Implementing the Team Approach in Higher Education: Important Questions and Advice for Administrators

Many companies have implemented the team approach as a way to empower their employees in an effort to enhance productivity, quality and overall profitability. While application of the concept to higher education administration has been limited, colleges and universities could benefit from the team approach if implemented appropriately and conscientiously. The authors discuss some of the issues and concerns that are relevant to implementing the team approach in an academic environment. Suggestions for implementing teams in higher education are provided, including the difference between the team approach and traditional administration, the importance of a preliminary needs assessment, the development of an implementation plan, the critical role of leadership, dealing with issues of assessment and accountability, and the concept of team efficacy

Profile Comparer: a program for scoring and aligning profile hidden Markov models

Summary: Profile Comparer (PRC) is a stand-alone program for scoring and aligning profile hidden Markov models (HMMs) of protein families. PRC can read models produced by SAM and HMMER, two popular profile HMM packages, as well as PSI-BLAST checkpoint files. This application note provides a brief description of the profile–profile algorithm used by PRC

The costs of single species programes and the budget constraint

Despite the scarcity of funding for species conservation programs, estimation of the cost of threatened species programs occurs in only a few countries. This paper examines the reasons for the lack of species program cost estimates and the likely impacts of this on conservation management. We report methodology used to estimate cost for eleven New Zealand species programs and their estimated costs over a ten year period. Differences between species in the costs of the programs and the breakdown of the costs are highlighted. The estimated costs are compared with expected levels of expenditure on each species to illustrate the existence of a budget constraint for threatened species. The likely effects of cost of species conservation exceeding expenditures on species conservation are examined. Annual cost data is used together with information on rate of conservation progress to estimate time and total cost for each species to reach ‘Not Threatened’ status

The Chief Student Affairs Officer: What Constitutes Effective Leadership?

The leadership characteristics of a 21 chief student affairs officers (CSAOs) within four-year, postsecondary institutions in the Southeast were examined using The Leadership Practices Inventory (LPI) developed by Kouzes and Posner. The LPI measures five fundamental leadership factors: challenge the process, inspire a shared vision, enable others to act, model the way, and encourage the heart. Each of these factors was investigated in relation to length of time in the current position, length in the student affairs profession, gender, and geographic location. Statistical analyses of performance on the LPI suggest that CSAOs tend to be most effective in leadership practices of challenge the process, enable others to act, and encourage the heart. CSAOs seem to be effective in the leadership practices of model the way and inspire a shared vision. Gender and geographic location were not found to be statistically significant to any of the leadership factors

Establishing and Maintaining Organizational Trust in the 21st Century

Recent corporate and academic scandals have led to decreasing levels of trust and confidence in many organizations. Whether the organization is a college or university, a government agency, a private company or a public corporation, the establishment and maintenance of trust is essential to both short-term success and long-term efficacy. This article deals with how managers and leaders can work to establish trust in their organizations via such strategies as fostering behavioural consistency, behavioural integrity, sharing of control, effective communication and demonstration of concern for employees. Also included are strategies of maintaining and enhancing trust, how the level of trust in an organization affects the individual as well as the entire enterprise, and the consequences of losing organizational trust

Observing Gravitational-Wave Transient GW150914 with Minimal Assumptions

The gravitational-wave signal GW150914 was first identified on September 14, 2015, by searches for short-duration gravitational-wave transients. These searches identify time-correlated transients in multiple detectors with minimal assumptions about the signal morphology, allowing them to be sensitive to gravitational waves emitted by a wide range of sources including binary black hole mergers. Over the observational period from September 12 to October 20, 2015, these transient searches were sensitive to binary black hole mergers similar to GW150914 to an average distance of ∼600  Mpc. In this paper, we describe the analyses that first detected GW150914 as well as the parameter estimation and waveform reconstruction techniques that initially identified GW150914 as the merger of two black holes. We find that the reconstructed waveform is consistent with the signal from a binary black hole merger with a chirp mass of ∼30  M⊙ and a total mass before merger of ∼70  M⊙ in the detector frame

The Rate of Binary Black Hole Mergers Inferred From Advanced LIGO Observations Surrounding GW150914

A transient gravitational-wave signal, GW150914, was identified in the twin Advanced LIGO detectors on 2015 September 2015 at 09:50:45 UTC. To assess the implications of this discovery, the detectors remained in operation with unchanged configurations over a period of 39 days around the time of the signal. At the detection statistic threshold corresponding to that observed for GW150914, our search of the 16 days of simultaneous two-detector observational data is estimated to have a false-alarm rate (FAR) o

Directly Comparing GW150914 With Numerical Solutions of Einstein\u27s Equations for Binary Black Hole Coalescence

We compare GW150914 directly to simulations of coalescing binary black holes in full general relativity, including several performed specifically to reproduce this event. Our calculations go beyond existing semianalytic models, because for all simulations—including sources with two independent, precessing spins—we perform comparisons which account for all the spin-weighted quadrupolar modes, and separately which account for all the quadrupolar and octopolar modes. Consistent with the posterior distributions reported by Abbott et al. [Phys. Rev. Lett. 116, 241102 (2016)] (at the 90% credible level), we find the data are compatible with a wide range of nonprecessing and precessing simulations. Follow-up simulations performed using previously estimated binary parameters most resemble the data, even when all quadrupolar and octopolar modes are included. Comparisons including only the quadrupolar modes constrain the total redshifted mass Mz ∈ ½64 M⊙ − 82 M⊙_, mass ratio 1=q ¼ m2=m1 ∈ ½0.6; 1_, and effective aligned spin χeff ∈ ½−0.3; 0.2_, where χeff ¼ ðS1=m1 þ S2=m2Þ · ˆL=M. Including both quadrupolar and octopolar modes, we find the mass ratio is even more tightly constrained. Even accounting for precession, simulations with extreme mass ratios and effective spins are highly inconsistent with the data, at any mass. Several nonprecessing and precessing simulations with similar mass ratio and χeff are consistent with the data. Though correlated, the components’ spins (both in magnitude and directions) are not significantly constrained by the data: the data is consistent with simulations with component spin magnitudes a1;2 up to at least 0.8, with random orientations. Further detailed follow-up calculations are needed to determine if the data contain a weak imprint from transverse (precessing) spins. For nonprecessing binaries, interpolating between simulations, we reconstruct a posterior distribution consistent with previous results. The final black hole’s redshifted mass is consistent with Mf;z in the range 64.0 M⊙ − 73.5 M⊙ and the final black hole’s dimensionless spin parameter is consistent with af ¼ 0.62–0.73. As our approach invokes no intermediate approximations to general relativity and can strongly reject binaries whose radiation is inconsistent with the data, our analysis provides a valuable complement to Abbott et al. [Phys. Rev. Lett. 116, 241102 (2016)]

Characterization of Transient Noise in Advanced LIGO Relevant to Gravitational Wave Signal GW150914

On September 14, 2015, a gravitational wave signal from a coalescing black hole binary system was observed by the Advanced LIGO detectors. This paper describes the transient noise backgrounds used to determine the significance of the event (designated GW150914) and presents the results of investigations into potential correlated or uncorrelated sources of transient noise in the detectors around the time of the event. The detectors were operating nominally at the time of GW150914. We have ruled out environmental influences and non-Gaussian instrument noise at either LIGO detector as the cause of the observed gravitational wave signal