Metric Development for Continuous Process Improvement

Air Force Smart Operations for the 21st Century (AFSO21) is not currently being used as effectively as it could be across the Air Force. Instead of trying to simply save money here or cut man-hours there, AFSO21 tools should be used to help the Air Force fly, fight and win better. the Air Force Institute of Technology (AFIT) has developed a methodology to identify specific target areas where continuous process improvement, i.e., AFSO21, can be applied to improve the bottom line of an organization. the first step of this process is to solicit the key performance indicators (KPIs) that best reflect the organization\u27s mission. the second step is to use and/or develop metrics based on those KPIs to measure the organization\u27s mission performance today. the third step is to capture the trends of those KPIs over time to see if the organization is getting better or worse. the final step is to identify the largest performance capability gaps in order to determine where AFSO21 resources should be applied to get the most bang for the buck . the result of this process should give the decision maker the ability to improve the bottom line of an organization by improving its weakest areas. Air Combat Command is used as a case study for the application of this methodology

Problems in Teaching Philosophy of Education

Those of us who teach philosophy of education can hardly be happy with the present state of our subject. On many counts now the energetic optimism of a decade or two ago just seems misplaced. Of course there have been considerable achievements, but much is wrong and badly wrong. The abundance, diversity and quality of literature that marks a healthy discipline is not yet in evidence, educational leaders and top decision makers take little heed of philosophical counsel, eminent educational philosophers are questioning the place of theoretical disciplines in teacher education, declining members of philosophy of education societies seem to reflect declining career prospects, and political developments in some countries are reflected in educational administrations that set little value on liberal studies, independent though and philosophy

Impactite and pseudotachylite from Roter Kamm Crater, Namibia

Pseudotachylite is known to occur in a variety of geologic settings including thrust belts (e.g., the Alps and the Himalayas) and impact craters such as Roter Kamm, Namibia. Controversy exists, however, as to whether pseudotachylite can be produced by shock brecciation as well as by tectonic frictional melting. Also open to debate is the question of whether pseudotachylites form by frictional fusion or by cataclasis. It was speculated that the pseudotachylite at Roter Kamm was formed by extensional settling and adjustment of basement blocks during 'late modification stage' of impact. The occurrence of pseudotachylite in association with rocks resembling quenched glass bombs and melt breccias in a relatively young crater of known impact origin offers a rare opportunity to compare features of these materials. Petrographic, x-ray diffraction, and electron microprobe analyses of the impactites and pseudotachylites are being employed to determine the modes of deformation and to assess the role of frictional melting and comminution of adjacent target rocks

An Idea to Save Educational Theory

The future looks gloomy for educational theory. The place of theory in the education of teachers and in deliberations on educational policy, is being speedily reduced. The number of persons employed to teach educational theory is declining and many of those who remain are having to teach adulterated or dubiously \u27relevant\u27 theory regarding which they can feel no real enthusiasm or honest commitment. It is possible that some areas of educational theory which have developed impressively over the last two or three decades will almost vanish. Already one can discern the unhappy consequences for practice. Thus a valuable contribution to this year\u27s PESA conference was Robin Barrow\u27s attack on \u27the Genetic Fallacy\u27 in education - on the notion that it is possible, let alone meaningful, for educators to set about developing generic abilities and capacities of mind, such as critical thinking skills or reasoning abilities. Barrow\u27s talk was timely and left little room for doubt as to the highly questionable nature of many contemporary curriculum developments. His critique is urgently needed. Yet it ought not to be. For a quarter of a century ago a central plank in Paul Hirst\u27s \u27Forms of Knowledge\u27 thesis was that it only made sense to talk of abilities and powers of the mind within specific contexts such as those provided by the disciplines of knowledge. Compatible conclusions had long been emerging from psychological work on transfer of training. Of course an educational innovator might study such views and discern grounds for rejecting them. Yet recent \u27thinking skills\u27 talk seems to be in ignorance rather than informed denial of these bodies of theorising. So sweeping reforms of practice are being introduced by people who seem to be unaware of good theoretical inquiries which suggest that their reforms may be mistaken and damaging, and give helpful pointers as to how they might be improved

Rapid isolation of malvidin 3-glucoside from red wine by high speed countercurrent chromatography (HSCCC)

Research Not

The "lessons" of the Australian "heroin shortage"

Heroin use causes considerable harm to individual users including dependence, fatal and nonfatal overdose, mental health problems, and blood borne virus transmission. It also adversely affects the community through drug dealing, property crime and reduced public amenity. During the mid to late 1990s in Australia the prevalence of heroin use increased as reflected in steeply rising overdose deaths. In January 2001, there were reports of an unpredicted and unprecedented reduction in heroin supply with an abrupt onset in all Australian jurisdictions. The shortage was most marked in New South Wales, the State with the largest heroin market, which saw increases in price, dramatic decreases in purity at the street level, and reductions in the ease with which injecting drug users reported being able to obtain the drug. The abrupt onset of the shortage and a subsequent dramatic reduction in overdose deaths prompted national debate about the causes of the shortage and later international debate about the policy significance of what has come to be called the "Australian heroin shortage". In this paper we summarise insights from four years' research into the causes, consequences and policy implications of the "heroin shortage"

Assepsia de brotações de Pinus tecunumanii e Pinus maximinoi mantidos em casa-de-vegetação para estabelecimento de material no cultivo in vitro.

Editores técnicos: Marcílio José Thomazini, Elenice Fritzsons, Patrícia Raquel Silva, Guilherme Schnell e Schuhli, Denise Jeton Cardoso, Luziane Franciscon. EVINCI. Resumos

Non-Regenerative Multi-Way Relaying: Combining the Gains of Network Coding and Joint Processing

In this paper, we consider a non-regenerative multi-group multi-way relaying scenario in which each group consists of multiple half-duplex nodes. Each node wants to share its data with all other nodes within its group. The transmissions are performed via an intermediate non-regenerative half-duplex multi-antenna relay station, termed RS, which spatially separates the different groups. In our proposal, all nodes simultaneously transmit to RS during a common multiple access phase and RS retransmits linearly processed versions of the received signals back to the nodes during multiple broadcast (BC) phases. We propose a novel transmit strategy which exploits analog network coding (ANC) and efficiently combines spatial transceive processing at RS with joint receive processing at each node over multiple BC phases. A closed-form solution for an ANC aware relay transceive filter is introduced and closed-form solutions for the joint receive processing filters at the nodes are presented. Furthermore, self-interference cancellation and successive interference cancellation are exploited at the nodes to improve the joint receive processing. By numerical results, it is shown that the proposed transmit strategy significantly outperforms existing multi-way strategies

La política antidrogas: nuevos horizontes de cambio en el control de la oferta y la demanda

96 p.De acuerdo con la Organización Mundial de la Salud (OMS, 1994) una sustancia o droga psicoactiva es aquella que, al ingerirse, afecta procesos mentales, como la cognición o la memoria. El término es asemejado generalmente con el de psicotrópico y ambas expresiones refieren al grupo de sustancias, legales e ilegales, de interés para la política en materia de drogas. En general, la literatura refiere con el término psicotrópico, a medicamentos utilizados principalmente en el tratamiento de los trastornos mentales, como los ansiolíticos, sedantes, antidepresivos, anti maníacos y neurolépticos. Bajo la categoría de sustancias psicotrópicas se encuentran los estupefacientes, acepción utilizada para referirse a sustancias cuya acción sedante, analgésica, narcótica y euforizante puede conducir al acostumbramiento y a la toxicomanía, por lo cual tienen un elevado potencial de abuso y / o dependencia psíquica/física. Entre ellos, se cuentan los estimulantes -cocaína, cafeína, nicotina-, los alucinógenos -Peyote y Psilocybes, los opiáceos -morfina, heroína-, y los sedantes/hipnóticos -alcohol- (OMS, 1994).Prólogo Introducción Capítulo 1. El panorama global: evolución reciente del fenómeno del consumo de sustancias psicoactivas Capítulo 2. La junta internacional de fiscalización de estupefacientes y la eficacia de la política antidrogas: el caso colombiano Capítulo 3. Hacia nuevos horizontes del análisis de política antidrogas Conclusiones Bibliografí