The Cross-Cultural Invariance of the Servant Leadership Survey: A Comparative Study across Eight Countries

This paper tests and confirms the cross-cultural equivalence of the Servant Leadership Survey (SLS) in eight countries and languages: The Netherlands, Portugal, Germany, Iceland, Italy, Spain, Turkey and Finland. A composite sample consisting of 5201 respondents from eight countries that all filled out the SLS was used. A three-step approach was adopted to test configural invariance, measurement equivalence, and structural equivalence. For the full 30-item version of the SLS, configural invariance and partial measurement equivalence were confirmed. Implications of these results for the use of the SLS within cross-cultural studies are discussed

Expression of Bcl-2 in node-negative breast cancer is associated with various prognostic factors, but does not predict response to one course of perioperative chemotherapy.

The aim of this study was to assess relationships between Bcl-2 expression, response to chemotherapy and a number of pathological and biological tumour parameters in premenopausal, lymph node-negative breast cancer patients. Expression of Bcl-2 was determined using immunohistochemistry on paraffin-embedded sections in a series of 441 premenopausal, lymph node-negative breast cancers of patients randomised to receive perioperative chemotherapy (5-fluorouracil, doxorubicin, cyclophosphamide) or no perioperative chemotherapy. Immunohistochemistry of Bcl-2 was evaluated by scoring both staining intensity (0-3) and number of positive cells (0-2). Using these scores tumours were grouped into categories 0-6. It was found that 9.2% of the tumours were completely negative (0), 17.2% weakly (1 + 2), 41.6% moderately (3 + 4) and 31.9% strongly positive (5 + 6) for Bcl-2. A positive correlation was found between high Bcl-2 expression and oestrogen (P < 0.001) and progesterone receptor positivity (P < 0.001) and low tumour grade (P < 0.001), whereas high Bcl-2 expression was negatively correlated with p53 (P < 0.001) and c-erb-B-2 positively (P < 0.001), high Ki-67 index (P < 0.001), mitotic index (P < 0.001) and large tumour size (P = 0.006). Patients with tumours expressing high levels of Bcl-2 (overall score 3-6) had a significantly better disease-free (P = 0.004) and overall (P = 0.009) survival. However, in a multivariate model this association no longer remained significant. There was a trend for an effect of adjuvant chemotherapy on disease-free survival both for patients with Bcl-2-positive (HR-0.61, 95% CI 0.35-1.06, P = 0.07) and negative (HR = 0.55, 95% CI 0.27-1.12, P = 0.09) breast tumours at a median follow-up of 49 months. The level of Bcl-2 expression does not seem to predict response to perioperative chemotherapy in premenopausal, lymph node-negative breast cancer patients. High levels of Bcl-2 are preferentially expressed in well-differentiated tumours and are associated with favourable prognosis. However, Bcl-2 expression is not an independent prognostic factor in this patient series

Effects of GNSS receiver tuning on the PLL tracking jitter estimation in the presence of ionospheric scintillation

Ionospheric scintillation is an interference characterized by rapid and random fluctuations inradio frequency signals when passing through irregularities in the ionosphere. It can severely degrade theperformance of Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) receivers, thus increasing positioning errors.Receivers with different tracking loop bandwidths and coherent integration times perform differently underscintillation. This study investigates the effects of GNSS receiver tracking loop tuning on scintillationmonitoring and Phase Locked Loop (PLL) tracking jitter estimation using simulated GNSS data. Thevariation of carrier to noise density ratio (C/N0) under scintillation with different tracking loop settings isalso studied. The results show that receiver tuning has a minor effect on scintillation indices calculation.The levels of C/N0 are also similar for different PLL bandwidths and integration times. Additionally, thetracking jitter is estimated by theoretical equations and verified using the relationship with the PLLdiscriminator output noise, which is calculated using the post‐correlation measurements. Novel approachesare further proposed to calculate 1‐s scintillation index, which enables to compute the tracking jitter ata rate of 1 s. It is found that 1‐s tracking jitter can successfully represent the signal fluctuations levels causedby scintillation. This work is valuable for developing scintillation sensitive tracking error models and is alsoof great significance for GNSS receiver design to mitigate scintillation effects

Modeling of a Buss-Kneader as a polymerization reactor for acrylates. Part II: Methyl methacrylate based resins

The Buss-Kneader has proven to be a suitable reactor for the polymerization of acrylates. In this second part, the polymerization of methyl methacrylate and the ter- polymerization of methyl methacrylate (MMA), hydroxyethyl methacrylate and n-butylmethacrylate is carried out in a pilot Buss-Kneader. The reactor had to be pressurized up to about 10 bars to avoid evaporation of MMA. Instabilities in output rate and temperature profiles were observed as a result of fluctuating the pressures. Because of good mixing there may be no diffusion limitation for radicals. As a result, even at high conversions, no gel effect was observed

Initial GPS scintillation results from CASES receiver at South Pole, Antarctica

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/94940/1/rds6025.pd

Event Generators for WW Physics

The report summarizes the results of the activities of the Working Group on Event Generators for WW Physics at CERN during 1995.Comment: 99 Latex, including 30 figures, 24 tables. The report is part of: G.Altarelli,T.Sjostrand and F.Zwirner (eds), Physics at LEP2 CERN 96-0