKS 12 2°, lost) 40 Justinus in Membranâ. = GKS 451 2° or GKS 452 2° (Ilsøe’s suggestions) 57 Bibliorum tomus II incipit a Iobo. = GKS 1310 4° 77 Notkirkes alterbog i gammel dage. = GKS 3453 8° Item 2 was produced in Lund, that is in medieval Denmark. Item 57 was produced in Italy, but belonged to the chapter of the cathedral of Lund in the later Middle Ages. If my identification is correct, item 11was produced in England, but it had migrated to Bergen in Norway in the Middle Ages. I am in doubt about the identity of item 40, but Iustinus was widely copied and read in the Middle Ages, even in Denmark. Item 77 is of particular interest in our context. It is a Latin manuale ecclesiasticum, and was found in the local church of Notmark on the island of Als in 1669 by king Frederik III himself. He visited the provincial church and required to take ‘the old monastic book in Latin’ as well as a copy in German of king Valdemar’s law book along to Copenhagen. His request was granted and the visit of the king recorded by the vicar in a Danish printed bible that remained in the church. The medieval books in the collection were not bought abroad because of their splen­dour or prestige, but inherited, received as gifts or gathered from places inside the king’s own realms. Thus the catalogues E 8 a and E 8 not only offer evidence of the presence of a given manuscript in the kings Library ante the end of 1665 or ante 1671. They also indicate that the manuscripts may well have had a much longer history in Denmark than hitherto known. Thus the list of Schumacher is not just a detail in the history of a library. It is also the mirror through which Wulfstan and his codex may become visible in the distant landscape of medieval Denmark.

04–533Cheng, Winnie and Warren, Martin (Hong Kong Polytechnic U., Email: egwcheng@polyu.edu.hk). Peer assessment of language proficiency. Language Testing (London, UK), 22, 1 (2005), 93–121.04–534Malabonga, Valerie, Kenyon, Dorry M. and Carpenter, Helen (Centre for Applied Linguistics, Washington, USA; Email: valerie@cal.org). Self-assessment, preparation and response time on a computerised oral proficiency test. Language Testing (London, UK), 22, 1 (2005), 59–92.04–535Parkinson, Jean and Adendorff, Ralph (U. of Natal, India). The use of popular science articles in teaching scientific literacy. English for Specific Purposes (Oxford, UK), 23, 4 (2004), 379–396.04–536Quinn, M. (Melbourne U., Australia). Talking with Jess: Looking at how metalanguage assisted explanation writing in the Middle Years. Australian Journal of Language and Literacy (Norwood, South Australia), 27, 3 (2004), 246–261.04–537Raphael, T. E., Florio-Raine, S. and George, M. (Oakland U., Australia). Book club plus: organising your literacy curriculum to bring students to high levels of literacy. Australian Journal of Language and Literacy (Norwood, South Australia), 27, 3 (2004), 198–216.04–538Reed, Malcolm (U. of Bristol, UK). Write or wrong? A sociocultural approach to schooled writing. English in Education (Sheffield, UK), 38, 1 (2004), 21–38.04–539Ren, Guanxin. Introducing oval writing.Babel – Journal of the AFMLTA (Queensland, Australia), 39, 1 (2004), 4–10.04–540Richgels, Donald J. (Northern Illinois U., USA; Email: richgels@niu.edu). Paying attention to language. Reading Research Quarterly (Newark, USA), 39, 4 (2004), 470–477.04–541Sang-Keun, Shin (Ewha Womens U. Seoul, Korea; Email: sangshin@ewhaac.kr). Did they take the same test? Examinee language proficiency and the structure of language tests. Language Testing (London,UK), 22, 1 (2005), 31–57.04–542Schoonen, Rob (U. of Amsterdam, The Netherlands; Email: rob.schoonen@uva.nl). Generalisability of writing scores: an application of structural equation modelling. Language Testing (London, UK), 22, 1 (2005), 1–30.04–543So, Bronia (U. of Hong Kong, Hong Kong; Email: bronia_so@yahoo.com.hk). From analysis to pedagogic applications: using newspaper genres to write school genres. Journal of English for Academic Purposes (Oxford, UK), 4, 1 (2005), 67–82.04–544Spodark, Edwina (Hollins U., USA; Email: spodark@hollins.edu). “French in Cyberspace”: an online French course for undergraduates. CALICO Journal (Texas, USA), 22, 1 (2004), 83–101.04–545Sutherland-Smith, Wendy (Deakin U., Australia; Email: wendyss@deakin.edu.au). Pandora's box: academic perceptions of student plagiarism in writing. Journal of English for Academic Purposes (Oxford, UK), 4, 1 (2005), 83–95.04–546Thurstun, Jennifer (Macquarie U., Australia). Teaching and learning the reading of homepages. Prospect (Sydney, Australia), 19, 2 (2004), 56–71.04–547Valencia, S. W. and Riddle Buly, M. (Washington U., USA). Behind test scores: What struggling readers REALLY need. Australian Journal of Language and Literacy (Norwood, South Australia), 27, 3 (2004), 217–233.04–548Warschauer, Mark (U. of California, USA; Email: markw@uci.edu), Grant, David, Del Real, Gabriel and Rousseau, Michele. Promoting academic literacy with technology: successful laptop programs in K-12 schools. System (Oxford, UK), 32, 4 (2004), 525–537.04–549Young, Richard F. and Miller, Elisabeth R. (U. of Wisconsin, USA; Email: rfyoungt@wisc.edu). Learning as changing participation: discourse roles in ESL writing conferences. The Modern Language Journal (Malden, MA, USA), 88, 4 (2004), 519–535.04–550Bernhardt, Elizabeth B., Rivera, Raymond J. and Kamil, Michael L. (Stanford U., USA). The practicality and efficiency of web-based placement testing for college-level language programs. Foreign Language Annals (Alexandria, VA, USA), 37, 3 (2004), 356–366.04–551Brown, Gavin T. L. (U. of Auckland, New Zealand; Email: gt.brown@auckland.ac.uz), Glasswell, Kath and Harland, Don. Accuracy in the scoring of writing: Studies of reliability and validity using a New Zealand writing assessment system. Assessing Writing (New York, USA), 9, 2 (2004), 105–121.04–552Hawkey, Roger and Barker, Fiona (Cambridge ESOL, UK; Email: roger@hawkey58.freeserve.co.uk). Developing a common scale for the assessment of writing. Assessing Writing (New York, USA), 9 (2004), 122–159.04–553Peterson, Shelley, Childs, Ruth and Kennedy, Kerrie (U. of Toronto, Canada; Email: slpeterson@oise.utoronto.ca). Written feedback and scoring of sixth-grade girls' and boys' narrative and persuasive writing. Assessing Writing (New York, USA), 9 (2004), 160–180.04–554Watson Todd, Richard (King Mongkut's U. of Technology Thonburi, Thailand; Email: irictodd@kmutt.ac.th), Glasswell, Kath and Harland, Don. Measuring the coherence of writing using topic-based analysis. Assessing Writing (New York, USA), 9, 2 (2004), 85–104.

04–255 Belcher, Diane D. Trends in teaching English for Specific Purposes. Annual Review of Applied Linguistics (New York, USA), 24 (2004), 165–186.04–257 Burden, P. (Okayama Shoka U., Japan; Email: burden-p@po.osu.ac.jp). An examination of attitude change towards the use of Japanese in a University English ‘conversation’ class. RELC Journal (Singapore),35,1 (2004), 21–36.04–258 Burns, Anne (Macquarie U., Australia; Email: anne.burns@mq.edu.au). ESL curriculum development in Australia: recent trends and debates. RELC Journal (Singapore), 34, 3 (2003), 261–283.04–259 Bush, Michael D. and Browne, Jeremy M. (Brigham Young U., USA; Email: Michael_Bush@byu.edu). Teaching Arabic with technology at BYU: learning from the past to bridge to the future. Calico Journal (Texas, USA), 21, 3 (2004), 497–522.04–260 Carlo, María S. 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This literature review addresses five themes that inform the faculty adequacy standards established by U.S. regional accreditation commissions and provides information about faculty credentials, the relationship between institutional missions and faculty responsibilities; full-time, part-time and contingent faculty; faculty responsibilities, and faculty in disciplinary-based accreditation. This review of literature supports institutions’ responses to the standards for adequacy of full-time faculty in six U.S. regional accreditation commissions. The study’s findings may provide common themes related to faculty adequacy to facilitate the institutions’ definitions and standards for faculty adequacy. The results might inform regional accreditors as they evaluate institutions on this standard. Finally, this study may be of interest to accreditors in other countries as they develop and revise their standards related to faculty adequacy. Keywords Faculty adequacy, accreditation standards, U.S. regional accreditation commissions References [1] Middaugh, M. F. (2002). Faculty productivity: Different strategies for different audiences. Planning For Higher Education, 30(3), 34-43[2] Tincher-Ladner, L., & King, S. (2014). Effects of regional accreditation of full-time faculty on community college graduation rates. Community College Journal of Research and Practice, 38, 947-950.[3] Northwest Commission on Colleges and Universities (NWCCU) (2012). Accreditation standards. Retrieved from http://www.nwccu.org/accreditation/standards-policies/standards/[4] Middle States Commission on Higher Education (MSCHE) (2015). Standards for accreditation and requirements of affiliation ( 13th ed). [5] North Central Association of Colleges and Schools-The Higher Learning Commission (NCA-HLC) (2015). Resource guide: Criteria for accreditation and assumed practices.[6] New England Association of Schools and Colleges Commission on Institutions of Higher Education (NEASC-CIHE) (2011). The standards for accreditation. [7] Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges (2011). Faculty roster: Instructions for reporting the qualifications of full-time and part-time faculty. [8] WASC Senior College and University Commission (WSCUC) (2013). Handbook of Accreditation. Retrieved at https://www.wscuc.org/book/export/html/924[9] Cohen, A. & Kisker C. (2010). The shaping of American higher education (2nd ed.). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.[10] Faireweather.J. (2002). The mythologies of faculty productivity. The Journal of Higher Education. 73(1). 26-48[11] Townsend, B. K. (2008). Community college faculty what we know and need to know. Community College Review. 36 (1). 5-24. [12] National Center for Education Statistics, U.S. Department of Education. (2003). Federal programs for education and related activities. In Digest of Education Statistics (Chap. 4). Retrieved from the National Center for Education Statistics Web site: http://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d10/tables/dt10_261.asp[13] Middaugh, M. F.(2001). Understanding faculty productivity: Standards and benchmarks for colleges and universities. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers.[14] Texas Tech University (2006). Faculty responsibility (OP 32.06). Retrieved from http://www.depts.ttu.edu/opmanual/OP32.06.pdf[15] South Plains College (2015). Faculty Handbook. Retrieved from http://www.southplainscollege.edu/employees/manualshandbooks/facultyhandbook.php[16] North Central Association of Colleges and Schools-The Higher Learning Commission (HLC) (2015). Determining qualified faculty through HLC’s criteria for accreditation and assumed practices. Retrieved at https://www.lssu.edu/hlc/documents/QualifiedFacultyGuidelines_2015-08_OPB.pdf[17] Chaden, C. (2013). Engaging faculty in retention: Finding traction through accreditation. New Directions for Higher Education, (161), 91-100. doi: 10.1002/he.20049[18] Williams, T. S. (2011). The unknowning knowers: Faculty and the accreditation process. (Doctoral Dissertation). Available from ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Full Text (Order No. 3476398).[19] Townsend, B.K & Rosser, V.J (2007). Workload issues and measures of faculty productivities. The NEA Higher Education Journal. 7-19[20] Middaugh, M. F. (2011). Measuring faculty productivity: Let's get it right. Chronicle of Higher Education, 58(2), A43-A44.[21] Middaugh, M. F., Kelly, H. A., & Walters, A. M. (2008). The role of institutional research in understanding and describing faculty work. New Directions for Higher Education, (141), 41-56. doi:10.1002/he.292[22] Maxey, D. D., & Kezar, A. K. (2015). Revealing opportunities and obstacles for changing non-tenure-track faculty practices: An examination of stakeholders' awareness of institutional contradictions. Journal of Higher Education, 86(4), 564-594.[23] Marsh, F. K. (2010). High performance team: Building a business program with part- and full-time faculty. Journal of Education for Business, 85(4), 187-194. doi:10.1080/08832320903252421[24] Elman, S. E. (2003). A regional accreditation perspective on contingent faculty appointments. New Directions for Higher Education, (123), 71.[25] Gerlich, R. N., & Sollosy, M. (2010). Predicting assessment outcomes: The effect of full-time and part-time faculty. Journal of Case Studies in Accreditation and Assessment, 1-9[26] Speer, C. N. (2013). Perceptions of employment and use of part-time faculty among chief instructional officers at southern association of colleges and schools-accredited public associate's colleges. (Doctoral Dissertation). Available from ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Full Text. (Order No. 3612131)[27] Hedrick, D. D., Henson, S. E., Krieg, J. M., & Wassell Jr., C. S. (2010). The effects of AACSB accreditation on faculty salaries and productivity. Journal of Education for Business, 85(5), 284-291. doi:10.1080/08832320903449543[28] Bell, R. L., & Joyce, M. P. (2011). Comparing business faculty's salaries by rank and gender: Does AACSB accreditation really make a difference? Academy of Educational Leadership Journal, 15(2), 19-40.[29] Koys, D. J. (2008). Judging academic qualifications, professional qualifications, and participation of faculty using AACSB guidelines. Journal of Education for Business, 83(4), 207-213.[30] Boronico, J., Murdy, J., & Kong, X. (2014). Faculty sufficiency and AACSB accreditation compliance within a global university: A mathematical modeling approach. American Journal of Business Education, 7(3), 213-218. [31] Bộ Giáo dục và Đào tạo (2014). Thông thư số 36/2014/TTLT-BGDĐT-BNV ngày 28/11/2014 về Quy định mã số và tiêu chuẩn chức danh nghề nghiệp viên chức giảng dạy trong các cơ sở giáo dục đại học công lập. [32] Chính Phủ (2015). Nghị định chính phủ số 73/2015/NĐ-CP ngày 08/09/2015 về Quy định tiêu chuẩn phân tầng, khung xếp hạng và tiêu chuẩn xếp hạng cơ sở giáo dục đại học. [33] Cục quản lý chất lượng (2018). Thông thư số 768/QLCL-KĐCLGD ngày 20/04/2018 về Hướng dẫn đánh giá theo bộ tiêu chuẩn đánh giá chất lượng cơ sỏ giáo dục đại học.

Nghiên cứu khu hệ rết lớn tại Vườn Quốc gia (VQG) Kon Ka Kinh và Khu bảo tồn thiên nhiên (KBTTN) Kon Chư Răng, tỉnh Gia Lai đã được thực hiện trong thời gian 2017 - 2018, vào hai mùa chính là mùa mưa (tháng 5, 6) và mùa khô (tháng 11, 12). Đã xác định được 12 loài thuộc 3 giống và 2 họ. Trong đó, có 1 loài lần đầu tiên ghi nhận được ở Việt Nam và 6 loài lần đầu tiên ghi nhận cho khu hệ. Trong hai họ ghi nhận được tại khu vực thì họ Scolopendridae Pocock, 1895 chiếm ưu thế hơn với 11 loài, còn họ Cryptops Leach, 1815 chỉ có 1 loài duy nhất. Các loài ghi nhận được phân bố tập trung nhiều nhất ở sinh cảnh rừng nguyên sinh, còn ở rừng thông ít đa dạng nhất. Vào mùa mưa, số lượng loài ghi nhận được nhiều hơn ở mùa khô. Riêng với giống Cryptops Leach, 1815 chỉ ghi nhận được vào mùa mưa.

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The Modern Language Journal (Malden, MA, USA), 86, 3 (2002), 368—83.03—307 Hu, Guangwei (Nat. Inst. of Ed., Nanyang Technological U., Singapore; Email: gwhu@nie.edu.sg). Psychological constraints on the utility of metalinguistic knowledge in second language production. Studies in Second Language Acquisition (New York, USA), 24, 3 (2002), 347—86.03—308 Hulstijn, Jan (U. of Amsterdam, The Netherlands; Email: hulstijn@hum.uva.nl). Towards a unified account of the representation, processing and acquisition of second language knowledge. Second Language Research (London, UK), 18, 3 (2002), 193—223.03—309 Itakura, Hiroko (The Hong Kong Polytechnic U.; Email: eghiroko@polyu.edu.hk). Gender and pragmatic transfer in topic development. Language, Culture and Curriculum (Clevedon, UK), 15, 2 (2002), 161—83.03—310 Jarvis, Scott (Ohio U., USA; Email: jarvis@ohio.edu). Topic continuity in L2 English article use. Studies in Second Language Acquisition (New York, USA), 24, 3 (2002), 387—418.03—311 Jung, Udo O. H. (U. of Bayreuth, Germany; Email: hmejung@gmx.de). An international bibliography of computer-assisted language learning: Fifth instalment. System (Oxford, UK), 30, 3 (2002), 349—98.03—312 Kim, Daejin (Hansei U., Republic of Korea; Email: daejkim@chollian.net) and Hall, Joan Kelly. The role of an interactive book reading program in the development of second language pragmatic competence. The Modern Language Journal (Malden, MA, USA), 86, 3 (2002), 332—48.03—313 Lee, Eun-Joo (Stanford U., USA; Email: eunlee@stanford.edu). Comparing personal references in English by a native-speaking and a Korean pre-adolescent. English Teaching (Korea), 57, 3 (2002), 125—43.03—314 Lee, Lina (U. of New Hampshire, USA; Email: llee@hopper.unh.edu). Synchronous online exchanges: A study of modification devices on non-native discourse. System (Oxford, UK), 30, 3 (2002), 275—88.03—315 Lee, Siok H. (Burnaby Sch. District & Simon Fraser U., Canada; Email: slee@alpha.sd41.bc.ca) and Carey, Stephen. Explaining Chinese learners' errors in the phonological representations of Latinate derivatives in English: A psycholinguistic perspective. Canadian Journal of Applied Linguistics (Ottawa, Canada), 5, 1/2 (2002), 65—91.03—316 Liontas, John I. (U. of Notre Dame, IN, USA; Email: jliontas@nd.edu). Exploring second language learners' notions of idiomaticity. System (Oxford, UK), 30, 3 (2002), 289—313.03—317 Macintyre, Peter D. (U. Coll. of Cape Breton, Canada; Email: peter_macintyre@uccb.ca), Baker, Susan C., Clément, Richard and Donovan, Leslie A.. Sex and age effects on willingness to communicate, anxiety, perceived competence, and L2 motivation among junior high school French immersion students. Language Learning (Malden, MA, USA), 52, 3 (2002), 537—64.03—318 Martínez, Ana Cristina Lahuerta (U. of Oviedo, Asturias, Spain; Email: lahuerta@correo.uniovi.es). Empirical examination of EFL readers' use of rhetorical information. English for Specific Purposes (Amsterdam, The Netherlands), 21, 1 (2002), 81—98.03—319 Mori, Yoshiko (Georgetown U., USA; Email: moriy@georgetown.edu). Individual differences in the integration of information from context and word parts in interpreting unknown kanji words. Applied Psycholinguistics (Cambridge, UK), 23, 3 (2002), 375—97.03—320 Morris, Frank A. (U. of Miami, USA). Negotiation moves and recasts in relation to error types and learner repair in the foreign language classroom. Foreign Language Annals (New York, USA), 35, 4 (2002), 395—404.03—321 O'Grady, William (U. of Hawai'i, USA; Email: ogrady@hawaii.edu) and Yamashita, Yoshie. Partial agreement in second-language acquisition. Linguistics (Berlin, Germany), 40, 5 (2002), 1011—19.03—322 Perdue, Clive (Université Paris VIII, France; Email: clive@univ-paris8.fr), Benazzo, Sandra and Giuliano, Patrizia. When finiteness gets marked: The relations between morphosyntactic development and use of scopal items in adult language. Linguistics (Berlin, Germany), 40, 4 (2002), 849—90.03—323 Pichette, François (U. of South Florida, USA; Email: pichette@chuma1.cas.usf.edu). Second-language vocabulary learning and the additivity hypothesis. Canadian Journal of Applied Linguistics (Ottawa, Canada), 5, 1/2 (2002), 117—30.03—324 Raymond, Patricia M. (U. of Ottawa, Canada) and Parks, Susan. Transitions: Orienting to reading and writing assignments in EAP and MBA contexts. The Canadian Modern Language Review/La Revue canadienne des langues vivantes (Toronto, Ont.), 59, 1 (2002), 152—80.03—325 Schulz, Renate A. (U. of Arizona, USA). Hilft es die Regel zu wissen um sie anzuwenden? Das Verhältnis von metalinguistischem Bewusstsein und grammatischer Kompetenz in DaF. [Does it help to know the rule to apply it? The relationship between metalinguistic consciousness and grammatical competence in German as a foreign language.] Die Unterrichtspraxis/Teaching German (Cherry Hill, NJ, USA), 36, 1 (2002), 15—24.03—326 Segler, Thomas M., Pain, Helen and Sorace, Antonella (U. of Edinburgh, Scotland, UK; Email: thomasse@dai.ed.ac.uk). Second language vocabulary acquisition and learning strategies in ICALL environments. Computer Assisted Language Learning (Lisse, The Netherlands), 15, 4 (2002), 409—22.03—327 Shehadeh, Ali (U. of Aleppo/King Saud U., Ryadh, Saudi Arabia; Email: ashhada@ksu.edu.sa). Comprehensible output, from occurrence to acquisition: An agenda for acquisitional research. Language Learning (Malden, MA, USA), 52, 3 (2002), 597—647.03—328 Tokuda, Naoyuki (SunFlare Research and Development Center, Tokyo, Japan; Email: tokuda_n@sunflare.co.jp). New developments in intelligent CALL systems in a rapidly internationalised information age. Computer Assisted Language Learning (Lisse, The Netherlands), 15, 4 (2002), 319—27.03—329 Tracy, Rosemarie (U. of Mannheim, Germany). Growing (clausal) roots: All children start out (and may remain) multilingual. Linguistics (Berlin, Germany), 40, 4 (2002), 653—86.03—330 van de Craats, Ineke (U. of Nijmegen, The Netherlands; Email: I.v.d.Craats@let.kun.nl), van Hout, Roeland and Corver, Norbert. The acquisition of possessive HAVE-clauses by Turkish and Moroccan learners of Dutch. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition (Cambridge, UK), 5, 2 (2002), 147—74.03—331 Verhoeven, Ludo (U. of Nijmegen, The Netherlands; Email: L.Verhoeven@ped.kun.nl) and Vermeer, Anne. Communicative competence and personality dimensions in first and second language learners. Applied Psycholinguistics (Cambridge, UK), 23, 3 (2002), 361—74.03—332 Wendt, Michael (U. Bremen, Germany). Kontext und Konstruktion: Fremdsprachendidaktische Theoriebildung und ihre Implikationen für die Fremdsprachenforschung. [Context and construction: Foreign language didactic theory formation and its implications for foreign language learning.] Zeitschrift für Fremdsprachenforschung (Germany), 13, 1 (2002), 1–62.03—333 Williams, Marion, Burden, Robert and Lanvers, Ursula (U. of Exeter, UK). ‘French is the Language of Love and Stuff’: Student perceptions of issues related to motivation in learning a foreign language. British Educational Research Journal (Abingdon, UK), 28, 4 (2002), 503—28.03—334 Wray, Alison (Cardiff U., UK; Email: wraya@cf.ac.uk). Formulaic language in computer-supported communication: Theory meets reality. Language Awareness (Clevedon, UK), 11, 2 (2002), 114—31.

This paper presents basic theoretical knowledge of critical thinking. It describes characteristics of critical thinking, which are used for the formation of critical thinking indicators. These indicators are needed for assessing students’ critical thinking levels and for designing lessons to develop critical thinking competence for students. The paper articulates arguments for highlighting the necessity of critical thinking education for students in Vietnam. The paper contributes to knowledge base of critical thinking education and supports further studies on critical thinking in order to enhance the effectiveness of education in Vietnam. Key words Critical thinking, competence, education, students References Arend, B. (2009). Encouraging critical thinking in online threaded discussions. The Journal of Educators Online, 6(1), doi: 10.1.1.412.1694Bacon, F. (1605). The Advancement of Learning. Edited by Joseph Devey, M.A. (New York: P.F. Collier and Son, 1901).Bailin, S. (2002). Critical thinking and science education. Science & Education, Vol. 11, Issue 4, pp 362-375Bailin, S., Case, R., Coombs, J. R., & Daniels, L. B. (1999). Conceptualizing critical thinking. Journal of Curriculum Studies, 31(3), 285–302. Beyer, B. K. (1995). Critical thinking. Bloomington, IN: Phi Delta Kappa Educational Foundation. Biggs, J., 1996. Western misperceptions of the Confucian-heritage learning culture. In D. Watkins & J. Biggs (Eds.), The Chinese learner: Cultural, psychological and contextual influences (pp. 45 – 67). Hong Kong: The University of Hong Kong Comparative Education Research Centre.Bloom B. S. (1956). Taxonomy of Educational Objectives, Handbook I: The Cognitive Domain. New York: David McKay Co Inc. Bộ Giáo dục và Đào tạo (2018). Dự thảo Chương trình Giáo dục Phổ thông Tổng thể.Brookfield, S. D. (1987). Developing Critical Thinkers. Jossey-Bass, San FranciscoChan, S. (1999). The Chinese learning – A question of style. Education and Training, 41(6/7), 294-304.Dewey, J. (1916). Democracy and education: An introduction to the philosophy of education. New York: Macmillan. Đặng Tự Ân, 2015. Mô hình trường học mới Việt Nam nhìn từ góc độ thực tiễn và lí luận. NXB Giáo dục Việt NamĐỗ Đình Hoan (2002). Một số vấn đề cơ bản của chương trình tiểu học mới. NXB Giáo dục Việt NamEnnis, R. H. (1986). A concept of critical thinking. Havard Educational Review, 22(1): 81-111. Facione, P. A. (2011). Think Critically, Pearson Education: Englewood Cliffs, NJ.Garrison, D. R., Anderson, T., & Archer, W., (2000). Critical inquiry in a text-based environment: Computer conferencing in higher education. The internet and higher education, 2(2-3): 87-105Guyton, J. J. (1984). The effects of teaching cognitive strategies on problem solving skills of baccalaureate nursing students. (Doctoral dissertation, University of Toledo, OH, 1983). Dissertation Abstracts International. 44. 3587-A.Halpern, D. F. (2006). Is intelligence critical thinking? Why we need a new construct definition for intelligence. In P. Kyllonen, I. Stankov, & R. D. Roberts (Eds.), Extending intelligence: Enhancement and new constructs. Mahwah. NJ: Erlbaum Associates. Harman, K., & Bich, N. T. N. (2010). Reforming teaching and learning in Vietnam’s higher education system. In G. Harman, M. Hayden, & T. N. Pham (Eds.). Reforming higher education in Vietnam: Challenges and priorities (pp.65-86). London: SpringerHenri, F. (1991). Computer conferencing and content analysis In O'Malley, C. (ed.) Computer Supported Collaborative Learning: Heidelberg: Springer-VerlagKokkidou, M. (2013). Critical thinking and school music education: Literature review, research findings, and perspectives. Journal for Learning through the Arts, 9(1), Retrieved from http://www.escholarship.org/uc/item/4dt433j3Koh, D. (2006). Reforms of the Vietnamese education system badly needed. Institute of South East Asian Studies.Kurfiss, J. G. (1988). Critical thinking: Theory, research, and possibilities. ASHE – ERIC Higher education Report No.2, Washington DC.Macduff, Anne (2005) "Deep Learning, Critical Thinking and Teaching for Law Reform," Legal Education Review: Vol. 15 : Iss. 1 ,Article 6.Marshall, R. & Tucker, M. (1992). Thinking for a living. New York: Basic BooksMason, M. (2007). Critical Thinking and Learning. Educational philosophy and theory. Volume 39, Issue 4, Pages 339–349 McCollister, K., & Sayler, M. (2010). Lift the ceiling: Increase rigor with critical thinking skills. Gifted Child Today, 33(1), 41-47.McPeck, J. (1981). Critical Thinking and Education. St. Martin's PressHằng, N. V. T., Meijer, M., Bulte, A. M. W., & Pilot, A. (2015). The implementation of a social constructivist approach in primary science education in Confucian heritage culture: the case of Vietnam. Cultural Studies of Science Education, 10(3), 2015, 665-693.DOI: 10.1007/s11422-014-9634-8Newman, D., Webb, B., & Cochrane, C. (1995). A content analysis method to measure critical thinking in face-to-face and computer supported group learning. Ipct - J, vol 3 (2), pp. 56-77.Nguyen Quang Kinh, Nguyen Quoc Chi (2008). Education in Vietnam: Development history, challenges and solutions. In An African Exploration of the East Asian Education Experience, Edited by Birger Fredriksen and Tan Jee Peng, The World Bank, Washington, D. C. Paul, R., & Elder, L. (2012). The nature and functions of critical & creative thinking. Tomales, CA: Foundation for Critical ThinkingRichmond, J. E. D. (2007). Bringing critical thinking to the education of developing country professionals, International Education Journal, v8 n1 p1-29 Ryan, J. & Louie, K. (2007). False dichotomy?: ‘Western’ and ‘Eastern’ concepts of scholarship and learning. Educational Philosophy and Theory (39)4, 404 - 417.Paul, R., & Scriven, M. (1987). 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Competence frameworks are the trend for human resource management in a dynamic environment. In Vietnam’s dynamic environment, the hotel industry is witnessing fast changes to adapt to the development of the Vietnamese economy. This requires a new model for human resource management in the hotel industry, in particular for middle managers. In this research, the author used a quantitative method to analyze the requirements for competence for middle managers in the hotel industry and has proposed a capability framework, including three main clusters: Professional competence, Executive and management Competence and Self-management competence - for middle managers in the Vietnamese hotel industry. Keywords Competence, middle manager competence, hotel industry References [1] J.B. Barney, P.M. Wright, “On becoming a strategic partner: The role of human resources in gaining competitive advantage”, Human Resource Management. 37 (1998) 31-46.[2] A.J. Nyberg, T.P. Moliterno, D. Hale Jr, D.P. Lepak, “Resource-based perspectives on unit-level human capital: A review and integration”, Journal of Management. 40 (2014) 316-346.[3] H. Jeou-Shyan, H. Hsuan, L. Chih-Hsing, L. Lin, T. Chang-Yen, “Competency analysis of top managers in the Taiwanese hotel industry”, International Journal of Hospitality Management. 30 (2011) 1044-1054. [4] K. Birdir, T.E. Pearson, “Research chefs’ competencies: A Delphi approach”, International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management. 12 (2000) 205-209. [5] L.M. Spencer, P.S.M. Spencer, Competence at Work models for superior performance: John Wiley & Sons, 2008.[6] F. Delamare Le Deist, J. Winterton, “What is competence”, Human Resourse Development International. 8 (2005) 27-46.[7] M.T. Brannick, E.L. Levine, F.P. Morgeson, Job and work analysis: Methods, research, and applications for human resource management: Sage, 2007.[8] J. Balogun, G. Johnson, “Organizational restructuring and middle manager sensemaking”, Academy of Management Journal. 47 (2004) 523-549. [9] Q.N. Huy, “In praise of middle managers”, Harvard Business Review. 79 (2001) 72-79.[10] N. Harding, H. Lee, J. Ford, “Who is “the middle manager”?”, Human relations. 67 (2014) 1213-1237. [11] D. Glover, D. Gleeson, G. Gough, M. Johnson, “The meaning of management: the development needs of middle managers in secondary schools”, Educational Management & Administration. 26 (1998) 279-292. [12] V. Siu, “Managing by competencies - A study on the managerial competencies of hotel middle managers in Hong Kong”, International Journal of Hospitality Management. 17 (1998) 253-273. [13] G. McCarthy, J.J. Fitzpatrick, “Development of a competency framework for nurse managers in Ireland”, The Journal of Continuing Education in Nursing. 40 (2009) 346-350.[14] S. Suh, J.J. West, J. Shin, “Important competency requirements for managers in the hospitality industry”, Journal of Hospitality, Leisure, Sport & Tourism Education. 11 (2012) 101-112. [15] Do Vu Phuong Anh, Khung nang luc nha quan ly cap trung trong doanh nghiep khu vuc kinh te tu nhan Vietnam, Ha Noi: DHQGHN, 2017.[16] Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism, “Research on Human Resource Demand for Tourism Industry for Training Tourism Employees in the Period 2025-2030”, 2017.[17] B.G. Chung-Herrera, C.A. Enz, M.J. Lankau, “A Competencies Model Grooming Future Hospitality Leaders”, Cornell Hotel and Restaurant Administration Quarterly. 44 (2003) 17-25.[18] Mai Thanh Lan, Ta Huy Hung, “The leadership competency in Vietnam public administration, Organizations and markets in emerging economies”. 9 (2019) 1-8.[19] Nguyen Hong Tin, Vo Thị Thanh Loc, Nguyen Quang Tuyen, Vo Kim Thoa, Vo Thành Danh, “Evaluate the current competence for leader and servant in Can Tho city”, Journal of Can Tho University. 38 (2015) 130-142.[20] K. Ernest, S.K. Matthew, A.K. Samuel, “Towards Entrepreneurial Learning Competencies: The Perspective of Built Environment Students”, Higher Education Studies. 5 (2015) 20-30.

A new device, sure to inspire technological bedazzlement, has been installed in Hong Kong shopping malls. Called simply The Love Machine, it functions like a photo booth, dispensing on-the-spot portraits1. But rather than one subject, it requires a couple, in fact the couple, in order to do its work of digital reproduction. For the output of this imaging machine is none other than a picture of the combined features of the two sitters, 'morphed' together by computer software to produce a technological child. Its Japanese manufacturers, while obviously cashing in on the novelty value, nevertheless list the advantage it allows for future matrimonial selection based around the production of a suitable aesthetic. Needless to say, the good citizens of Hong Kong have not allowed any rigid criteria for genetic engineering to get in the way of the progeny such a machine allows, creating such monstrous couplings as the baby 'cat-human', achieved by a sitter coupling with their pet. Rather than being the object of love here, technology acts as the conduit of emotion, or stronger still, it is the love relation itself, bringing the two together as one. What I want to touch upon is the sense in which a desire for oneness inhabits our relations to and through the technological. There is already an abundance of literature around the erotics of cyberspace, documenting and detailing encounters of virtual sex fantasies and romance. As well, there are more theoretical attempts to come to terms with what Michael Heim describes as the "erotic ontology of cyberspace" (59). Heim depicts these encounters not as a ravaging desire gone wild, sprouting up in odd places or producing monstrous offspring, but in homely and familial terms. Finally with the computer as incarnation of the machine, our love for technology can cease its restless and previously unfulfilled wanderings and find a comfortable place. What is worth pausing over here is the sense in which the sexual is subjugated to a conjugal and familial metaphor, at the same time as desire is modelled according to a metaphysics of fullness and lack. I would argue that in advancing this kind of love relation with the computer and the digital, the possibility of a relation is actually short-circuited. For a relation assumes the existence of at least two terms, and in these representations, technology does not figure as a second term. It is either marked as the other, where desire finds a soul mate to fill its lack. Or the technological becomes invisible, subsumed in a spiritual instrumentalism that sees it merely forging the union of cybernetic souls. I would suggest that an erotic relation with the technological is occluded in most accounts of the sexual in cyberspace and in many engagements with digital technologies. Instead we are left with a non-relational meeting of the same with itself. We might describe the dominant utilisation of the technological as onanistic. Relations of difference could be a productive effect of the technological, but are instead culturally caught up within an operational logic which sees the relational erotic possibilities of the machinic eliminated as sameness touches itself. I want to point towards some different models for theorising technology by briefly drawing upon the texts of Félix Guattari and Avital Ronell. These may lead to the production of a desiring relation with technology by coupling the machine with alterity. One of several climatic scenes from the 'virtual sex' movie Strange Days, directed by Katherine Bigelow, graphically illustrates the onanistic encounter. Set on the eve of the new millennium, the temporality of the film sets up a feeling of dis-ease: it is both futuristic and yet only too close. The narrative centres on the blackmarket in ultimate VR: purchasing software which allows the user, donning special headgear, to re-experience recorded memories in other peoples' lives. An evil abuser of this technology, known until the end of the film as an anonymous male junkie, is addicted to increasingly frequent hits of another's apperception. In his quest to score above his tolerance level, the cyber-junkie rapes a prostitute, but instead of wearing the headgear used to record his own perception of the rape, he forces the woman to put it on making her annex her subjectivity to his experience of desire. He records her reaction to becoming an appendage to him. The effect of watching this scene is deeply unsettling: the camera-work sets up a point-of-view shot from the position of the male subject but plays it to the audience as one might see through a video view-finder, thus sedimenting an assumed cultural association between masculinity and the male gaze. What we see is the violence produced by the annihilation of another's desire; what we hear is the soundtrack of the woman mimicking the male's enjoyment of his own desire. Put simply, what we watch is a feedback loop of a particular formation of technological desire, one in which the desire of or for the other is audio-visually impeded. Ultimately the experience can be stored and replayed as a porn movie solely for future masturbation. The scene in Strange Days quite adequately summarises the obstructed and obstructive desire to go no further than masturbation caught in the defiles of feedback. Feedback is also the term used in both video and sound production when a recording device is aimed at or switched onto a device playing back the same recording. The result, in the case of video, is to create an infinite abyss of the same image playing back into itself on the monitor; in the case of sound a high-pitched signal is created which impedes further transmission. By naming the desire to fuse with the technological a feedback loop, I am suggesting that manifestations of this desire are neither productive nor connective, in that any relation to exterior or heterogeneous elements are shut out. They stamp out the flow of other desires and replay the same looping desire based around notions of fullness and lack, completion and incompletion, and of course masculinity and femininity. Mark Dery makes this association between the desire for the technological, the elision of matter and phallic modes of masculinity: This, to the masculinist technophile, is the weirdly alchemical end point of cyberculture: the distillation of pure mind from base matter. Sex, in such a context, would be purged of feminine contact -- removed, in fact, from all notions of physicality -- and reduced to mental masturbation. (121) Dery's point is a corollary to mine; in discarding the need for an embodied sexual experience, the literature and representations of cyberspace, both theoretical and fictional, endorse only a touching of the sublimated self, no other bodies or even the bodily is brought into contact. There is no shortage of evidence for the disregard embodiment holds among the doyens of cyber-architecture. Hans Moravec and Marvin Minsky, writing about Artificial Intelligence, promote a future in which pure consciousness, freed from its entanglement with the flesh, merges with the machine (Mind Children; The Society of Mind). Here the reverence shown towards digital technology enters the sublime point of a coalition where the mind is supported by some sophisticated hardware, ultimately capable of adapting and reproducing itself. There are now enough feminist critics of this kind of cyberspeak to have noticed in this fantasy of machinic fusion a replay of the old Cartesian mind/body dualism. My point, however, is that this desire is not simply put in place by a failure to rethink the body in the realm of the digital. It is augmented by the fact that this disregard for theorising an embodied experience feeds into an inability to encounter any other within the realm of the technological. We should note that this is perpetuated not just by those seeking future solace in the digital, but also by its most ardent cultural critics. Baudrillard, as one who seemingly fits this latter category, eager to disperse the notion that writers such as Moravec and Minsky propound regarding AI, is driven to making rather overarching ontological remarks about machines in general. In attempting to forestall the notion that the machine could ever become the complement to the human, Baudrillard cancels the relation of the machine to desire by cutting off its ability to produce anything in excess of itself. The machine, on his account, can be reduced to the production of itself alone; there is nothing supplementary, exterior to or differential in the machinic circuit (53). For Baudrillard, the pleasures of the interface do not even extend to the solitary vice of masturbation. Celibate machines are paralleled by celibate digital subjects each alone with themselves, forming a non-relational system. While Baudrillard offers a fair account of the solitary lack of relation produced in and by digital technologies, he nevertheless participates in reinforcing the transformation of what he calls "the process of relating into a process of communication between One and the Same" (58). He catches himself within the circulation of the very desire he finds problematic. But whether onanistic or celibate, the erotics of our present or possible relations to technology do not become any more enticing in many actual engagements with emerging technologies. Popular modes of interfacing our desires with the digital favor a particular assemblage of body and machine where a kind of furtive one-handed masturbation may be the only option left to us. I will call this the operational assemblage, borrowing from Baudrillard and his description of Virtual Man, operating and communicating across computer cables and networks while being simultaneously immobilised in front of the glare of the computer screen. An operational assemblage, whilst being efficacious, inhibits movement and ties the body to the machine. Far from the body being discarded by information technologies, the operational assemblage sees certain parts of the body privileged and territorialised. The most obvious instance of this is VR, which, in its most technologically advanced state, still only selects the eyes and the hand as its points of bodily interface. In so-called fully immersive VR experience, it is the hand, wearing a data glove, which propels the subject into movement in the virtual world, but it is a hand propelled by the subject's field of vision, computer monitors mounted in the enveloping headset. Thus the hand operates by being subjected to the gaze2. In VR, then, the real body is not somehow left behind as the subject enters a new state of electronic consciousness; rather there is a re-organisation and reterritorialisation of the hand under the operative guidance of the eye and scopic desire. This is attested to by the experience one has of the postural body schema during immersion in VR. The 'non-operational' body remaining in physical space often feels awkward and clumsy as if it is too large or cumbersome to drag around and interact in the virtual world, as if it were made virtually non-functional. The operational assemblage of a distanced eye territorialising the hand to create a loop of identity through the machine produces a desiring body which is blocked in its relational capacities. It can only touch itself as self; it cannot find itself an other or as other. Rather than encouraging the hand to break connections with the circuit of the gaze, to develop speeds, capabilities and potentials of its own, these encounters are perpetually returned to the screen and the domain of the eye. They feed back into a loop where relations to other desires, other kinds of bodies, other machines are circumvented. Looping back and returning to the aesthetic reduction performed by the Love Machine, a more lo-tech version of the two technologically contracted to one might point to the possibility of alterity that current digital machines seem keen to circumvent. At San Fransisco's Exploratorium museum one of the public points of interface with the Human Genome Project can be found3. The Exploratorium has a display set up which introduces the public to the bioinformation technology involved as well as soliciting responses to bio-ethical issues surrounding the question of genetic engineering. In the midst of this display a simple piece of glass hangs as a divider between two sides of a table. By sitting on one side of the table with a light shining from behind, one could see both a self-reflection and through the glass to whomever was sitting on the other side. The text accompanying the display encourages couples to occupy either side of the glass. What is produced for the sitter on the light side is a combination of their own reflection 'mapped' onto the features of the sitter on the other side. The text for the display encourages a judgement of the probable aesthetic outcome of combining one's genes with those of the other. I tested this display with my partner, crossing both sides of the mirror/glass. Our reactions were similar; a sensation approaching horror arose as we each faced our distorted, mirrored features as possible future progeny, a sensation akin to encountering the uncanny4. While suggesting the familiar, it also indicates what is concealed, becoming a thing not known and thus terrifying. For what was decidedly spooky in viewing a morphing of my image onto that of the other's, in the context of the surrounding bioinformatic technologies, was the sense in which a familiarity with the homely features of the self was dislocated by a haunting, marking the claim of a double utterly different. Recalling the assertion made by Heim that in the computer we find an intellectual and emotional resting point, we could question whether the familiarity of a resting place provides a satisfactory erotic encounter with the technological. We could ask whether the dream of the homely, of finding in the computer a kinship which sanctions the love machine relation, operates at the expense of dispelling that other, unfamiliar double through a controlling device which adjusts differences until they reach a point of homeostasis. What of a reading of the technological which might instaurate rather than diffuse the question of the unfamiliar double? I will gesture towards both Guattari's text Chaosmosis and Ronell's The Telephone Book, for the importance both give to the double in producing a different relation with the technological. For Guattari, the machine's ghost is exorcised by the predominant view that sees particular machines, such as the computer, as a subset of technology, a view given credence at the level of hype in the marketing of AI, virtual reality and so forth as part of the great technological future. It also gains credibility theoretically through the Heideggerian perspective. Instead Guattari insists that technology is dependent upon the machinic (33). The machinic is prior to and a condition of any actual technology, it is a movement rather than a ground; the movement through which heterogeneous elements such as bodies, sciences, information come to form the interrelated yet specific fields of a particular assemblage we might term technological. It is also the movement through which these components retain their singularity. Borrowing from modern biology, Guattari labels this movement "autopoietic" (39). Rather than the cybernetic model which sees the outside integrated into the structure of the machinic by an adjustment towards homogeneity cutting off flow, Guattari underlines a continual machinic movement towards the outside, towards alterity, which transforms the interrelations of the technological ensemble. The machinic is doubled not by the reproduction of itself, but by the possibility of its own replacement, its own annihilation and transformation into something different: Its emergence is doubled with breakdown, catastrophe -- the menace of death. It possesses a supplement: a dimension of alterity which it develops in different forms. (37) Here, we can adjoin Guattari with Ronell's historical reading of the metaphorics of the telephone in attempts to think through technology. Always shadowed by the possibility Heidegger wishes to stake out for a beyond to or an overcoming of the technological, Ronell is both critical of the technologising of desire in the cybernetic loop and insistent upon the difference produced by technology's doubling desire. Using the telephone as a synecdoche for technology -- and this strategy is itself ambiguous: does the telephone represent part of the technological or is it a more comprehensive summary of a less comprehensive system? -- Ronell argues that it can only be thought of as irreducibly two, a pair (5). This differentiates itself from the couple which notoriously contracts into one. She argues that the two are not reducible to each other, that sender and receiver do not always connect, are not reducible to equal end points in the flow of information. For Ronell, what we find when we are not at home, on unfamiliar ground, is -- the machine. The telephone in fact maintains its relation to the machinic and to the doubling this implies, via the uncanny in Ronell's text. It relates to a not-being-at-home for the self, precisely when it becomes machine -- the answering machine. The answering machine disconnects the speaker from the listener and inserts itself not as controlling device in the loop, but as delay, the deferral of union. Loosely soldering this with Guattari's notion that the machine introduces a "dimension of alterity", Ronell reads the technological via the telephone line as that relation to the outside, to the machinic difference that makes the self always unfamiliar (84). I would suggest then that pursuing a love relation with technology or through the technological leads us to deploy an entire metaphorics of the familial, where the self is ultimately home alone and only has itself to play with. In this metaphorics, technology as double and technology's doubling desire become a conduit that returns only to itself through the circuitous mechanism of the feedback loop. Rather than opening onto heterogeneous relations to bodies or allowing bodies to develop different relational capacities, the body here is immobilised by an operational and scopic territorialisation. To be excited by an encounter with the technological something unfamiliar is preferable, some sense of an alternating current in the midst of all this homeliness, an external perturbation rubbing up against the tired hand of a short-circuiting onanism. Footnotes 1. The Love Machine is also the title of a digital still image and sound installation commenting upon the Hong Kong booth produced by myself and Michele Barker and last exhibited at the Viruses and Mutations exhibition for the Melbourne Festival, The Aikenhead Conference Centre, St. Vincent's Hospital, October, 1998. 2. For an articulation of the way in which this maps onto perspectival vision, see Simon Penny, "Virtual Reality as the Completion of the Enlightenment Project." Culture on the Brink. Eds. G. Bender and T. Druckery. Seattle: Bay Press, 1994. 3. Funded by the US Government, the project's goal is to develop maps for the 23 paired human chromosomes and to unravel the sequence of bases that make up the DNA of these chromosomes. 4. This is what Freud described in his paper "The Uncanny". Tracing the etymology of the German word for the uncanny, unheimlich, which in English translates literally as 'unhomely', Freud notes that heimlich, or 'homely', in fact contains the ambiguity of its opposite, in one instance. References Baudrillard, Jean. "Xerox and Infinity." The Transparency of Evil: Essays in Extreme Phenomena. Trans J. Benedict. London: Verso, 1993. 51-9. Dery, Mark. Escape Velocity: Cyberculture at the End of the Century. New York: Grove Press, 1996. Freud, Sigmund. "The Uncanny." Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud. Vol. 17. Trans. and ed. J. Strachey. London: Hogarth Press, 1955. Guattari, Félix. Chaosmosis: An Ethico-Aesthetic Paradigm. Sydney: Power Publications, 1995. Heim, Michael. "The Erotic Ontology of Cyberspace." Cyberspace: First Steps. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT P, 1994.59-80. Minsky, Marvin. The Society of Mind. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1985. Moravec, Hans. Mind Children. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard UP, 1988. Ronell, Avital. The Telephone Book. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 1989. Citation reference for this article MLA style: Anna Munster. "Love Machines." M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 2.6 (1999). [your date of access] <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/9909/love.php>. Chicago style: Anna Munster, "Love Machines," M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 2, no. 6 (1999), <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/9909/love.php> ([your date of access]). APA style: Anna Munster. (1999) Love machines. M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 2(6). <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/9909/love.php> ([your date of access]).

Introduction In December 2010, Nespresso, the world’s leading brand of premium-portioned coffee, opened a flagship “boutique” in Sydney’s Pitt Street Mall. This was Nespresso’s fifth boutique opening of 2010, after Brussels, Miami, Soho, and Munich. The Sydney debut coincided with the mall’s upmarket redevelopment, which explains Nespresso’s arrival in the city: strategic geographic expansion is key to the brand’s growth. Rather than panoramic ubiquity, a retail option favoured by brands like McDonalds, KFC and Starbucks, Nespresso opts for iconic, prestigious locations. This strategy has been highly successful: since 2000 Nespresso has recorded year-on-year per annum growth of 30 per cent. This has been achieved, moreover, despite a global financial downturn and an international coffee market replete with brand variety. In turn, Nespresso marks an evolution in the coffee market over the last decade. The Nespresso Story Founded in 1986, Nespresso is the fasting growing brand in the Nestlé Group. Its headquarters are in Lausanne, Switzerland, with over 7,000 employees worldwide. In 2012, Nespresso had 270 boutiques in 50 countries. The brand’s growth strategy involves three main components: premium coffee capsules, “mated” with specially designed machines, and accompanied by exceptional customer service through the Nespresso Club. Each component requires some explanation. Nespresso offers 16 varieties of Grand Crus coffee: 7 espresso blends, 3 pure origin espressos, 3 lungos (for larger cups), and 3 decaffeinated coffees. Each 5.5 grams of portioned coffee is cased in a hermetically sealed aluminium capsule, or pod, designed to preserve the complex, volatile aromas (between 800 and 900 per pod), and prevent oxidation. These capsules are designed to be used exclusively with Nespresso-branded machines, which are equipped with a patented high-pressure extraction system designed for optimum release of the coffee. These machines, of which there are 28 models, are developed with 6 machine partners, and Antoine Cahen, from Ateliers du Nord in Lausanne, designs most of them. For its consumers, members of the Nespresso Club, the capsules and machines guarantee perfect espresso coffee every time, within seconds and with minimum effort—what Nespresso calls the “ultimate coffee experience.” The Nespresso Club promotes this experience as an everyday luxury, whereby café-quality coffee can be enjoyed in the privacy and comfort of Club members’ homes. This domestic focus is a relatively recent turn in its history. Nestlé patented some of its pod technology in 1976; the compatible machines, initially made in Switzerland by Turmix, were developed a decade later. Nespresso S. A. was set up as a subsidiary unit within the Nestlé Group with a view to target the office and fine restaurant sector. It was first test-marketed in Japan in 1986, and rolled out the same year in Switzerland, France and Italy. However, by 1988, low sales prompted Nespresso’s newly appointed CEO, Jean-Paul Gillard, to rethink the brand’s focus. Gillard subsequently repositioned Nespresso’s target market away from the commercial sector towards high-income households and individuals, and introduced a mail-order distribution system; these elements became the hallmarks of the Nespresso Club (Markides 55). The Nespresso Club was designed to give members who had purchased Nespresso machines 24-hour customer service, by mail, phone, fax, and email. By the end of 1997 there were some 250,000 Club members worldwide. The boom in domestic, user-friendly espresso machines from the early 1990s helped Nespresso’s growth in this period. The cumulative efforts by the main manufacturers—Krups, Bosch, Braun, Saeco and DeLonghi—lowered the machines’ average price to around US $100 (Purpura, “Espresso” 88; Purpura, “New” 116). This paralleled consumers’ growing sophistication, as they became increasingly familiar with café-quality espresso, cappuccino and latté—for reasons to be detailed below. Nespresso was primed to exploit this cultural shift in the market and forge a charismatic point of difference: an aspirational, luxury option within an increasingly accessible and familiar field. Between 2006 and 2008, Nespresso sales more than doubled, prompting a second production factory to supplement the original plant in Avenches (Simonian). In 2008, Nespresso grew 20 times faster than the global coffee market (Reguly B1). As Nespresso sales exceeded $1.3 billion AU in 2009, with 4.8 billion capsules shipped out annually and 5 million Club members worldwide, it became Nestlé’s fastest growing division (Canning 28). According to Nespresso’s Oceania market director, Renaud Tinel, the brand now represents 8 per cent of the total coffee market; of Nespresso specifically, he reports that 10,000 cups (using one capsule per cup) were consumed worldwide each minute in 2009, and that increased to 12,300 cups per minute in 2010 (O’Brien 16). Given such growth in such a brief period, the atypical dynamic between the boutique, the Club and the Nespresso brand warrants closer consideration. Nespresso opened its first boutique in Paris in 2000, on the Avenue des Champs-Élysées. It was a symbolic choice and signalled the brand’s preference for glamorous precincts in cosmopolitan cities. This has become the design template for all Nespresso boutiques, what the company calls “brand embassies” in its press releases. More like art gallery-style emporiums than retail spaces, these boutiques perform three main functions: they showcase Nespresso coffees, machines and accessories (all elegantly displayed); they enable Club members to stock up on capsules; and they offer excellent customer service, which invariably equates to detailed production information. The brand’s revenue model reflects the boutique’s role in the broader business strategy: 50 per cent of Nespresso’s business is generated online, 30 per cent through the boutiques, and 20 per cent through call centres. Whatever floor space these boutiques dedicate to coffee consumption is—compared to the emphasis on exhibition and ambience—minimal and marginal. In turn, this tightly monitored, self-focused model inverts the conventional function of most commercial coffee sites. For several hundred years, the café has fostered a convivial atmosphere, served consumers’ social inclinations, and overwhelmingly encouraged diverse, eclectic clientele. The Nespresso boutique is the antithesis to this, and instead actively limits interaction: the Club “community” does not meet as a community, and is united only in atomised allegiance to the Nespresso brand. In this regard, Nespresso stands in stark contrast to another coffee brand that has been highly successful in recent years—Starbucks. Starbucks famously recreates the aesthetics, rhetoric and atmosphere of the café as a “third place”—a term popularised by urban sociologist Ray Oldenburg to describe non-work, non-domestic spaces where patrons converge for respite or recreation. These liminal spaces (cafés, parks, hair salons, book stores and such locations) might be private, commercial sites, yet they provide opportunities for chance encounters, even therapeutic interactions. In this way, they aid sociability and civic life (Kleinman 193). Long before the term “third place” was coined, coffee houses were deemed exemplars of egalitarian social space. As Rudolf P. Gaudio notes, the early coffee houses of Western Europe, in Oxford and London in the mid-1600s, “were characterized as places where commoners and aristocrats could meet and socialize without regard to rank” (670). From this sanguine perspective, they both informed and animated the modern public sphere. That is, and following Habermas, as a place where a mixed cohort of individuals could meet and discuss matters of public importance, and where politics intersected society, the eighteenth-century British coffee house both typified and strengthened the public sphere (Karababa and Ger 746). Moreover, and even from their early Ottoman origins (Karababa and Ger), there has been an historical correlation between the coffee house and the cosmopolitan, with the latter at least partly defined in terms of demographic breadth (Luckins). Ironically, and insofar as Nespresso appeals to coffee-literate consumers, the brand owes much to Starbucks. In the two decades preceding Nespresso’s arrival, Starbucks played a significant role in refining coffee literacy around the world, gauging mass-market trends, and stirring consumer consciousness. For Nespresso, this constituted major preparatory phenomena, as its strategy (and success) since the early 2000s presupposed the coffee market that Starbucks had helped to create. According to Nespresso’s chief executive Richard Giradot, central to Nespresso’s expansion is a focus on particular cities and their coffee culture (Canning 28). In turn, it pays to take stock of how such cities developed a coffee culture amenable to Nespresso—and therein lays the brand’s debt to Starbucks. Until the last few years, and before celebrity ambassador George Clooney was enlisted in 2005, Nespresso’s marketing was driven primarily by Club members’ recommendations. At the same time, though, Nespresso insisted that Club members were coffee connoisseurs, whose knowledge and enjoyment of coffee exceeded conventional coffee offerings. In 2000, Henk Kwakman, one of Nestlé’s Coffee Specialists, explained the need for portioned coffee in terms of guaranteed perfection, one that demanding consumers would expect. “In general”, he reasoned, “people who really like espresso coffee are very much more quality driven. When you consider such an intense taste experience, the quality is very important. If the espresso is slightly off quality, the connoisseur notices this immediately” (quoted in Butler 50). What matters here is how this corps of connoisseurs grew to a scale big enough to sustain and strengthen the Nespresso system, in the absence of a robust marketing or educative drive by Nespresso (until very recently). Put simply, the brand’s ascent was aided by Starbucks, specifically by the latter’s success in changing the mainstream coffee market during the 1990s. In establishing such a strong transnational presence, Starbucks challenged smaller, competing brands to define themselves with more clarity and conviction. Indeed, working with data that identified just 200 freestanding coffee houses in the US prior to 1990 compared to 14,000 in 2003, Kjeldgaard and Ostberg go so far as to state that: “Put bluntly, in the US there was no local coffee consumptionscape prior to Starbucks” (Kjeldgaard and Ostberg 176). Starbucks effectively redefined the coffee world for mainstream consumers in ways that were directly beneficial for Nespresso. Starbucks: Coffee as Ambience, Experience, and Cultural Capital While visitors to Nespresso boutiques can sample the coffee, with highly trained baristas and staff on site to explain the Nespresso system, in the main there are few concessions to the conventional café experience. Primarily, these boutiques function as material spaces for existing Club members to stock up on capsules, and therefore they complement the Nespresso system with a suitably streamlined space: efficient, stylish and conspicuously upmarket. Outside at least one Sydney boutique for instance (Bondi Junction, in the fashionable eastern suburbs), visitors enter through a club-style cordon, something usually associated with exclusive bars or hotels. This demarcates the boutique from neighbouring coffee chains, and signals Nespresso’s claim to more privileged patrons. This strategy though, the cultivation of a particular customer through aesthetic design and subtle flattery, is not unique. For decades, Starbucks also contrived a “special” coffee experience. Moreover, while the Starbucks model strikes a very different sensorial chord to that of Nespresso (in terms of décor, target consumer and so on) it effectively groomed and prepped everyday coffee drinkers to a level of relative self-sufficiency and expertise—and therein is the link between Starbucks’s mass-marketed approach and Nespresso’s timely arrival. Starbucks opened its first store in 1971, in Seattle. Three partners founded it: Jerry Baldwin and Zev Siegl, both teachers, and Gordon Bowker, a writer. In 1982, as they opened their sixth Seattle store, they were joined by Howard Schultz. Schultz’s trip to Italy the following year led to an entrepreneurial epiphany to which he now attributes Starbucks’s success. Inspired by how cafés in Italy, particularly the espresso bars in Milan, were vibrant social hubs, Schultz returned to the US with a newfound sensitivity to ambience and attitude. In 1987, Schultz bought Starbucks outright and stated his business philosophy thus: “We aren’t in the coffee business, serving people. We are in the people business, serving coffee” (quoted in Ruzich 432). This was articulated most clearly in how Schultz structured Starbucks as the ultimate “third place”, a welcoming amalgam of aromas, music, furniture, textures, literature and free WiFi. This transformed the café experience twofold. First, sensory overload masked the dull homogeny of a global chain with an air of warm, comforting domesticity—an inviting, everyday “home away from home.” To this end, in 1994, Schultz enlisted interior design “mastermind” Wright Massey; with his team of 45 designers, Massey created the chain’s decor blueprint, an “oasis for contemplation” (quoted in Scerri 60). At the same time though, and second, Starbucks promoted a revisionist, airbrushed version of how the coffee was produced. Patrons could see and smell the freshly roasted beans, and read about their places of origin in the free pamphlets. In this way, Starbucks merged the exotic and the cosmopolitan. The global supply chain underwent an image makeover, helped by a “new” vocabulary that familiarised its coffee drinkers with the diversity and complexity of coffee, and such terms as aroma, acidity, body and flavour. This strategy had a decisive impact on the coffee market, first in the US and then elsewhere: Starbucks oversaw a significant expansion in coffee consumption, both quantitatively and qualitatively. In the decades following the Second World War, coffee consumption in the US reached a plateau. Moreover, as Steven Topik points out, the rise of this type of coffee connoisseurship actually coincided with declining per capita consumption of coffee in the US—so the social status attributed to specialised knowledge of coffee “saved” the market: “Coffee’s rise as a sign of distinction and connoisseurship meant its appeal was no longer just its photoactive role as a stimulant nor the democratic sociability of the coffee shop” (Topik 100). Starbucks’s singular triumph was to not only convert non-coffee drinkers, but also train them to a level of relative sophistication. The average “cup o’ Joe” thus gave way to the latte, cappuccino, macchiato and more, and a world of coffee hitherto beyond (perhaps above) the average American consumer became both regular and routine. By 2003, Starbucks’s revenue was US $4.1 billion, and by 2012 there were almost 20,000 stores in 58 countries. As an idealised “third place,” Starbucks functioned as a welcoming haven that flattened out and muted the realities of global trade. The variety of beans on offer (Arabica, Latin American, speciality single origin and so on) bespoke a generous and bountiful modernity; while brochures schooled patrons in the nuances of terroir, an appreciation for origin and distinctiveness that encoded cultural capital. This positioned Starbucks within a happy narrative of the coffee economy, and drew patrons into this story by flattering their consumer choices. Against the generic sameness of supermarket options, Starbucks promised distinction, in Pierre Bourdieu’s sense of the term, and diversity in its coffee offerings. For Greg Dickinson, the Starbucks experience—the scent of the beans, the sound of the grinders, the taste of the coffees—negated the abstractions of postmodern, global trade: by sensory seduction, patrons connected with something real, authentic and material. At the same time, Starbucks professed commitment to the “triple bottom line” (Savitz), the corporate mantra that has morphed into virtual orthodoxy over the last fifteen years. This was hardly surprising; companies that trade in food staples typically grown in developing regions (coffee, tea, sugar, and coffee) felt the “political-aesthetic problematization of food” (Sassatelli and Davolio). This saw increasingly cognisant consumers trying to reconcile the pleasures of consumption with environmental and human responsibilities. The “triple bottom line” approach, which ostensibly promotes best business practice for people, profits and the planet, was folded into Starbucks’s marketing. The company heavily promoted its range of civic engagement, such as donations to nurses’ associations, literacy programs, clean water programs, and fair dealings with its coffee growers in developing societies (Simon). This bode well for its target market. As Constance M. Ruch has argued, Starbucks sought the burgeoning and lucrative “bobo” class, a term Ruch borrows from David Brooks. A portmanteau of “bourgeois bohemians,” “bobo” describes the educated elite that seeks the ambience and experience of a counter-cultural aesthetic, but without the political commitment. Until the last few years, it seemed Starbucks had successfully grafted this cultural zeitgeist onto its “third place.” Ironically, the scale and scope of the brand’s success has meant that Starbucks’s claim to an ethical agenda draws frequent and often fierce attack. As a global behemoth, Starbucks evolved into an iconic symbol of advanced consumer culture. For those critical of how such brands overwhelm smaller, more local competition, the brand is now synonymous for insidious, unstoppable retail spread. This in turn renders Starbucks vulnerable to protests that, despite its gestures towards sustainability (human and environmental), and by virtue of its size, ubiquity and ultimately conservative philosophy, it has lost whatever cachet or charm it supposedly once had. As Bryant Simon argues, in co-opting the language of ethical practice within an ultimately corporatist context, Starbucks only ever appealed to a modest form of altruism; not just in terms of the funds committed to worthy causes, but also to move thorny issues to “the most non-contentious middle-ground,” lest conservative customers felt alienated (Simon 162). Yet, having flagged itself as an ethical brand, Starbucks became an even bigger target for anti-corporatist sentiment, and the charge that, as a multinational giant, it remained complicit in (and one of the biggest benefactors of) a starkly inequitable and asymmetric global trade. It remains a major presence in the world coffee market, and arguably the most famous of the coffee chains. Over the last decade though, the speed and intensity with which Nespresso has grown, coupled with its atypical approach to consumer engagement, suggests that, in terms of brand equity, it now offers a more compelling point of difference than Starbucks. Brand “Me” Insofar as the Nespresso system depends on a consumer market versed in the intricacies of quality coffee, Starbucks can be at least partly credited for nurturing a more refined palate amongst everyday coffee drinkers. Yet while Starbucks courted the “average” consumer in its quest for market control, saturating the suburban landscape with thousands of virtually indistinguishable stores, Nespresso marks a very different sensibility. Put simply, Nespresso inverts the logic of a coffee house as a “third place,” and patrons are drawn not to socialise and relax but to pursue their own highly individualised interests. The difference with Starbucks could not be starker. One visitor to the Bloomingdale boutique (in New York’s fashionable Soho district) described it as having “the feel of Switzerland rather than Seattle. Instead of velvet sofas and comfy music, it has hard surfaces, bright colours and European hostesses” (Gapper 9). By creating a system that narrows the gap between production and consumption, to the point where Nespresso boutiques advertise the coffee brand but do not promote on-site coffee drinking, the boutiques are blithely indifferent to the historical, romanticised image of the coffee house as a meeting place. The result is a coffee experience that exploits the sophistication and vanity of aspirational consumers, but ignores the socialising scaffold by which coffee houses historically and perhaps naively made some claim to community building. If anything, Nespresso restricts patrons’ contemplative field: they consider only their relationships to the brand. In turn, Nespresso offers the ultimate expression of contemporary consumer capitalism, a hyper-individual experience for a hyper-modern age. By developing a global brand that is both luxurious and niche, Nespresso became “the Louis Vuitton of coffee” (Betts 14). Where Starbucks pursued retail ubiquity, Nespresso targets affluent, upmarket cities. As chief executive Richard Giradot put it, with no hint of embarrassment or apology: “If you take China, for example, we are not speaking about China, we are speaking about Shanghai, Hong Kong, Beijing because you will not sell our concept in the middle of nowhere in China” (quoted in Canning 28). For this reason, while Europe accounts for 90 per cent of Nespresso sales (Betts 15), its forays into the Americas, Asia and Australasia invariably spotlights cities that are already iconic or emerging economic hubs. The first boutique in Latin America, for instance, was opened in Jardins, a wealthy suburb in Sao Paulo, Brazil. In Nespresso, Nestlé has popularised a coffee experience neatly suited to contemporary consumer trends: Club members inhabit a branded world as hermetically sealed as the aluminium pods they purchase and consume. Besides the Club’s phone, fax and online distribution channels, pods can only be bought at the boutiques, which minimise even the potential for serendipitous mingling. The baristas are there primarily for product demonstrations, whilst highly trained staff recite the machines’ strengths (be they in design or utility), or information about the actual coffees. For Club members, the boutique service is merely the human extension of Nespresso’s online presence, whereby product information becomes increasingly tailored to increasingly individualised tastes. In the boutique, this emphasis on the individual is sold in terms of elegance, expedience and privilege. Nespresso boasts that over 70 per cent of its workforce is “customer facing,” sharing their passion and knowledge with Club members. Having already received and processed the product information (through the website, boutique staff, and promotional brochures), Club members need not do anything more than purchase their pods. In some of the more recently opened boutiques, such as in Paris-Madeleine, there is even an Exclusive Room where only Club members may enter—curious tourists (or potential members) are kept out. Club members though can select their preferred Grands Crus and checkout automatically, thanks to RFID (radio frequency identification) technology inserted in the capsule sleeves. So, where Starbucks exudes an inclusive, hearth-like hospitality, the Nespresso Club appears more like a pampered clique, albeit a growing one. As described in the Financial Times, “combine the reception desk of a designer hotel with an expensive fashion display and you get some idea what a Nespresso ‘coffee boutique’ is like” (Wiggins and Simonian 10). Conclusion Instead of sociability, Nespresso puts a premium on exclusivity and the knowledge gained through that exclusive experience. The more Club members know about the coffee, the faster and more individualised (and “therefore” better) the transaction they have with the Nespresso brand. This in turn confirms Zygmunt Bauman’s contention that, in a consumer society, being free to choose requires competence: “Freedom to choose does not mean that all choices are right—there are good and bad choices, better and worse choices. The kind of choice eventually made is the evidence of competence or its lack” (Bauman 43-44). Consumption here becomes an endless process of self-fashioning through commodities; a process Eva Illouz considers “all the more strenuous when the market recruits the consumer through the sysiphian exercise of his/her freedom to choose who he/she is” (Illouz 392). In a status-based setting, the more finely graded the differences between commodities (various places of origin, blends, intensities, and so on), the harder the consumer works to stay ahead—which means to be sufficiently informed. Consumers are locked in a game of constant reassurance, to show upward mobility to both themselves and society. For all that, and like Starbucks, Nespresso shows some signs of corporate social responsibility. In 2009, the company announced its “Ecolaboration” initiative, a series of eco-friendly targets for 2013. By then, Nespresso aims to: source 80 per cent of its coffee through Sustainable Quality Programs and Rainforest Alliance Certified farms; triple its capacity to recycle used capsules to 75 per cent; and reduce the overall carbon footprint required to produce each cup of Nespresso by 20 per cent (Nespresso). This information is conveyed through the brand’s website, press releases and brochures. However, since such endeavours are now de rigueur for many brands, it does not register as particularly innovative, progressive or challenging: it is an unexceptional (even expected) part of contemporary mainstream marketing. Indeed, the use of actor George Clooney as Nespresso’s brand ambassador since 2005 shows shrewd appraisal of consumers’ political and cultural sensibilities. As a celebrity who splits his time between Hollywood and Lake Como in Italy, Clooney embodies the glamorous, cosmopolitan lifestyle that Nespresso signifies. 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