Strategic Planning: Implications and Applications for Line Managers

Strategic planning is the key to producing a realistic, attractive rate of growth and a respectable return on investment. The author analyzes the steps in the planning process and looks at the environmental and cultural values which influence the strategic planner in his/her work

Questionnaire Construction

Questionnaires used in survey research can elicit excellent data for analysis for any part of the industry. The author discusses how to design questions, construct the survey, and watch for errors in conducting the re- search so that the results secured advance scientific inquiry

A Study Of A Baccalaureate Degree Curriculum In Hospitality Management

The Florida International University School of Hospitality Management program has been in existence since 1973. It is the only university program rated by Florida\u27s Board of Regents as a Distinguished Program and is consistently ranked by educational and industry leaders as one or the top four programs of its kind in the United States. The undergraduate program consists of fifty-five courses on a 3000-4000 level, and they are taught by a distinguished faculty or thirty-five professors, plus adjuncts and visiting lecturers from the industry. In 1990 the school moved into its own $10 million state-of-the-art facility on the university\u27s North Campus. Since its inception the administration has made it a matter of policy that the undergraduate curriculum will be reviewed internally every five years. The 1988 review was moved back one year to accommodate the relocation of the program to the new building, and to coincide with the self study required in the reaccreditation process of the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools. Thus this study occurred over an eighteen-month period, culminating in June, 1990. The purpose of the study was clearly established by Jean Anthony G. Marshall and Associate Dean Rocco M. Angelo. Specifically, it was intended to evaluate staff, discipline, and course efficacy on a performance/perception basis. A number of congruent factors as follows added to the significance of this type of evaluation: The university has established heightened requirements on degree programs for improved performance. Research and self-analysis were deemed central to this objective. The educational arm of the hospitality industry is seeking o professionalize itself by requiring program accreditation through its Council of Hotel, Restaurant and Institutional Editors (CHRIE) working with the Council on Post-Secondary Education (COPA). An anticipated move to accept freshmen and sophomore degree candidates require an in-depth program review. The study sough to develop answers to, or directions for, a set of both philosophic and pragmatic questions relating to a professional school education: a) What is the appropriate balance between general/liberal education courses and the specific disciplines requirements as perceived by industry leadership? b) How do our graduates perform in the industry on the basis of the curriculum as it now exists? W c) What is the real opinion of industry leaders of the school\u27s product? d) How, precisely, should the curriculum look ? Utilizing the resources of the school and faculty, stratified random sample of the baccalaureate population was selected; a questionnaire was constructed by faculty and university research experts, and a mailing was sent to 600 graduates. Concurrently, the deans and faculty compiled a list of industry leaders to be personally interviewed approximately 200 individuals were involved in the process and results were collected over a three-month period. Analysis of the results indicated a very high level of success and satisfaction by program graduates and by industry leaders who have employed the graduates. Graduates remain in the industry in significant numbers, are mobile within the industry, receive regular pronotions and are, overall, satisfied with the knowledge they gained in the school and the relevancy of this information to the industry. Both graduates and industry leaders were open and articulate regarding perceived needs, emphasizing improvements in the areas of marketing, additional accounting material, and applied leadership. To synthesize the results of the, study, a model\u27\u27 curriculum was proposed to emphasize changes in human resource-type courses. It was recommended that an ad hoc curriculum revision committee be appointed within the School of Hospitality Management charged with presenting curriculum change recommendations to the full faculty by Fall 1991. This has been accomplished, and the work is in process. Two courses that were determined to be superfluous by the study are in the process of being phased out, and a new seniors honors course in career development tracking is under study. In the final analysis, this study has met every objective it was assigned and has provided the meaningful data that was sought. The result will be manifested in a modern, more relevant, and humanistic hospitality program curriculum

Perceptions of Discrimination Among Women as Managers In Hospitality Organizations

Women in hospitality organizations are moving up the corporate ladder at a pace significantly outdistancing their colleagues of a few decades ago, but women managers selectively perceive overt and covert discriminatory resistance, from chauvinism to carefully-contrived covert prejudicial treatment constructed to insure a no-win situation. The authors attempted to determine if these discriminatory practices against equally well-trained, qualified, and experienced hospitality women middle managers do affect their perception of their career growth as compared to male counterpart

Preparing a Small Town for a Hazardous Materials Incident: An Examination of Evacuation Routing Algorithms and Plume Models

Evacuation and shelter in place are two common protective action measures during hazardous events that involve the release of hazardous materials. These responses are complex and require advanced planning to determine their appropriateness to reduce human exposure to hazardous materials and minimize related health risks. Evacuation and shelter in place responses were assessed for people in the town of Erwin, Tennessee, USA, a small, rural town in the mountains of Northeast Tennessee, using a release of uranium hexafluoride (UF6). The population at risk was identified using historical meteorological data and the Radiological Assessment System for Consequence Analysis tool to create plume models for a hypothetical release of UF6 from a nuclear fuel facility that downblends highly enriched uranium. Two hypothetical evacuation scenarios were modeled. One uses the total road network in Erwin and the other involves a train impeding access to an arterial evacuation route. Two routing algorithms available within the custom network analyst routing tool (ArcCASPER) were used for each scenario: 1) a basic shortest path algorithm and 2) a capacity-aware shortest path evacuation routing algorithm. Post-hoc analyses of each scenario and algorithm indicated that the capacity-aware algorithm predicted the quickest evacuation times for both scenarios. Roads with the longest evacuation times and all critical facilities that would benefit from sheltering in place were identified. The study concluded that the capacity-aware algorithm available within ArcCASPER is the most realistic for the town of Erwin

Antibiotic-resistant Escherichia Coli from Retail Poultry Meat with Different Antibiotic Use Claims

Background We sought to determine if the prevalence of antibiotic-resistant Escherichia coli differed across retail poultry products and among major production categories, including organic, “raised without antibiotics”, and conventional. Results We collected all available brands of retail chicken and turkey—including conventional, “raised without antibiotic”, and organic products—every two weeks from January to December 2012. In total, E. coli was recovered from 91% of 546 turkey products tested and 88% of 1367 chicken products tested. The proportion of samples contaminated with E. coli was similar across all three production categories. Resistance prevalence varied by meat type and was highest among E. coli isolates from turkey for the majority of antibiotics tested. In general, production category had little effect on resistance prevalence among E. coli isolates from chicken, although resistance to gentamicin and multidrug resistance did vary. In contrast, resistance prevalence was significantly higher for 6 of the antibiotics tested—and multidrug resistance—among isolates from conventional turkey products when compared to those labelled organic or “raised without antibiotics”. E. coli isolates from chicken varied strongly in resistance prevalence among different brands within each production category. Conclusion The high prevalence of resistance among E. coli isolates from conventionally-raised turkey meat suggests greater antimicrobial use in conventional turkey production as compared to “raised without antibiotics” and organic systems. However, among E. coli from chicken meat, resistance prevalence was more strongly linked to brand than to production category, which could be caused by brand-level differences during production and/or processing, including variations in antimicrobial use

The FIRST-Optical-VLA Survey for Lensed Radio Lobes

We present results from a survey for gravitationally lensed radio lobes. Lensed lobes are a potentially richer source of information about galaxy mass distributions than lensed point sources, which have been the exclusive focus of other recent surveys. Our approach is to identify radio lobes in the FIRST catalog and then search optical catalogs for coincident foreground galaxies, which are candidate lensing galaxies. We then obtain higher-resolution images of these targets at both optical and radio wavelengths, and obtain optical spectra for the most promising candidates. We present maps of several radio lobes that are nearly coincident with galaxies. We have not found any new and unambiguous cases of gravitational lensing. One radio lobe in particular, FOV J0743+1553, has two hot spots that could be multiple images produced by a z=0.19 spiral galaxy, but the lensing interpretation is problematic.Comment: 38 pages, 18 figures, aastex, accepted to A

Modeling of Tunable Elastic Ultralight Aircraft

Aircraft weight is one of the most critical factors in the design and operation of modern vehicles. The ability to integrate ultra-light materials into the primary load bearing structures has the potential to reduce aircraft weight significantly. Ultralight materials tend to be lattice-based meta-materials that are difficult and computationally expensive to model. One of the advantages of meta-materials is to be able to tune or "program" their bulk material properties through the placement of heterogeneous components in the material. A large amount of time devoted to the simulation in the development time for the tuning of the material can be a barrier to the adoption of large scale lattice materials. In this paper, we present a workflow and analysis tool-set to provide first-order estimates for rapid development of engineered lattice materials for aerospace applications. We present results for estimating the displacement and maximum structural stresses

Fast Radio Burst Tomography of the Unseen Universe

The discovery of Fast Radio Bursts (FRBs) at cosmological distances has opened a powerful window on otherwise unseen matter in the Universe. In the 2020s, observations of $>10^{4}$ FRBs will assess the baryon contents and physical conditions in the hot/diffuse circumgalactic, intracluster, and intergalactic medium, and test extant compact-object dark matter models.Comment: Science white paper submitted to the Astro2020 Decadal Survey. 15 pages, 3 color figure

Cdc42, dynein, and dynactin regulate MTOC reorientation independent of Rho-regulated microtubule stabilization

AbstractIn migrating adherent cells such as fibroblasts and endothelial cells, the microtubule-organizing center (MTOC) reorients toward the leading edge [1–3]. MTOC reorientation repositions the Golgi toward the front of the cell [1] and contributes to directional migration [4]. The mechanism of MTOC reorientation and its relation to the formation of stabilized microtubules (MTs) in the leading edge, which occurs concomitantly with MTOC reorientation [3], is unknown. We show that serum and the serum lipid, lysophosphatidic acid (LPA), increased Cdc42 GTP levels and triggered MTOC reorientation in serum-starved wounded monolayers of 3T3 fibroblasts. Cdc42, but not Rho or Rac, was both sufficient and necessary for LPA-stimulated MTOC reorientation. MTOC reorientation was independent of Cdc42-induced changes in actin and was not blocked by cytochalasin D. Inhibition of dynein or dynactin blocked LPA- and Cdc42-stimulated MTOC reorientation. LPA also stimulates a Rho/mDia pathway that selectively stabilizes MTs in the leading edge [5, 6]; however, activators and inhibitors of MTOC reorientation and MT stabilization showed that each response was regulated independently. These results establish an LPA/Cdc42 signaling pathway that regulates MTOC reorientation in a dynein-dependent manner. MTOC reorientation and MT stabilization both act to polarize the MT array in migrating cells, yet these processes act independently and are regulated by separate Rho family GTPase-signaling pathways