The Real You: Paddington Markets and the Postmodern Search for the Self

Paddington Markets, located on the grounds of the Paddington Uniting Church every Saturday, are defined by their emphasis on the ‘Natural’, the ‘Original’, the ‘Organic’ and the ‘Vintage’, all designed to appeal to our sense of authenticity in regards to our own identity.  However, in an era of conflicting modern and postmodern ideas about the nature of reality and representation, identity is fast becoming a victim of uncertainty. So what does it mean to be an individual in today’s society?  Is it ever possible to ‘be yourself’?  Today, the struggle to find a unique identity is becoming increasingly pressing yet increasingly difficult.  Paddington Markets embodies the way in which the search for identity is undertaken through consumerism, through its emphasis on the ‘authentic’ qualities of its products. This article will examine the way in which modernism and postmodernism have shaped the way we conceptualise reality, representation, the subject and identity, and the ways in which consumerism has adapted to suit the changing ideas of these two traditions.  Through the theories of Baudrillard, Lyotard, Hall, Marx and with a little bit of help from Bon Jovi, the question of what identity means in a consumer society is explored through Paddington Markets

Pay-for-Performance Systems in State Government: Perceptions of State Agency Personnel Managers*

Pay for performance has been a widely used method of compensation in the public sector since the early 1980s, but a growing body of research has indicated that numerous problems can be associated with the application of performance-based compensation systems In late 1993, the federal government, after years of difficulty experienced with its merit pay program, took a significant step back from pay for performance through passage of the Performance Management and Recognition System Termination Act This research seeks to determine whether state governments are becoming similarly disenchanted with pay for performance To gain insight into this question, a survey was administered to a nationwide random sample of state agency personnel management executives Results indicate that pay for performance remains as popular as ever in state government, and that nearly all of the systems in the states utilize merit pay despite difficulties often associated with that approach to pay for performance.Yeshttps://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/manuscript-submission-guideline

Technical Training in the United States Postal Service

TECHNICAL TRAINING IS MOST FREQUENTLY DISCUSSED IN THE CONTEXT OF PRIVATE SECTOR ORGANIZATIONS, AND RELATIVELY LITTLE IS KNOWN ABOUT ITS ROLE IN PUBLIC ORGANIZATIONS. THIS ARTICLES DESCRIBES THE ORGANIZATION AND DETAILS THE IMPLEMENTATION OF TECHNICAL TRAINING IN THE UNITED STATES POSTAL SERVICE (USPS). THE USPS OPERATES A STATE-OF-THE-ART TECHNICAL TRAINING PROGRAM, ONE WHICH INCORPORATES A RANGE OF DELIVERY TECHNIQUES, INCLUDING RESIDENT TRAINING AND DISTANCE LEARNING, TO DELIVER OVER 1,800 COURSE OFFERINGS TO MORE THAN 39,000 EMPLOYEES ANNUALLY.Yeshttps://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/manuscript-submission-guideline

Why Elephants Gallop: Assessing and Predicting Organizational Performance in Federal Agencies

Hal G. Rainey and Paula Steinbauer (1999) recently proposed a theory of effective government organizations. Several other theories exist in whole or in part, but empirical testing is rare. In this article we cut to the chase and examine several key elements of these theories empirically. First, we explore the theoretical dimensions of organizational performance and derive a taxonomy to help measure the construct. Second, we draw from the literature and develop a model predicting organizational performance. Third, we operationalize and test the model with data from the 1996 Merit Principles Survey, U.S. Merit Systems Protection Board. In the end, this model explains 70 percent of the variation in employee perceptions of organizational performance across the twenty-three largest federal agencies. Most hypothesized relationships are confirmed. We conclude the article with a discussion of implications, limitations, and suggestions for future research

Visitor Attitudes Toward Little Penguins (Eudyptula minor) at Two Australian Zoos

This study identified and compared the attitudes of visitors toward zoo-housed little penguins, their enclosure and visitor experience that may influence the way visitors behave toward little penguins at two Australian zoos. Visitor attitudes were assessed using an anonymous questionnaire, targeting visitor beliefs, and experiences, where visitors were randomly approached at the penguin exhibit after they had finished viewing the penguins. Visitors were given two options to complete the questionnaire, on an iPad during their zoo visit or online (URL sent via email) after their zoo visit. A total of 638 participants (495 at Melbourne Zoo and 143 at Taronga Zoo) completed the questionnaire, 42% were completed onsite during their zoo visit and 58% were completed online after their zoo visit. Most participants were living in Australia, non-zoo members, female, previously or currently owned a pet, aged between 26 and 35 years and had a University degree. Results showed that the attitude dimensions of visitors were consistent between the two zoos which indicates that these measures of attitudes were stable over time and location. Overall, visitors at both zoos had positive attitudes toward little penguins, penguin welfare, the enclosure, and visitor experience. However, whether these positive attitudes and positive visitor experience influenced the way visitors behaved toward the penguins remains unclear. There were some differences in visitor attitudes toward the perceived "aggressiveness" and "timidness" of little penguins, "negative penguin welfare", "experience with the penguins", "learning", "visual barriers" and the way visitors rated their overall experience at the penguin enclosure. While the reasons for the differences in visitor attitudes and visitor experience between the zoos were not clear, some factors such as penguin behavior and enclosure design, may have been attributable to these differences. Also, a relationship was found between visitor attitudes and how visitors rated the welfare of penguins, the enclosure and visitor experience at the enclosure; more positive visitor attitudes were associated with higher ratings of penguin welfare, the enclosure and visitor experience. The practical implications of these results for zoos is unclear because the differences in visitor attitudes were numerically small. This requires further comparisons between zoos or enclosures that are more markedly different than the penguin enclosures in the present study and further research on how visitors assess zoo animals, enclosures and visitor experience

Semantic Bookworm: mining literary resources revisited

In this paper, we describe Semantic Bookworm-a tool that supports scholarly text analysis. In contrast to the text-based Bookworm tool, the Semantic Bookworm identifies semantic concepts

CCCTC-binding factor recruitment to the early region of the human papillomavirus 18 genome regulates viral oncogene expression.

UNLABELLED: Host cell differentiation-dependent regulation of human papillomavirus (HPV) gene expression is required for productive infection. The host cell CCCTC-binding factor (CTCF) functions in genome-wide chromatin organization and gene regulation. We have identified a conserved CTCF binding site in the E2 open reading frame of high-risk HPV types. Using organotypic raft cultures of primary human keratinocytes containing high-risk HPV18 genomes, we show that CTCF recruitment to this conserved site regulates viral gene expression in differentiating epithelia. Mutation of the CTCF binding site increases the expression of the viral oncoproteins E6 and E7 and promotes host cell proliferation. Loss of CTCF binding results in a reduction of a specific alternatively spliced transcript expressed from the early gene region concomitant with an increase in the abundance of unspliced early transcripts. We conclude that high-risk HPV types have evolved to recruit CTCF to the early gene region to control the balance and complexity of splicing events that regulate viral oncoprotein expression. IMPORTANCE: The establishment and maintenance of HPV infection in undifferentiated basal cells of the squamous epithelia requires the activation of a subset of viral genes, termed early genes. The differentiation of infected cells initiates the expression of the late viral transcripts, allowing completion of the virus life cycle. This tightly controlled balance of differentiation-dependent viral gene expression allows the virus to stimulate cellular proliferation to support viral genome replication with minimal activation of the host immune response, promoting virus productivity. Alternative splicing of viral mRNAs further increases the complexity of viral gene expression. In this study, we show that the essential host cell protein CTCF, which functions in genome-wide chromatin organization and gene regulation, is recruited to the HPV genome and plays an essential role in the regulation of early viral gene expression and transcript processing. These data highlight a novel virus-host interaction important for HPV pathogenicity.CP was supported by a PhD studentship funded by the University of St Andrews, School of Medicine. IP is supported by a Cancer Research UK (CRUK) PhD Studentship awarded to JLP and SR. IG and NC are supported by a CRUK Programme Award (13080) to NC. JLP is supported by a Royal Society University Research Fellowship (UF110010).This is the final version of the article. It first appeared from American Society for Microbiology via http://dx.doi.org/10.1128/JVI.00097-1

O’Hanlon, Sally McNulty, David Tian, Ruiyuan Coleman, Jonathan O’Dwyer, Colm

Adding porosity to battery electrodes is sometimes useful for accommodating volumetric expansion, electrolyte access to active materials, or mitigating poor high-rate performance for thicker electrodes. Ordered macroporous electrode such as inverse opals, are a good model system: binder and conductive additive-free, interconnected electrically, have defined porosity consistent with thickness, good electrolyte wettability and surprisingly good behavior in half-cells and some Li-battery cells at normal rates. We show that at high charge and discharge rates, charge storage in macroporous electrode materials can be completely supressed, and then entirely recovered at low rates. Using a model system of inverse opal V2O5 in a flooded Li-battery three-electrode cell electrodes store almost no charge at rates >10 C, but capacity completely recovers when the rate is reduced to <1 C. We show how the IO material is modified under lithiation using X-ray diffraction, Raman scattering and electron microscopy. Chronoamperometric measurements together with a model to fit rate-dependent capacity decay suggests a dependence on the intrinsic out-of-plane conductivity of the electrode. The data show that electrodes with nanoscale dimensions and macroscale porosity are fundamentally limited for high-rate performance if the intrinsic electronic conductivity is poor, even when fully soaked with electrolyt