A Quality Approach to Tacit Knowledge Capture: Effective Practice to Achieving Operational Excellence

Knowledge loss resulting from an aging workforce continues to be a management nightmare that has obliged many organizational leaders to develop strategies aimed at documenting mission-critical knowledge. Yet knowledge captured and stored in repositories continues to lack quality. The purpose of this study was to explore the impact of integrating quality management into the tacit knowledge capture process. Further studies on the effects of personality in the knowledge capture processes could lead to insights on reasons for diminished knowledge quality. From a social perspective, the implementation of a model that encompasses personality and quality management could improve decision-making processes

Exploring Critical Success Factors for Data Integration and Decision-Making in Law Enforcement

Agencies from various disciplines supporting law enforcement functions and processes have integrated, shared, and communicated data through ad hoc methods to address crime, terrorism, and many other threats in the United States. Data integration in law enforcement plays a critical role in the technical, business, and intelligence processes created by users to combine data from various sources and domains to transform them into valuable information. The purpose of this qualitative phenomenological study was to explore the current conditions of data integration frameworks through user and system interactions among law enforcement organizational processes. Further exploration of critical success factors used to integrate data more efficiently among systems of systems and user interactions may improve crime and intelligence analysis through modern applications and novel frameworks

Outcomes of Enterprise Resource Planning System on Organizational Productivity

Leaders within local government organizations do not understand how to achieve expected and desired benefits from the implementation of enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems. The lack of alignment between social and technical elements in ERP implementation continues to depress organizational productivity. The prime objective of our quantitative correlational study was to examine whether social and technical elements increase use and productivity in ERP implementation. Sociotechnical systems theory provided the theoretical basis for our study. We examined six dimensional variables relating to ERP implementation. Our key findings indicated positive significant relationships between ERP and information sharing, between ERP system quality and ease of ERP use, and between ERP system quality and organizational productivity. Further studies could examine other dimensions that could ensure ERP sustainability in other government organizations

The role of vitamin D in pulmonary disease: COPD, asthma, infection, and cancer

The role of vitamin D (VitD) in calcium and bone homeostasis is well described. In the last years, it has been recognized that in addition to this classical function, VitD modulates a variety of processes and regulatory systems including host defense, inflammation, immunity, and repair. VitD deficiency appears to be frequent in industrialized countries. Especially patients with lung diseases have often low VitD serum levels. Epidemiological data indicate that low levels of serum VitD is associated with impaired pulmonary function, increased incidence of inflammatory, infectious or neoplastic diseases. Several lung diseases, all inflammatory in nature, may be related to activities of VitD including asthma, COPD and cancer. The exact mechanisms underlying these data are unknown, however, VitD appears to impact on the function of inflammatory and structural cells, including dendritic cells, lymphocytes, monocytes, and epithelial cells. This review summarizes the knowledge on the classical and newly discovered functions of VitD, the molecular and cellular mechanism of action and the available data on the relationship between lung disease and VitD status

A História da Alimentação: balizas historiográficas

Os M. pretenderam traçar um quadro da História da Alimentação, não como um novo ramo epistemológico da disciplina, mas como um campo em desenvolvimento de práticas e atividades especializadas, incluindo pesquisa, formação, publicações, associações, encontros acadêmicos, etc. Um breve relato das condições em que tal campo se assentou faz-se preceder de um panorama dos estudos de alimentação e temas correia tos, em geral, segundo cinco abardagens Ia biológica, a econômica, a social, a cultural e a filosófica!, assim como da identificação das contribuições mais relevantes da Antropologia, Arqueologia, Sociologia e Geografia. A fim de comentar a multiforme e volumosa bibliografia histórica, foi ela organizada segundo critérios morfológicos. A seguir, alguns tópicos importantes mereceram tratamento à parte: a fome, o alimento e o domínio religioso, as descobertas européias e a difusão mundial de alimentos, gosto e gastronomia. O artigo se encerra com um rápido balanço crítico da historiografia brasileira sobre o tema

Greater prairie-chickens and sharp-tailed grouse have similarly high nest survival in the Nebraska Sandhills

The ranges of two native galliform species overlap in the Nebraska Sandhills, the largest contiguous grassland in North America. We monitored nests of greater prairie-chickens (Tympanuchus cupido) and sharp-tailed grouse (Tympanuchus phasianellus) in Cherry County, Nebraska, in 2015 and 2016. Our objectives were to 1) compare daily probability of nest survival between species, 2) evaluate vegetation structure at nests for potential effects on nest survival, 3) compare nest site topography between species, and 4) use a simple model of breeding season success to evaluate the potential for stable populations at our study sites. We captured and radiomarked 87 birds, and we monitored nests for known fate analyses of survival. The two species did not vary in daily nest survival (pooled DNS = 0.9667, SE = 0.0085), and pooled probability of nest success (24-day) was high (0.4436). Sharp-tailed grouse used nest sites with taller vegetation and nested lower on slopes than greater prairie-chickens, but survival did not vary with vegetation structure. Our modeling suggested that grouse in the Sandhills region have high potential for stable populations with the level of productivity documented in our study