Extending Social Learning Theories to Collectivist Cultures: The Effect of Behavior Modeling Training, Service Orientation and Language Skills on Service Skills and Behaviors

Although previous research has suggested that training approaches using behavior modeling yield better results than lecture-based approaches, these assumptions have not been tested in collectivist cultures. This study examined the effects of these alternative training methods for service knowledge and service behavior with a field experiment involving 117 Russian hotel employees. Despite no previous exposure to behavior modeling and no cultural context for service, the behavioral modeling training approach relative to the lecture-based approach yielded higher levels of both service knowledge and behavior. Since the setting was an English speaking hotel, difference in language ability were also considered and behavioral modeling was found to be a more effective training approach regardless of English ability. It also appears that service orientation is positively associated with both knowledge and behavior. The results indicate behavior modeling may be most helpful to those employees least predisposed to service or with lower language abilities

TAM or VFM? Which Model Matches How People Ascribe Actually Value?

The IT community has a long history of developing theory to explain when people will change their behaviors to adopt new technology systems. Two current technology adoption theories, the Technology Adoption Model and the Value Frequency Model, draw from different groups of referent theory: Reasons Theories (RTs) and Expectancy Value Theories (EVTs). RTs and EVTs make different assumptions about how people form attitudes toward behavioral changes (i.e., to adopt or not). Having a better understanding of how people make judgments that affect their behavioral choices could help guide the choice of referent theory when developing new IT theory. This study examined how people responded to attitude-shaping scenarios as a way to gain insight into the assumptions that could be guiding their choices. Their responses indicated a tendency to assign values in ways consistent with the assumptions and processes articulated in EVTs

Teaching and Learning Law and Business: An Open Resource Tool

This dissertation examines the impacts of business law education through a multi-layered review of surveys, data, and literature. The authors examine what law schools across the country offer, explore research conducted in partnership with the Minnesota and American Bar Associations, and provide a systemic review of the relevant literature. The data shows attorneys resoundingly do not believe law school coursework prepared them adequately for the business of law. Despite the practical changes that have been made to law school education since the 1960s to the present, there is still a disconnect between what law schools say they will provide and what is delivered. By examining this issue of how law schools have offered an unfulfilled promise, we clarify the process by which education can transform lives, open doors, and reorganize structures to address the needs of the communities we serve. The period studied: 2009–20 includes the expansion of online capabilities, distance learning, and the global pandemic of COVID 19. Two major research strategies are used: (1) a quantitative analysis of state and countrywide-level data and (2) a review of literature. Data has been collected from archives, interviews, newspapers, published reports, and studies. This dissertation challenges the proposition that that doctrinal law school course offerings adequately prepare law students to thrive in business for themselves or their clients. Practical skills courses, innovation, collaboration, simulations, and partnerships with lawyers, teachers and businesspeople in the community will be the driving agents for change

An environmental and economic comparison of cooling system designs for steam-electric power plants

Originally presented as a thesis (M.S.), M.I.T., Dept. of Civil Engineering, 1978, by Kenneth F. Najjar.The selection of waste heat rejection systems for steam-electric power plants involves a trade-off among environmental, energy and water conservation, and economic factors. This study compares four general types of cooling systems on the basis of these factors. The cooling systems chosen for study are: once-through systems including surface canals and submerged multiport diffusers; shallow closed cycle cooling ponds; mechanical and natural draft evaporative cooling towers; and mechanical draft dry towers. The cooling system comparison involves, first, an optimization of each cooling system and then a comparison among optimal systems. Comparison is made for an 800 MWe fossil unit and a 1200 MWe nuclear unit located at a hypothetical midwestern river site. A set of models has been developed to optimize the components of each cooling system based on the local meteorological and hydrological conditions at the site in accordance with a fixed demand, scalable plant concept. This concept allows one to compare the costs of producing the same net power from each plant/cooling system. Base case economic parameters were used to evaluate the optimum system for each of the four general cooling systems followed by a sensitivity study for each parameter. Comparison of energy and water consumption follows from the results of the performance model, while comparison of environmental impacts is mostly qualitative. Some quantitative modelling was performed for the environmental effects of thermal discharges from once-through systems, fogging from wet cooling towers and water consumption from the ponds, wet towers and once-through. The results of the optimization models of each of the systems are compared on the basis of: performance - discrete distributions of environmental conditions and transient simulation; economics - using base case scenarios and sensitivity values to arrive at costs expressed in terms of production costs, annualized costs and present value costs; energy and water consumption; and environmental effects. The once-through systems were found to be the least expensive of the four systems, the most energy efficient, but potentially the most environmentally damaging. On the other extreme, dry cooling towers are the most environmentally sound while being the most expensive and least energy efficient. Finally, the results of the economic optimization are compared with results from previous comparative studies

Impacts of Atmospheric Nitrogen Deposition on Surface Waters of the Western North Atlantic Mitigated by Multiple Feedbacks

The impacts of atmospheric nitrogen deposition (AND) on the chlorophyll and nitrogen dynamics of surface waters in the western North Atlantic (25 degrees N-45 degrees N, 65 degrees W-80 degrees W) are examined with a biogeochemical ocean model forced with a regional atmospheric chemistry model (Community Multiscale Air Quality, CMAQ). CMAQ simulations with year-specific emissions reveal the existence of a hot spot of AND over the Gulf Stream. The impact of the hot spot on the oceanic biogeochemistry is mitigated in three ways by physical and biogeochemical processes. First, AND significantly contributes to surface oceanic nitrogen concentrations only during the summer period, when the stratification is maximal and the background nitrogen inventories are minimal. Second, the increase in summer surface nitrate concentrations is accompanied by a reduction in upward nitrate diffusion at the base of the surface layer. This negative feedback partly cancels the nitrogen enrichment from AND. Third, gains in biomass near the surface force a shoaling of the euphotic layer and a reduction of about 5% in deep primary production and biomass on the continental shelf. Despite these mitigating processes, the impacts of AND remain substantial. AND increases surface nitrate concentrations in the Gulf Stream region by 14% during the summer (2% on average over the year). New primary production increases by 22% in this region during summer (8% on average). Although these changes may be difficult to distinguish from natural variability in observations, the results support the view that AND significantly enhances local carbon export

Every Picture Tells a Story: The 2010 Round of Congressional Redistricting in New England

The United States Constitution requires that the number of representatives in Congress be reapportioned among the states based on a decennial census, and the U.S. Supreme Court ruled half a century ago that congressional districts within each state must be, as nearly as practicable, equal in population. However, the actual drawing of district lines for our national lower house and the methods employed for doing so are largely left to the individual states. Redistricting thus presents a fertile field for the comparative examination of state politics and political institutions

Expression of L1 retrotransposons in granulocytes from patients with active systemic lupus erythematosus

Background: Patients with systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) have autoantibodies against the L1-encoded open-reading frame 1 protein (ORF1p). Here, we report (i) which immune cells ORF1p emanates from, (ii) which L1 loci are transcriptionally active, (iii) whether the cells express L1-dependent interferon and interferon-stimulated genes, and (iv) the effect of inhibition of L1 ORF2p by reverse transcriptase inhibitors.Results: L1 ORF1p was detected by flow cytometry primarily in SLE CD66b+CD15+ regular and low-density granulocytes, but much less in other immune cell lineages. The amount of ORF1p was higher in neutrophils from patients with SLE disease activity index (SLEDAI) &gt; 6 (p = 0.011) compared to patients with inactive disease, SLEDAI &lt; 4. Patient neutrophils transcribed seven to twelve human-specific L1 loci (L1Hs), but only 3 that are full-length and with an intact ORF1. Besides serving as a source of detectable ORF1p, the most abundant transcript encoded a truncated ORF2p reverse transcriptase predicted to remain cytosolic, while the two other encoded an intact full-length ORF2p. A number of genes encoding proteins that influence L1 transcription positively or negatively were altered in patients, particularly those with active disease, compared to healthy controls. Components of nucleic acid sensing and interferon induction were also altered. SLE neutrophils also expressed type I interferon-inducible genes and interferon β, which were substantially reduced after treatment of the cells with drugs known to inhibit ORF2p reverse transcriptase activity.Conclusions: We identified L1Hs loci that are transcriptionally active in SLE neutrophils, and a reduction in the epigenetic silencing mechanisms that normally counteract L1 transcription. SLE neutrophils contained L1-encoded ORF1p protein, as well as activation of the type I interferon system, which was inhibited by treatment with reverse transcriptase inhibitors. Our findings will enable a deeper analysis of L1 dysregulation and its potential role in SLE pathogenesis.</p

The Relationship between Heart Rate Variability and Adiposity Differs for Central and Overall Adiposity

While frank obesity is associated with reduced HRV, indicative of poorer autonomic nervous system (ANS) function, the association between body mass index (BMI) and HRV is less clear. We hypothesized that effects of adiposity on ANS are mostly mediated by visceral fat and less by subcutaneous fat; therefore, centrally distributed adipose tissue, that is, waist circumference (WC), should be more strongly associated with HRV than overall adiposity (BMI). To examine this hypothesis, we used data collected in a subset of the Baltimore Longitudinal Study of Aging to compare strength of association between HRV and WC to that of HRV and BMI. Time domain HRV variables SDNN (standard deviation of successive differences in normal-to-normal (N-N) intervals) and RMSSD (root mean square of successive differences in N-N intervals) were calculated from 24-hour Holter recordings in 159 participants (29–96 years). Increasing WC was associated with decreasing SDNN and RMSSD in younger but not older participants (P value for WC-by-age interaction = 0.003). BMI was not associated with either SDNN or RMSSD at any age. In conclusion, central adiposity may contribute to sympathetic and parasympathetic ANS declines early in life

Estuarine Dissolved Organic Carbon Flux From Space: With Application to Chesapeake and Delaware Bays

This study uses a neural network model trained with in situ data, combined with satellite data and hydrodynamic model products, to compute the daily estuarine export of dissolved organic carbon (DOC) at the mouths of Chesapeake Bay (CB) and Delaware Bay (DB) from 2007 to 2011. Both bays show large flux variability with highest fluxes in spring and lowest in fall as well as interannual flux variability (0.18 and 0.27 Tg C/year in 2008 and 2010 for CB; 0.04 and 0.09 Tg C/year in 2008 and 2011 for DB). Based on previous estimates of total organic carbon (TOCexp) exported by all Mid‐Atlantic Bight estuaries (1.2 Tg C/year), the DOC export (CB + DB) of 0.3 Tg C/year estimated here corresponds to 25% of the TOCexp. Spatial and temporal covariations of velocity and DOC concentration provide contributions to the flux, with larger spatial influence. Differences in the discharge of fresh water into the bays (74 billion m3/year for CB and 21 billion m3/year for DB) and their geomorphologies are major drivers of the differences in DOC fluxes for these two systems. Terrestrial DOC inputs are similar to the export of DOC at the bay mouths at annual and longer time scales but diverge significantly at shorter time scales (days to months). Future efforts will expand to the Mid‐Atlantic Bight and Gulf of Maine, and its major rivers and estuaries, in combination with coupled terrestrial‐estuarine‐ocean biogeochemical models that include effects of climate change, such as warming and CO2 increase

Structure Guided Design of Potent and Selective Ponatinib-Based Hybrid Inhibitors for RIPK1

SummaryRIPK1 and RIPK3, two closely related RIPK family members, have emerged as important regulators of pathologic cell death and inflammation. In the current work, we report that the Bcr-Abl inhibitor and anti-leukemia agent ponatinib is also a first-in-class dual inhibitor of RIPK1 and RIPK3. Ponatinib potently inhibited multiple paradigms of RIPK1- and RIPK3-dependent cell death and inflammatory tumor necrosis factor alpha (TNF-α) gene transcription. We further describe design strategies that utilize the ponatinib scaffold to develop two classes of inhibitors (CS and PN series), each with greatly improved selectivity for RIPK1. In particular, we detail the development of PN10, a highly potent and selective “hybrid” RIPK1 inhibitor, capturing the best properties of two different allosteric RIPK1 inhibitors, ponatinib and necrostatin-1. Finally, we show that RIPK1 inhibitors from both classes are powerful blockers of TNF-induced injury in vivo. Altogether, these findings outline promising candidate molecules and design approaches for targeting RIPK1- and RIPK3-driven inflammatory pathologies