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It has been a long time since the people in Afghanistan have started doing business and meeting their living needs in a proper way. In this transaction process various items like animals, stones, grains, plants, gold, silver... have been used as a means of transaction. In the early days, trading was very complicated and difficult because often one side of the transaction whose need was serious in terms of the intensity of the need, would be harmed by this process of transaction. The goods would be exchanged for the goods which had a lot of problems in estimating the price of the goods in this transaction process. Therefore, attempts were made to introduce a tool which would be acceptable to all parties involved in the transaction (individuals, households, enterprises, the state and the foreign business sector) as a means of measuring the value of the transaction. It basically paved the way for the idea of inventing money. Its invention eliminated the hassle of barter transactions and created more facilities in this area. The purpose of this research is to find out how long paper money has been used in Afghanistan and how it put an end to the product-to-product exchange that had caused so many problems. On the other hand, the people should have awareness about the fiqhi (Jurisprudential) quality of paper money. The results of this study will show how long paper money in Afghanistan has met the needs and demands of the people. The readers of this research will also find information about the improvement of the quality of paper money in Afghanistan, so that the people of our beloved country will be aware of the benefits of using paper money in their transactions and put it into practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: Organizations have started using the metaverse to sell non-fungible tokens, execute engineering processes and conduct business meetings. A condition of creating value by moving business processes to the metaverse is acceptance of this technology. In business-to-business scenarios, internal employees and external partners may have different views on the topic but must agree upon new practices. Understanding common motivations and challenges associated with using the metaverse is crucial to its success. Design/methodology/approach: The authors interviewed managers from a pharmaceutical company considering conducting meetings with clients in the metaverse. A series of 23 statements on reasons for (non)-use was generated. Twenty-five individuals (13 employees and 12 clients) then ranked these statements against each other, revealing what would drive or hinder their metaverse use. The authors compared these perspectives to identify common issues. Findings: The authors identified four different views. Views 1 and 2 correspond to internal and external participants, while Views 3 and 4 correspond to external ones only. View 1 is skeptical and underlines the role of peers in acceptance. View 2 is a positive perspective centered on usefulness. View 3 is ambivalent and is centered on efforts required to use the metaverse. View 4 reveals a reversed perspective wherein using the metaverse is a low-effort activity. Originality/value: This paper proposes a case study probing acceptance of a realistic business use of the metaverse. This paper identifies risks to mitigate and motivations to leverage when proposing metaverse usage in a business-to-business context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the many concerns of disaster recovery specialists is how to create disaster recovery scenarios, strategies and related solutions that meet the vision of management while building solutions for the critical business process within budget, with refined technical resources and operational and maintenance processes and procedures similar to those utilised in production. Rather than consider disaster recovery as a separate environment from production, this paper suggests that there are areas where the disaster recovery solution can map more closely to production solutions to better manifest the critical business process, avoiding the decreased sales forecasts and reputational impacts resulting from an outage. There is no magic here — just ideas for designing a solution and enhancements to the disaster recovery programme that may help to meet business expectations. A disaster recovery site based on similar production technical solutions and overall corporate IT vision can provide such benefits as: faster recovery time objective; faster availability of the data while maintaining data integrity; fewer manual procedures during switch/failover; ability to utilise similar resources to work both environments resulting in a smaller training programme; similar operational and maintenance processes and procedures; ability to switchover components rather than declaring disaster recovery; and an environment that supports production by running critical business process while production suffers an outage or requires maintenance. This paper provides readers with ideas to take back to their disaster recovery solution and how it manifests the critical business process during an outage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aiming at the characteristics of resource periodicity in massive MIMO systems and bandwidth allocation without comprehensive consideration of user service QoS and channel state information, resulting in poor user satisfaction and low bandwidth utilization, this paper proposes an adaptive bandwidth allocation method based on user services. This method comprehensively considers factors, such as user service QoS, channel state information, and resource periodicity, to adaptively allocate bandwidth for users using different services. Firstly, based on the service priority, the user priority is dynamically adjusted according to the current channel state information and the continuous periodicity of the allocation, and the user is scheduled.; Secondly, the dynamic priority is combined with the minimum guaranteed time slot to establish the objective function of adaptive bandwidth allocation. Finally, chaos theory, Levy flight, and reverse learning are integrated to improve the bald eagle optimization algorithm. The improved bald eagle algorithm is used to solve the problem, and the optimal solution to bandwidth allocation is obtained. The simulation shows that compared with the traditional bandwidth allocation method based on user service quality perception, the bandwidth allocation algorithm based on the minimum rate requirement, and the ant colony-based allocation algorithm, the bandwidth allocation method proposed in this paper improves the system utility value, bandwidth utilization rate, throughput, and user satisfaction by 23.70%, 4.22%, 6.55%, and 4.28%, respectively, and better meets the business needs of users. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Decentralisation is not a binary concept, but a spectrum. This paper presents a starting point for an objective discussion about the levels and risks related to decentralisation across ecosystem, consensus protocol, tokens and network distribution attributes for the largest networks of today — such as Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana, Cardano, BNB Smart Chain, Polygon, Polkadot, Uniswap, Compound, AAVE, Curve, MakerDAO and Lido. The paper argues that it is imperative to identify, mitigate, monitor, measure and manage risks for a successful decentralised network to meet its business objectives, and emphasises that the true degree of decentralisation and risks in the network are shaped by the strengths and weaknesses of the design, and further affected by market forces creating a wide range of operational, technological, financial, strategic, legal and regulatory, reputational and business risks, among many. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The minutes of the 2023 Business Meeting of the Charles S. Peirce Society provide an overview of the meeting proceedings. The meeting began with a moment of silence to honor deceased Peirce scholars. The Executive Committee reported on various topics, including the society's non-profit status, scholarship funding, and future conferences. The Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society discussed challenges faced in publishing their journal, such as a ransomware attack and a decrease in quality submissions. The financial statement showed the society's income and expenditures. The Peirce Edition Project reported on staff and challenges due to budget cuts, as well as the relocation of their research center. The text also mentions the Max Fisch library, the relocation of books from various collections, the end of a grant from the NEH Office of Digital Humanities, and the need for fundraising to create a permanent endowment for the Peirce Project. The document concludes with a report from the Nominating Committee and proposed candidates for various positions. [Extracted from the article]

Although live streaming is indispensable, live-streaming e-business requires accurate and timely sales-volume prediction to ensure a healthy supply–demand balance for companies. Practically, because various factors can significantly impact sales results, the development of a powerful, interpretable model is crucial for accurate sales prediction. In this study, we propose SaleNet, a deep-learning model designed for sales-volume prediction. Our model achieved correct prediction results on our private, real operating data. The mean absolute percentage error (MAPE) of our model's performance fell as low as 11.47% for a + 1.5-days forecast. Even for a 1-week forecast (+ 6 days), the MAPE was only 19.79%, meeting actual business needs and practical requirements. Notably, our model demonstrated robust interpretability, as evidenced by the feature contribution results which are consistent with prevailing research findings and industry expertise. Our findings provided a theoretical foundation for predicting shopping behavior in live-broadcast e-commerce and offered valuable insights for designing live-broadcast content and optimizing the user experience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the impact of the local tea industry on the language ecology of the geographically remote Blang community in China. The paper takes an ecology perspective in language planning where all languages in the locality are given equal attention. These languages in the context of this paper include Blang, Putonghua, and English as the leading global lingua franca of international trade. The study used a qualitative approach and reports findings from semi-structured interviews collected in Yunnan Province. The discursive approach allows for the analysis of participants' attitudes and ideologies vis-à-vis the changing economic and linguistic ecology. The findings demonstrate that the local tea industry has increased the economic value of Putonghua and further marginalised Blang. Putonghua and English were ideated as capital in the domestic and global markets, while Blang was perceived as having no economic value. These findings point towards a weakening vitality of Blang and reflect the uneven power relations favouring Putonghua and English. While economic entrepreneurship was paired with linguistic entrepreneurship, this agentive behaviour was mainly directed towards learning the dominant languages by the Blang people, and it was related to the extent to which individuals themselves engaged with the tea business. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The IDEA committee administered the annual climate survey, that includes questions about the recent BGA meeting as well as BGA more broadly. The annual business meeting of the members of the Behavior Genetics Association, a corporation not for profit, duly organized and existing under and by virtue of the laws of the State of Illinois, United States of America, was convened at the Murcia Auditorium and Conference Center, at 12:00 CET on the 24th day of June, 2023. The Editors continue to believe that these special issues are a great opportunity to provide a focused resource for the behavior genetics research in a specific area and are a great service to the field; so please contact John Hewitt with ideas for a special issue that you would like to guest edit. [Extracted from the article]

Purpose: This research interrogates how the construction of narratives and accounting forecasts contributes to managing the emotional state of actors involved in reporting meetings by promoting discourses of hope in their organization's future, mitigating their anxiety. This study shows how narratives are built from multiple antenarratives and accounting forecasts, which restore and strengthen organizational actors' commitment to their organizations. This study contributes to a better understanding of the role played by narratives and accounting documents in mitigating organizational members' anxiety. Design/methodology/approach: Over eight months, an interventionist research design method gave one of the authors the opportunity to record discussions held during reporting meetings in a business incubator. These recordings captured the production of narratives and forecasts in these meetings. Findings: This study shows how the production of multiple antenarratives and accounting forecasts helps organizational actors who attend reporting meetings mitigate the anxiety triggered by disappointing performance figures and restore collective discourses full of hope for the organization's future. This case highlights how personal antenarratives and successive versions of accounting forecasts contribute to restoring a collective commitment to a failing organization. Originality/value: This study refines current understanding of the under-explored links between accounting forecasts, narratives and anxiety management. The study provides insight into how accounting practices contribute to the production of narratives that successfully restore organizational members' commitment to working for a failing organization. The study also exemplifies the original insights gained from interventionist research protocols. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Railway Signalling & Communication Engineering is the property of Railway Signalling & Communication Engineering and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Corporate activities vastly impact the environment and society, and people are increasingly becoming conscious of this. Generation Z (GenZ), an emerging customer segment globally, is particularly concerned about sustainability. Corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives assist businesses in meeting these expectations. Will purchase intention (PI), brand equity (BE), and willingness to pay (WTP) for these companies' brands rise as a result of their CSR initiatives? Will the effects of CSR's three dimensions–environmental, social, and economic – on these outcomes be different? To study this, a 4(CSR)* 2(brands) between-subjects factorial design experiment was conducted with 414 students in India using an incentive-based Becker-DeGroot-Marschak (BDM) procedure. Marketers and researchers will gain valuable insights into the effects of different dimensions of CSR on consumer behaviour from the findings of this study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The document provides a list of upcoming meetings and conferences related to concrete and construction. The events are scheduled from April to June 2024 and include virtual and in-person gatherings in various locations around the world. The document also includes future dates for the ACI Concrete Convention. For more information, readers can contact the ACI Event Services. [Extracted from the article]

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to provide an overview of evolving developments in international, regional and EU law including the UK and Turkish jurisdictions for the liability of corporate businesses for modern forms of exploitative labour practices described as the modern forms of slavery. Design/methodology/approach: In the first part, this paper outlines international, regional and EU instruments, UK and Turkish jurisdictions in relation to modern forms of slavery. The second part reviews legal frameworks for corporate liability for modern forms of slavery. Findings: Slavery, slavery-like practices or some other exploitative practices are prohibited by numerous international law instruments starting from 1904. Apart from old forms of defined exploitative practices, multiple relevant current exploitative practices, called contemporary or modern forms of slavery exist all over the world. Under various international or regional conventions signatory States have been held responsible for exploitative practices by the international or regional courts or supervisory bodies, yet businesses were largely overlooked as a participating partner in the global movement to eradicate modern forms of slavery. For many years, multi-national businesses have engaged with various voluntary international corporate social responsibility initiatives in response to demands to operate in a socially responsible manner. There is a growing global recognition of the role corporate businesses can and should play in tackling crime and exploitative practices. A number of initiatives at the international and EU level and the introduction of the California Transparency in Supply Chains Act, (2010 – effective from 2012), the UK Modern Slavery Act 2015, the French Act on Due Diligence of Corporations and Main Contractors 2017 (loi sur le devoir de vigilance), the Australian Commonwealth Modern Slavery Act 2018, the Dutch Child Labour Due Diligence Act 2019, (which is due to come into effect in mid-2022), reflect this recognition. Originality/value: This paper argues that it is important for companies to use available tools, participate in joint initiatives and advocate for binding international and regional instruments and effective national legislation and action – all aimed at ending business involvement in modern forms of slavery. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The annual business meeting of the members of the Behavior Genetics Association, a corporation not for profit, duly organized and existing under and by virtue of the laws of the State of Illinois, United States of America, was convened at the USC Hotel, at 12:00 US-PT on the 24th day of June, 2022. Minutes of the Annual Business Meeting of the Members of the BEHAVIOR GENETICS ASSOCIATION: June 24, 2022, 12:00-13:30, Venue USC Hotel, 3540 S Figueroa St, Los Angeles, CA 90007 Danielle Dick provided the IDEA committee report, reminding the membership that the conduct policy has been launched and is available on the website and that there would be an organizational culture survey following the 2022 BGA meeting. [Extracted from the article]

Copyright of Railway Signalling & Communication Engineering is the property of Railway Signalling & Communication Engineering and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The article offers information about the one hundred thirty-fourth annual meeting of the American Economic Association (AEA), called to order by President David Card via the Zoom platform. It mentions that Card discussed the agenda and also summarized the many activities that are being undertaken by the AEA committees.

Have you sat in a project meeting with business and technical teams and felt everyone was speaking a different language, creating confusion on goals, requirements, and the path forward?. Or have you watched a completed software solution demo that the business team felt didn't meet their actual needs, causing rifts between business and IT?. Or participated in a Steering Committee session spanning multiple functions and teams with too many voices in the rooms, generating swirl and a lack of clear direction?. The truth is, different stakeholder groups have different needs and ways of working and communicating -- and your approach to creating alignment needs to take that into consideration as according to Geneca (Blog, 2017) of dev teams spend half their time on rework. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the rapid development of service-oriented computing, an overwhelming number of web services have been published online. Developers can create mashups that combine one or multiple services to meet complex business requirements. To speed up the mashup development process, recommending suitable services for developers is a vital problem. In this paper, we address the data sparsity and cold-start problems faced in service recommendation, and propose a novel multi-relational graph convolutional network framework (MRGCN) for service recommendation. Specifically, we first construct a multi-relational mashup-service graph with three types of relations, namely composition relation, functional relation, and tagging relation. These three relations are indispensable and complement each other for capturing multi-view information. Then, the three relations in the graph are seamlessly fused with various strategies. Next, graph convolution is performed on the fused multi-relational graph to capture the high-order relational information between mashups and services. Finally, the relevance between mashup requirements and services is predicted based on the learned features on the graph. We conduct extensive experiments on the ProgrammableWeb dataset and demonstrate that our proposed method can outperform state-of-the-art methods in recommending services when only mashup requirements are available. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research Question/Issue: This paper provides novel evidence on the dynamics of board meetings and the economic value of their decisions. We exploit a unique regulatory requirement of the Italian Stock Exchange that mandates the publication of board meeting minutes when the board votes on "price sensitive" matters to analyze detailed data about directors' participation, discussions, voting, and the dissemination of their decisions to the market. Research Findings/Insights: In a large, multiyear sample of board meeting minutes, we show previously unavailable patterns of board meetings participation and discussion and highlight the moderating role of key governance mechanisms that shed novel light on the effectiveness of boards. Looking at the economic value of board meetings, we document significant delays in the diffusion of information in the market that may be indicative of information leakage. Theoretical/Academic Implications: We contribute to the theoretical discussion about the role of boards. Our results are consistent with a supervisory approach model of boards where consensus is high and dissent is costly. However, they cast doubt on the efficacy of boards as a counterbalancing mechanism to the power of executives. Practitioner/Policy Implications: Boards have grown in size and become increasingly complex. This study documents the actual discussion, participation, and voting dynamics of board meetings and provides evidence on the diffusion of information to market participants, which is valuable in the design of efficient corporate governance mechanisms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Hydrographic Surveying & Charting / Haiyang Cehui is the property of Hydrographic Surveying & Charting Editorial Board and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Background and purpose: Operational alignment, the alignment between business processes (BPs) and information systems (ISs), is a well-acknowledged requirement for improving business efficiency. However, a lack of sound foundation for the practical implementation of operational alignment remains in the existing literature. This is, in part, because previously developed coarse-grained strategic alignment models for operational alignment have overlooked the differences between strategic and operational levels of alignment. Additionally, while some studies have recognized these differences, they remain limited. This is partly due to their negligence of the IS's socio-technical nature or their focus on identifying the social antecedents and their effect on operational alignment, without considering how ISs meet the business requirements in achieving operational alignment. To overcome this potential lack of applicability, the purpose of this paper is to determine the right level of abstraction for describing BPs and ISs and reconceptualizing operational alignment. Methodology: This paper conducts empirical research using a grounded theory (GT), centering on semi-structured interviews with 28 experts involved in the Iranian top public universities. Data were analyzed by using MAXQDA software. Results: The resulting FunCaps framework specifies the required combinations of BP functions and IS capabilities for operational alignment. Conclusion: FunCaps reconceptualizes operational alignment based on operational planning and reciprocal integration and establishes the broader picture by considering an IS as a socio-technical system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The European Medicines Agency (EMA) offers guidance and support to pharmaceutical companies through bilateral discussions called business pipeline meetings (BPMs). An analysis of BPMs in oncology over a 5‐year period was conducted to identify common topics and recurring queries. The documents of all BPMs available at the EMA regarding the field of oncology from January 1, 2018, to Decemer 31, 2022, were reviewed. For every query, a main category was assigned, and in case of multiple relevant topics, a secondary category was appointed too. For all queries, the follow‐up offered by the EMA was documented, and whether the requested information was available. Subsequently, all queries were scanned for overlapping topics between meetings. From 2018 to 2022, 31 BPMs were held between the EMA and pharmaceutical companies to discuss oncology‐related questions, for a total of 397 queries raised. They were classified into 24 topics, of which 15 were common topics (n ≥ 10 queries) with regulatory pathways/guidelines and trial design having the most queries. Post‐BPM actions were taken or recommended by the EMA for 41.3% of queries, such as referrals to scientific advice or published guidelines. Forty‐three queries were raised at more than one BPM. Targeted therapy, companion diagnostics, institutional collaboration, trial design, and regulatory pathways/guidelines were the most discussed topics in oncology BPMs, with molecular developments being the common denominator. Creating Q&A documents, publishing new guidelines, providing a framework for discussions, and questionnaire‐based follow‐up research can improve the quality of BPMs, and the accessibility of the information requested during the BPMs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Examining the historical evolution of the Sportsmen's Lodge, a restaurant and banquet facility located on Ventura Boulevard in Los Angeles's San Fernando Valley, this essay argues that suburban restaurants have served as vital "suburban anchors" facilitating suburban growth and place-making. Established in the 1920s as a recreational fishing concession for the film industry, the Sportsmen's Lodge expanded to become a renowned restaurant and banquet hall by the 1940s. Its facilities were used not only for social gatherings among politically conservative white homeowners, but also for business meetings where attendees strategized for the suburban region's growth. Ironically, their success in recruiting suburban industry and infrastructure produced an increasingly dense and diverse suburban landscape in which the Sportsmen's Lodge's itself ultimately became obsolete. The Lodge's recent demolition and redevelopment as a mixed-use retail complex signals the multiple purposes fulfilled by suburban restaurants, while highlighting the limits to their evolution in diversifying suburbs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research aims to analyze the types of startup business development methods and their relations to entrepreneurship. The research was conducted using exploratory research, which focuses on various types of startup business methods within the scope of entrepreneurship and describes them qualitatively. According to the analysis findings, several business startup development methods are relevant to today's business developments, including lean startup, lean canvas, design thinking, and agile. One of the four approaches, lean startup, is widely employed in establishing new enterprises. Lean startup is a business model in which the client serves as a trial object for the product being created in order to collect immediate feedback and make modifications depending on the demands of the consumer. In conclusion, entrepreneurship facilitated the presence of startup businesses by prioritizing meeting customer needs in accordance with the methods used to maximize business profits. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

I Respectfully submitted, Tina Brandt i Appendix 10 Certification Section Update Typically, the Certification Section of the PAA would hold an in-person meeting in either late November or early December. These two saving accounts would fall under the PAA umbrella and will be assets of the PAA corporation, but will be separate savings accounts and will not fall under PAA annual budgeting. The PAA Annual Business Meeting was called to order by the president, Kent McCue at 4:00PM ET on Wednesday, July 22, 2020 during the 104th Annual Meeting held virtually. (10-15-19) B MOTION b by Larry Hiller, was seconded by Roy Navarre, and was unanimously passed that PAA begin using credit card payment transactions with Affinipay as the approved credit card processor in association with Wild Apricot, beginning with the PAA December 2019 renewal with Wild Apricot. [Extracted from the article]

The conference program will include paper, poster, symposia, and panel sessions, and a business meeting open to all members so the future of INGRoup can be collectively planned and shaped. Graph Hyatt Regency Bellevue, Washington, USA Eastside of Seattle, Washington The B Interdisciplinary Network for Group Research (INGRoup) b was created to provide a context for scholars to: (1) promote communication about groups and teams research across fields and nations, (2) advance understanding about group dynamics through research, (3) advance theory and methods for understanding groups and teams, and (4) promote interdisciplinary research. [Extracted from the article]

STEP will ultimately consist of a standalone TEI editor and of a virtual STEP Platform workflow management coupled with a TEI online editor system. I [as approved on January 13, 2022] i The Annual General Meeting of the Charles S. Peirce Society was held virtually via zoom on January 8, 2021. On behalf of the staff of the Peirce Project, I want to express our enormous gratitude to the Peirce Society and to all steadfast supporters of the Peirce cause and the Project's mission. Dr. Govindarajan is currently busy designing the STEP workflow by modeling it closely on a prototype designed by De Tienne: STEP Workflow Monitor. [Extracted from the article]

The PAA Annual Business Meeting was called to order by president, Helen Tai at 1:30PM MT on Wednesday, July 20, 20212 during the 106th Annual Meeting held in Missoula, MT. Helen also highlighted other events including Potato Expo, the Global outreach committee speaker and symposium speakers for PAA. Not all committee are mentioned in bylaws...Article VIIII, (i) not all committees "i.e., bylaws and rules committee" are mentioned by name in bylaws...who and how is committee chair selected. The Potato Association of America 106th Annual Business Meeting July 20, 2022, 1:30- 3:30 pm MT: Holiday Inn Downtown Missoula Garden City Parlor D. [Extracted from the article]

The article focuses on the deployment of hypothetical talk in the CANBEC and CCI corpora of business meetings and examines its use as a discursive tool for communicating stance in encounters where participants represent (potentially) incompatible positions. Through the use of hypothetical talk, interactants signal the potential for agreement and resolution by testing the other participants' position and their preparedness to shift their view. It is argued that although talk introduced to the meeting may be hypothetical, the stance communicated is real. The analysis provides insights into actions applied to resolve impasse or conflict situations, particularly through the rhetorical move of formulating. Formulating aims to resolve or summarize talk at a particular instance in time. The act of formulating requires an evaluative step on the part of the participants in order to consider their contributions or their opposition to the formulation. It is, therefore, of interest to examine how talk that is known to be hypothetical - hence essentially unreal, speculative, potentially untrue or even counterfactual - can be allowed to feature in meetings discourse and to influence a meeting's outcome. Two theoretical models were applied to understand this - Du Bois's (2007) "stance triangle" and Hunston's (1989, 1994, 2011) three functions of evaluation. These offered a new perspective on the role of hypothetical talk in business meetings, where, as the results demonstrate, hypothetical talk is used to signal stance, test that of the other participants, and advance the speakers' goals. By integrating the two models and applying them in order to understand how hypothetical talk is formulated in business meetings, it was possible to conceptualize the process through which meeting participants evaluate and act upon talk, by making "real life decisions" upon information which has initially been introduced to the meeting as hypothetical. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the transition from a traditional print program for the AsMA Annual Scientific Meetings to a digital meeting application, highlighting the advantages of real-time updates and improved efficiency in managing changes, including withdrawn abstracts, and added meetings.

Background and Objectives: Under the ISBT, the Working Party (WP) for Red Cell Immunogenetics and Blood Group Terminology is charged with ratifying blood group systems, antigens and alleles. This report presents the outcomes from four WP business meetings, one located in Basel in 2019 and three held as virtual meetings during the COVID‐19 pandemic in 2020 and 2021. Materials and Methods: As in previous meetings, matters pertaining to blood group antigen nomenclature were discussed. New blood group systems and antigens were approved and named according to the serologic, genetic, biochemical and cell biological evidence presented. Results: Seven new blood group systems, KANNO (defined numerically as ISBT 037), SID (038), CTL2 (039), PEL (040), MAM (041), EMM (042) and ABCC1 (043) were ratified. Two (039 and 043) were de novo discoveries, and the remainder comprised reported antigens where the causal genes were previously unknown. A further 15 blood group antigens were added to the existing blood group systems: MNS (002), RH (004), LU (005), DI (010), SC (013), GE (020), KN (022), JMH (026) and RHAG (030). Conclusion: The ISBT now recognizes 378 antigens, of which 345 are clustered within 43 blood group systems while 33 still have an unknown genetic basis. The ongoing discovery of new blood group systems and antigens underscores the diverse and complex biology of the red cell membrane. The WP continues to update the blood group antigen tables and the allele nomenclature tables. These can be found on the ISBT website (http://www.isbtweb.org/working-parties/red-cell-immunogenetics-and-blood-group-terminology/). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mark applauded the efforts of those involved in PAA and acknowledged the contributions of outgoing PAA treasurer Larry Hiller. Larry reminded members that details of the PAA endowments, financial account information can be found under the PAA Member's Only section of the PAA website. The PAA Annual Business Meeting was called to order by the president, Mark Pavek at 4:00PM ET on Wednesday, July 28, 2021 during the 105th Annual Meeting held virtually. B MOTION b by Larry Hiller to create a longer PAA video with Dennis Halterman serving as committee chair, was seconded by Jeff Miller, and was unanimously approved (12-18-2020). Larry Hiller - thought for the new section and officers in the coming years; several sections have contacted the board about section bylaws and revising them to be up to date; keep in mind for future section directions and initiatives. [Extracted from the article]

The history of St Stephen's cloister in the Palace of Westminster, a fragile and little‐known Tudor survival, exemplifies the long‐standing tensions between preserving parliament's built heritage and meeting its political and business needs. Adjacent to the old house of commons, it was long part of a grand house for the auditors of the exchequer but came under the control of the commons Speaker in 1794. In the 19th century it was restored twice, by James Wyatt in 1802–8, and after having survived the 1834 fire, by Charles Barry in 1850–2. By now uneasily situated in Charles Barry's vast new palace and no longer needed for domestic purposes, in 1852 it was deployed to meet the business needs of MPs. This use it has retained, even after two of its four walks were destroyed in 1940 and painstakingly reconstructed in 1950–1. The epithet 'gothic slum', coined in 1982 by Jack Straw MP for the exquisite lower oratory off the west cloister walk where he found his desk most inconveniently located, encapsulates the long‐standing tensions between the admirers and custodians of the fabric of the cloister and those who require proper space and facilities to discharge their official or parliamentary duties. In tracing the history and uses of the cloister since 1548 this article reveals the long‐standing impact of those unresolved tensions on the cloister's fabric, but suggests that the restoration and renewal programme might prompt a new approach to the use of this fragile and largely unknown survival of Westminster's past. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scholars can be the presenting author on no more than two submissions, excluding poster submissions. Graph Hyatt Regency Bellevue, Washington, USA Eastside of Seattle, Washington The B Interdisciplinary Network for Group Research (INGRoup) b was created to provide a context for scholars to: (1) promote communication about groups and teams research across fields and nations, (2) advance understanding about group dynamics through research, (3) advance theory and methods for understanding groups and teams, and (4) promote interdisciplinary research. [Extracted from the article]