Most Popular Books by Jonathan Thomas

Your story. Your narratives. Your experiences. All of them can provide insight and direction that you never knew existed by activating your Internal Observer. Without it, we are doomed to repeat the same patterns of behavior that reinforce tired preconceptions. ARE YOU READY TO SURPRISE YOURSELF? In this genre-bending new book, readers will be introduced to a new road map for positive self-discovery. Using visual geometry, questions and exercises culled from real-life stories, and an 8-step guide that anyone can follow, readers will be empowered to leverage their own narratives and to navigate difficult situations. Whether for the professional or personal, individual or team, the CoreSelf Framework can teach anyone to access where they are, acknowledge where they want to be, and determine how to best get there.This journey of self-exploration allows us to position ourselves in difficult situations, use our values to provide perspective, and determine the best next steps to literally Get on the Same Page with ourselves and others.

In this paper a matching model with variable search intensity that incorporates the inactive is developed and calibrated. The model is used to look at possible explanations for the recent sharp decline in the UK working-age unemployment rate, which has been accompanied by only a moderate reduction in the working-age inactivity rate. From the range of different shocks considered, the most plausible combination consists of a significant reduction in unemployment benefits, perhaps reflecting reduced coverage, coupled with an increase in the student population. According to the model, these shocks would not have produced an increase in aggregate wage pressure.

The development of external stimuli responsive nanoparticles has progressed greatly since its inception in the seventies. However, apart from some clinical success for slow release delivery via liposomes, the technology has stalled for the delivery of chemotherapeutics due to a myriad of problems with cytocompatibility and premature diffusion of drug payload. The solution to cytocompatibility has been the coating of the system with polyethylene glycol. New methods have been developed to attach polyethylene glycol (PEG) tethers to the surface of otherwise unreactive particles. Surface hydrolysis of acrylamide containing polymers can be used to produce carboxylic acid functional groups near the surface of the polymeric nanoparticles. These nanoparticles can then be functionalized with PEG via EDC/NHS chemistry. The use of surface hydrolysis not only allows for reaction with these neutral polymers, but also provides greater control of PEG localization and leads to an unintrusive method to add the much needed stealth coating.

Near road air quality is a growing concern for urban developers and transportation engineers as exposure to common vehicle emissions has been linked to numerous adverse health effects. Roadway design is being considered as one potential solution for mitigating exposure for those living and working nearby. This work examines the effectiveness of various roadway configurations, such as elevations and depressions, as well as the presence of solid barriers, such as those erected to reduce noise pollution, and vegetation barriers. Various experimental work has shown the potential benefits of these features. However, there is still a lack of mechanistic understanding of how they impact the air flow and pollutant transport in the near-road environment. In this work, we propose that Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) models can be utilized to further our understanding in this regard. To this end, we first use existing experimental data to validate our CFD model. Once validated, we can use the computational model to observe any number of other configurations. We find that flat terrain often has worse pollutant concentrations at grade than any of the other roadway configurations. Solid barriers near roadways in particular can reduce ground level concentrations by up to 80%. However, there are potential drawbacks, such as higher concentrations at higher elevations and higher on-road concentrations. Furthermore, vegetation barriers often have mixed results. They enhance particle deposition, but often lead to increased concentrations due to lower convective and turbulent transport. In the latter part of this work, we aim to use the knowledge gained from our computational simulations to help create a simple parameterized model to characterize pollutant transport near roadside barriers. CFD models are computationally very expensive and require extensive understanding in order to properly use. We propose a modification to Gaussian plume dispersion models to account for the impact of both solid and vegetative barriers. This model is shown to be only slightly less accurate than the CFD model while saving large amounts of computational time. In doing this we hope to make our findings more accessible to those who will need to utilize them for policy making decisions.

The measurement of pain has had a growing importance in animals for both privately owned animals and those animals involved in clinical research. Lameness is considered to be 1 aspect of the pain experience. The ability of a veterinarian to assess lameness during a routine orthopedic examination can be difficult given the short amount of time in which the clinician can observe the animal, and the fact that the animal is in a stressful environment. Thus, the input of the owner concerning the animal's well-being over an extended time period may be extremely useful to the clinician in assessing the degree of lameness of the animal. It was the purpose of this study to establish an instrument that was both repeatable and valid in assessing the degree of lameness. The instrument used was a questionnaire containing 39 questions in a visual analog scale format. A force platform was used as the gold-standard for detecting mechanical lameness. Peak vertical, cranial-caudal, and their associated impulses were forces used to determine lameness, along with maximum slope in some cases. A test-retest measure of repeatability was conducted on a subset of 19 dogs that were confirmed to have less than a 10% change in vertical peak force. Nineteen of the 39 questions were found to be repeatable based on a Spearman rank correlation. These 19 questions were then used as predictor variables in several multiple regression models which predicted force plate measurements. The result was 3 different models each containing 7 independent variables that were thought to be valid representations of the forces measured (vertical peak, vertical impulse, and propulsion peak forces). Each reduced model was found to fit the data as well as the full model containing all 19 of the repeatable questions. The composite of 11 questions from the 3 different models was used to calculate a total score. This total score was found to be significantly correlated with force plate measurements. These 11 questions should be useful to a clinician in detecting the degree of lameness in the dog.

The aim of this paper is to offer a coherent framework for examining the underlying drivers of labour market tightness, and the relationship between labour market tightness and inflation.

The assessment of neuroplasticity after stroke through functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) analysis is a developing field where the objective is to understand the neural process of recovery and to better target rehabilitation. In this study, the connectivity structure of the stroke-affected brain is analyzed before and after rehabilitation. The main challenge associated with fMRI data from stroke patients is the significant individual variability that is present. We provide a graph-theoretical framework to effectively compare algorithm performance for capturing subject variability for real data. We demonstrate that independent vector analysis provides superior performance when compared with group independent component analysis. In this study, increased small worldness across components and greater centrality in key motor networks are demonstrated as a result of the intervention, suggesting improved efficiency in neural communication. Clinically, these results bring forth new possibilities as a means to observe the neural processes underlying improvements in motor function.

In this paper the evolution of skill imbalances in the UK labor market over the past two decades is investigated. Movements in the relative ease with which firms can recruit skilled workers can affect unemployment, inflation, and productivity. Any assessment of changes in the skill balance is complicated by the fact that different indicators often send conflicting messages. Such conflicts could reflect the underlying definitions of skilled and unskilled workers, as well as differences in the sensitivities of each measure to alternative market shocks. The analysis casts doubt on the reliability of standard measures of unemployment dispersion across educational groups, and the Confederation of British Industry ratio of skilled and unskilled labor shortages, as measures of skill imbalance. The gap between the demand for, and the supply of, educated labor has in fact increased steadily over the past two decades, particularly for those workers with graduate-level qualifications. So the apparent decline in the NAIRU over the recent cyclical upswing cannot be attributed to an improvement in the relative ease with which firms can hire educated workers.

This thesis project analyzes the influence of T.S. Eliot, named "the first Cambridge poet" by Jeremy Noel-Tod, on Cambridge poets Andrew Crozier and Peter Riley, particularly through their representations of the quotidian. At stake is the larger question: what is the often hidden effect of the objects that surround us in daily life? Or even--what is the value of daily life? By extension, their representation of the quotidian directly affects their depiction of the physical environment allowing for an ecocritical debate in which landscape determines how individuals place themselves in a familiar physical environment defined by tradition, culture, and the routine. Regarding the influence of landscape on the poet, Eliot said, "[m]y poetry, like that of other poets, shows traces of every environment in which I have lived." He, of course, was not referring to Nature, but how social geographies encapsulate traditions, culture, and language, in what can be classified as ecologically-informed memories. One section of this project addresses the present scholarly (mis)interpretation of ecocritism, moving it beyond a discourse of global sustainability or sustainable environmental practices to a more distinct focus in what phenomenologists refer to an ecological sphere of existence in which the daily lives of people become inseparable from the environments in which they have lived.