Principles and principals: Do customer stewardship and agency control compete or complement when shaping frontline employee behavior?

This article introduces customer stewardship control (CSC) to the marketing field. This concept represents a frontline employee's felt ownership of and moral responsibility for customers' overall welfare. In two studies, the authors show that CSC is a more encompassing construct than customer orientation, which reflects a frontline employee's focus on meeting customers' needs. They provide evidence that the former is more potent in shaping in- and extra-role employee behaviors. Moreover, they highlight how CSC operates in conjunction with an organization's agency control system: Stewardship's positive influence on in- and extra-role behavior is weaker in the presence of high agency control. They offer actionable advice about how to solve the resulting managerial control dilemma. Finally, the authors show that CSC depends on drivers that reside at the individual level (employee relatedness), the team level (team competence), or both levels of aggregation (employee and team autonomy). These findings show how to effectively design a frontline employee's work environment to ensure optimal frontline performance

Chronic Apocynin Treatment Attenuates Beta Amyloid Plaque Size and Microglial Number in hAPP(751)SL Mice

Background: NADPH oxidase is implicated in neurotoxic microglial activation and the progressive nature of Alzheimer’s Disease (AD). Here, we test the ability of two NADPH oxidase inhibitors, apocynin and dextromethorphan (DM), to reduce learning deficits and neuropathology in transgenic mice overexpressing human amyloid precursor protein with the Swedish and London mutations (hAPP(751)SL). Methods: Four month old hAPP(751)SL mice were treated daily with saline, 15 mg/kg DM, 7.5 mg/kg DM, or 10 mg/kg apocynin by gavage for four months. Results: Only hAPP(751)SL mice treated with apocynin showed reduced plaque size and a reduction in the number of cortical microglia, when compared to the saline treated group. Analysis of whole brain homogenates from all treatments tested (saline, DM, and apocynin) demonstrated low levels of TNFa, protein nitration, lipid peroxidation, and NADPH oxidase activation, indicating a low level of neuroinflammation and oxidative stress in hAPP(751)SL mice at 8 months of age that was not significantly affected by any drug treatment. Despite in vitro analyses demonstrating that apocynin and DM ameliorate Ab-induced extracellular superoxide production and neurotoxicity, both DM and apocynin failed to significantly affect learning and memory tasks or synaptic density in hAPP(751)SL mice. To discern how apocynin was affecting plaque levels (plaque load) and microglial number in vivo, in vitro analysis of microglia was performed, revealing no apocynin effects on beta-amyloid (Ab) phagocytosis, microglial proliferation, or microglial survival. Conclusions: Together, this study suggests that while hAPP(751)SL mice show increases in microglial number and plaque load, they fail to exhibit elevated markers of neuroinflammation consistent with AD at 8 months of age, which may be a limitation of this animal model. Despite absence of clear neuroinflammation, apocynin was still able to reduce both plaque size and microglial number, suggesting that apocynin may have additional therapeutic effects independent of anti-inflammatory characteristics

Vulnerable suspects in police interviews: exploring current practice in England and Wales

Mentally disordered individuals are increasingly coming into contact with the police. The current study explored investigative interview practice with mentally disordered suspects to examine how they respond, and the impact this has on the level of information obtained. Transcripts of interviews conducted with vulnerable and non-vulnerable suspects (N = 66) were analysed using a specially designed coding framework. Results highlighted that best practice is generally not being adhered to regarding questioning techniques (for example, the use of open questions). Furthermore, while police officers altered their communication to suit the needs of the vulnerable suspect, they were also more likely to use minimisation tactics. Mentally disordered suspects sought more clarification for open questions and provided more information to closed questions. They also demonstrated higher levels of vulnerability (suggestibility and compliance) when compared to their non-vulnerable counterparts. Implications regarding interviewing methods for this vulnerable group are discussed

Serving highly vulnerable families in home-visitation programs

Home-visitation programs for families with young children are growing in popularity in the US. These programs typically seek to prevent child abuse and neglect and/or promote optimal development for infants, toddlers, and/or preschool-age children. This paper focuses on improving the capacity of home-visitation programs to meet the complex needs of highly vulnerable families with young children. Poverty, maternal depression and substance abuse, and domestic violence are noted as factors that place young children at risk for poor outcomes. The challenges of providing home-visitation services to families in which these risk factors are present are discussed. Family engagement, matching services to families’ needs, and staff capabilities are highlighted as areas in which improvements can be made to enhance home-visitation programs’ capacity to serve highly vulnerable families. Recommendations are given for improving the effectiveness of home-visitation programs in serving these families, as well for addressing policy and research issues related to the further development and evaluation of these programs.First author draf

Steps and bumps: precision extraction of discrete states of molecular machines using physically-based, high-throughput time series analysis

We report new statistical time-series analysis tools providing significant improvements in the rapid, precision extraction of discrete state dynamics from large databases of experimental observations of molecular machines. By building physical knowledge and statistical innovations into analysis tools, we demonstrate new techniques for recovering discrete state transitions buried in highly correlated molecular noise. We demonstrate the effectiveness of our approach on simulated and real examples of step-like rotation of the bacterial flagellar motor and the F1-ATPase enzyme. We show that our method can clearly identify molecular steps, symmetries and cascaded processes that are too weak for existing algorithms to detect, and can do so much faster than existing algorithms. Our techniques represent a major advance in the drive towards automated, precision, highthroughput studies of molecular machine dynamics. Modular, open-source software that implements these techniques is provided at http://www.eng.ox.ac.uk/samp/members/max/software

Physiological markers of exercise capacity and lung disease severity in cystic fibrosis

National Institute of Health Research (UK