Transformational Decision Making: A Corporate Success Story In Purchasing

The purpose of this case study is to provide a pedagogical teaching tool for undergraduate business students to fully comprehend the importance of the business management functions of planning, organizing, leading and controlling businesses.  This case is inspired by events in the history of Rockwell International Corporation.  As a major conglomerate struggles to transform itself over a period of eight decades, Rockwell provided a challenging problem for students to solve

Teams That Work: Preparing Student Teams For The Workplace

Organizations today often require collaboration in the form of work teams. Many tasks completed within organizations, whether in the workplace or in academia, however, can be beyond the capabilities of individuals alone. Productive teamwork and cooperative activities in business are expected and can begin very early in a person's career. The pedagogy for teamwork instruction in the classroom may not simulate real workplace events or parallel organizational behavior in order to attain a successful outcome. In universities, teamwork often breeds frustration and dysfunction, since the teams often do not perform at a high level or reach their full potential. This paper will provide best practices for creating productive teams in the classroom in preparation for the workforce. This insight will include ideas that will bond team members through collective values and goals, resulting in effective teams and a productive environment

Damming Grand Canyon: The 1923 USGS Colorado River Expedition

In 1923, America paid close attention, via special radio broadcasts, newspaper headlines, and cover stories in popular magazines, as a government party descended the Colorado to survey Grand Canyon. Fifty years after John Wesley Powell\u27s journey, the canyon still had an aura of mystery and extreme danger. At one point, the party was thought lost in a flood. Something important besides adventure was going on. Led by Claude Birdseye and including colorful characters such as early river-runner Emery Kolb, popular writer Lewis Freeman, and hydraulic engineer Eugene La Rue, the expedition not only made the first accurate survey of the river gorge but sought to decide the canyon\u27s fate. The primary goal was to determine the best places to dam the Grand. With Boulder Dam not yet built, the USGS, especially La Rue, contested with the Bureau of Reclamation over how best to develop the Colorado River. The survey party played a major role in what was known and thought about Grand Canyon. The authors weave a narrative from the party\u27s firsthand accounts and frame it with a thorough history of water politics and development and the Colorado River. The recommended dams were not built, but the survey both provided base data that stood the test of time and helped define Grand Canyon in the popular imagination.https://digitalcommons.usu.edu/usupress_pubs/1160/thumbnail.jp

Business Ethics: A View From The Classroom

The global economy has been devastated in the last year and according to Federal Reserve Chairman, Ben Bernanke, America's economy was threatened, reminiscent of the Great Depression. Our nation is also in a serious ethical and moral decline, as evidenced by steroid use in baseball, corporate scandals, accounting fraud, religious immorality within churches, human trafficking and the rise of cheating and plagiarism in our school systems. The lines between right and wrong have been blurred, relegating moral and ethical boundaries to outdated standards. This paper will seek to establish some answers regarding university students in the classroom such as, what is the perceived attitudes of today’s college students toward ethical behavior, are they naïve, etc? Also, this paper will explore ways in which professors can reinforce appropriate ethical behavior as an essential element in our society

Endocrine disruption in male mosquitofish (Gambusia holbrooki) inhabiting wetlands in Western Australia

The use of gonopodial indices as potential indicators of endocrine disruption in the mosquitofish Gambusia holbrooki inhabiting south west Australian wetlands was investigated. A minimum of 50 mature males was collected from each of five water-bodies in the Swan Coastal Plain, Western Australia, in order to measure morphological features related to reproduction. A set of morphological measurements were used to derive the following indices: gonopodium length/standard body length, pre-anal length/standard body length, the index of elongation and the percentage of male fish with hooks on the distal end of the gonopodium. Indices of male mosquitofish collected from Jack Finney Lake, located in the Curtin University campus, suggest the presence of endocrine disrupting chemicals (EDCs) in this water-body, while those from Lake Kulinup suggest this is a site of concern. Indices of male fish from the Wagerup wetland, Lake Monger and Loch McNess indicate that fish inhabiting these wetlands are not affected by EDCs. This preliminary study suggests that EDCs may be present in a number of wetlands of the Swan Coastal Plain. Further study using EDC specific markers such as vitellogenin induction in male mosquitofish is required to confirm whether EDCs are present in these water-bodies

Category-specific effects in Welsh mutation

In this paper we investigate category-specific effects through the lens of Welsh mutation. Smith (2011) and Moreton et al. (2017) show that English distinguishes nouns and proper nouns in an experimental blending task. Here we show that Welsh distinguishes nouns, verbs, personal names, and place names in the mutation system. We demonstrate these effects experimentally in a translation task designed to elicit mutation intuitions and in several corpus studies. In addition, we show that these effects correlate with lexical frequency. Deeper statistical analysis and a review of the English data suggests that frequency is a more explanatory factor than part of speech in both languages. We therefore argue that these category-specific effects can be reduced to lexical frequency effects.Open access journalThis item from the UA Faculty Publications collection is made available by the University of Arizona with support from the University of Arizona Libraries. If you have questions, please contact us at [email protected]

Barriers to women's participation in inter-conceptional care: a cross-sectional analysis

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>We describe participation rates in a special interconceptional care program that addressed all commonly known barriers to care, and identify predictors of the observed levels of participation in this preventive care service.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>A secondary analysis of data from women in the intervention arm of an interconceptional care clinical trial in Philadelphia (n = 442). Gelberg-Andersen Behavioral Model for Vulnerable Populations to Health Services (herein called Andersen model) was used as a theoretical base. We used a multinomial logit model to analyze the factors influencing women's level of participation in this enhanced interconceptional care program.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Although common barriers were addressed, there was variable participation in the interconceptional interventions. The Andersen model did not explain the variation in interconceptional care participation (Wald ch sq = 49, <it>p = </it>0.45). <it>Enabling </it>factors <it>(p </it>= 0.058), <it>older maternal age (p = 0.03) </it>and <it>smoking (p = < 0.0001) </it>were independently associated with participation.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>Actively removing common barriers to care does not guarantee the long-term and consistent participation of vulnerable women in preventive care. There are unknown factors beyond known barriers that affect participation in interconceptional care. New paradigms are needed to identify the additional factors that serve as barriers to participation in preventive care for vulnerable women.</p

The glycolytic enzyme phosphofructokinase-1 assembles into filaments.

Despite abundant knowledge of the regulation and biochemistry of glycolytic enzymes, we have limited understanding on how they are spatially organized in the cell. Emerging evidence indicates that nonglycolytic metabolic enzymes regulating diverse pathways can assemble into polymers. We now show tetramer- and substrate-dependent filament assembly by phosphofructokinase-1 (PFK1), which is considered the "gatekeeper" of glycolysis because it catalyzes the step committing glucose to breakdown. Recombinant liver PFK1 (PFKL) isoform, but not platelet PFK1 (PFKP) or muscle PFK1 (PFKM) isoforms, assembles into filaments. Negative-stain electron micrographs reveal that filaments are apolar and made of stacked tetramers oriented with exposed catalytic sites positioned along the edge of the polymer. Electron micrographs and biochemical data with a PFKL/PFKP chimera indicate that the PFKL regulatory domain mediates filament assembly. Quantified live-cell imaging shows dynamic properties of localized PFKL puncta that are enriched at the plasma membrane. These findings reveal a new behavior of a key glycolytic enzyme with insights on spatial organization and isoform-specific glucose metabolism in cells

Depurated fish as an alternative reference for field-based biomarker monitoring

The whole of the Swan-Canning Estuary, in the south-west of Australia, is impacted by human activity, and the selection of a local reference site to assess the impact of environmental contamination on the health of biota is not possible. To determine whether fish depurated under laboratory conditions could be used as an alternative to a reference site; adult black bream (Acanthopagrus butcheri) were collected from the estuary and maintained in clean water (S24) for 3 months. A suite of biomarkers of fish health were assessed, and the results were compared with field-captured black bream from three sites within the estuary (Ascot, Claisebrook, and Riverton). Comparisons of a subset of biomarkers were also made between hatchery-bred juvenile fish and the depurated fish. Biomarker levels were up to 3.8 times higher in field captured fish compared with depurated fish, while DNA integrity was lower. EROD activity was comparable in the hatchery-bred black bream to the depurated fish while s-SDH levels were two times higher in the hatchery fish. From the results obtained, field-captured black bream depurated for 3 months are suitable to determine reference/baseline levels for biomarker of health studies in estuarine environments

Cholesterol reduction using manufactured foods high in monounsaturated fatty acids: a randomized crossover study

In two separate studies, the cholesterol-lowering efficacy of a diet high in monounsaturated fatty acids (MUFA) was evaluated by means of a randomized crossover trial. In both studies subjects were randomized to receive either a high-MUFA diet or the control diet first, which they followed for a period of 8 weeks; following a washout period of 4–6 weeks they were transferred onto the opposing diet for a further period of 8 weeks. In one study subjects were healthy middle-aged men (n 30), and in the other they were young men (n 23) with a family history of CHD recruited from two centres (Guildford and Dublin). The two studies were conducted over the same time period using identical foods and study designs. Subjects consumed 38 % energy as fat, with 18 % energy as MUFA and 10 % as saturated fatty acids (MUFA diet), or 13 % energy as MUFA and 16 % as saturated fatty acids (control diet). The polyunsaturated fatty acid content of each diet was 7 %. The diets were achieved by providing subjects with manufactured foods such as spreads, ‘ready meals’, biscuits, puddings and breads, which, apart from their fatty acid compositions, were identical for both diets. Subjects were blind to which of the diets they were following on both arms of the study. Weight changes on the diets were less than 1 kg. In the groups combined (n 53) mean total and LDL-cholesterol levels were significantly lower at the end of the MUFA diet than the control diet by 0⋅29 (SD 0⋅61) mmol/l (