Gendering the careers of young professionals: some early findings from a longitudinal study. in Organizing/theorizing: developments in organization theory and practice

Wonders whether companies actually have employees best interests at heart across physical, mental and spiritual spheres. Posits that most organizations ignore their workforce – not even, in many cases, describing workers as assets! Describes many studies to back up this claim in theis work based on the 2002 Employment Research Unit Annual Conference, in Cardiff, Wales

Fine structure in the α decay of 223U

Fine structure in the α decay of 223U was observed in the fusion-evaporation reaction 187Re(40Ar, p3n) by using fast digital pulse processing technique. Two α-decay branches of 223U feeding the ground state and 244 keV excited state of 219Th were identified by establishing the decay chain 223U →α1 219Th →α2 215Ra →α3 211Rn. The α-particle energy for the ground-state to ground-state transition of 223U was determined to be 8993(17) keV, 213 keV higher than the previous value, the half-life was updated to be 62−10+14 μs. Evolution of nuclear structure for N = 131 even-Z isotones from Po to U was discussed in the frameworks of nuclear mass and reduced α-decay width, a weakening octupole deformation in the ground state of 223U relative to its lighter isotones 219Ra and 221Th was suggested

East Dunbartonshire geodiversity audit

This report describes a geodiversity audit of East Dunbartonshire commissioned by East Dunbartonshire Council (EDC), funded by Scottish Natural Heritage (SNH) and EDC, and carried out by the British Geological Survey (BGS). The audit began with a review of the available geodiversity documentation for East Dunbartonshire including BGS field maps, databases, digital aerial photography and publications, SNH SSSI and GCR documentation, and site information from the Strathclyde RIGS Group. An initial list of 59 sites with potential for geodiversity value was compiled from this information. A total of 36 sites from the initial list were visited and audited, most during March and April 2009. Information was recorded on the GeoDiversitY scoring system, developed by BGS. In this system, geological scientific merit, education value, community site value, cultural/heritage/economic importance, access, site fragility, potential are assessed. The GeoDiversitY system was accessed via digital data entry forms on the BGS SIGMA Mobile system running on a ruggedized field notebook PC. Of the 36 sites visited, 34 are recommended as Local Geodiversity Sites. These sites have a good geographical spread across East Dunbartonshire, encompassing both urban and rural areas. Together they show typical geological strata, structure and features of all the geological units present immediately beneath the surface of East Dunbartonshire and are representative examples of the Carboniferous sequence which underlies much of Central Scotland. The sites, chosen primarily for their geology, have revealed numerous links to the character of the landscape, historical structures, ecology, and the economic and cultural history of the area. Many of these sites could be enhanced to encourage visitors and students to learn more about the geology beneath their feet and how the geology, as the foundation of our landscape, has influenced the form and nature of what lies at the surface; from the inter-drumlin depressions which have created a wetland habitat to the ironstones and fireclays which were exploited as raw materials for the heavy industry which flourished around Glasgow, resulting in the development of large conurbations. This report will assist in future planning, development and conservation issues within East Dunbartonshire and form the basis of a Local Geodiversity Action Plan (LGAP)

PDP-11 front-end for a VAX-11/780

An unpublicized feature of the VAX-11/780 is the provision for attaching a PDP-11 to the VAX UNIBUS Adapter. Doing this can give significantly improved I/O performance for applications which are limited by overhead in the VAX I/O driver rather than by the transfer speed of the UNIBUS itself. Such a system was implemented by using a PDP-11/04 as a front-end to a CAMAC data acquisition system. Both the PDP and the VAX have full access to the UNIBUS. That portion of the PDP address space that does not have UNIBUS memory can be mapped to buffers in the VAX memory; this approach allows the PDP to access VAX memory and to initiate DMA transfers directly to the VAX. The VAX also has full access to the PDP memory; a convenient means for developing and downloading the PDP software is thus provided. 5 figures

The Australian Rural Health Research Collaboration: Building collaborative population health research in rural and remote NSW

The health problems faced by rural and remote communities are complex and not amenable to simple or short-term solutions. The Australian Rural Health Research Collaboration, which comprises rural research centres, area health services and policy makers in NSW, investigates these problems. Founded in 2002, it has grown to become the leading rural research collaboration in Australia. It aims to: conduct high quality research; build the capacity of researchers and clinicians; and encourage the translation of research evidence into practice for the benefit of rural and remote communities. The success of the Collaboration is illustrated by the increase in research outputs, funds generated, the strength of the relationships between partners and the ability to address complex research problems such as the mental health of rural and remote communities often deemed too difficult or expensive to include in metropolitan-based research. Keys to success have been the inclusive public health ethos, the participation of senior researchers and service managers, the critical mass of researchers achieved through collaboration and effective leadership and governance. This demonstrates the value of supporting cooperative research and capacity building in rural and remote areas where the size of research groups is small and where effective multi-disciplinary and co-operative research can pay dividends

Functional genomics reveals that Clostridium difficile Spo0A coordinates sporulation, virulence and metabolism

Background Clostridium difficile is an anaerobic, Gram-positive bacterium that can reside as a commensal within the intestinal microbiota of healthy individuals or cause life-threatening antibiotic-associated diarrhea in immunocompromised hosts. C. difficile can also form highly resistant spores that are excreted facilitating host-to-host transmission. The C. difficile spo0A gene encodes a highly conserved transcriptional regulator of sporulation that is required for relapsing disease and transmission in mice. Results Here we describe a genome-wide approach using a combined transcriptomic and proteomic analysis to identify Spo0A regulated genes. Our results validate Spo0A as a positive regulator of putative and novel sporulation genes as well as components of the mature spore proteome. We also show that Spo0A regulates a number of virulence-associated factors such as flagella and metabolic pathways including glucose fermentation leading to butyrate production. Conclusions The C. difficile spo0A gene is a global transcriptional regulator that controls diverse sporulation, virulence and metabolic phenotypes coordinating pathogen adaptation to a wide range of host interactions. Additionally, the rich breadth of functional data allowed us to significantly update the annotation of the C. difficile 630 reference genome which will facilitate basic and applied research on this emerging pathogen. Supplemental Material Identification of differentially expressed genes in C. difficile 630∆erm spo0A mutant by transcriptional profiling. Scatter plot of the log2 fold changes against the normalised mean read abundance per gene (calculated at the base level). Red dots represent genes considered to be significantly differentially expressed (P = ≤ 0.01). Black dots signify genes not deemed to be significantly differentially expressed according to these criteria. Table summarizing genes differentially expressed in a C. difficile spo0A mutant relative to the parental strain based on transcriptomics and proteomics. Datasets are presented in the context of the entire updated reference genome annotation for C. difficile 630. Table summarizing gene regulation genes that are controlled by C. difficile Spo0A