Operations Strategy: A Broader View Of Threading The Vision To The Customer

In todays turbulent business environment, providing services, products, and solutions that meet customer needs and demands is a major challenge for all businesses. To be more competitive, companies are placing greater emphasis on lowering costs, improving quality, and reducing product cycle-time. Many different approaches, frameworks, and models are being used to guide businesses in their endeavors to move to the next level of productivity and excellence. This paper proposes an integrated framework that can assist business executives in evaluating and integrating their organizations in order to improve their operational profile

Principles Driven Leadership: Thoughts, Observations And Conceptual Model

Leadership has as many definitions as it does books written on the subject. Discussions regarding the subject often migrate toward the differences between leadership and management. The purpose of this paper is to provide a conceptual view of leadership based on experience, observation and lessons learned. A conceptual model and a comprehensive set of principles are presented that can be used as a blueprint toward developing a sound foundation of leadership

The Manifest Destiny Of Education: Past, Present And Beyond The Boundaries Of Tradition

The generation currently in secondary schools has never known the world without the Internet, has spent thousands of hours each year interacting with video games and social media, and has high expectations for the degree of control and choices they will have regarding employment, entertainment, and the education they receive.The employers of our future graduates have undergone - and will continue to undergo - profound changes in consumer behavior and technology-based marketing and value creation, while simultaneously facing intense global competition, rapid technological advances, and dynamic markets. Employer demands for increasingly flexible, self-motivated, collaborative, communicative, creative, energetic, technology savvy employees will continue to rise. These conditions are fundamentally changing consumer and employer expectations of education and driving the need for ever greater relevance, personalization, flexibility, mobility, and meaningful and relevant outcomes. In many respects, we must work toward and plan for an evolving target and, as such, we should work to create dynamic contexts as well as learning what can change and be modified as needed

Leadership Systems Model: An Integration Of People, Process, And Behaviors In A Dynamic And Evolving Environment

Defining, observing, and measuring leadership skills, styles and approaches are far from being a new effort. Although research has provided much information regarding leadership, the classical leadership theories and models, processes, and behavioral views must be further integrated in order to provide a richer and wider view of leadership. Furthermore, organizations are not static; they are constantly changing and evolving over time. The purpose of this paper is to provide a conceptual model integrating these views using a systems level theory to understand the aggregate nature of leadership

The Research Roadmap: A Primer To The Approach And Process

Performing research can be an overwhelming and challenging endeavor.  It’s easy to get confused just from collecting, reading and deciphering textbooks and journal articles. Getting organized and mapping out the entire process would be extremely helpful and more importantly provide a path for accomplishing the research project.  This paper will provide a research roadmap that can be used as a guide for accomplishing a research project or a doctoral dissertation.  It will discuss research methods, ethics in research, key components, and provide a comprehensive graphic that can be used as a guide to quick-start the research effort

The Defense Life Cycle Management System As A Working Model For Academic Application

Performing the review and assessment of masters’ level degree programs can be an overwhelming and challenging endeavor.  Getting organized and mapping out the entire review and assessment process can be extremely helpful and more importantly provide a path for successfully accomplishing the review and assessment of the entire program.  This paper will provide a roadmap that was used as a guide for accomplishing a successful review and assessment of academic degree programs in a logical and succinct manner by adapting a proven model originally developed for the acquisition and life cycle management of new equipment, materials, and systems. This paper will also discuss how the Integrated Defense Acquisition, Technology, and Logistics Life Cycle Management System process was adapted to the needs of an academic institution of higher-learning

Changes in Whole Blood Gene Expression in Obese Subjects with Type 2 Diabetes Following Bariatric Surgery: a Pilot Study

A pilot study was performed in order to investigate the effects of bariatric surgery on whole blood gene expression profiles in obese subjects with type 2 diabetes.Whole blood from eleven obese subjects with type 2 diabetes was collected in PAXgene tubes prior to and 6-12 months after bariatric surgery. Total RNA was isolated, amplified, labeled and hybridized to Illumina gene expression microarrays. Clinical and expression data were analyzed using a paired t-test, and correlations between changes in clinical trait and transcript levels were calculated. Pathways were identified using Ingenuity Pathway Analysis and DAVID gene ontology software. Overall, bariatric surgery resulted in significant reduction of body mass index, fasting plasma glucose, fasting plasma insulin, and normalization of glycosylated hemoglobin levels. The expression levels of 204 transcripts, representing 200 unique genes, were significantly altered after bariatric surgery. Among the significantly regulated genes were GGT1, CAMP, DEFA1, LCN2, TP53, PDSS1, OLR1, CNTNAP5, DHCR24, HHAT and SARDH, which have been previously implicated in lipid metabolism, obesity and/or type 2 diabetes. Selected findings were replicated by quantitative real-time-PCR. The changes in expression of seven transcripts, WDR35, FLF45244, DHCR24, TIGD7, TOPBP1, TSHZ1, and FAM8A1 were strongly correlated with the changes in body weight, fasting plasma glucose and glycosylated hemoglobin content. The top pathways associated with gene expression changes after bariatric surgery was lipid metabolism, small molecule biochemistry and gene expression. Two antimicrobial peptides were among the transcripts with the largest changes in gene expression after bariatric surgery.Data from this pilot study suggest that whole blood expression levels of specific transcripts may be useful as biomarkers associated with susceptibility for type 2 diabetes and/or therapeutic response

Turning solid aluminium transparent by intense soft X-ray photoionization

Saturable absorption is a phenomenon readily seen in the optical and infrared wavelengths. It has never been observed in core-electron transitions owing to the short lifetime of the excited states involved and the high intensities of the soft X-rays needed. We report saturable absorption of an L-shell transition in aluminium using record intensities over 10 16 W cm 2 at a photon energy of 92 eV. From a consideration of the relevant timescales, we infer that immediately after the X-rays have passed, the sample is in an exotic state where all of the aluminium atoms have an L-shell hole, and the valence band has approximately a 9 eV temperature, whereas the atoms are still on their crystallographic positions. Subsequently, Auger decay heats the material to the warm dense matter regime, at around 25 eV temperatures. The method is an ideal candidate to study homogeneous warm dense matter, highly relevant to planetary science, astrophysics and inertial confinement fusion. © 2009 Macmillan Publishers Limited. All rights reserved