The Relationship Between Perceptions and Actual Use of Workplace Flexibility and Employee Engagement

Previous research has identified both perceptions of the availability of flexible work arrangements and use of these arrangements as a predictor of engagement (Richman, Civian, Shannon, Hill, & Brennan, 2008; Ten Brummelhuis, Bakker, Hetland, & Keulemans, 2012). However, no studies have looked at the incremental effect use of flexible work arrangements have on engagement, above and beyond actual use. Very few studies have looked at how gender moderates the relationship between perceptions of flexible work arrangements and use of flexible work arrangements and engagement. The purpose of this study was to examine and compare the relationships between perceptions and actual use of flexible work arrangements and to examine the moderating effect of gender on these aforementioned relationships. One hundred and forty-nine survey results collected from employees at the Bay Area branch of large technology company revealed that actual use of flexibility did not have an effect on engagement, above and beyond that of perceptions of flexibility and engagement. Gender was found to moderate the relationship between actual use of flexible work arrangements and dedication, one of the three subscales of engagement assessed in the present study. It is suggested that organizations increase offerings of flexible work arrangements, and encourage employees to perceive the availability of these offerings, in order to increase the dedication of their employees

MOLECULAR TROJAN HORSES IN THE TREATMENT OF METACHROMATIC LEUKODYSTROPHY

Metachromatic leukodystrophy (MLD) is a lysosomal storage disease caused by a mutation in the enzyme, arylsulfatase A (ASA) and is characterized by progressive and fatal demyelination in the central and peripheral nervous systems. To date, no effective treatment exists and development is hampered by the blood-brain barrier (BBB). I have successfully generated fusion proteins using an ApoE fragment as a molecular Trojan horse fused to the full-length human ASA. These proteins were expressed in eukaryotic cells transduced with lentiviral expression vectors and have been assessed for in vitro enzymatic activity and kinetic properties. Although preliminary studies show that these constructs did not cross an in vitro BBB model under these experimental conditions, there is evidence to suggest that the ApoE fragment facilitates the uptake of fusion proteins into the endothelial cells of the BBB. Recommendations for further study are encouraged to reach the goal to find treatment for ML

Mating system and population genetic structure of the bulldog ant Myrmecia pavida

Understanding the evolution of the alternative mating strategies of monandry and polyandry is a fundamental problem in evolutionary biology because of the cost-benefit trade-offs associated with mating for females. The problem is particularly intriguing in the social insects because queens in most species appear to be obligately monandrous (i.e., only a single male fathers their offspring), while those in a minority of species have evolved high, and sometimes extreme, polyandry. One group which may shed particular insight is the ant subfamily Myrmeciinae (Myrmecia and Nothomyrmecia). Here we examine the population and colony genetic structure of the bulldog ant Myrmecia pavida CLARK, 1951 by genotyping offspring workers from 45 colonies. We find little evidence of geographic structuring or inbreeding in the population, indicating that the species outbreeds, most probably in mating swarms. We also find that queens of M pavida show moderately high polyandry, with 84% having mated with between two and seven males, and an overall mean observed mating frequency of 3.8. This is significantly higher than previously reported for queens of Nothomyrmecia macrops, in which most females mate singly. This was similar to that of M pyriformis, M brevinoda, and M pilosula, the three congenerics for which mating frequencies have recently been reported. The two genera in the Myrmeciinae therefore appear to show multiple transitions in mating frequency and further investigation of the subfamily may be highly informative for disentangling the forces driving the evolution of alternative mating strategies

State Strategies for Water Conservation

Proceedings of the 2001 Georgia Water Resources Conference, April 26 and 27, 2001, Athens, Georgia.Water conservation must become an integral part of water management planning, especially in a state such as Georgia, where rapidly increasing water demands exacerbate the impacts of natural drought. Although Georgia began requiring water conservation plans as a requirement of new or expanded water withdrawal permits in 1994, the state still lacks a comprehensive and aggressive water conservation policy. Many states, such as California, Colorado, Connecticut and others have enacted broad and far-reaching water conservation programs. Recommendations for Georgia's programs, focusing on urban water use, are made based on effective programs from other states.Sponsored and Organized by: U.S. Geological Survey, Georgia Department of Natural Resources, Natural Resources Conservation Service, The University of Georgia, Georgia State University, Georgia Institute of TechnologyThis book was published by the Institute of Ecology, The University of Georgia, Athens, Georgia 30602-2202. The views and statements advanced in this publication are solely those of the authors and do not represent official views or policies of The University of Georgia, the U.S. Geological Survey, the Georgia Water Research Institute as authorized by the Water Resources Research Act of 1990 (P.L. 101-397) or the other conference sponsors

Analysis of C. elegans NR2E nuclear receptors defines three conserved clades and ligand-independent functions.

RIGHTS : This article is licensed under the BioMed Central licence at http://www.biomedcentral.com/about/license which is similar to the 'Creative Commons Attribution Licence'. In brief you may : copy, distribute, and display the work; make derivative works; or make commercial use of the work - under the following conditions: the original author must be given credit; for any reuse or distribution, it must be made clear to others what the license terms of this work are.BACKGROUND: The nuclear receptors (NRs) are an important class of transcription factors that are conserved across animal phyla. Canonical NRs consist of a DNA-binding domain (DBD) and ligand-binding domain (LBD). While most animals have 20-40 NRs, nematodes of the genus Caenorhabditis have experienced a spectacular proliferation and divergence of NR genes. The LBDs of evolutionarily-conserved Caenorhabditis NRs have diverged sharply from their Drosophila and vertebrate orthologs, while the DBDs have been strongly conserved. The NR2E family of NRs play critical roles in development, especially in the nervous system. In this study, we explore the phylogenetics and function of the NR2E family of Caenorhabditis elegans, using an in vivo assay to test LBD function. RESULTS: Phylogenetic analysis reveals that the NR2E family of NRs consists of three broadly-conserved clades of orthologous NRs. In C. elegans, these clades are defined by nhr-67, fax-1 and nhr-239. The vertebrate orthologs of nhr-67 and fax-1 are Tlx and PNR, respectively. While the nhr-239 clade includes orthologs in insects (Hr83), an echinoderm, and a hemichordate, the gene appears to have been lost from vertebrate lineages. The C. elegans and C. briggsae nhr-239 genes have an apparently-truncated and highly-diverged LBD region. An additional C. elegans NR2E gene, nhr-111, appears to be a recently-evolved paralog of fax-1; it is present in C. elegans, but not C. briggsae or other animals with completely-sequenced genomes. Analysis of the relatively unstudied nhr-111 and nhr-239 genes demonstrates that they are both expressed--nhr-111 very broadly and nhr-239 in a small subset of neurons. Analysis of the FAX-1 LBD in an in vivo assay revealed that it is not required for at least some developmental functions. CONCLUSIONS: Our analysis supports three conserved clades of NR2E receptors, only two of which are represented in vertebrates, indicating three ancestral NR2E genes in the urbilateria. The lack of a requirement for a FAX-1 LBD suggests that the relatively high level of sequence divergence for Caenorhabditis LBDs reflects relaxed selection on the primary sequence as opposed to divergent positive selection. This observation is consistent with a model in which divergence of some Caenorhabditis LBDs is allowed, at least in part, by the absence of a ligand requirement

Probing EWSB Naturalness in Unified SUSY Models with Dark Matter

We have studied Electroweak Symmetry Breaking (EWSB) fine-tuning in the context of two unified Supersymmetry scenarios: the Constrained Minimal Supersymmetric Model (CMSSM) and models with Non-Universal Higgs Masses (NUHM), in light of current and upcoming direct detection dark matter experiments. We consider both those models that satisfy a one-sided bound on the relic density of neutralinos, $\Omega_{\chi} h^2 < 0.12$, and also the subset that satisfy the two-sided bound in which the relic density is within the 2 sigma best fit of WMAP7 + BAO + H0 data. We find that current direct detection searches for dark matter probe the least fine-tuned regions of parameter-space, or equivalently those of lowest Higgs mass parameter $\mu$, and will tend to probe progressively more and more fine-tuned models, though the trend is more pronounced in the CMSSM than in the NUHM. Additionally, we examine several subsets of model points, categorized by common mass hierarchies; M_{\chi_0} \sim M_{\chi^\pm}, M_{\chi_0} \sim M_{\stau}, M_{\chi_0} \sim M_{\stop_1}, the light and heavy Higgs poles, and any additional models classified as "other"; the relevance of these mass hierarchies is their connection to the preferred neutralino annihilation channel that determines the relic abundance. For each of these subsets of models we investigated the degree of fine-tuning and discoverability in current and next generation direct detection experiments.Comment: 26 pages, 10 figures. v2: references added. v3: matches published versio

US Cosmic Visions: New Ideas in Dark Matter 2017: Community Report

This white paper summarizes the workshop "U.S. Cosmic Visions: New Ideas in Dark Matter" held at University of Maryland on March 23-25, 2017.Comment: 102 pages + reference

Global change effects on plant communities are magnified by time and the number of global change factors imposed

Global change drivers (GCDs) are expected to alter community structure and consequently, the services that ecosystems provide. Yet, few experimental investigations have examined effects of GCDs on plant community structure across multiple ecosystem types, and those that do exist present conflicting patterns. In an unprecedented global synthesis of over 100 experiments that manipulated factors linked to GCDs, we show that herbaceous plant community responses depend on experimental manipulation length and number of factors manipulated. We found that plant communities are fairly resistant to experimentally manipulated GCDs in the short term (<10 y). In contrast, long-term (≥10 y) experiments show increasing community divergence of treatments from control conditions. Surprisingly, these community responses occurred with similar frequency across the GCD types manipulated in our database. However, community responses were more common when 3 or more GCDs were simultaneously manipulated, suggesting the emergence of additive or synergistic effects of multiple drivers, particularly over long time periods. In half of the cases, GCD manipulations caused a difference in community composition without a corresponding species richness difference, indicating that species reordering or replacement is an important mechanism of community responses to GCDs and should be given greater consideration when examining consequences of GCDs for the biodiversity–ecosystem function relationship. Human activities are currently driving unparalleled global changes worldwide. Our analyses provide the most comprehensive evidence to date that these human activities may have widespread impacts on plant community composition globally, which will increase in frequency over time and be greater in areas where communities face multiple GCDs simultaneously