Hiring Practices of North Dakota Based Firms

This thesis describes and analyzes the hiring practices of North Dakota based firms. The term, North Dakota based firms, is defined as those firms organized, incorporated or originating in North Dakota. The data were obtained from firms employing a minimum of 50 individuals. It was felt that firms of this size or larger were most likely to hire college graduates. A mail questionnaire was sent to 86 firms and a 60 per cent return was received. The main topics discussed in this thesis concern the extent of demand for college graduates in North Dakota and the ways in which the North Dakota firms included in the investigation obtained college graduates for employment. North Dakota is primarily an agriculturally-oriented state. Compared with the United States as a whole, manufacturing in North Dakota is still in an early stage of development. For this reason many firms may not have realized the need for college educated personnel. Seventy-five per cent of the firms included in the survey indicated they hired college graduates. Most graduates hired by these firms were graduates of North Dakota colleges and universities. Graduates were hired for a variety of positions. Manufacturing firms did not place their recruiting and hiring emphasis on any particular area. They hired graduates for sales, production, accounting and for training programs for managerial supervisory positions. Non-manufacturing establishments placed most of their emphasis on recruiting graduates for positions in sales. Those firms that did not hire college gra°duates indicated they could not afford to pay the salaries expected by graduates. Sixty-five per cent of the responding firms reported that they employed persons who had not graduated from college for positions which they considered primarily for college graduates. Almost 60 per cent of the firms surveyed anticipated recruiting and hiring some college graduates within the period 1971-1973. Firms recruited college graduates when the need arose to find a college graduate to fill a position vacancy. To locate sources of supply of college graduates outside the company, respondent firms utilized a variety of methods. Both manufacturing and non-manufacturing firms depended primarily upon recommendations from acquaintances and employees to locate possible job candidates. Employees were obtained from a number of different sources. Firms obtained most of their employees with college degrees from names furnished by public employment agencies and college placement centers. Starting salaries paid newly hired college graduates in North Dakota were lower than salaries paid graduates on a national level in 1971

To Extend or not to Extend: on the Uniqueness of Browser Extensions and Web Logins

Recent works showed that websites can detect browser extensions that users install and websites they are logged into. This poses significant privacy risks, since extensions and Web logins that reflect user's behavior, can be used to uniquely identify users on the Web. This paper reports on the first large-scale behavioral uniqueness study based on 16,393 users who visited our website. We test and detect the presence of 16,743 Chrome extensions, covering 28% of all free Chrome extensions. We also detect whether the user is connected to 60 different websites. We analyze how unique users are based on their behavior, and find out that 54.86% of users that have installed at least one detectable extension are unique; 19.53% of users are unique among those who have logged into one or more detectable websites; and 89.23% are unique among users with at least one extension and one login. We use an advanced fingerprinting algorithm and show that it is possible to identify a user in less than 625 milliseconds by selecting the most unique combinations of extensions. Because privacy extensions contribute to the uniqueness of users, we study the trade-off between the amount of trackers blocked by such extensions and how unique the users of these extensions are. We have found that privacy extensions should be considered more useful than harmful. The paper concludes with possible countermeasures.Comment: accepted at WPES 201

Organizing the innovation process : complementarities in innovation networking

This paper contributes to the developing literature on complementarities in organizational design. We test for the existence of complementarities in the use of external networking between stages of the innovation process in a sample of UK and German manufacturing plants. Our evidence suggests some differences between the UK and Germany in terms of the optimal combination of innovation activities in which to implement external networking. Broadly, there is more evidence of complementarities in the case of Germany, with the exception of the product engineering stage. By contrast, the UK exhibits generally strong evidence of substitutability in external networking in different stages, except between the identification of new products and product design and development stages. These findings suggest that previous studies indicating strong complementarity between internal and external knowledge sources have provided only part of the picture of the strategic dilemmas facing firms

Xylella fastidiosa pil-chp operon is involved in regulating key structural genes of both type I and IV pili

Xylella fastidiosa is the causal agent of Pierce's disease (PD) in grapevines. It has type I and type IV pili, which are both virulence factors involved in the PD-associated processes of motility, aggregation, and biofilm formation. Many questions remain as to how the two pili are regulated. We previously identified a X. fastidiosa pil-chp chemosensory-like cluster as an operon composed of genes pilG-I-J-L-chpB-C. In this study, we deleted pilG (resulting in a ∆pilG-I strain) and pilJ and discovered that both mutants (∆pilG-I and ∆pilJ) had reduced virulence after 24 weeks post-inoculation, whereas ∆chpB and ∆chpC did not. Both ∆pilG-I and ∆pilJ lost motility and were impaired in biofilm formation in rich artificial media and xylem sap. Gene expression was significantly downregulated for representative fimbrial adhesin and motility genes in ∆pilG-I, and to a lesser extent in ∆pilJ. Our data suggest that Pil, but not Chp, proteins are virulence factors, and pilG-I-J are involved in transcriptional regulation of type I and IV pili virulence genes and therefore motility and biofilm formation. To our knowledge, this is the first report of a chemotaxis-like operon involved in the regulation of key structural genes of both type I and type IV pili

The Operophtera brumata Nucleopolyhedrovirus (OpbuNPV) Represents an Early, Divergent Lineage within Genus Alphabaculovirus

Operophtera brumata nucleopolyhedrovirus (OpbuNPV) infects the larvae of the winter moth, Operophtera brumata. As part of an effort to explore the pesticidal potential of OpbuNPV, an isolate of this virus from Massachusetts (USA)—OpbuNPV-MA—was characterized by electron microscopy of OpbuNPV occlusion bodies (OBs) and by sequencing of the viral genome. The OBs of OpbuNPV-MA consisted of irregular polyhedra and contained virions consisting of a single rod-shaped nucleocapsid within each envelope. Presumptive cypovirus OBs were also detected in sections of the OB preparation. The OpbuNPV-MA genome assembly yielded a circular contig of 119,054 bp and was found to contain little genetic variation, with most polymorphisms occurring at a frequency of \u3c 6%. A total of 130 open reading frames (ORFs) were annotated, including the 38 core genes of Baculoviridae, along with five homologous repeat (hr) regions. The results of BLASTp and phylogenetic analysis with selected ORFs indicated that OpbuNPV-MA is not closely related to other alphabaculoviruses. Phylogenies based on concatenated core gene amino acid sequence alignments placed OpbuNPV-MA on a basal branch lying outside other alphabaculovirus clades. These results indicate that OpbuNPV-MA represents a divergent baculovirus lineage that appeared early during the diversification of genus Alphabaculovirus

Sarcocystis cymruensis: discovery in Western Hemisphere in the Brown rat (Rattus norvegicus) from Grenada, West Indies: redescription, molecular characterization, and transmission to IFN-γ gene knockout mice via sporocysts from experimentally infected domestic cat (Felis catus)

Rodents are intermediate hosts for many species of Sarcocystis. Little is known of Sarcocystis cymruensis that uses the Brown rat (Rattus norvegicus) as intermediate hosts and the domestic cat (Felis catus) as experimental definitive host. Here, we identified and described Sarcocystis cymruensis in naturally infected R. norvegicus from Grenada, West Indies. Rats (n = 167) were trapped in various locations in two parishes (St. George and St. David). Microscopic, thin (\u3c 1 μm) walled, slender sarcocysts were found in 11 of 156 (7.0%) rats skeletal muscles by squash examination. A laboratory-raised cat fed naturally infected rat tissues excreted sporocysts that were infectious for interferon gamma gene knockout (KO) mice, but not to Swiss Webster outbred albino mice. All inoculated mice remained asymptomatic, and microscopic S. cymruensis-like sarcocysts were found in the muscles of KO mice euthanized on day 70, 116, and 189 post inoculation (p.i.). Sarcocysts from infected KO mice were infective for cats at day 116 but not at 70 days p.i. By transmission electron microscopy, the sarcocyst wall was Btype 1a.^ Detailed morphological description of the cyst wall, metrocytes, and bradyzoites is given for the first time. Additionally, molecular data on S. cymruensis are presented also for the first time. Molecular characterization of sarcocysts 18S rDNA and 28S rDNA, ITS-1, and cox1 loci showed the highest similarity with S. rodentifelis and S. muris. In conclusion, the present study described the natural infection of S. cymruensis in Brown rat for the first time in a Caribbean country and provided its molecular characteristics

Positional Differences in Areal Bone Mineral Density and Body Composition in NCAA Division - I Football Athletes

poste

Comparison of Serum Cotinine Concentration within and across Smokers of Menthol and Nonmenthol Cigarette Brands among Non-Hispanic Black and Non-Hispanic White U.S. Adult Smokers, 2001–2006

Background: The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is examining options for regulating menthol content in cigarettes. There are many pharmacologic properties of menthol that may facilitate exposure to tobacco smoke, and it has been suggested that the preference for menthol cigarettes in black smokers accounts for their higher cotinine levels. Objective: To assess cigarettes smoked per day–adjusted cotinine levels in relation to smoking a menthol or nonmenthol cigarette brand among non-Hispanic black and white U.S. adult smokers under natural smoking conditions. Method: Serum cotinine concentrations were measured in 1,943 smokers participating in the 2001 to 2006 National Health and Nutrition Examination Surveys (NHANES). The effect of smoking a menthol brand on cigarettes smoked per day–adjusted serum cotinine levels in these two populations was modeled by adjusting for sex, age, number of smokers living in the home, body weight, time since last smoked, and FTC (Federal Trade Commission)-measured nicotine levels. The 8- or 12-digit Universal Product Code (UPC) on the cigarette label was used to determine the cigarette brand and whether it was menthol. Results: Smoking a menthol cigarette brand versus smoking a nonmenthol cigarette brand was not associated (P≥ 0.05) with mean serum cotinine concentration in either black or white smokers. Conclusions: The higher levels of cotinine observed in black smokers compared with white smokers are not explained by their higher preference for menthol cigarette brands. Impact: Further studies like ours are needed to improve our ability to understand health consequences of future changes in tobacco product design

Creating university spin-offs: A science-based design perspective

Academic entrepreneurship by means of university spin-offs commercializes technological breakthroughs, which may otherwise remain unexploited. However, many universities face difficulties in creating spin-offs. This article adopts a science-based design approach to connect scholarly research with the pragmatics of effectively creating university spin-offs. This approach serves to link the practice of university spin-off creation, via design principles, to the scholarly knowledge in this area. As such, science-based design promotes the interplay between emergent and deliberate design processes. This framework is used to develop a set of design principles that are practice based as well as grounded in the existing body of research on university spin-offs. A case-study of spin-off creation at a Dutch university illustrates the interplay between initial processes characterized by emergent design and the subsequent process that was more deliberate in nature. This case study also suggests there are two fundamentally different phases in building capacity for university spin-off creation. First, an infrastructure for spin-off creation (including a collaborative network of investors, managers and advisors) is developed that then enables support activities to individual spin-off ventures. This study concludes that to build and increase capacity for creating spin-offs, universities should do the following: (1) create university-wide awareness of entrepreneurship opportunities, stimulate the development of entrepreneurial ideas, and subsequently screen entrepreneurs and ideas by programs targeted at students and academic staff; (2) support start-up teams in composing and learning the right mix of venturing skills and knowledge by providing access to advice, coaching, and training; (3) help starters in obtaining access to resources and developing their social capital by creating a collaborative network organization of investors, managers, and advisors; (4) set clear and supportive rules and procedures that regulate the university spin-off process, enhance fair treatment of involved parties, and separate spin-off processes from academic research and teaching; and (5) shape a university culture that reinforces academic entrepreneurship by creating norms and exemplars that motivate entrepreneurial behavior. These and other results of this study illustrate how science-based design can connect scholarly research to the pragmatics of actually creating spin-offs in academic institutions