Examining Organizational Justice in the Context of LMX and the Effect of LMX on Trust and Job Performance

Services marketing and organizational behavior researchers have studied factors that have a positive influence on employees’ job performance. They viewed that the manager’s role in dealing with his/her subordinates is critical in producing the desired outcomes such as employee job performance. This study based on organizational justice and Leader-Member Exchange (LMX) theory, presents and tests a model, in which relationships among justice, LMX, trust, and job performance are examined. More specifically, the study examines the impact of organizational justice on the quality of LMX and the effect of LMX on employees’ attitudinal and behavioral aspects (trust and job performance). The study employs four dimensions of justice, two bases of trust and two types of job performance. By using a dimensional approach, the study attempts to investigate and comprehend dynamic and complex relationships among the variables. Using the data collected from restaurant employees in South Korea, the study finds that all dimensions of justice have a positive influence on the quality of LMX. LMX plays a significant role in affecting two bases of trust (cognitive trust and affective trust) and two dimensions of job performance (task performance and helping behavior). The study also found that not cognitive trust but affective trust influences task performance. The finding that distributive justice explains the largest portion of the variance in the quality of LMX suggests that distributive justice plays the most important role in building and maintaining the quality of manager-employee relationship. Employees care about fair distribution of the resources and outcomes that reflect the efforts they put into the work. The importance of quality of leader-member exchange is highlighted in this study. The high-quality relationship developed through the organization’s institutionalization of justice helps employees have trust in the leaders. It seems that justice is a mechanism through which managers and employees develop a highquality relationship. The study also found that affective trust has a significant positive effect on task performance, suggesting instilling and nurturing trust among employees is critical for improving their job performance

Reverse Doppler Effect of Sound

We report observation of reverse Doppler effect in a double negative acoustic metamaterial. The metamaterial exhibited negative phase velocity and positive group velocity. The dispersion relation is such that the wavelength corresponding to higher frequency is longer. We observed that the frequency was down-shifted for the approaching source, and up-shifted when the source receded

Spatiotemporal Expression of GRP78 in the Blood Vessels of Rats Treated With 3-Nitropropionic Acid Correlates With Blood–Brain Barrier Disruption

Glucose-regulated protein (GRP78) or BiP, a 78-kDa chaperone protein located in the endoplasmic reticulum (ER), has recently been reported to be involved in the neuroglial response to ischemia-induced ER stress. The present study was designed to study the expression patterns of this protein and the cell types involved in the induction of GRP78 expression in rats treated with the mitochondrial toxin 3-nitropropionic acid (3-NP). GRP78 immunoreactivity was almost exclusively localized to striatal neurons in saline-treated controls, but GRP78 expression was induced in activated glial cells, including reactive astrocytes and activated microglia/macrophages, in the striata of rats treated with 3-NP. In the lesion core, increased GRP78 immunoreactivity was observed in the vasculature; this was evident in the lesion periphery of the core at 3 days after lesion induction, and was evenly distributed throughout the lesion core by 7 days after lesion induction. Vascular GRP78 expression was correlated, both temporally and spatially, with infiltration of activated microglia into the lesion core. In addition, this was coincident with the time and pattern of blood–brain barrier (BBB) leakage, detected by the extravasation of fluorescein isothiocyanate-albumin, an established BBB permeability marker. Vascular GRP78-positive cells in the lesion core were identified as endothelial cells, smooth muscle cells, and adventitial fibroblast-like cells, in which GRP78 protein was specifically localized to the cisternae of the rough ER and perinuclear cisternae, but not to other organelles such as mitochondria or nuclei. Thus, our data provide novel insights into the phenotypic and functional heterogeneity of GRP78-positive cells within the lesion core, suggesting the involvement of GRP78 in the activation/recruitment of activated microglia/macrophages and its potential role in BBB impairment in response to a 3-NP-mediated neurotoxic insult

A Compact Dual-Band RFID Tag Antenna Mountable on Metallic Objects

A compact (50 × 50 × 4 mm3) dual-band radio frequency identification (RFID) tag antenna mountable on metallic objects is proposed for the ultra-high frequency (UHF) band (917∼923.5 MHz) and the microwave (MW) band (2.4∼2.45 GHz). With the proximity-coupled feed loop, the proposed antenna consists of two symmetric planar inverted-F antenna (PIFA) elements for the UHF band passive tag and a meander microstrip patch antenna for the MW band active tag. The performance of the proposed antenna is verified by mounting it on the different sizes of the metallic object. Furthermore, the passive tag antenna in the UHF band furthermore may be used for energy harvesting techniques to improve the lifetime of the active tag in the MW band. The measured maximum read range is 5.50 m in the UHF band and 14.15 m in the MW band when the proposed tag antenna is mounted on the metallic objects. The total efficiency for all operating frequency bands is higher than 50%. High isolation (>12 dB) between tag antennas in the UHF band and the MW band is achieved

Evaluation of the brain activation induced by functional electrical stimulation and voluntary contraction using functional magnetic resonance imaging

BACKGROUND: To observe brain activation induced by functional electrical stimulation, voluntary contraction, and the combination of both using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). METHODS: Nineteen healthy young men were enrolled in the study. We employed a typical block design that consisted of three sessions: voluntary contraction only, functional electrical stimulation (FES)-induced wrist extension, and finally simultaneous voluntary and FES-induced movement. MRI acquisition was performed on a 3.0 T MR system. To investigate activation in each session, one-sample t-tests were performed after correcting for false discovery rate (FDR; p < 0.05). To compare FES-induced movement and combined contraction, a two-sample t-test was performed using a contrast map (p < 0.01). RESULTS: In the voluntary contraction alone condition, brain activation was observed in the contralateral primary motor cortex (MI), thalamus, bilateral supplementary motor area (SMA), primary sensory cortex (SI), secondary somatosensory motor cortex (SII), caudate, and cerebellum (mainly ipsilateral). During FES-induced wrist movement, brain activation was observed in the contralateral MI, SI, SMA, thalamus, ipsilateral SII, and cerebellum. During FES-induced movement combined with voluntary contraction, brain activation was found in the contralateral MI, anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), SMA, ipsilateral cerebellum, bilateral SII, and SI. The activated brain regions (number of voxels) of the MI, SI, cerebellum, and SMA were largest during voluntary contraction alone and smallest during FES alone. SII-activated brain regions were largest during voluntary contraction combined with FES and smallest during FES contraction alone. The brain activation extent (maximum t score) of the MI, SI, and SII was largest during voluntary contraction alone and smallest during FES alone. The brain activation extent of the cerebellum and SMA during voluntary contraction alone was similar during FES combined with voluntary contraction; however, cerebellum and SMA activation during FES movement alone was smaller than that of voluntary contraction alone or voluntary contraction combined with FES. Between FES movement alone and combined contraction, activated regions and extent due to combined contraction was significantly higher than that of FES movement alone in the ipsilateral cerebellum and the contralateral MI and SI. CONCLUSIONS: Voluntary contraction combined with FES may be more effective for brain activation than FES-only movements for rehabilitation therapy. In addition, voluntary effort is the most important factor in the therapeutic process

Acoustic metamaterial exhibiting four different sign combinations of density and modulus

We fabricated a double negative acoustic metamaterial which consisted of Helmholtz resonators and membranes. Experimental data on the transmission and dispersion relation are presented. The system exhibits three frequencies where the acoustic state makes sharp transitions from density negative ({\rho} -NG) to double negative (DNG), modulus negative (B-NG), and double positive (DPS) in sequence with the frequency. We observed a wide range of negative refractive index from -0.06 to -3.7 relative to air, which will allow for new acoustic transformation techniques.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figures, submitted to Physical Review Letter