Can a Work Organization Have an Attitude Problem? The Impact of Workplaces on Employee Attitudes and Economic Outcomes

Using the employee opinion survey responses from several thousand employees working in 193 branches of a major U.S. bank, we consider whether there is a distinctive workplace component to employee attitudes despite the common set of corporate human resource management practices that cover all the branches. Several different empirical tests consistently point to the existence of a systematic branch-specific component to employee attitudes. “Branch effects” can also explain why a significant positive cross-sectional correlation between branch-level employee attitudes and branch sales performance is not observed in longitudinal fixed-effects sales models. The results of our empirical tests concerning the determinants of employee attitudes and the determinants of branch sales are consistent with an interpretation that workplace-specific factors lead to better outcomes for both employees and the bank, and that these factors are more likely to be some aspect of the branches’ internal operations rather than some characteristic of the external market of the branch.

Temporal-Difference Learning to Assist Human Decision Making during the Control of an Artificial Limb

In this work we explore the use of reinforcement learning (RL) to help with human decision making, combining state-of-the-art RL algorithms with an application to prosthetics. Managing human-machine interaction is a problem of considerable scope, and the simplification of human-robot interfaces is especially important in the domains of biomedical technology and rehabilitation medicine. For example, amputees who control artificial limbs are often required to quickly switch between a number of control actions or modes of operation in order to operate their devices. We suggest that by learning to anticipate (predict) a user's behaviour, artificial limbs could take on an active role in a human's control decisions so as to reduce the burden on their users. Recently, we showed that RL in the form of general value functions (GVFs) could be used to accurately detect a user's control intent prior to their explicit control choices. In the present work, we explore the use of temporal-difference learning and GVFs to predict when users will switch their control influence between the different motor functions of a robot arm. Experiments were performed using a multi-function robot arm that was controlled by muscle signals from a user's body (similar to conventional artificial limb control). Our approach was able to acquire and maintain forecasts about a user's switching decisions in real time. It also provides an intuitive and reward-free way for users to correct or reinforce the decisions made by the machine learning system. We expect that when a system is certain enough about its predictions, it can begin to take over switching decisions from the user to streamline control and potentially decrease the time and effort needed to complete tasks. This preliminary study therefore suggests a way to naturally integrate human- and machine-based decision making systems.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figures, This version to appear at The 1st Multidisciplinary Conference on Reinforcement Learning and Decision Making, Princeton, NJ, USA, Oct. 25-27, 201

Summer Emigrations of the Frog Rana Pipiens in Northwestern Iowa

During the summers of 1961, 1962, and 1963, mass emigrations of Rana pipiens pipiens Schreber occurred at the end of the first week in July. The intensity of the movement varied in the three years. Environmental causes for this movement were considered; temperature changes, precipitation or crowding do not seem to be operating. Samples of the tadpole populations were examined and the metamorphic changes prior to emigration are rapid and regular. With final metamorphosis into juvenile frogs, the emigration suddenly begins. It appears to be triggered by internal events related to maturation

Transition in Education: Domain Analysis from the Encyclopedia of Milwaukee

Encyclopedism and its products, encyclopedias are an important form of knowledge organization system. Encyclopedias are deliberate cultural syntheses. Local online encyclopedias represent an emerging trend in the development of KOSs. The Encyclopedia of Milwaukee is one of the most recent additions to this trend. An interesting problem for research is how to visualize the domain of an evolving online encyclopedia. In this study, the base bibliography for one disciplinary cluster—education—is submitted to bibliometric domain analytical techniques. While parameters of a typical domain emerge, other atypical results also emerge, raising questions about the differences represented in encyclopedia domains as well as questions about the historical evolution of scholarship. Nonetheless, transitions in the evolution of the domain of education in Milwaukee, including increased author productivity and enhanced granularity, as well as local cultural distinction, clearly emerge

Treatment of symptoms of the menopause: an endocrine society clinical practice guideline

Objective: The objective of this document is to generate a practice guideline for the management and treatment of symptoms of the menopause. Participants: The Treatment of Symptoms of the Menopause Task Force included six experts, a methodologist, and a medical writer, all appointed by The Endocrine Society. Evidence: The Task Force developed this evidenced-based guideline using the Grading of Recommendations, Assessment, Development, and Evaluation (GRADE) system to describe the strength of recommendations and the quality of evidence. The Task Force commissioned three systematic reviews of published data and considered several other existing meta-analyses and trials. Consensus Process: Multiple e-mail communications, conference calls, and one face-to-face meeting determined consensus. Committees of The Endocrine Society, representatives from endorsing societies, and members of The Endocrine Society reviewed and commented on the drafts of the guidelines. The Australasian Menopause Society, the British Menopause Society, European Menopause and Andropause Society, the European Society of Endocrinology, and the International Menopause Society (co-sponsors of the guideline) reviewed and commented on the draft. Conclusions: Menopausal hormone therapy (MHT) is the most effective treatment for vasomotor symptoms and other symptoms of the climacteric. Benefits may exceed risks for the majority of symptomatic postmenopausal women who are under age 60 or under 10 years since the onset of menopause. Health care professionals should individualize therapy based on clinical factors and patient preference. They should screen women before initiating MHT for cardiovascular and breast cancer risk and recommend the most appropriate therapy depending on risk/benefit considerations. Current evidence does not justify the use of MHT to prevent coronary heart disease, breast cancer, or dementia. Other options are available for those with vasomotor symptoms who prefer not to use MHT or who have contraindications because these patients should not use MHT. Low-dose vaginal estrogen and ospemifene provide effective therapy for the genitourinary syndrome of menopause, and vaginal moisturizers and lubricants are available for those not choosing hormonal therapy. All postmenopausal women should embrace appropriate lifestyle measures

Back to the Future: Cicero\u27s Five Canons as an Assessment Framework

Responding to an external mandate to engage in program level assessment, an assessment ad hoc committee within a large and broadly focused communication studies department invokes the Five Canons as the framework for an imbedded assessment process. The article explores the challenges that the Five Canons helped resolve and the unique organizational and curricular advantages that the Five Canons offer

The Supreme Court as the Grand Mediator in Social Regulation of the Media - De Gustibus Non Disputandum Est: Or Are They

This article presents a study of administrative and statutory schemes designed to regulate various aspects of the media in considering broad questions of indecency, obscenity, and societal and parental controls over content in various forms of media broadcasting. The article then provides an important historical back-drop by referencing Burstyn v. Wilson (a 1950s case involving an alleged secular sacrilege ) and Pacifica Foundation (the George Carlin Filthy Words monologue case). It then turns to a discussion of the litigation and controversy spurred by passage of the Communications Decency Act of 1996 and the Child Online Protection Act of 1998 as the focus of congressional attention turned to regulating the Internet. In this context, the article discusses Reno v. ACLU and American Library Association v. United States, two cases which provided direct challenges to Congressional regulatory responses. This article concludes by noting important international implications of the attempts to place restrictions on the Internet, and offers several tentative conclusions by bringing to the forefront the debate on the use of filtering technology designed to provide controls and supervision over this new media

A swarm in July : Beekeeping perspectives on the Old English Wid Ymbe charm

Inscribed in the margins of an eleventh-century manuscript1 of Bede's Ecclesiastical History of the English People and crowded beneath a Latin prayer is a brief bit of advice for beekeepers in the event of a swarm (ymbe), a natural phenomenon in which a substantial portion of an older bee colony migrates en masse with a queen to establish a new colony. The following analysis of this enigmatic text has been inspired largely by three features central to John Miles Foley's vast body of work: interdisciplinarity, collaboration, and comparative research. While the eight lines of alliterative verse that constitute the greater portion of this swarm charm have assured its standing within canonical Old English literature, its insights into traditional apiary practices of Anglo-Saxon England make it equally appropriate subject matter for studies in folklore or even animal science. It is precisely such unlikely intersections that have long served as foci for the transdisciplinary work of John Foley, and it is thus that we now choose it as the subject of analysis for a volume in his honor.2Issue title: Festschrift for John Miles Foley. This article belongs to a special issue of Oral Tradition published in honor of John Miles Foley's 65th birthday and 2011 retirement. The surprise Festschrift, guest-edited by Lori and Scott Garner entirely without his knowledge, celebrates John's tremendous impact on studies in oral tradition through a series of essays contributed by his students from the University of Missouri-Columbia (1979-present) and from NEH Summer Seminars that he has directed (1987-1996). Quotation marks removed to ensure alphabetical order. Title difference as follows; "A Swarm in July" : Beekeeping Perspectives on the Old English Wid Ymbe Char