How do excellent companies stay excellent?

Organisations throughout the world adopt business excellence frameworks to guide their business strategy and continuous improvement. Some seek and receive awards which recognise high levels of achievement against the criteria of these frameworks. Even at these levels of performance, organisations face challenges to maintaining high levels of achievement and these are the subject of this paper. Using a sample of Australian Business Excellence Award winners, interviews with key managers provide insights into the challenges which these organisations face in their ongoing quest for excellence. Six key themes emerged: embedding excellence, ensuring it is not onerous, engaging people, providing meaning, driving and consistency. The paper explores these and how they are managed

Lifelong guidance policy and practice in the EU

A study on lifelong guidance (LLG) policy and practice in the EU focusing on trends, challenges and opportunities. Lifelong guidance aims to provide career development support for individuals of all ages, at all career stages. It includes careers information, advice, counselling, assessment of skills and mentoring

What Is Historic Integrity Worth to the General Public? Evidence from a Proposed Relocation of a West Virginia Agricultural Mill

While historians believe that preserving a historic building in its original location is important to maintain its historic integrity, the general publicÂ’s opinion is unknown. Survey data were gathered from local residents regarding a proposed relocation of a historic mill in rural West Virginia. Only a minority of the sample population supported preserving the mill at its original location. Willingness to pay for preservation was estimated at $8.45 for a one-time donation for the sample and$2.29 after adjusting for non-respondents using characteristics of the local population.contingent valuation, historic preservation, Tobit model, willingness to pay, Demand and Price Analysis, Resource /Energy Economics and Policy,

The importance of data partitioning and the utility of bayes factors in bayesian phylogenetics

As larger, more complex data sets are being used to infer phylogenies, accuracy of these phylogenies increasingly requires models of evolution that accommodate heterogeneity in the processes of molecular evolution. We investigated the effect of improper data partitioning on phylogenetic accuracy, as well as the type I error rate and sensitivity of Bayes factors, a commonly used method for choosing among different partitioning strategies in Bayesian analyses. We also used Bayes factors to test empirical data for the need to divide data in a manner that has no expected biological meaning. Posterior probability estimates are misleading when an incorrect partitioning strategy is assumed. The error was greatest when the assumed model was underpartitioned. These results suggest that model partitioning is important for large data sets. Bayes factors performed well, giving a 5% type I error rate, which is remarkably consistent with standard frequentist hypothesis tests. The sensitivity of Bayes factors was found to be quite high when the across-class model heterogeneity reflected that of empirical data. These results suggest that Bayes factors represent a robust method of choosing among partitioning strategies. Lastly, results of tests for the inclusion of unexpected divisions in empirical data mirrored the simulation results, although the outcome of such tests is highly dependent on accounting for rate variation among classes. We conclude by discussing other approaches for partitioning data, as well as other applications of Bayes factors. Copyright © Society of Systematic Biologists

Ubiquitination and deubiquitination of PCNA in response to stalling of the replication fork

Following exposure of human cells to DNA damaging agents that block the progress of the replication fork, mono-ubiquitination of PCNA mediates the switch from replicative DNA polymerases to polymerases specialised for translesion synthesis. We have shown that this modification of PCNA is necessary for the survival of cells after UV-irradiation and methyl methanesulfonate, that it is independent of cell cycle checkpoint activation, and that it persists after UV damage has been removed. In this Extra-view, we compare the regulation and biological significance of PCNA ubiquitination following treatments with UV light and the replication inhibitor hydroxyurea. We show that ubiquitination persists after removal of the replication block in both cases. With UV however, the persistence of ubiquitinated PCNA correlates with disappearance of the PCNA deubiquitinating enzyme USP1, whereas this is not the case for HU. Prevention of PCNA ubiquitination sensitises the cells to killing by both UV and HU

Developing Contemporary Literacies through Sports: A Guide for the English Classroom

Bryan Ripley Crandall is a contributing author, Promoting democracy through sports, community and dialogue with The Crossover. Book description: Love them or loathe them, the prominence of sports in schools and society is undeniable. The emphasis on sports culture presents teachers with countless possibilities for engaging students in the English language arts. Whether appealing to students’ passion for sports to advance literacy practices or inviting students to reconsider normalized views by examining sports culture through a critical lens, teachers can make sports a pedagogical ally. This book, a collection of lessons and commentaries from established teachers, teacher educators, scholars, and authors, will support teachers in turning students’ extracurricular interests into legitimate options for academic study. With seven interrelated sections—facilitating literature study, providing alternatives to traditional novels, teaching writing, engaging students in inquiry and research, fostering media and digital literacies, promoting social justice, and developing out-of-school literacies—this collection and its companion website provide numerous resources that support teachers in developing students’ contemporary literacies through sports. Each section includes (1) four lesson plans written by practicing English teachers and teacher educators that focus on a specific topic and/or method of instruction; (2) a brief introduction from a leading scholar in the field of English education, including Wendy Glenn, Chris Crowe, Joan F. Mitchell, Jeffrey D. Wilhelm, Carl A. Young, Lisa Scherff, and Thomas Newkirk; and (3) a closing “author connection” in which contemporary authors of sports-related young adult literature—Alan Lawrence Sitomer, Ann E. Burg, Chris Lynch, Rich Wallace and Sandra Neil Wallace, Lisa Luedeke, Bill Konigsberg, and Chris Crutcher—offer reflections on and connections to the ongoing conversations. In giving voice to so many literacy educators and authors, including forewords by English teacher educator Peter Smagorinsky and acclaimed sports journalist and fiction and nonfiction writer Robert Lipsyte, as well as an afterword by professor emeritus Joseph O. Milner, editors Alan Brown and Luke Rodesiler have made a giant first step in their call to make public the practice of promoting critical sports literacy as a way of reaching all students in the middle and high school classroom.https://digitalcommons.fairfield.edu/education-books/1059/thumbnail.jp

Mannitol promotes adherence of an outbreak strain of Burkholderia multivorans via an exopolysaccharide-independent mechanism that is associated with upregulation of newly identified fimbrial and afimbrial adhesins

© Society for General Microbiology, 2013. Post-print version of article deposited in accordance with SHERPA RoMEO guidelinesBurkholderia multivorans, a member of the Burkholderia cepacia complex (Bcc), is an important pathogen of the cystic fibrosis (CF) lung. Mannitol, approved as an inhaled osmolyte therapy for use in CF patients, promotes exopolysaccharide (EPS) production by the Bcc. In the present study, we investigated the role of mannitol-induced EPS in the adherence of B. multivorans. We report that mannitol promoted adherence of two representative B. multivorans strains. However, whilst this enhanced adherence was largely EPS-dependent in an environmental isolate, it was EPS-independent within a CF outbreak strain, suggesting strain-to-strain variation in adhesins. Genome sequencing of the outbreak strain enabled the identification of two distinct loci encoding putative fimbrial and afimbrial adhesins. The putative fimbriae-encoding locus was found to be widely distributed amongst clinical and environmental B. multivorans. In contrast, the locus encoding the putative afimbrial adhesin (of the filamentous haemagglutinin family, FHA) was restricted to clinical isolates. Both loci contributed to biofilm formation and mucin adherence. Furthermore, we report that mannitol promoted expression of both loci, and that the locus encoding the putative FHA-family adhesin is a key determinant of the enhanced adherence observed following growth in mannitol. Our studies provide the first characterization, to our knowledge, of B. multivorans adhesins, and in so doing highlight the strain-dependent role of EPS in the Bcc and the difficulties in assigning phenotypic traits to Bcc EPS due to the wider response to mannitol. Our observations also highlight the need to monitor the microbiological effects of inhaled mannitol therapy in Bcc-infected CF patients

A Comment on “Is Information Systems a Science?”

In this paper, we respond to McBride’s (2018) paper on whether information systems is a science. We first argue that information systems is indeed a science in that it draws from and creates knowledge in a form similar to many different disciplines, including psychology, sociology, mathematics, economics, computer science, and engineering. We counter the flawed logic of methodical extremists who believe that their approach represents the best or only path to knowledge. Specifically, we argue that many different methods of inquiry and discovery are appropriate in information systems and that each has its strengths and weaknesses

On the integration of object-oriented and process-oriented computation in persistent environments

Persistent programming is concerned with the construction of large and long lived systems of data [1,2]. Such systems have traditionally required concurrent access for two reasons. The first is that of speed, be it access speed for multiple users or execution speed for parallel activities. The second reason for concurrency is to control the complexity of large systems by decomposing them into parallel activities. This process-oriented approach to system construction has much in common with the object-oriented approach. We will demonstrate, in this paper, the facilities of the language Napier [17] which allows the integration of the two methodologies along with a persistent environment to provide concurrently accessed object-oriented databases.Othe