Training leadership teams to impact performance outcomes: an exploratory case study

This study examined the impact of teamwork training provided to intact teams of organization leaders in a single healthcare services company. The subjects of the training were teams of Regional Operations Directors participating in a company-sponsored, 4-day training session focused on examining current and desired levels of collaboration among members. Primary data were collected pre- and post-session using an online Team Effectiveness Tool (TET), measuring group skills, processes, and emergent states of climate, affinity, and member satisfaction. Analysis of primary data revealed statistically significant improvements in 22 of the 29 TET items at a 0.01 level of confidence. Secondary data involving objective measures of business performance (productivity, labor cost, quality, employee turnover) were also collected pre- and post-session, and revealed statistically significant changes in two of the four objective measures of performance post-training (clinical quality and employee turnover at the 0.01 and 0.05 levels of confidence, respectively). Correlation and regression analyses indicate a statistically significant relationship (at 0.01 confidence level) of changes in team behaviors post-training and improvements in clinical quality. These case study results strongly suggested a strong, positive relationship between teamwork training for leadership teams and improvements in two important drivers of business success for this company - clinical quality and employee turnover

Pre- and post-processing for Cosmic/NASTRAN on personal computers and mainframes

An interface between Cosmic/NASTRAN and GIFTS has recently been released, combining the powerful pre- and post-processing capabilities of GIFTS with Cosmic/NASTRAN's analysis capabilities. The interface operates on a wide range of computers, even linking Cosmic/NASTRAN and GIFTS when the two are on different computers. GIFTS offers a wide range of elements for use in model construction, each translated by the interface into the nearest Cosmic/NASTRAN equivalent; and the options of automatic or interactive modelling and loading in GIFTS make pre-processing easy and effective. The interface itself includes the programs GFTCOS, which creates the Cosmic/NASTRAN input deck (and, if desired, control deck) from the GIFTS Unified Data Base, COSGFT, which translates the displacements from the Cosmic/NASTRAN analysis back into GIFTS; and HOSTR, which handles stress computations for a few higher-order elements available in the interface, but not supported by the GIFTS processor STRESS. Finally, the versatile display options in GIFTS post-processing allow the user to examine the analysis results through an especially wide range of capabilities, including such possibilities as creating composite loading cases, plotting in color and animating the analysis

Cotton harvest aids (1994)

Removing leaves and opening bolls with harvest aids are important components of a management plan for producing high-quality cotton fiber. When not properly managed, harvest aids may reduce yield and quality. By properly managing the time of defoliation, the crop can be prepared for a timely harvest, which is critical in Missouri's short season environment. The number of suitable hours for harvest operations decreases rapidly during the fall. With timely harvest, earlier stalk destruction can occur as an essential part of insect and disease management. The objective of this publication is to provide information on proper defoliation techniques and the available harvest aids on the market today.David W. Albers (State Extension Specialist-Cotton, Delta Center), Fred Fishel (Pesticide Application Trainer Supervisor), Jill B. Mobley (Research Specialist).New March 199

Optical modeling of ocean waters: Is the case 1 - case 2 classification still useful?

…two extreme cases can be identified and separated. Case 1 is that of a concentration of phytoplankton high compared to other particles…. In contrast, the inorganic particles are dominant in case 2.… In both cases dissolved yellow substance is present in variable amounts.… An ideal case 1 would be a pure culture of phytoplankton and an ideal case 2 a suspension of nonliving material with a zero concentration of pigments. Morel and Prieur emphasized that these ideal cases are not encountered in nature, and they suggested the use of high or low values of the ratio of pigment concentration to scattering coefficient as a basis for discriminating between Case 1 and Case 2 waters. Although no specific values of this ratio were proposed to serve as criteria for classification, their example data suggested that the ratio of chlorophyll a concentration (in mg m-3) to the scattering coefficient at 550 nm (in m-1) in Case 1 waters is greater than 1 and in Case 2 waters is less than 1. Importantly, however, Morel and Prieur also showed data classified as “intermediate waters” with the ratio between about 1 and 2.2. Although the original definition from 1977 did not imply a binary classification, the practice of most investigators in the following years clearly evolved toward a bipartite analysis

Membrane interactions of the synthetic N-terminal peptide of HIV-1 gp41 and its structural analogs

AbstractStructural and functional studies assessed the membrane actions of the N terminus of HIV-1 glycoprotein 41 000 (gp41). Earlier site-directed mutagenesis has shown that key amino acid changes in this gp41 domain inhibit viral infection and syncytia formation. Here, a synthetic peptide corresponding to the N terminus of gp41 (FP; 23 residues, 519–541), and also FP analogs (FP520V/E with Val→Glu at residue 520; FP527L/R with Leu→Arg at 527; FP529F/Y with Phe→Tyr at 529; and FPCLP1 with FP truncated at 525) incorporating these modifications were prepared. When added to human erythrocytes at physiologic pH, the lytic and aggregating activities of the FP analogs were much reduced over those with the wild-type FP. With resealed human erythrocyte ghosts, the lipid-mixing activities of the FP analogs were also substantially depressed over that with the wild-type FP. Combined with results from earlier studies, theoretical calculations using hydrophobic moment plot analysis and physical experiments using circular dichroism and Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy indicate that the diminished lysis and fusion noted for FP analogs may be due to altered peptide-membrane lipid interactions. These data confirm that the N-terminal gp41 domain plays critical roles in the cytolysis and fusion underlying HIV-cell infection

One at a time, live tracking of NGF axonal transport using quantum dots

Retrograde axonal transport of nerve growth factor (NGF) signals is critical for the survival, differentiation, and maintenance of peripheral sympathetic and sensory neurons and basal forebrain cholinergic neurons. However, the mechanisms by which the NGF signal is propagated from the axon terminal to the cell body are yet to be fully elucidated. To gain insight into the mechanisms, we used quantum dot-labeled NGF (QD-NGF) to track the movement of NGF in real time in compartmentalized culture of rat dorsal root ganglion (DRG) neurons. Our studies showed that active transport of NGF within the axons was characterized by rapid, unidirectional movements interrupted by frequent pauses. Almost all movements were retrograde, but short-distance anterograde movements were occasionally observed. Surprisingly, quantitative analysis at the single molecule level demonstrated that the majority of NGF-containing endosomes contained only a single NGF dimer. Electron microscopic analysis of axonal vesicles carrying QD-NGF confirmed this finding. The majority of QD-NGF was found to localize in vesicles 50–150 nm in diameter with a single lumen and no visible intralumenal membranous components. Our findings point to the possibility that a single NGF dimer is sufficient to sustain signaling during retrograde axonal transport to the cell body

Brewster-angle measurements of sea-surface reflectance using a high resolution spectroradiometer

This paper describes the design, construction and testing of a ship-borne spectroradiometer based on an imaging spectrograph and cooled CCD array with a wavelength range of 350-800 nm and 4 nm spectral sampling. The instrument had a minimum spectral acquisition time of 0.1 s, but in practice data were collected over periods of 10 s to allow averaging of wave effects. It was mounted on a ship's superstructure so that it viewed the sea surface from a height of several metres at the Brewster angle (53 degrees) through a linear polarizing filter. Comparison of sea-leaving spectra acquired with the polarizer oriented horizontally and vertically enabled estimation of the spectral composition of sky light reflected directly from the sea surface. A semi-empirical correction procedure was devised for retrieving water-leaving radiance spectra from these measurements while minimizing the influence of reflected sky light. Sea trials indicated that reflectance spectra obtained by this method were consistent with the results of radiance transfer modelling of case 2 waters with similar concentrations of chlorophyll and coloured dissolved organic matter. Surface reflectance signatures measured at three locations containing blooms of different phytoplankton species were easily discriminated and the instrument was sufficiently sensitive to detect solar-stimulated fluorescence from surface chlorophyll concentrations down to 1 mg m−3

Performance and Radiation Testing of a Low-Noise Switched Capacitor Array for the CMS Endcap Muon System.

The 16-channel, 96-cell per channel switched capacitor array ( SCA) ASIC developed at UC Davis for the cathode readout of the cathode strip chambers ( CSC) in the CMS endcap muon system is ready for production. For the final full-sized prototype, the Address Decoder was re-designed and LVDS receivers were incorporated into the chip package. Under precision testing, the chip exhibits excellent linearity within the 1V design range and very low cell-to-cell pedestal variation. Monitored samples of the production design were subjected to exposure to a 63.3 MeV proton beam. The performance of chips after exposures up to 100 krad was within tolerances of an unexposed part

Polarized light field under dynamic ocean surfaces: Numerical modeling compared with measurements

As part of the Radiance in a Dynamic Ocean (RaDyO) program, we have developed a numerical model for efficiently simulating the polarized light field under highly dynamic ocean surfaces. Combining the advantages of the three-dimensional Monte Carlo and matrix operator methods, this hybrid model has proven to be computationally effective for simulations involving a dynamic air-sea interface. Given water optical properties and ocean surface wave slopes obtained from RaDyO field measurements, model-simulated radiance and polarization fields under a dynamic surface are found to be qualitatively comparable to their counterparts from field measurements and should be quantitatively comparable if the light field measurement and the wave slope/water optical property measurements are appropriately collocated and synchronized. This model serves as a bridge to connect field measurements of water optical properties, wave slopes and polarized light fields. It can also be used as a powerful yet convenient tool to predict the temporal underwater polarized radiance in a real-world situation. When appropriate surface measurements are available, model simulation is shown to reveal more dynamic features in the underwater light field than direct measurements

Atmospheric correction of AVIRIS data of Monterey Bay contaminated by thin cirrus clouds

Point source measurements (e.g. sun photometer data, weather station observations) are often used to constrain radiative transfer models such as MODTRAN/LOWTRAN7 when atmospherically correcting AVIRIS imagery. The basic assumption is that the atmosphere is horizontally homogeneous throughout the entire area. If the target area of interest is isolated a distance away from the point measurement position, the calculated visibility and atmospheric profiles may not be characteristic of the atmosphere over the target. AVIRIS scenes are often rejected when cloud cover exceeds 10%. However, if the cloud cover is determined to be primarily cirrus rather than cumulus, in-water optical properties may still be extracted over open ocean. High altitude cirrus clouds are non-absorbing at 744 nm. If the optical properties of the AVIRIS scene can be determined from the 744 nm band itself, the atmospheric conditions during the overflight may be deduced