I-O Psychology in Aotearoa, New Zealand: A world away?

Industrial-organizational psychology has had a fairly long history in this country, dating back to around the 1920s (Jamieson & Paterson, 1993). To a large extent the field developed initially within universities, although the focus of I-O psychologists’ activities in this country has always been very applied. Inclusion of I-O psychology in university curricula originally started at the University of Canterbury (in the south island) and then Massey University (in the north island); now two other universities (University of Auckland and University of Waikato, both in the north island) also provide training programs in the field. There are about a dozen academics in psychology departments who would consider themselves to be I-O psychologists, and a small handful in management or HRM departments. Clearly the number of academics specializing in this field is very small. Although this poses challenges for the development of I-O psychology in Aotearoa New Zealand, at the same time it helps communication among us

A Penalty Method for the Numerical Solution of Hamilton-Jacobi-Bellman (HJB) Equations in Finance

We present a simple and easy to implement method for the numerical solution of a rather general class of Hamilton-Jacobi-Bellman (HJB) equations. In many cases, the considered problems have only a viscosity solution, to which, fortunately, many intuitive (e.g. finite difference based) discretisations can be shown to converge. However, especially when using fully implicit time stepping schemes with their desirable stability properties, one is still faced with the considerable task of solving the resulting nonlinear discrete system. In this paper, we introduce a penalty method which approximates the nonlinear discrete system to first order in the penalty parameter, and we show that an iterative scheme can be used to solve the penalised discrete problem in finitely many steps. We include a number of examples from mathematical finance for which the described approach yields a rigorous numerical scheme and present numerical results.Comment: 18 Pages, 4 Figures. This updated version has a slightly more detailed introduction. In the current form, the paper will appear in SIAM Journal on Numerical Analysi

Isospin Splitting in the Baryon Octet and Decuplet

Baryon mass splittings are analyzed in terms of a simple model with general pairwise interactions. At present, the $\Delta$ masses are poorly known from experiments. Improvement of these data would provide an opportunity to make a significant test of our understanding of electromagnetic and quark-mass contributions to hadronic masses. The problem of determining resonance masses from scattering and production data is discussed.Comment: 9 pages, LATEX inc. 2 LATEX "pictures", CMU-HEP91-24-R9

Penalty Methods for the Solution of Discrete HJB Equations -- Continuous Control and Obstacle Problems

In this paper, we present a novel penalty approach for the numerical solution of continuously controlled HJB equations and HJB obstacle problems. Our results include estimates of the penalisation error for a class of penalty terms, and we show that variations of Newton's method can be used to obtain globally convergent iterative solvers for the penalised equations. Furthermore, we discuss under what conditions local quadratic convergence of the iterative solvers can be expected. We include numerical results demonstrating the competitiveness of our methods.Comment: 31 Pages, 7 Figure

Transcriptional profiling reveals altered biological characteristics of chorionic stem cells from women with gestational diabetes

Background Gestational diabetes (GDM) is a common complication of pregnancy. The impact of pregnancy complications on placental function suggests that extraembryonic stem cells in the placenta may also be affected during pregnancy. Neonatal tissue-derived stem cells, with the advantages of their differentiation capacity and non-invasive isolation processes, have been proposed as a promising therapeutic avenue for GDM management through potential cell therapy approaches. However, the influence of GDM on autologous stem cells remains unclear. Thus, studies that provide comprehensive understanding of stem cells isolated from women with GDM are essential to guide future clinical applications. Methods Human chorionic membrane-derived stem cells (CMSCs) were isolated from placentas of healthy and GDM pregnancies. Transcriptional profiling was performed by DNA microarray, and differentially regulated genes between GDM- and Healthy-CMSCs were used to analyse molecular functions, differentiation, and pathway enrichment. Altered genes and biological functions were validated via real-time PCR and in vitro assays. Results GDM-CMSCs displayed, vs. Healthy-CMSCs, 162 upregulated genes associated with increased migration ability, epithelial development, and growth factor-associated signal transduction while the 269 downregulated genes were strongly linked to angiogenesis and cellular metabolic processes. Notably, significantly reduced expression of detoxification enzymes belonging to the aldehyde dehydrogenase gene families (ALDH1A1/1A2, ALDH2, ALDH3) accounted for downregulation across several metabolic pathways. ALDH activity and inhibitor assays indicated that reduced gene expression of ALDHs affected ALDH enzymatic functions and resulted in oxidative stress dysregulation in GDM-CMSCs. Conclusion Our combined transcriptional analysis and in vitro functional characterisation have provided novel insights into fundamental biological differences in GDM- and Healthy-CMSCs. Enhanced mobility of GDM-CMSCs may promote MSC migration toward injured sites; however, impaired cellular metabolic activity may negatively affect any perceived benefit

Codified methods to analyse the failures of water pipelines: A Review

Pipelines used for the transportation of water and other services are very important lifelines in modern society. The important role that they play in our present economy is reflected by thousands of kilometres of service laid in urban centres worldwide. As many of these pipelines have been laid few decades earlier, in most cases, their condition has been deteriorated mainly by electro-chemical and (or) micro-biological corrosion. There are several codes of practice available at present to analyse the condition of such deteriorated pipes. This paper identifies and reviews all such relevant standards applicable to corroded water mains with the use of some case studies. Three dimensional finite element analyses are also conducted to investigate the capabilities of simulating the failures of corroded pipelines and thus to ascertain the validity of codified methods. By careful assessment of the current codes of practice in use, it is possible to understand where these codes are lacking and which codes can rightly predict the realistic water pipe failures observed in the past

Invariants of differential equations defined by vector fields

We determine the most general group of equivalence transformations for a family of differential equations defined by an arbitrary vector field on a manifold. We also find all invariants and differential invariants for this group up to the second order. A result on the characterization of classes of these equations by the invariant functions is also given.Comment: 13 page

Dawn–Dusk Asymmetries In The Coupled Solar Wind–Magnetosphere–Ionosphere System: A Review

Dawn–dusk asymmetries are ubiquitous features of the coupled solar-wind–magnetosphere–ionosphere system. During the last decades, increasing availability of satellite and ground-based measurements has made it possible to study these phenomena in more detail. Numerous publications have documented the existence of persistent asymmetries in processes, properties and topology of plasma structures in various regions of geospace. In this paper, we present a review of our present knowledge of some of the most pronounced dawn–dusk asymmetries. We focus on four key aspects: (1) the role of external influences such as the solar wind and its interaction with the Earth\u27s magnetosphere; (2) properties of the magnetosphere itself; (3) the role of the ionosphere and (4) feedback and coupling between regions. We have also identified potential inconsistencies and gaps in our understanding of dawn–dusk asymmetries in the Earth\u27s magnetosphere and ionosphere

Hierarchy of Conservation Laws of Diffusion--Convection Equations

We introduce notions of equivalence of conservation laws with respect to Lie symmetry groups for fixed systems of differential equations and with respect to equivalence groups or sets of admissible transformations for classes of such systems. We also revise the notion of linear dependence of conservation laws and define the notion of local dependence of potentials. To construct conservation laws, we develop and apply the most direct method which is effective to use in the case of two independent variables. Admitting possibility of dependence of conserved vectors on a number of potentials, we generalize the iteration procedure proposed by Bluman and Doran-Wu for finding nonlocal (potential) conservation laws. As an example, we completely classify potential conservation laws (including arbitrary order local ones) of diffusion--convection equations with respect to the equivalence group and construct an exhaustive list of locally inequivalent potential systems corresponding to these equations.Comment: 24 page