WHEN GOVERNMENT IS NO LONGER EMPLOYER OF CHOICE; WHAT MAY THE SECTOR PERCEPTIONS OF PUBLIC MANAGERS BE LIKE AFTER THE ECONOMY RECOVERS?

In today’s economic climate, government is now considered by many to be the “employer of choice.” However, employers at all levels of government may eventually lose their recent gains in the war for talent, as the economy improves. Accordingly, it is important to explain how public sector managers viewed the relative advantages and disadvantages of government employment before the economic downturn along specific parameters, including opportunities for women and minorities, managerial autonomy, and employee talent and innovativeness. This paper assesses these views for state-level public managers across a broad range of public services, using survey data that preceded the economic downturn. Specifically, it examines how their past public and private sector career experiences, controlling for their contemporaneous government work experiences, affect their views of the public and private sectors. The study emphasizes career experiences not because past work experience are the only or the most important predictors of sector perceptions generally, but because career trajectory may be the most important consideration for developing strategy for response to government workforce dynamics once the economy improves. Thus, the findings are explained in terms of the related processes of workplace socialization and attitude formation and change, which see public and perhaps also private sector occupational norms and expectations and experiences, past and present, amalgamating to render personal values conducive to favoring one sector over the other. The importance of sector perceptions for human resources management and for broader government workforce concerns as the economy recovers are discussed, as well theory development regarding the career trajectories of public managers

Assessing the number of users who are excluded by domestic heating controls

This is the pre-print version of the Article. This Article is also referred to as: "Assessing the 'Design Exclusion' of Heating Controls at a Low-Cost, Low-Carbon Housing Development". - Copyright @ 2011 Taylor & FrancisSpace heating accounts for almost 60% of the energy delivered to housing which in turn accounts for nearly 27% of the total UK's carbon emissions. This study was conducted to investigate the influence of heating control design on the degree of ‘user exclusion’. This was calculated using the Design Exclusion Calculator, developed by the Engineering Design Centre at the University of Cambridge. To elucidate the capability requirements of the system, a detailed hierarchical task analysis was produced, due to the complexity of the overall task. The Exclusion Calculation found that the current design placed excessive demands upon the capabilities of at least 9.5% of the UK population over 16 years old, particularly in terms of ‘vision’, ‘thinking’ and ‘dexterity’ requirements. This increased to 20.7% for users over 60 years old. The method does not account for the level of numeracy and literacy and so the true exclusion may be higher. Usability testing was conducted to help validate the results which indicated that 66% of users at a low-carbon housing development could not programme their controls as desired. Therefore, more detailed analysis of the cognitive demands placed upon the users is required to understand where problems within the programming process occur. Further research focusing on this cognitive interaction will work towards a solution that may allow users to behave easily in a more sustainable manner

HYTEST Phase I Facility Commissioning and Modeling

The purpose of this document is to report the first year accomplishments of two coordinated Laboratory Directed Research and Development (LDRD) projects that utilize a hybrid energy testing laboratory that couples various reactors to investigate system reactance behavior. This work is the first phase of a series of hybrid energy research and testing stations - referred to hereafter as HYTEST facilities – that are planned for construction and operation at the Idaho National Laboratory (INL). A HYTEST Phase I facility was set up and commissioned in Bay 9 of the Bonneville County Technology Center (BCTC). The purpose of this facility is to utilize the hydrogen and oxygen that is produced by the High Temperature Steam Electrolysis test reactors operating in Bay 9 to support the investigation of kinetic phenomena and transient response of integrated reactor components. This facility provides a convenient scale for conducting scoping tests of new reaction concepts, materials performance, new instruments, and real-time data collection and manipulation for advance process controls. An enclosed reactor module was assembled and connected to a new ventilation system equipped with a variable-speed exhaust blower to mitigate hazardous gas exposures, as well as contract with hot surfaces. The module was equipped with a hydrogen gas pump and receiver tank to supply high quality hydrogen to chemical reactors located in the hood

Guided Surface Plasmon Mode of Semicircular Cross Section Silver Nanoridges

Tightly confined plasmon waveguide modes supported by semicircular cross section top silver nanoridges are investigated in this paper. Mode field profiles, dispersion curves, propagation distances, confinement factors, and figure-of-merits of semicircular top silver nanoridge plasmon waveguide mode are calculated for different radii of curvature at different wavelengths. It is found that semicircular top silver nanoridges support tightly confined quasi-TEM plasmon waveguide modes. Semicircular top silver nanoridge mode has longer propagation distance and higher figure-of-merit than that of the cylindrical silver nanowire of the same radius of curvature.Comment: 21 pages, 11 figure

Mode Properties of Flat-top Silver Nano-ridge Surface Plasmon Waveguides

We investigate surface plasmon modes supported by flat-top silver nano-ridges. We calculate the mode electromagnetic field distribution, the dispersion curve, the travel range, and the figure-of-merit of the nano-ridge mode. We find that the nano-ridge surface plasmon modes are quasi-TEM modes with longitudinal field components three orders of magnitude smaller than the transverse field components. The quasi-TEM nature of mode profiles reveals that the propagation of free electron oscillations on the top of the nano-ridge contributes mainly to the tightly confined ridge mode. We also find that as the width of the nano-ridge decreases, the ridge mode becomes more tightly confined on the ridge top. As the width of the nano-ridge increases, the nano-ridge mode approaches two decoupled right-angle wedge plasmon modes.Comment: 23 pages, 9 figures, journal articl

The diffusion of domestic energy efficiency policies: A spatial perspective

National domestic energy-efficiency policies are unlikely to be implemented in a geographically uniform manner. This paper demonstrates the importance of socioeconomic, contextual, and local policy conditions in shaping the spatially heterogeneous response to a national policy. Through an assessment of the geographical and temporal variation in domestic energy-efficiency assessments provided under the United Kingdom’s Green Deal, the factors underpinning the spatial diffusion of this policy are identified. Spatial regression models show that the presence of young families, university educated residents, detached homes, and large households positively affects the uptake of energy-efficiency assessments whereas property market activity, personal incomes, the presence of self-employed residents, and the efficiency levels of the existing housing stock has a dampening effect. National incentives for policy implementation that are distributed through selected local authorities also work to promote the uptake of energy-efficiency assessments. Overall, the analysis clearly shows the importance of local factors in determining how national policies are implemented on the ground. This has important implications for policymakers in designing and administering national policy frameworks, in trading-off targeted implementation with fairness and uniformity, and in evaluating the local effectiveness of national policies

Phylogenetically Widespread Polyembryony in Cyclostome Bryozoans and the Protracted Asynchronous Release of Clonal Brood-Mates

The file attached is the Published/publisher’s pdf version of the articl

Addressing statistical biases in nucleotide-derived protein databases for proteogenomic search strategies

[Image: see text] Proteogenomics has the potential to advance genome annotation through high quality peptide identifications derived from mass spectrometry experiments, which demonstrate a given gene or isoform is expressed and translated at the protein level. This can advance our understanding of genome function, discovering novel genes and gene structure that have not yet been identified or validated. Because of the high-throughput shotgun nature of most proteomics experiments, it is essential to carefully control for false positives and prevent any potential misannotation. A number of statistical procedures to deal with this are in wide use in proteomics, calculating false discovery rate (FDR) and posterior error probability (PEP) values for groups and individual peptide spectrum matches (PSMs). These methods control for multiple testing and exploit decoy databases to estimate statistical significance. Here, we show that database choice has a major effect on these confidence estimates leading to significant differences in the number of PSMs reported. We note that standard target:decoy approaches using six-frame translations of nucleotide sequences, such as assembled transcriptome data, apparently underestimate the confidence assigned to the PSMs. The source of this error stems from the inflated and unusual nature of the six-frame database, where for every target sequence there exists five “incorrect” targets that are unlikely to code for protein. The attendant FDR and PEP estimates lead to fewer accepted PSMs at fixed thresholds, and we show that this effect is a product of the database and statistical modeling and not the search engine. A variety of approaches to limit database size and remove noncoding target sequences are examined and discussed in terms of the altered statistical estimates generated and PSMs reported. These results are of importance to groups carrying out proteogenomics, aiming to maximize the validation and discovery of gene structure in sequenced genomes, while still controlling for false positives

Physical activity, sedentary time and physical capability in early old age: British birth cohort study.

PURPOSE: To investigate the associations of time spent sedentary, in moderate-to-vigorous-intensity physical activity (MVPA) and physical activity energy expenditure (PAEE) with physical capability measures at age 60-64 years. METHODS: Time spent sedentary and in MVPA and, PAEE were assessed using individually calibrated combined heart rate and movement sensing among 1727 participants from the MRC National Survey of Health and Development in England, Scotland and Wales as part of a detailed clinical assessment undertaken in 2006-2010. Multivariable linear regression models were used to examine the cross-sectional associations between standardised measures of each of these behavioural variables with grip strength, chair rise and timed up-&-go (TUG) speed and standing balance time. RESULTS: Greater time spent in MVPA was associated with higher levels of physical capability; adjusted mean differences in each capability measure per 1 standard deviation increase in MVPA time were: grip strength (0.477 kg, 95% confidence interval (CI): 0.015 to 0.939), chair rise speed (0.429 stands/min, 95% CI: 0.093 to 0.764), standing balance time (0.028 s, 95% CI: 0.003 to 0.053) and TUG speed (0.019 m/s, 95% CI: 0.011 to 0.026). In contrast, time spent sedentary was associated with lower grip strength (-0.540 kg, 95% CI: -1.013 to -0.066) and TUG speed (-0.011 m/s, 95% CI: -0.019 to -0.004). Associations for PAEE were similar to those for MVPA. CONCLUSION: Higher levels of MVPA and overall physical activity (PAEE) are associated with greater levels of physical capability whereas time spent sedentary is associated with lower levels of capability. Future intervention studies in older adults should focus on both the promotion of physical activity and reduction in time spent sedentary.This work was supported by the UK Medical Research Council (U120063239, U123092720, MC_UU_12019/1, MC_UU_12019/4, MC_UU_12015/3, and MC_UU_12015/4).This is the final published version. It first appeared at http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0126465