Cash Flow Trends and Their Fundamental Drivers: A Continuing Look Comprehensive Industry Review (Qtr 4, 2008)

This research report is one of a series that looks at the cash flow performance of Corporate America. Our primary focus is on free cash margin, or free cash flow measured as a percent of revenue. We also look at the drivers or components of free cash margin in an effort to determine factors behind observed changes. In the current study we conduct a comprehensive review of 20 four-digit GICS non-financial industries and their 61 six-digit GICS sub-industries for a series of rolling twelve-month periods from the first quarter of 2000 through the fourth quarter of 2008. Recession notwithstanding, due to declining capital expenditures and reduced working capital requirements, free cash margin held up reasonably well during the twelve months ended December 2008. The metric declined to 4.12%, down from a high of 5.14% reached in June 2004, and more recently, the 4.93% level reached in December 2007 and 4.44% in September 2008. With free cash margin at 4.12%, corporate America is generating 4.12 cents of free cash flow for every dollar of revenue generated. The number of industries experiencing declining free cash margin increased from our last report. For our sample as a whole, free cash margin last bottomed at 2.43% during the 2001 recession. We continue to believe that during the current recession, free cash margin will likely decline to levels that are at or below those found in the 2001 recession, suggesting a continuing contraction of free cash flow of 50% or more from current levels. However, a continuing focus on maintaining low working capital levels and reduced capital expenditures may leave companies better off on a cash flow basis than they were in 2001

The leadership challenge: improving learning in schools

Building communities of professional learners is the key to meeting Australia’s school leadership challenge, according to this review of research. This report argues that the task of leading a school is now too complex and demanding a job for one person, and that improving schooling over time requires the enhanced capacity, not just of one person, but of many. Advances in science and technology, changes in demography, increased globalisation and pressures on the environment are causing education organisations to broaden and personalise curriculum and to rethink school structures and the role of the principal within them. The report calls for more research and policy attention to be given to the career paths of school principals in order to meet the challenge of identifying and developing the next generation of school leaders

Is breastfeeding really invisible, or did the health care system just choose not to notice it?

There are innumerable myths and misconceptions about breastfeeding that minimize its importance; these often keep health workers from providing effective care to support and protect breastfeeding. They are compounded by lack of basic and applied research, and by the cultural invisibility of breastfeeding in the United States. This paper highlights some of the blind spots and suggests the importance of an approach that places breastfeeding promotion and advocacy within the context of women's lives. As we work to ensure that the health care system provides good breastfeeding care, we need to guard against letting the medicalization of infant feeding keep us from remembering that breastfeeding is something that mothers and children do, in all the aspects of their private and public lives

Leadership for improving the quality of secondary education: Some international developments

Internationally, this is a “golden age” of school but it is taking place in the face of tremendous pressure for schools to be more publicly accountable. This mix of leadership and accountability has created a very new working context for both teachers and school leaders. There is a clear need to better understand the consequences of that context for the work of secondary school leaders. To help with this understanding, this paper identifies some of the international developments in that context in education and school leadership. It first focuses on work emanating from the OECD and then moves to recent developments in UK and Australia. All start at the broadest level by questioning what kind of education best serves society now and in the future. They then move to the question of how the education system is best organised in order to met the new demands, especially in terms of its governance and leadership. Three clear areas are identified from this work that involve a broadening of what counts for good schooling, governance and school leadership. A second focus on recent reviews of research on school leadership effects on student learning finds them consistent with these international and national developments, as well as suggesting directions forward for effective secondary school leadership

Genetics of Chemotherapy Toxicity in Human Lymphoblastoid Cell Lines from Diverse Populations

The development of effective treatments is vital in the fight against cancer, the second leading cause of death globally. Cancer is a personalized disease without an overarching cure, thus it is important to consider how genetic variation affects the drug response of individuals. After performing both GWAS and TWAS, we discovered several novel SNPs as well as two genes to be significantly associated with chemotherapy cytotoxicity within and across different ethnic cohorts. By identifying variants associated with toxicity, we strive to understand how genetic factors impact the effectiveness of existing chemotherapy drugs and enable future developments in precision medicine

Agnes Mulford to Mr. Meredith (3 October 1962)

https://egrove.olemiss.edu/mercorr_pro/1216/thumbnail.jp

Successful School Leadership for Improved Student Outcomes: Capacity Building and Synergy

The research reported in this article builds on work commenced eight years ago with reviewing the literature and models of successful school leadership for improved student outcomes. When the findings of this review were combined with the results from case studies of successful schools it resulted in a preliminary model of successful school principalship. We examined a range of areas using further analysis of the case study data, detailed analysis of the subsequent quantitative surveys (developed in part from the preliminary model) and actual school literacy and numeracy results. We also included a measure of teacher perceptions of student social development. This inclusion is consistent with evidence that social skills have become many times more important in determining students' relative life chances in the 21 st Century than cognitive outcomes alone. The final part of our research used model building and powerful multi-level statistical analyses of the survey data. In this way, we examined all the factors that may influence a school’s success with student outcomes. Model building allowed us to construct inherently logical and theoretically defensible representations of the “world” in which successful schools exist, and the models can be statistically tested to see how well these representations explain the reality portrayed by the data collected.