Der Ausbau der Hochschulen muss zügig kommen

Die Bedeutung des Humankapitals für das künftige Wirtschaftswachstum ist allgemein anerkannt. Gleichzeitig stoßen steigende Studienanfängerzahlen auf knappe Bildungsbudgets in den Bundesländern. Wie wird sich die Zahl der Studienanfänger bis 2020 entwickeln? Wird es eine entsprechende Nachfrage nach Hochschulabsolventen geben? Welcher Kapazitätsaufbau ist an den Hochschulen erforderlich und was wird er kosten? --

CPS Based Liquid Metal Divertor Target for EU-DEMO

AbstractPower exhaust is a key mission in the roadmap to the realization of a future fusion reactor. Among the different solutions, the use of liquid metals as plasma facing materials are of interest due to their potential increased lifetime. Several liquid metal limiters have been successfully tested in the Frascati Tokamak Upgrade over the last 10 years. Liquid materials such as lithium and tin have been investigated using capillary porous systems (CPSs), and their impact on plasma performance has been explored. From such experience, a liquid metal divertor (LMD) concept design, CPS-based, is here proposed. Tin has been preferred as plasma facing material. The proposed LMD would operate, in low evaporative regime, with matching heat exhausting capabilities to those of the baseline ITER-like divertor. Continuous refilling of the CPS is guaranteed with a reservoir at the back of the unit, where the metal is kept liquid through a gas heating circuit. The study has been carried out using ANSYS and the thermal results will be shown. All the design choices are compatible with the current materials and the constraints adopted for the DEMO W divertor. Using such configuration, thermal loads up to 20 MW/m2 are exhausted while keeping the surface temperature below 1250 °C. The design foresees values of pressure, temperature and flow rate of the water coolant in the same range expected for the W DEMO divertor, thus facilitating the integration of such solution in the current cassette design. Technological and practical aspects are addressed, i.e. tin corrosion and CPS wettability. Possible solutions to prevent tin corrosion, and its compatibility with structural materials, will be outlined

Excellence in healthcare : The identification of characteristics of organizational excellence

Key Words: Organizational Excellence, Performance Excellence, Health SystemsThere are an alarmingly low number of hospitals and healthcare systems that have been identified as excellent, leaving the impression that the majority of hospitals are performing below this expectation. Performance excellence should be the standard of all health systems. The objective of this paper is to identify key criteria/characteristics of performance excellence in health systems in order to develop a measurement of excellence that may be used by similar health organizations. This will be achieved by examining current rating systems to determine what criteria of organizational excellence is measured, as well as researching key attributes of examples of healthcare and nonhealthcare organizations identified as excellent, to find any similarities. From the research, the identified key characteristics for performance excellence were placed into seven pillars: Planning and Management, Leadership, Patient Satisfaction and Quality of Care, Service, Employee Satisfaction and Empowerment of Employees, Growth, and Financial Performance. Once the identified attributes are determined, they can be utilized by healthcare systems to achieve and sustain excellence

Service employees' willingness to report complaints scale: Cross-country application and replication

This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from Elsevier via the DOI in this record.Although effective customer complaint management can be a key success factor for international service firms, relatively little is known about employees' proclivity to report complaints. The present study examines the meaningfulness and cross-national validity of the Israel-developed willingness to report complaints (WRC) scale. Recognized validation procedures, with samples of service employees from Germany and the U.S., demonstrate the reliability, validity and cross-national invariance of the WRC scale. This article offers implications for both research and service managers

Fluctuations of company yearly profits versus scaled revenue: Fat tail distribution of Levy type

We analyze annual revenues and earnings data for the 500 largest-revenue U.S. companies during the period 1954-2007. We find that mean year profits are proportional to mean year revenues, exception made for few anomalous years, from which we postulate a linear relation between company expected mean profit and revenue. Mean annual revenues are used to scale both company profits and revenues. Annual profit fluctuations are obtained as difference between actual annual profit and its expected mean value, scaled by a power of the revenue to get a stationary behavior as a function of revenue. We find that profit fluctuations are broadly distributed having approximate power-law tails with a Levy-type exponent $\alpha \simeq 1.7$, from which we derive the associated break-even probability distribution. The predictions are compared with empirical data.Comment: 6 pages, 6 figure

Electron-correlation effects in appearance-potential spectra of Ni

Spin-resolved and temperature-dependent appearance-potential spectra of ferromagnetic Nickel are measured and analyzed theoretically. The Lander self-convolution model which relates the line shape to the unoccupied part of the local density of states turns out to be insufficient. Electron correlations and orbitally resolved transition-matrix elements are shown to be essential for a quantitative agreement between experiment and theory.Comment: LaTeX, 6 pages, 2 eps figures included, Phys. Rev. B (in press

The effect of job-related demands and resources on service employees’ willingness to report complaints

This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from the publisher via the DOI in this recordService employees’ willingness to report complaints (WRC) is an important determinant of firms’ long-term growth. Despite its importance, we know little about the factors that drive or hinder employees’ WRC. Drawing on the job demands-resources (JDR) model, we propose job resources (supervisor support and employee empowerment) and job demands (perceived customer unfriendliness and workload) as antecedents of WRC. We also examine the mediational role of organizational commitment and customer orientation, and the moderating role of country, in the effect of JDR variables on WRC. Using data from German and Chinese service employees, we show that supervisor support and workload positively affect WRC, whereas employee empowerment and customer unfriendliness negatively affect it. Thus, contradictory to the prevailing assumption that job resources help employees achieve work goals and that job demands inhibit their achievement, we show job resources (supervisor support) and demands (workload) can enhance WRC, whereas other job resources (employee empowerment) and demands (customer unfriendliness) have inhibiting effects. Organizational commitment and customer orientation mediate the impact of all JDR variables on WRC except empowerment. Furthermore, supervisor support has a more positive, while empowerment and customer unfriendliness have a more negative effect for German than for Chinese service employees. Service managers may influence WRC by managing job resources, job demands, and employee-company and employee-customer interfaces. Besides, employees from individualistic countries (Germany) are more sensitive to the JDR environment than those from collectivistic countries (China). Thus, managing job resources and demands may reap more benefits in the form of enhanced WRC in individualistic than in collectivistic countries

Apolipoprotein E (APOE) genotype regulates body weight and fatty acid utilization—Studies in gene-targeted replacement mice

Scope Of the three human apolipoprotein E (APOE) alleles, the ε3 allele is most common, which may be a result of adaptive evolution. In this study, we investigated whether the APOE genotype affects body weight and energy metabolism through regulation of fatty acid utilization. Methods and results Targeted replacement mice expressing the human APOE3 were significantly heavier on low- and high-fat diets compared to APOE4 mice. Particularly on high-fat feeding, food intake and dietary energy yields as well as fat mass were increased in APOE3 mice. Fatty acid mobilization determined as activation of adipose tissue lipase and fasting plasma nonesterified fatty acid levels were significantly lower in APOE3 than APOE4 mice. APOE4 mice, in contrast, exhibited higher expression of proteins involved in fatty acid oxidation in skeletal muscle. Conclusion Our data suggest that APOE3 is associated with the potential to more efficiently harvest dietary energy and to deposit fat in adipose tissue, while APOE4 carriers tend to increase fatty acid mobilization and utilization as fuel substrates especially under high-fat intake. The different handling of dietary energy may have contributed to the evolution and worldwide distribution of the ε3 allele

Single-cell analysis reveals individual spore responses to simulated space vacuum

Outer space is a challenging environment for all forms of life, and dormant spores of bacteria have been frequently used to study the survival of terrestrial life in a space journey. Previous work showed that outer space vacuum alone can kill bacterial spores. However, the responses and mechanisms of resistance of individual spores to space vacuum are unclear. Here, we examined spores’ molecular changes under simulated space vacuum (~10−5 Pa) using micro-Raman spectroscopy and found that this vacuum did not cause significant denaturation of spore protein. Then, live-cell microscopy was developed to investigate the temporal events during germination, outgrowth, and growth of individual Bacillus spores. The results showed that after exposure to simulated space vacuum for 10 days, viability of spores of two Bacillus species was reduced up to 35%, but all spores retained their large Ca2 +-dipicolinic acid depot. Some of the killed spores did not germinate, and the remaining germinated but did not proceed to vegetative growth. The vacuum treatment slowed spore germination, and changed average times of all major germination events. In addition, viable vacuum-treated spores exhibited much greater sensitivity than untreated spores to dry heat and hyperosmotic stress. Among spores’ resistance mechanisms to high vacuum, DNA-protective α/β−type small acid-soluble proteins, and non- homologous end joining and base excision repair of DNA played the most important roles, especially against multiple cycles of vacuum treatment. Overall, these results give new insight into individual spore’s responses to space vacuum and provide new techniques for microorganism analysis at the single-cell level