What are Some Best Practices for Managing Long-Term Incentive Plans (LTIP) during M&A Activity and What Impact Do LTIPs Have On Employees?

[Excerpt] In 2017, companies announced over 50,600 M&A transactions with a total value of over $3.5 trillion. Approximately 80% of these M&A deals fail for a variety of reasons: culture differences, stark operational differences, and budget constraints. Due to the nature of M&A activity, employee LTIPs – which are often made up of stock options, RSUs, and other forms of equity – are the most affected form of compensation during this process. HR and other business leaders should adhere to best practices and due diligence concerning LTIPs to prevent their firm merger, acquisition, or spin-off from becoming another statistic

What are Best Practices Relating to Counter-Offers?

[Excerpt] While counter-offers virtually disappeared in the great recession, they have regained popularity in recent years in an attempt to retain employees as the labor market tightens. While the use of counter-offers is widespread, many organizations are failing to use counter-offers effectively. Ineffective and poorly planned counter-offers result in negative consequences and poor results for all parties involved. Following the acceptance of a counter-offer, 55% of employees report greater unhappiness and decreased levels of commitment. Only 16% of employees who accept counter-offers believe their relationship with their employer improved post-offer. In fact, he majority of employees who accept counter-offers turnover within the following 6 to 24 months. Counter-Offers are a short-term fix when firms need a long-term solution

The Impact of Wrong Assumptions in BAO Reconstruction

The process of density field reconstruction enhances the statistical power of distance scale measurements using baryon acoustic oscillations (BAO). During this process a fiducial cosmology is assumed in order to convert sky coordinates and redshifts into distances; fiducial bias and redshift-space-distortion parameters are also assumed in this procedure. We analytically assess the impact of incorrect cosmology and bias assumptions on the post-reconstruction power spectra using low-order Lagrangian perturbation theory, deriving general expressions for the incorrectly reconstructed spectra. We find that the BAO peak location appears to shift only by a negligible amount due to wrong assumptions made during reconstruction. However, the shape of the BAO peak and the quadrupole amplitude can be affected by such errors (at the percent- and five-percent-level respectively), which potentially could cause small biases in parameter inference for future surveys; we outline solutions to such complications.Comment: 18 pages, 3 figures; comments welcome. v2 matches JCAP accepted versio

How We Can Apply AI, and Deep Learning to our HR Functional Transformation and Core Talent Processes?

[Excerpt] While organizations agree with the importance of AI, only 31% are ready to embrace or have already applied it to their HR process. There are varying levels of acceptance for AI across the HR function. Top areas of implementation are: recruiting and hiring (49%), HR strategy and employee management decisions (31%), analysis of workplace policies (24%), and automation of tasks previously performed by humans (22%)

Keck NIRSPEC Radial Velocity Observations of Late-M dwarfs

We present the results of an infrared spectroscopic survey of 23 late-M dwarfs with the NIRSPEC echelle spectrometer on the Keck II telescope. Using telluric lines for wavelength calibration, we are able to achieve measurement precisions of down to 45 m/s for our late-M dwarfs over a one to four year-long baseline. Our sample contains two stars with RV variations of >1000 m/s. While we require more measurements to determine whether these RV variations are due to unseen planetary or stellar companions or are the result of starspots known to plague the surface of M dwarfs, we can place upper limits of <40 MJsini on the masses of any companions around those two M dwarfs with RV variations of <160 m/s at orbital periods of 10-100 days. We have also measured the rotational velocities for all the stars in our late-M dwarf sample and offer our multi-order, high-resolution spectra over 2.0 to 2.4 micron to the atmospheric modeling community to better understand the atmospheres of late-M dwarfs.Comment: Accepted to Ap

Brief notes on the glacial phenomena of Colombia (South America)

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Building a Framework to Guide Residents through Scholarly Activities

Objective: The objective of this project was to build an online resource that will help guide residents through their Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) scholarly activity requirement by providing guidelines, advice, and resources on publishing, presenting, and research. Methods: The Clinical Services Librarian first met with the Graduate Medical Education (GME) office to determine the needs of the residencies and clarify current ACGME requirements. Meetings were then set with representatives from the largest residencies to discuss how the scholarly activity requirement was currently being met and to collect resources. After these meetings the librarian began building an online resource in the LibGuides software for both residents and junior faculty. The Research and Scholarly Activity Guide combines practical advice with tips and tricks for completing projects. Sections include information on how to set up and where to print a poster, how to write an abstract, and how to submit articles to journals. Research resources help guide residents through the institutional review board process, finding a mentor, and identifying statistical expertise. Results: The Research and Scholarly Activity Guide was completed over the summer and introduced to new interns and returning residents during noon conferences and orientations. The guide was also presented at both the residency directors’ and residency coordinators’ monthly meetings. The guide was well received and comments and suggestions were incorporated were appropriate. Conclusions: The Research and Scholarly Activity Guide was available starting July 2018. The guide brings a number of disparate resources together easing residents’ road to completion of their scholarly activity requirement as well as assisting junior faculty with research endeavors. Residency directors and coordinators have expressed how much this guide will help their programs

Automated Annotation-Based Bio-Ontology Alignment with Structural Validation

We outline the structure of an automated process to both align multiple bio-ontologies in terms of their genomic co-annotations, and then to measure the structural quality of that alignment. We illustrate the method with a genomic analysis of 70 genes implicated in lung disease against the Gene Ontology

Multiepoch Radial Velocity Observations of L Dwarfs

We report on the development of a technique for precise radial-velocity measurements of cool stars and brown dwarfs in the near infrared. Our technique is analogous to the Iodine (I2) absorption cell method that has proven so successful in the optical regime. We rely on telluric CH4 absorption features to serve as a wavelength reference, relative to which we measure Doppler shifts of the CO and H2O features in the spectra of our targets. We apply this technique to high-resolution (R~50,000) spectra near 2.3 micron of nine L dwarfs taken with the Phoenix instrument on Gemini-South and demonstrate a typical precision of 300 m/s. We conduct simulations to estimate our expected precision and show our performance is currently limited by the signal-to-noise of our data. We present estimates of the rotational velocities and systemic velocities of our targets. With our current data, we are sensitive to companions with M sin i > 2MJ in orbits with periods less than three days. We identify no companions in our current data set. Future observations with improved signal-to-noise should result in radial-velocity precision of 100 m/s for L dwarfs.Comment: Accepted for publication in ApJ, 24 pages, 7 figure