Emotional Support Animals, Service Animals, and Pets on Campus

For decades, universities have been accommodating physically disabled students who require guide dogs and other types of service animals. Within the past several years, however, mentally disabled students have increasingly petitioned colleges with no-pet policies to permit them to bring their animals on campus because they need a companion or emotional support animal to make college life easier and to reduce their stress, loneliness, depression, and/or anxiety. Institutions that unlawfully reject such requests are finding themselves in court and charged with disability discrimination. Schools are understandably confused about their obligation, if any, to waive their no-pet rules under these circumstances. This article discusses pets on campus and provides administrators guidance with respect to this increasingly contentious issue and to keep their organizations “out of the legal dog house.

How managers use the Stockdale Paradox to balance “the now and the next”

Recent discussions of leadership paradoxes have suggested that managers who can hold seemingly opposed, yet interrelated perspectives, are more adaptive and effective. One such paradox that has received relatively little attention is the “Stockdale Paradox,” named after Admiral James Stockdale, an American naval officer who was held captive for seven and one-half years during the Vietnam War and survived imprisonment in large part because he held beliefs of optimism about the future, while simultaneously acknowledging the current reality of the desperate situation in which he found himself. This contradictory tension enabled him and his followers to emerge from their situation not just unbroken, but stronger. Such paradoxical thinking has been empirically supported by mental contrasting research demonstrating the effectiveness of visualizing a positive future yet recognizing the reality of the current situation. This apparent dichotomy provides an important lesson for leaders who must remain optimistic, yet face the reality of their present condition, and is symbolic of an overarching, general tension leaders face in addressing “the now and the next.

Women’s Empowerment Campaigns: Helpful or Harmful to the Workplace?

Women’s empowerment campaigns create greater equality for women in numerous areas including social, political, economic, and occupational fields. However, the current #MeToo and Time’s Up movements have become increasingly hostile toward men. This hostility has developed an anti-male environment that may be perceived by men as unfair restrictions on their behavior and boundaries on their autonomy. This leads to adoption of behavior and attitudes opposite of the intended effects and that may do more harm than good. This response is explained as psychological reactance. The authors discuss its harmful impact in the workplace offer suggestions for mitigating these situations

Never Underestimate the Power of a Backhoe: Integrating Single Points of Failure into Strategic Planning

SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats) analysis is probably used more often than any other management technique in strategic decision making. There appears to be a greater emphasis, however, on identifying strengths and opportunities while weaknesses and threats are examined less closely. Such bias may be problematic because firms may overlook single points of failure (SPOFs), which are elements that, upon malfunction, render an entire system unavailable or unreliable. These threats and weaknesses are most often presented in information technology and engineering discussions of equipment, machine, and device breakdowns, but may have applicability in a number of other areas important to organizations including people; materials and supplies; methods and processes; and shock events—natural and human-made disasters. To be resilient in today’s 24-7, 365 days a year global business world, it is critical that organizations effectively anticipate, evaluate, prepare for, and mitigate SPOF risks that can have a seriously negative impact on a firm’s performance. The paper concludes with a three-step approach to help managers reduce and effectively respond to SPOFs. Companies that integrate the concept of SPOFs into their strategic planning could develop high-impact management skill, leading to improved corporate profitability

SM-1 (APPR-1) RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT PROGRAM ACTIVITY BUILDUP PROGRAM. TASK I. Status Report for February to November 1958

Results are given of experimental work performed from February to November 1958 to determine the nature and extent of the build-up of radioactivity in the primary system of the SM-1 (APPR-1). The results of radiochemical and chemical analyses of primary water, circulating crud, and deposits removed from metal test specimens are presented. The relationships between build-up of activity and calendar hours, reactor operation, and crud levels are given. The methods and results of dose rate measurements made on the primary system components are reported. (auth

Long-term trends in anthropogenic land use in Siberia and the Russian Far East : a case study synthesis from Landsat

As globally important forested areas situated in a context of dramatic socio-economic changes, Siberia and the Russian Far East (RFE) are important regions to monitor for anthropogenic land-use trends. Therefore, we compiled decadal Landsat-derived land-cover and land-use data for eight dominantly rural case study sites in these regions and focused on trends associated with settlements, agriculture, logging, and roads 1975-2010. Several key spatial-temporal trends emerged from the integrated landscape-scale analyses. First, road building increased in all case study sites over the 35-year period, despite widespread socio-economic decline post-1990. Second, increase in settlements area was negligible over all sites. Third, increased road building, largely of minor roads, was especially high in more rugged and remote RFE case study sites not associated with greater agriculture extent or settlement densities. High demands for wood export coupled with the expansion of commercial timber harvest leases starting in the mid-1990s are likely among leading reasons for an increase in roads. Fourth, although fire was the dominant disturbance over all sites and dates combined, logging exerted a strong land-use pattern, serving as a reminder that considering local anthropogenic landscapes is important, especially in Siberia and the RFE, which represent almost 10% of the Earth's terrestrial land surface. The paper concludes by identifying remaining research needs regarding anthropogenic land use in the region: more frequent moderate spatial resolution imagery and greater access to more finely resolved statistical and other spatial data will enable further research. Social media abstract Landsat reveals long-term anthropogenic land-use trends in Siberia and Russian Far EastPeer reviewe

Characterization of Imaging Luminance Measurement Devices (ILMDs)

CIE 244:2021This document describes the elements, function and characterization of imaging luminance measuring devices (ILMDs). Furthermore, the calibration of ILMDs is described and some guidelines for their use are provided. Using ILMDs the projection of the luminance distribution of a scene can be recorded and made available for further evaluation. In addition to a simple documentation of measurements, the geometrical assignment of the image points into the object coordinate system often allows more complex calculations by combining luminance, directional and, if necessary, solid angle information (e.g. for glare evaluation). In addition to the flexible evaluation option, it is possible to acquire a large number of measured values quickly and, if necessary, even synchronously. Furthermore, the type of evaluation can also be coupled to the image content, i.e. the image areas to be evaluated can be determined in the image either by their position within the image or by their luminance value

Evidence for the role of EPHX2 gene variants in anorexia nervosa.

Anorexia nervosa (AN) and related eating disorders are complex, multifactorial neuropsychiatric conditions with likely rare and common genetic and environmental determinants. To identify genetic variants associated with AN, we pursued a series of sequencing and genotyping studies focusing on the coding regions and upstream sequence of 152 candidate genes in a total of 1205 AN cases and 1948 controls. We identified individual variant associations in the Estrogen Receptor-ß (ESR2) gene, as well as a set of rare and common variants in the Epoxide Hydrolase 2 (EPHX2) gene, in an initial sequencing study of 261 early-onset severe AN cases and 73 controls (P=0.0004). The association of EPHX2 variants was further delineated in: (1) a pooling-based replication study involving an additional 500 AN patients and 500 controls (replication set P=0.00000016); (2) single-locus studies in a cohort of 386 previously genotyped broadly defined AN cases and 295 female population controls from the Bogalusa Heart Study (BHS) and a cohort of 58 individuals with self-reported eating disturbances and 851 controls (combined smallest single locus P<0.01). As EPHX2 is known to influence cholesterol metabolism, and AN is often associated with elevated cholesterol levels, we also investigated the association of EPHX2 variants and longitudinal body mass index (BMI) and cholesterol in BHS female and male subjects (N=229) and found evidence for a modifying effect of a subset of variants on the relationship between cholesterol and BMI (P<0.01). These findings suggest a novel association of gene variants within EPHX2 to susceptibility to AN and provide a foundation for future study of this important yet poorly understood condition