Upheaval in the Boardroom: Outside Director Public Resignations, Motivations, and Consequences

We investigate the motives and circumstances surrounding outside directors\u27 decisions to publicly announce their board resignations. Directors who leave quietly are in their mid-sixties and professional directors, i.e., retirees, who are retiring entirely from professional life. Directors who announce their resignation are in their mid-fifties and active professionals. Half the time they say they are leaving because they are busy. These directors leave from firms with some weakness in their performance, but with no overt manifestations of cronyism such as excessive compensation of either the CEO or directors. The other half of the time directors leave while publicly criticizing the firm. These directors are finance professionals who were members of the audit and compensation committees. They resign from firms with weak boards and financial performance with evidence that managers have manipulated earnings upwards. Public criticism appears to pressure these boards to make management changes associated with improved stock price performance. We conclude that while such public resignations are motivated by the reputational concerns of directors, they can act as a disciplining device for poor board performance

Essential Air Service: A Lower Rung on the Pilot Shortage Food Chain?

The Essential Air Service (EAS) program, established in 1978 by the federal government as a temporary measure designed to help remote communities cope with the impact of airline deregulation, subsidizes flights to certain destinations that would not otherwise have ready access to commercial air service. The airlines participating in this program fly relatively smaller aircraft and have traditionally hovered at the lower end of the salary scale. Their pilots are, nevertheless, subject to the same flight experience requirements as the major carriers. The national (or perhaps international) pilot shortage has caused some EAS carriers to abruptly terminate service leaving the related communities in the lurch. The service disruptions and increasing cost of the program over its 40-year history has not gone unnoticed by Congress. Although it would appear to be low hanging fruit for budget minded legislators, efforts to radically reduce expenditures have been only marginally successful. The lack of a ground swell movement to eliminate the program can be explained by the economic theory of concentrated benefits and disbursed costs – that is to say, the benefits of the program are concentrated in a localized few who can serve as an active voting block while the costs are disbursed among all taxpayers who hardly notice the miniscule charge. I would argue that it is reasonable and prudent at this time to dramatically reduce the number of serviced communities through incentives and sunset provisions and, furthermore, that such a reduction will have very little impact on the communities being served

Digital Immigrant Teachers’ Technology Integration and In-Service Professional Development: An Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis

The purpose of this interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA) research study was to describe and interpret the digital integration learning experiences of digital immigrant teachers at a southeastern United States school system. Digital immigrant teachers represent a large segment of the teachers in American classrooms. Digital immigrant teachers desire to be effective educators in today’s digital technology-rich classrooms, yet they have struggled due to a lack of technological knowledge and with knowing how to effectively integrate digital tools in their practices. Theories that guided this study were constructivism and Mishra and Koehler’s TPACK, a conceptual knowledge framework that considers technological knowledge to be an integral part a teacher’s knowledge base for learning how to integrate technology in their instructional practices. A questionnaire, semi-structured interviews, and focus groups interviews provided a thick, rich description of digital immigrant teachers educational journey into a world full of digital technologies. Data was analyzed using the IPA research framework developed by Jonathan A. Smith. Findings revealed digital technology integration has two sides to its coin, and current in-service technology-focused professional development (PD) has been inconsistent in meeting of the needs of these adult learners. A learner-focused in-service PD approach was recommended to help teachers purposefully integrate digital technology. Recommendations for further research were to replicate the study with other groups of digital immigrant teachers, to study the lived experiences of PD designers and trainers, and to comprehensively study the full impact of the digital technologies on today’s learners due to concerns voiced by these teachers

Barriers to Using Fixed-Route Public Transit for Older Adults, MTI Report 09-16

For older adults, unmet transportation needs are linked to reduced well-being (Cvitkovich and Wister 2001). Current research indicates that, as a society, we are ill-prepared to provide adequate transit for the growing increasing population of older adults (Millar, 2005). Although public transit is available for many older adults, actual and perceived barriers prohibit its use. Thus, the research presented here examines what do older persons perceive as barriers to using fixed-route public transit? Four focus groups were conducted with older adults in order to gain insights into what they perceive as barriers to use of fixed route transit. Findings from these focus groups informed the development of a mail-out survey sent to 1800 older adults—half each in Erie County, New York and the City of San José, California. A total of 775 (43.1%) surveys were returned. Despite concerns of response bias, data analyses reveal that older adults perceive fixed-route public transit as a viable option to their preferred mode of transit, the automobile. However, older adults note significant barriers to the use of fixed-route transit. This report summarizes findings and presents a behavior change model that may be used as an intervention and even a guide to market the strengths of fixed-route public transit while encouraging older adults to use transit

Materials study supporting thermochemical hydrogen cycle sulfuric acid decomposer design

The entire dissertation/thesis text is included in the research.pdf file; the official abstract appears in the short.pdf file (which also appears in the research.pdf); a non-technical general description, or public abstract, appears in the public.pdf file.Title from title screen of research.pdf file (viewed on February 27, 2008)Vita.Thesis (Ph. D.) University of Missouri-Columbia 2007.A laboratory scale sulfuric acid decomposer simulator was constructed at the Nuclear Science and Engineering Institute at the University of Missouri- Columbia. The simulator was capable of producing the temperatures and corrosive environments that process equipment would be exposed to for industrialization of the sulfur iodide or hybrid sulfur thermochemical cycles. A series of boron treated synthetic diamonds were tested in the simulator to determine corrosion resistances and suitability for use in thermochemical process equipment. The study concluded that boron treated diamonds were not suitable for use in decomposer process equipment. Unacceptable corrosion rates were observed at 600[degrees]C and increased linearly with temperature up to 700[degrees]C. The boron treated diamonds completely disassociated at temperatures above 700[degrees]C. The researcher postulated that the high corrosion rates resulted from diamond carbon having a higher preference for oxygen free radicals formed during the decomposition process. Oxygen free radical concentration also increased as a function of increasing temperature.Includes bibliographical reference

Swimming with ShARCS: Comparison of On-sky Sensitivity With Model Predictions for ShaneAO on the Lick Observatory 3-meter Telescope

The Lick Observatory's Shane 3-meter telescope has been upgraded with a new infrared instrument (ShARCS - Shane Adaptive optics infraRed Camera and Spectrograph) and dual-deformable mirror adaptive optics (AO) system (ShaneAO). We present first-light measurements of imaging sensitivity in the Ks band. We compare measured results to predicted signal-to-noise ratio and magnitude limits from modeling the emissivity and throughput of ShaneAO and ShARCS. The model was validated by comparing its results to the Keck telescope adaptive optics system model and then by estimating the sky background and limiting magnitudes for IRCAL, the previous infra-red detector on the Shane telescope, and comparing to measured, published results. We predict that the ShaneAO system will measure lower sky backgrounds and achieve 20\% higher throughput across the $JHK$ bands despite having more optical surfaces than the current system. It will enable imaging of fainter objects (by 1-2 magnitudes) and will be faster to reach a fiducial signal-to-noise ratio by a factor of 10-13. We highlight the improvements in performance over the previous AO system and its camera, IRCAL.Comment: 13 pages, 5 figures, SPIE Astronomical Telescopes + Instrumentation, Montreal 201

The joint US/UK 1990 epoch world magnetic model

A detailed summary of the data used, analyses performed, modeling techniques employed, and results obtained in the course of the 1990 Epoch World Magnetic Modeling effort are given. Also, use and limitations of the GEOMAG algorithm are presented. Charts and tables related to the 1990 World Magnetic Model (WMM-90) for the Earth's main field and secular variation in Mercator and polar stereographic projections are presented along with useful tables of several magnetic field components and their secular variation on a 5-degree worldwide grid

Megan\u27s Treadmill

Megan is a 21-year-old Special Olympian in the local San Luis Obispo area who loves to move. Due to a visual impairment, Megan is limited in the amount of time she can be active and she currently relies on the help of a partner when she exercises. For example, during the school year, Megan participates in the Friday Club in the local recreation center where she teams up with a kinesiology student to obtain physical activity. She also competes every year in the Special Olympics held at Cuesta College. Megan races in the 50- and 100-meter dash holding a baton attached to a rope as a guide. Her other source of training is on a treadmill; however, she is dependent on a guide to help her walk safely. While she enjoys this, Megan would like to be able to exercise safely without relying on assistance. Michael Lara, the Sports Manager for the San Luis Obispo County Special Olympics, has been sponsoring senior projects at California Polytechnic State University (Cal Poly) for nine years. Mr. Lara wanted to help Megan increase her physical activity and find more independence, so he brought this project, known as “Megan’s Treadmill,” to the mechanical engineering senior project class. The goal of this project was to adapt a treadmill to provide a safe and accessible environment for Megan to exercise independently. Our team consists of three senior engineering students attending Cal Poly: Daniel Byrne (ME), Michael Peck (ME), and Eddie Ruano (CPE). The different knowledge bases of our team assisted in producing a versatile and robust design. This final design report documents the full design process for this project, from start to finish. In this report, our team will highlight the many steps we took to produce our final detailed design, as well as the process of turning this design into a fully functional product

Transcriptomic response to shell damage in the Antarctic clam, Laternula elliptica: time scales and spatial localisation

Mollusc shell is built up by secretion from the mantle and is the result of a controlled biological process termed biomineralisation. In general mollusc shells are well characterised however, the molecular mechanisms used by molluscs to produce shell remain largely unknown. One tractable method to study molecular biomineralisation mechanisms are shell damage-repair experiments, which stimulate calcification pathways. The present study used the Antarctic clam (Laternula elliptica) as a model to better understand when and where molecular biomineralisation events occur in the mantle. Two approaches were used: one experiment used high-throughput RNA-sequencing to study molecular damage-repair responses over a 2 month time series, and a second experiment used targeted semi-quantitative PCR to investigate the spatial location of molecular mechanisms in response to damage. Shell repair in L. elliptica was slow, lasting at least 2 months, and expression results revealed different biological processes were important at varying time scales during repair. A spatial pattern in relation to a single drilled hole was revealed for some, but not all, candidate genes suggesting the mantle may be functionally zoned and can respond to damage both locally and ubiquitously across the mantle. Valuable data on the temporal and spatial response of shell damage-repair provide a baseline not only for future studies in L. elliptica, but also other mollusc