An Investigation Of Mentoring Preference Of Employees At The Adventist Information Ministry And implications For Empowerment

Problem Customer Service Representatives at the Adventist Information Ministry (AIM), the call center for the North American Division of Seventh-day Adventist Church media ministries on the campus of Andrews University in Michigan, have a passion for ministry but lack mentoring models to make their ministry effective. There is a great need to understand mentoring models operational at AIM and to develop a master plan for mentoring and empowering employees at Adventist Information Ministry. Method The purpose of this study was to discover the mentoring styles preferred by employees within the Seventh-day Adventist community of faith working at Adventist Information Ministry (AIM). Using the Mentoring Style Indicator survey instrument developed by William A. Gray and Marilynne Miles Gray (1996), employees at Adventist Information Ministry (AIM) were asked to list in order of their preference what mentoring styles they preferred to use when presented with six situational scenarios. The results were analyzed to determine the preferred mentoring styles employees at AIM like to provide and receive. Results The data collected ranked informational mentoring style as the most preferred followed by confirming, guiding and collaborative mentoring styles for employees at AIM. The data collected underscored that younger responders (18-24 year old group) preferred the informational mentoring style while the oldest group (32+ year olds) preferred the collaborative mentoring style. The data collected underscored that males preferred the information mentoring style while females preferred the guiding mentoring style. The data collected revealed that staff prefer to utilize the guiding mentoring style, shift leaders prefer to use the confirming mentoring style, and chaplains prefer to use the guiding mentoring style, and customer service representatives prefer the informational mentoring style. Results The data collected ranked informational mentoring style as the most preferred followed by confirming, guiding and collaborative mentoring styles for employees at AIM. The data collected underscored that younger responders (18-24 year old group) preferred the informational mentoring style while the oldest group (32+ year olds) preferred the collaborative mentoring style. The data collected underscored that males preferred the information mentoring style while females preferred the guiding mentoring style. The data collected revealed that staff prefer to utilize the guiding mentoring style, shift leaders prefer to use the confirming mentoring style, and chaplains prefer to use the guiding mentoring style, and customer service representatives prefer the informational mentoring style. Conclusions Mentoring is an evasive term in that it overlaps with coaching. Employees at AIM can be coached to obtain specific competencies but it does not mean that they are prepared to face all the challenges of ministry. Understanding mentor style preferences helps combat barriers to communication. Thus, a more efficient manner of knowledge transfer can happen. All initial mentoring relationships are dependent on information sharing (equipping) until the relationships takes on the dynamics of confirmation (empowering)

Impulsivity in rodents with a genetic predisposition for excessive alcohol consumption is associated with a lack of a prospective strategy

Increasing evidence supports the hypothesis that impulsive decision-making is a heritable risk factor for an alcohol use disorder (AUD). Clearly identifying a link between impulsivity and AUD risk, however, is complicated by the fact that both AUDs and impulsivity are heterogeneous constructs. Understanding the link between the two requires identifying the underlying cognitive factors that lead to impulsive choices. Rodent models have established that a family history of excessive drinking can lead to the expression of a transgenerational impulsive phenotype, suggesting heritable alterations in the decision-making process. In the present study, we explored the cognitive processes underlying impulsive choice in a validated, selectively bred rodent model of excessive drinking-the alcohol-preferring ("P") rat. Impulsivity was measured via delay discounting (DD), and P rats exhibited an impulsive phenotype as compared to their outbred foundation strain-Wistar rats. Steeper discounting in P rats was associated with a lack of a prospective behavioral strategy, which was observed in Wistar rats and was directly related to DD. To further explore the underlying cognitive factors mediating these observations, a drift diffusion model of DD was constructed. These simulations supported the hypothesis that prospective memory of the delayed reward guided choice decisions, slowed discounting, and optimized the fit of the model to the experimental data. Collectively, these data suggest that a deficit in forming or maintaining a prospective behavioral plan is a critical intermediary to delaying reward, and by extension, may underlie the inability to delay reward in those with increased AUD risk

Management and Social Indicators of Soil Carbon Storage in a Residential Ecosystem, Midlothian, VA

Soil carbon storage- defined here as carbon mass per unit ground area- is an important ecosystem service, sequestering carbon that might otherwise exist in atmospheric CO2 . Significant attention has focused on the effects that humans have on carbon cycling, but little is known about how human behaviors and attitudes relate to lawn carbon storage. The objectives of this study were to conduct household surveys in concert with soil carbon sampling in a 10-year-old exurban neighborhood near Richmond, Virginia to quantify differences in soil carbon storage between residential lawns and mixed pine-hardwood forest fragments, and to determine how lawn management and environmental attitudes relate to soil carbon storage. Lawns stored significantly less carbon than forest fragments in the top 10 cm of soils. A significant negative relationship was observed between watering and fertilizer frequency and soil carbon storage, but the goodness-of-fit was sensitive to intra-lawn variability in soil carbon mass. Survey respondents that claimed to be environmentalists stored significantly more carbon and spent one hour less per week managing their lawns, suggesting that environmental attitudes may affect how households manage their lawns and, in turn, the quality of soil carbon stored in residential soils

Aspects of non-locality in gravity

Since the beginning of the 20th century, much time and effort has been invested in the search for a theory of quantum gravity. While this provided a myriad of possibilities, it has so far failed to find a definitive answer. Here we take an alternative approach: instead of constructing a theory of quantum gravity and examining its low energy limit, we start with the conventional theory and ask what are the first deviations induced by a possible quantization of gravity. It is proposed that in this limit quantum gravity, whatever the ultimate theory might be, manifests itself as non-locality. In this thesis are explored two different approaches to effective theories. In the first, it is demonstrated how combining quantum field theory with general relativity naturally gives rise to non-locality. This is explored in the context of inflation, a natural place to look for high energy phenomena. By considering a simple scalar field theory, it is shown how non-locality results in higher dimensional operators and what the effects are on inflationary models. The second approach looks at a theory which naturally incorporates a minimal scale. Noncommutative geometry parallels the phase space or deformation quantization approach of quantum mechanics. It supposes that at short scales, the structure of spacetime is algebraic rather than geometric. In the first instance, we follow the first section and look at cosmological implications by replacing normal scalar theory with its noncommutative counterpart. In the second, we take a step back and examine the implications of quantization on the differential geometry. The formalism is developed and applied to generic spherically symmetric spacetimes where it is shown that to first order in deformation, the quantization is uniqu

Classical versus Quantum Time Evolution of Densities at Limited Phase-Space Resolution

We study the interrelations between the classical (Frobenius-Perron) and the quantum (Husimi) propagator for phase-space (quasi-)probability densities in a Hamiltonian system displaying a mix of regular and chaotic behavior. We focus on common resonances of these operators which we determine by blurring phase-space resolution. We demonstrate that classical and quantum time evolution look alike if observed with a resolution much coarser than a Planck cell and explain how this similarity arises for the propagators as well as their spectra. The indistinguishability of blurred quantum and classical evolution implies that classical resonances can conveniently be determined from quantum mechanics and in turn become effective for decay rates of quantum correlations.Comment: 10 pages, 3 figure

Митна політика Запорозької Січі: деякі аспекти дослідження проблеми.

Про те, що Запорозька Січ мала свою, хоча і слабо структуровану, митну систему, і що вона була важливою складовою економічного існування Січі, історики побіжно згадують, відносячи цей факт до сер. 50-х рр. XVIII ст., пояснюючи її складання прискоренням внутрішнього економічного розвитку Запорожжя, не забуваючи, однак, що стратегічне положення Січі давало їй величезні переваги від транзитної торгівлі та її забезпечення. Можливо, справедливим є припущення українського історика Я. Дашкевича про те, що “зони впливу (народів) з середини XVII ст. почали оформлюватися у вигляді юридичних кордонів, щоб остаточно стабілізуватися наприкінці XVIII ст.” [1]. Імовірно, що оформлення структури митної мережі, як і прикордонної, чітке оформлення географічних і політичних кордонів для захисту економічних інтересів відбувається на території Запорозьких Вольностей в період Нової Запорозької Січі. Питання функціонування і остаточного визначення структури митної мережі в період Нової Запорозької Січі (1734–1775 рр.) набуває актуальності і окреслених рис під тиском не лише внутрішніх, але і зовнішніх обставин. Ініціатива у цій справі з початку XVIII ст. поступово перехоплювалася царським урядом. Йшлося не про захист інтересів російської держави, а про наміри контролювати важливі торгівельні потоки і спрямовувати їх у загальноімперських інтересах. У введенні митної мережі на південних рубежах Вольностей Запорозьких найбільш показовим було ігнорування інтересів Війська Запорозького. На поверхні чітко відстежувалася загальна політика на завоювання Чорноморського узбережжя, вільну, без будь-яких політичних обмежень і перешкод східну торгівлю, виключно в інтересах Росії