LGBT issues in the HRD and adult education literature: Past research and future needs

Issues related to human resource development (HRD) and lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people such as workplace inclusion, employee affinity groups, and LGBT-specific diversity initiatives are being addressed in organizations more often now than ever before. This paper explores the existing literature on LGBT issues in HRD and adult education through a systemic review in order to determine what research exists and what future directions are necessary. This review revealed a small core of research related to these issues. Existing work is mainly conceptual, and there is a lack of quantitative work. Topics of focus are related to organizational change and diversity efforts, with very little research on HR policy, career development, and workplace education. Key findings include that HR professionals have primarily served in a reactive role, rather than leading on these issues. Keywords: HRD research; lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT); sexual minorities; diversity Issues related to lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) individuals in United States (U.S.) workplaces have captured the attention of organizations recently, causing favorable changes in relatively short time periods. The Human Rights Campaign Corporate Equality Index measures an employer’s “commitment to equal treatment of employees, consumers, and investors, irrespective of [an employee’s] sexual orientation or gender identity and expression” (Corporate Equality Index, 2007, p. 12) using a scale of 0-100 percent. The 2010 report noted that 305 businesses received a perfect 100 percent rating. That number was a 45 percent increase over the previous year, and those 305 businesses represent over 9.3 million full-time employees (Corporate Equality Index, 2010). Even in these challenging economic times, “the Corporate Equality Index once again demonstrates that businesses recognize the importance of working with and providing for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender workers and consumers” (Corporate Equality Index, 2010, p. 1). From a research standpoint, however, LGBT workplace issues have not received a great deal of attention. Ragins (2004) notes that they “constitute one of the largest, but least studied, minority groups in the workforce” (p. 35). An examination of LGBT workplace issues is appropriate for HRD researchers. LGBT individuals constitute a sexual minority (Kameny, 1971; Leonard, 2003) that could benefit from conceptual, empirical, and theoretical work connecting the issue of sexual minorities as a distinct group to diversity and other concerns of HRD. Is the lack of research-related attention on this topic related to lack of interest on the part of, or lack of acceptance by, the academic community? In 2008, Githens, Schmidt, Rocco, and Gedro hosted the first preconference on LGBT issues in HRD at the Academy of Human Resource Development (AHRD) International Conference. AHRD proved to be slower in its acceptance of the topic. Schmidt and Githens (2010) reported that some reviewers for their preconference felt the topic was extremely important, however, one reviewer wondered whether it was a topic the organization wanted to promote and others questioned the importance of the topic in general. The session went on to become the highest-attended preconference held that year. Feedback from participants of the 2008 LGBT preconference demonstrated a demand for guidelines on evidence-based practice on LGBT issues in HRD. The purpose of this paper is to examine the literature in human resource development and adult education to determine what work has been done related to HRD, identify the topics which were covered, types of papers published, and research methods used and use this information to create a research agenda to address the intersection of LGBT issues and HRD. To do this, we searched the literature asking these questions: What types of articles are published (e.g., conceptual, literature reviews, empirical studies) and what methods are used? To what extent does the literature address the concerns of LGBT people? Do the articles published provide an adequate foundation for future research? What topics, trends, issues should form future research agendas? This review includes research from the fields of adult education and human resource development because of the close-knit and overlapping relationship between the two disciplines. Three of the four authors of this paper are in both fields, some graduate programs house programs of study in both fields, and some HRD programs grew from adult education programs. The search of the adult education literature begins in 1994 just before the first article by Hill (1995) was published on LGBT issues. Work on this topic in adult education spawned the work in HRD where the first article was published by Gedro, Cervero, & Johnson-Bailey (2002). The search of HRD literature begins in 2001 just before that first article appeared in Human Resource Development International. This review is organized as follows: A conceptual framework for diversity and LGBT inclusion will be presented followed by article analysis by content and by research approaches employed. Summary tables regarding article content and research approaches are then presented. Content-related and research approach-related themes will be discussed, followed by a discussion of gaps in current research and recommendations for future research

Curvature Dependence of Peaks in the Cosmic Microwave Background Distribution

The widely cited formula $\ell_1\simeq 200 \Omega_0^{-1/2}$ for the multipole number of the first Doppler peak is not even a crude approximation in the case of greatest current interest, in which the cosmic mass density is less than the vacuum energy density. For instance, with $\Omega_M$ fixed at 0.3, the position of any Doppler peak varies as $\Omega_0^{-1.58}$ near $\Omega_0=1$.Comment: 7 pages, Late

Lesbians, Gays, Bisexuals, and Transgendered People and Human Resource Development: An Examination of the Literature in Adult Education and Human Resource Development

Issues related to human resource development (HRD) and lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people such as workplace inclusion, employee affinity groups, and LGBT-specific diversity initiatives are being addressed in organizations more often now than ever before. This article explores the existing literature on LGBT issues in HRD and adult education through a systemic review to determine what research exists and what future directions are necessary. This review revealed a small core of research related to these issues. Existing work is mainly conceptual, and there is a lack of quantitative work. Topics of focus are related to organizational change and diversity efforts, with very little research on HR policy, career development, and workplace education. Key findings include that HR professionals have primarily served in a reactive role, rather than leading on these issues

A genomic approach to inferring kinship reveals limited intergenerational dispersal in the yellow fever mosquito

Understanding past dispersal and breeding events can provide insight into ecology and evolution, and can help inform strategies for conservation and the control of pest species. However, parent-offspring dispersal can be difficult to investigate in rare species and in small pest species such as mosquitoes. Here we develop a methodology for estimating parent-offspring dispersal from the spatial distribution of close kin, using pairwise kinship estimates derived from genome-wide single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs). SNPs were scored in 162 Aedes aegypti (yellow fever mosquito) collected from eight close-set, high-rise apartment buildings in an area of Malaysia with high dengue incidence. We used the SNPs to reconstruct kinship groups across three orders of kinship. We transformed the geographical distances between all kin pairs within each kinship category into axial standard deviations of these distances, then decomposed these into components representing past dispersal events. From these components, we isolated the axial standard deviation of parent-offspring dispersal, and estimated neighbourhood area (129 m), median parent-offspring dispersal distance (75 m), and oviposition dispersal radius within a gonotrophic cycle (36 m). We also analysed genetic structure using distance-based redundancy analysis and linear regression, finding isolation by distance both within and between buildings and estimating neighbourhood size at 268 individuals. These findings indicate the scale required to suppress local outbreaks of arboviral disease and to target releases of modified mosquitoes for mosquito and disease control. Our methodology is readily implementable for studies of other species, including pests and species of conservation significance

Soil Microbial Networks Shift Across a High-Elevation Successional Gradient.

While it is well established that microbial composition and diversity shift along environmental gradients, how interactions among microbes change is poorly understood. Here, we tested how community structure and species interactions among diverse groups of soil microbes (bacteria, fungi, non-fungal eukaryotes) change across a fundamental ecological gradient, succession. Our study system is a high-elevation alpine ecosystem that exhibits variability in successional stage due to topography and harsh environmental conditions. We used hierarchical Bayesian joint distribution modeling to remove the influence of environmental covariates on species distributions and generated interaction networks using the residual species-to-species variance-covariance matrix. We hypothesized that as ecological succession proceeds, diversity will increase, species composition will change, and soil microbial networks will become more complex. As expected, we found that diversity of most taxonomic groups increased over succession, and species composition changed considerably. Interestingly, and contrary to our hypothesis, interaction networks became less complex over succession (fewer interactions per taxon). Interactions between photosynthetic microbes and any other organism became less frequent over the gradient, whereas interactions between plants or soil microfauna and any other organism were more abundant in late succession. Results demonstrate that patterns in diversity and composition do not necessarily relate to patterns in network complexity and suggest that network analyses provide new insight into the ecology of highly diverse, microscopic communities

Insights and inferences about integron evolution from genomic data

Research articl

Fluctuations and Correlations of net baryon number, electric charge, and strangeness: A comparison of lattice QCD results with the hadron resonance gas model

We calculate the quadratic fluctuations of net baryon number, electric charge and strangeness as well as correlations among these conserved charges in (2+1)-flavor lattice QCD at zero chemical potential. Results are obtained using calculations with tree level improved gauge and the highly improved staggered quark (HISQ) actions with almost physical light and strange quark masses at three different values of the lattice cut-off. Our choice of parameters corresponds to a value of 160 MeV for the lightest pseudo scalar Goldstone mass and a physical value of the kaon mass. The three diagonal charge susceptibilities and the correlations among conserved charges have been extrapolated to the continuum limit in the temperature interval 150 MeV <T < 250 MeV. We compare our results with the hadron resonance gas (HRG) model calculations and find agreement with HRG model results only for temperatures T<= 150 MeV. We observe significant deviations in the temperature range 160 MeV < T < 170 MeV and qualitative differences in the behavior of the three conserved charge sectors. At T < 160 MeV quadratic net baryon number fluctuations in QCD agree with HRG model calculations while, the net electric charge fluctuations in QCD are about 10% smaller and net strangeness fluctuations are about 20% larger. These findings are relevant to the discussion of freeze-out conditions in relativistic heavy ion collisions.Comment: 17 pages, 18 EPS-files, 5 tables, revised version includes continuum limit extrapolations of off-diagonal susceptibilities, to appear in Phys. Rev.

The pharmacological rationale for combining muscarinic receptor antagonists and beta-adrenoceptor agonists in the treatment of airway and bladder disease

Muscarinic receptor antagonists and beta-adrenoceptor agonists are used in the treatment of obstructive airway disease and overactive bladder syndrome. Here we review the pharmacological rationale for their combination. Muscarinic receptors and beta-adrenoceptors are physiological antagonists for smooth muscle tone in airways and bladder. Muscarinic agonism may attenuate beta-adrenoceptor-mediated relaxation more than other contractile stimuli. Chronic treatment with one drug class may regulate expression of the target receptor but also that of the opposing receptor. Prejunctional beta(2)-adrenoceptors can enhance neuronal acetylcholine release. Moreover, at least in the airways, muscarinic receptors and beta-adrenoceptors are expressed in different locations, indicating that only a combined modulation of both systems may cause dilatation along the entire bronchial tree. While all of these factors contribute to a rationale for a combination of muscarinic receptor antagonists and beta-adrenoceptor agonists, the full value of such combination as compared to monotherapy can only be determined in clinical studies