Looking Closely at Quality Circles: Implications for Intervention

This article explores quality circles (QCs), a popular type of work group employed extensively in business and industry. It is noted that several empirical studies point out the failure of QCs to achieve desired outcomes. On the basis of the findings of a study involving QCs in an electronics manufacturing firm, three categories of QCs are identified: management dominated QCs; stable QCs; and QCs in crisis. The article suggests that practitioners should recognize the complexity of QCs and focus intervention efforts upon individual, QC group, and organizational levels of analysis

An Intervention Model For Homeless Youth

Youth homelessness has become a more visible problem in recent years, and is exacerbated by changes in the central city economy, schooling, and the family. This article describes the Street Youth Employment Program, a program designed by sociological practitioners to intervene into the lives of homeless street youth through a collaborative effort between a socio-medical clink and an urban university. Program elements included (1) Stabilizing the living conditions of homeless youth, (2) Providing immediate part-time employment for participants on subsidized work projects, (3) Ensuring participation by youth in program policy and operation, and (4) Providing education and on-the-job training for youth. Of the youth who participated in the program (N = 16), the majority (70%) successfully moved away from living on the street to more stable involvement in work or school. The limited success of the intervention was attributed primarily to the linkage of meaningful employment with stable living arrangements, and attention to medical and mental health needs. It was noted that direct job creation is a more appropriate intervention strategy for homeless youth man pre-employment and job readiness services alone

An Evaluation of Columbia Villa/Tamaracks Community Service Intervention Project

The Community Service Intervention Program (CSlP) is a unique public agency response to a multifaceted set of problems confronting low income residents living in Oregon \u27s largest public housing project. The primary goals of the CSIP are to reduce crime, reduce the fear of crime among residents, and to improve the quality of life of the families living in Columbia Villa/Tamaracks. The evaluation of the CSIP combined a number of different research methods, on different analytical levels, to provide a summary assessment. Data were collected from individuals, from agencies, and from police records in a post facto analysis of the CSIP. Recommendations include: a higher profile by the County to coordinate, plan, manage, and evaluate services according to a set of carefully chosen set of objectives; a longitudinal evaluation of CSIP efforts; greater involvement by Columbia Villa/Tamaracks residents; greater job opportunities and job training for Columbia Villa/Tamaracks residents; additional participation in the CSIP by the Fire Department, Tri-Met, Metro (Solid Waste), and DEQ

J/\Psi production in two-photon collisions at next-to-leading order

In this paper, we report on the calculation of the cross section of J/\Psi plus jet inclusive production in direct two-photon collisions at next-to-leading order within the factorization formalism of nonrelativistic quantum chromodynamics (NRQCD). Theoretical predictions for the future e^+e^- linear collider TESLA are also presented.Comment: 5 pages, 2 figures, talk given at the 7th DESY Workshop on Elementary Particle Theory: Loops and Legs in Quantum Field Theory, Zinnowitz, Germany, 25-30 April, 2004: added references for section

Contribution of Long Wavelength Gravitational Waves to the CMB Anisotropy

We present an in depth discussion of the production of gravitational waves from an inflationary phase that could have occurred in the early universe, giving derivations for the resulting spectrum and energy density. We also consider the large-scale anisotropy in the cosmic microwave background radiation coming from these waves. Assuming that the observed quadrupole anisotropy comes mostly from gravitational waves (consistent with the predictions of a flat spectrum of scalar density perturbations and the measured dipole anisotropy) we describe in detail how to derive a value for the scale of inflation of $(1.5-5)\times 10^{16}$GeV, which is at a particularly interesting scale for particle physics. This upper limit corresponds to a 95\% confidence level upper limit on the scale of inflation assuming only that the quadrupole anisotropy from gravitational waves is not cancelled by another source. Direct detection of gravitational waves produced by inflation near this scale will have to wait for the next generation of detectors.Comment: (LaTeX 16 pages), 2 figures not included, YCTP-P16-9

Primordial Gravitational Waves From Open Inflation

We calculate the spectrum of gravitational waves generated during inflation in open $(\Omega _0<1)$ inflationary models. In such models an initial epoch of old inflation solves the horizon and flatness problems, and during this first epoch of inflation the quantum state of the graviton field rapidly approaches the Bunch-Davies vacuum. Then old inflation ends by the nucleation of a single bubble, inside of which there is a shortened epoch of slow-roll inflation giving $\Omega _0<1$ today. In this paper we re-express the Bunch-Davies vacuum for the graviton field in terms of the hyperbolic modes inside the bubble and propagate these modes forward in time into the present era. We derive the expression for the contribution from these gravity waves to the cosmic microwave background anisotropy including the effect of a finite energy difference across the bubble wall.Comment: 40 pages, TEX with phyzzx macro, 5 figure

The glycosyltransferase GnT-III activates Notch signaling and drives stem cell expansion to promote the growth and invasion of ovarian cancer

Glycosylation changes associated with cellular transformation can facilitate the growth and progression of tumors. Previously we discovered that the gene Mgat3 encoding the glycosyltransferase GnT-III is elevated in epithelial ovarian carcinomas (EOCs) and leads to the production of abnormal truncated N-linked glycan structures instead of the typical bisected forms. In this study, we are interested in discovering how these abnormal glycans impact the growth and progression of ovarian cancer. We have discovered using stable shRNA gene suppression that GnT-III expression controls the expansion of side-population cells, also known as cancer stem cells. More specifically, we found that GnT-III expression regulates the levels and activation of the heavily glycosylated Notch receptor involved in normal and malignant development. Suppression of GnT-III in EOC cell lines and primary tumor-derived cells resulted in an inhibition of Notch signaling that was more potent than phar-macologic blockage of Notch activation via γ-secretase inhibition. The inhibition resulted from the redirection of the Notch receptor to the lysosome, a novel mechanism. These findings demonstrate a new role for bisecting glycosylation in the control of Notch transport and demonstrate the therapeutic potential of inhibiting GnT-III as a treatment for controlling EOC growth and recurrence

Aspects of the behavioral and endocrine ontogeny of six moustached tamarins, Saguinus mystax (Callitrichinae)

Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (HE 1870/10-1,2

The Ratio of W + N jets To Z/gamma + N jets As a Precision Test of the Standard Model

We suggest replacing measurements of the individual cross-sections for the production of W + N jets and Z/gamma + N jets in searches for new high-energy phenomena at hadron colliders by the precision measurement of the ratios (W+0 jet)/(Z+0 jet), (W+1 jet)/(Z+1 jet), (W+2 jets)/(Z+2 jets),... (W+N jets)/(Z+N jets), with N as large as 6 (the number of jets in ttbarH). These ratios can also be formed for the case where one or more of the jets is tagged as a b or c quark. Existing measurements of the individual cross sections for Wenu + N jets at the Tevatron have systematic uncertainties that grow rapidly with N, being dominated by uncertainties in the identification of jets and the jet energy scale. These systematics, and also those associated with the luminosity, parton distribution functions (PDF's), detector acceptance and efficiencies, and systematics of jet finding and b-tagging, are expected to substantially cancel in calculating the ratio of W to Z production in each N-jet channel, allowing a greater sensitivity to new contributions in these channels in Run II at the Tevatron and at the LHC.Comment: 10 pages, 8 figures, added reference

Hinged Dissections Exist

We prove that any finite collection of polygons of equal area has a common hinged dissection. That is, for any such collection of polygons there exists a chain of polygons hinged at vertices that can be folded in the plane continuously without self-intersection to form any polygon in the collection. This result settles the open problem about the existence of hinged dissections between pairs of polygons that goes back implicitly to 1864 and has been studied extensively in the past ten years. Our result generalizes and indeed builds upon the result from 1814 that polygons have common dissections (without hinges). We also extend our common dissection result to edge-hinged dissections of solid 3D polyhedra that have a common (unhinged) dissection, as determined by Dehn's 1900 solution to Hilbert's Third Problem. Our proofs are constructive, giving explicit algorithms in all cases. For a constant number of planar polygons, both the number of pieces and running time required by our construction are pseudopolynomial. This bound is the best possible, even for unhinged dissections. Hinged dissections have possible applications to reconfigurable robotics, programmable matter, and nanomanufacturing.Comment: 22 pages, 14 figure