Applied Merit Pay Challenges

From an organizational perspective, economic incentives are often used as a tool to induce behaviors which align the goals of individuals with the organization. As a fundamental concept, varied types of merit pay have been utilized to keep organizational and individual motives in sync. This can be illustrated in contracts that base wages on commission. Many small businesses and individuals have their compensation tied to how effective their organization runs. However, when the ultimate goal is to enhance productivity, does merit pay produce the optimal environment that enables workers to achieve their potential? This essay will attempt to investigate that question through analyzing the motivational perceptions of skilled workers who were considering a merit pay policy at Oregon Health and Sciences University (OHSU)

Filament: The Work of Bill FitzGibbons and Creighton Michael (Exhibition Catalogue)

Catalogue to accompany the two-person exhibition of Bill FitzGibbons and Creighton Michael, held at the Ewing Gallery of Art + Architecture, September 16 - October 31, 2010

I just look it up: Undergraduate student perception of social media use in their academic success

College students are increasingly using social media.  This case study explores how traditionally aged college students perceive social media use contributes to their academic success.  We used survey data collected at a college student union to understand the social media students use in their academic pursuits and to inform a focus group discussion.  Findings indicate that students do not differentiate between technology and social media, and that they rely heavily on social media to facilitate their academic success.  This case study indicates that while using social media extensively may create minor issues for students, proper use can support academic endeavors

Characterization of basal ganglia volume changes in the context of HIV and polysubstance use

HIV and psychoactive substances can impact the integrity of the basal ganglia (BG), a neural substrate of cognition, motor control, and reward-seeking behaviors. This study assessed BG gray matter (GM) volume as a function of polysubstance (stimulant and opioid) use and HIV status. We hypothesized that comorbid polysubstance use and HIV seropositivity would alter BG GM volume differently than would polysubstance use or HIV status alone. We collected structural MRI scans, substance use history, and HIV diagnoses. Participants who had HIV (HIV +), a history of polysubstance dependence (POLY +), both, or neither completed assessments for cognition, motor function, and risk-taking behaviors (N = 93). All three clinical groups showed a left-lateralized pattern of GM reduction in the BG relative to controls. However, in the HIV + /POLY + group, stimulant use was associated with increased GM volume within the globus pallidus and putamen. This surpassed the effects from opioid use, as indicated by decreased GM volume throughout the BG in the HIV-/POLY + group. Motor learning was impaired in all three clinical groups, and in the HIV + /POLY + group, motor learning was associated with increased caudate and putamen GM volume. We also observed associations between BG GM volume and risk-taking behaviors in the HIV + /POLY- and HIV-/POLY + groups. The effects of substance use on the BG differed as a function of substance type used, HIV seropositivity, and BG subregion. Although BG volume decreased in association with HIV and opioid use, stimulants can, inversely, lead to BG volume increases within the context of HIV

Aerothermodynamic comparison of two- and three-dimensional rarefied hypersonic cavity flows

The thermal protection system is a key element in atmospheric re-entry missions of aerospace vehicles. Usually, in the thermal load calculations, the analysis assumes that the vehicle has a smooth surface. However, discontinuities or imperfections are often present on the aerospace vehicle surfaces due to fabrication tolerances, sensor installations, spaces between the thermal protection plates, and differential expansion or ablation rates between non-similar materials. In the present work, rarefied hypersonic flows over two- and three-dimensional cavities at an altitude of 80km in the Earth’s atmosphere are studied numerically. To model flows in the transitional regime, where the validity of the Navier Stokes equations is questionable, the direct simulation Monte Carlo method has been used. The primary goal is to assess the sensitivity of heat transfer, pressure, and skin-friction coefficients for a family of two- and three-dimensional cavities defined by different length-to-depth ratios. The analysis shows that an assumption of two-dimensionality plays a key role in the over prediction of the aerodynamic properties. Previous work using a continuum approach shows that two recirculation regions and flow attachment occurs when the length-to-depth ratio is equal to 14; however, the same phenomena are observed in the transitional regime when the cavity length-to-depth ratio is equal to 4. A study of the influence of the cavity width has also been conducted. It is shown that increasing the cavity width results in an augmentation of the surface aerothermodynamic quantitie

Data Assimilation Enhancements to Air Force Weathers Land Information System

The United States Air Force (USAF) has a proud and storied tradition of enabling significant advancements in the area of characterizing and modeling land state information. 557th Weather Wing (557 WW; DoDs Executive Agent for Land Information) provides routine geospatial intelligence information to warfighters, planners, and decision makers at all echelons and services of the U.S. military, government and intelligence community. 557 WW and its predecessors have been home to the DoDs only operational regional and global land data analysis systems since January 1958. As a trusted partner since 2005, Air Force Weather (AFW) has relied on the Hydrological Sciences Laboratory at NASA/GSFC to lead the interagency scientific collaboration known as the Land Information System (LIS). LIS is an advanced software framework for high performance land surface modeling and data assimilation of geospatial intelligence (GEOINT) information

Fibroblast Growth Factor Receptor Signaling Dramatically Accelerates Tumorigenesis and Enhances Oncoprotein Translation in the Mouse Mammary Tumor Virus-Wnt-1 Mouse Model of Breast Cancer

Fibroblast growth factor (FGF) cooperates with the Wnt/β-catenin pathway to promote mammary tumorigenesis. To investigate the mechanisms involved in FGF/Wnt cooperation, we genetically engineered a model of inducible FGF receptor (iFGFR) signaling in the context of the well-established mouse mammary tumor virus–Wnt-1 transgenic mouse. In the bigenic mice, iFGFR1 activation dramatically enhanced mammary tumorigenesis. Expression microarray analysis did not show transcriptional enhancement of Wnt/β-catenin target genes but instead showed a translational gene signature that also correlated with elevated FGFR1 and FGFR2 in human breast cancer data sets. Additionally, iFGFR1 activation enhanced recruitment of RNA to polysomes, resulting in a marked increase in protein expression of several different Wnt/β-catenin target genes. FGF pathway activation stimulated extracellular signal-regulated kinase and the phosphorylation of key translation regulators both in vivo in the mouse model and in vitro in a human breast cancer cell line. Our results suggest that cooperation of the FGF and Wnt pathways in mammary tumorigenesis is based on the activation of protein translational pathways that result in, but are not limited to, increased expression of Wnt/β-catenin target genes (at the level of protein translation). Further, they reveal protein translation initiation factors as potential therapeutic targets for human breast cancers with alterations in FGF signaling

Mendelian gene identification through mouse embryo viability screening.

BACKGROUND: The diagnostic rate of Mendelian disorders in sequencing studies continues to increase, along with the pace of novel disease gene discovery. However, variant interpretation in novel genes not currently associated with disease is particularly challenging and strategies combining gene functional evidence with approaches that evaluate the phenotypic similarities between patients and model organisms have proven successful. A full spectrum of intolerance to loss-of-function variation has been previously described, providing evidence that gene essentiality should not be considered as a simple and fixed binary property. METHODS: Here we further dissected this spectrum by assessing the embryonic stage at which homozygous loss-of-function results in lethality in mice from the International Mouse Phenotyping Consortium, classifying the set of lethal genes into one of three windows of lethality: early, mid, or late gestation lethal. We studied the correlation between these windows of lethality and various gene features including expression across development, paralogy and constraint metrics together with human disease phenotypes. We explored a gene similarity approach for novel gene discovery and investigated unsolved cases from the 100,000 Genomes Project. RESULTS: We found that genes in the early gestation lethal category have distinct characteristics and are enriched for genes linked with recessive forms of inherited metabolic disease. We identified several genes sharing multiple features with known biallelic forms of inborn errors of the metabolism and found signs of enrichment of biallelic predicted pathogenic variants among early gestation lethal genes in patients recruited under this disease category. We highlight two novel gene candidates with phenotypic overlap between the patients and the mouse knockouts. CONCLUSIONS: Information on the developmental period at which embryonic lethality occurs in the knockout mouse may be used for novel disease gene discovery that helps to prioritise variants in unsolved rare disease cases