An Evaluation of the Implementation of Total Quality Management in a Service Organization

This research consists of a formative evaluation designed to identify the steps necessary to revitalize a formerly successful Total Quality Management (TQM) process at a U.S. Navy engineering and logistics support organization. The research also developed a methodology to account for the fact that the investigator is a well-informed insider who served as one of the principle change agents for the TQM implementation. The research is based on the researcher\u27s observation that the major cause for the waning implementation was due to senior management and leadership issues and the organization-wide processes with which they interface. The investigation consisted of an extensive review of the literature to identify, from a leadership perspective and theory framework, an ideal implementation for this organization. Then a case study was conducted to identify the espoused and actual implementation processes, again from a leadership viewpoint. The gaps or differences between ideal and espoused and espoused and actual were analyzed to identify conditions and relationships which must be addressed as part of the formative evaluation. Significant concerns were identified in leadership actions, TQM processes, allocation of assets and cultural issues which hindered the adoption of the principles of TQM. Each of these was addressed by the development of specific recommendations which, if followed, would result in actions to revitalize the implementation of TQM. The research recognized that much of the discovery and mutually agreed understanding of the incidences associated with TQM had occurred during the actual implementation. The challenge was to develop methods of obtaining validity and insure a true mutual agreement on the occurrences in a manner to satisfy academic standards. This was accomplished through multiple techniques involving the researcher making statements which he believed accurate, frequently in writing, and then either finding substantiating documentation in the historical records or having multiple other insiders correct the understanding, either through interview or in writing response. This formed a method of mutual mirroring which insured multiple viewpoints and shared understanding. This research developed a systematic revitalization process which may have application to other similar organizations and improved methods of implementing TQM, especially for planning and developing improvements in quality of daily work. The literature research provided an improved integration of TQM principles with the underlying theories of organizational change and leadership. Specific leadership actions to implement TQM were identified

Leveraging population admixture to characterize the heritability of complex traits.

Despite recent progress on estimating the heritability explained by genotyped SNPs (h(2)g), a large gap between h(2)g and estimates of total narrow-sense heritability (h(2)) remains. Explanations for this gap include rare variants or upward bias in family-based estimates of h(2) due to shared environment or epistasis. We estimate h(2) from unrelated individuals in admixed populations by first estimating the heritability explained by local ancestry (h(2)γ). We show that h(2)γ = 2FSTCθ(1 - θ)h(2), where FSTC measures frequency differences between populations at causal loci and θ is the genome-wide ancestry proportion. Our approach is not susceptible to biases caused by epistasis or shared environment. We applied this approach to the analysis of 13 phenotypes in 21,497 African-American individuals from 3 cohorts. For height and body mass index (BMI), we obtained h(2) estimates of 0.55 ± 0.09 and 0.23 ± 0.06, respectively, which are larger than estimates of h(2)g in these and other data but smaller than family-based estimates of h(2)

Discovery and fine-mapping of adiposity loci using high density imputation of genome-wide association studies in individuals of African ancestry: African Ancestry Anthropometry Genetics Consortium

Genome-wide association studies (GWAS) have identified >300 loci associated with measures of adiposity including body mass index (BMI) and waist-to-hip ratio (adjusted for BMI, WHRadjBMI), but few have been identified through screening of the African ancestry genomes. We performed large scale meta-analyses and replications in up to 52,895 individuals for BMI and up to 23,095 individuals for WHRadjBMI from the African Ancestry Anthropometry Genetics Consortium (AAAGC) using 1000 Genomes phase 1 imputed GWAS to improve coverage of both common and low frequency variants in the low linkage disequilibrium African ancestry genomes. In the sex-combined analyses, we identified one novel locus (TCF7L2/HABP2) for WHRadjBMI and eight previously established loci at P < 5×10−8: seven for BMI, and one for WHRadjBMI in African ancestry individuals. An additional novel locus (SPRYD7/DLEU2) was identified for WHRadjBMI when combined with European GWAS. In the sex-stratified analyses, we identified three novel loci for BMI (INTS10/LPL and MLC1 in men, IRX4/IRX2 in women) and four for WHRadjBMI (SSX2IP, CASC8, PDE3B and ZDHHC1/HSD11B2 in women) in individuals of African ancestry or both African and European ancestry. For four of the novel variants, the minor allele frequency was low (<5%). In the trans-ethnic fine mapping of 47 BMI loci and 27 WHRadjBMI loci that were locus-wide significant (P < 0.05 adjusted for effective number of variants per locus) from the African ancestry sex-combined and sex-stratified analyses, 26 BMI loci and 17 WHRadjBMI loci contained ≤ 20 variants in the credible sets that jointly account for 99% posterior probability of driving the associations. The lead variants in 13 of these loci had a high probability of being causal. As compared to our previous HapMap imputed GWAS for BMI and WHRadjBMI including up to 71,412 and 27,350 African ancestry individuals, respectively, our results suggest that 1000 Genomes imputation showed modest improvement in identifying GWAS loci including low frequency variants. Trans-ethnic meta-analyses further improved fine mapping of putative causal variants in loci shared between the African and European ancestry populations

Leveraging population admixture to explain missing heritability of complex traits

Despite recent progress on estimating the heritability explained by genotyped SNPs (hg2), a large gap between hg2 and estimates of total narrow-sense heritability (h2) remains. Explanations for this gap include rare variants, or upward bias in family-based estimates of h2 due to shared environment or epistasis. We estimate h2 from unrelated individuals in admixed populations by first estimating the heritability explained by local ancestry (hγ2). We show that hγ2 = 2FSTCθ(1−θ)h2, where FSTC measures frequency differences between populations at causal loci and θ is the genome-wide ancestry proportion. Our approach is not susceptible to biases caused by epistasis or shared environment. We examined 21,497 African Americans from three cohorts, analyzing 13 phenotypes. For height and BMI, we obtained h2 estimates of 0.55 ± 0.09 and 0.23 ± 0.06, respectively, which are larger than estimates of hg2 in these and other data, but smaller than family-based estimates of h2

MBL Agreement of Association

Document establishing the Marine Biological Laboratory as a Massachusetts corporationPurpose "to establish and maintain a laboratory or station for scientific study and investigation, and a school for instruction in biology and natural history"Correspondenc

Reservoir quality of Cenozoic carbonate buildups and coral reef terraces

Almost half of SE Asia's considerable hydrocarbon reserves are contained in carbonates. The majority of these reservoirs are Miocene buildups up to tens of kilometres across. However, with the exception of a few fields, there is little detailed data on how local depositional and diagenetic conditions influence the considerable heterogeneities in reservoir quality often encountered. This study focuses on factors influencing the facies, diagenetic and reservoir variability of comparable Modern, Quaternary and Neogene reef associated deposits from the Tukang Besi Archipelago, Central Indonesia.The Archipelago includes large atolls, a number of smaller buildups and 4 main islands each with modern rimmed shelves or fringing reefs. On the islands, over ten late Neogene and Quaternary coral reef terraces have been uplifted to maximum heights of ~300 m. Analysis of the modern deposits allows initial reservoir potential to be assessed and related to local environmental conditions. The influence of diagenesis on final reservoir quality is evaluated for the depositional facies exposed in the uplifted terraces. The overall spatial distribution of effective porosity across the area is strongly dependent on local energy conditions, water depth, carbonate producers, size of atolls or islands, climate and local meteoric diagenetic processes. This evaluation of spatial variability in carbonate reservoir characteristics provides much needed analogue data as the hydrocarbon industry focuses on improving recovery from existing fields and exploring for new reserves

'Voyaging in': colonialism and migration

A major reference chapter on the history of the literature of colonialism and migration 1945-70. The book marks an intervention into conventional histories of British Literature. The chapter illustrates and analyses the influential formation of alternative modernities by migrant writers resident in Britain during this period; it also extends the gaze to the period before 1945 earlier in the twentieth century. Maps new ways of reading literary history; broad and wideranging discussion of migration during this period

Leveraging population admixture to characterize the heritability of complex traits

Despite recent progress on estimating the heritability explained by genotyped SNPs (h(2)g), a large gap between h(2)g and estimates of total narrow-sense heritability (h(2)) remains. Explanations for this gap include rare variants or upward bias in family-based estimates of h(2) due to shared environment or epistasis. We estimate h(2) from unrelated individuals in admixed populations by first estimating the heritability explained by local ancestry (h(2)γ). We show that h(2)γ = 2FSTCθ(1 - θ)h(2), where FSTC measures frequency differences between populations at causal loci and θ is the genome-wide ancestry proportion. Our approach is not susceptible to biases caused by epistasis or shared environment. We applied this approach to the analysis of 13 phenotypes in 21,497 African-American individuals from 3 cohorts. For height and body mass index (BMI), we obtained h(2) estimates of 0.55 ± 0.09 and 0.23 ± 0.06, respectively, which are larger than estimates of h(2)g in these and other data but smaller than family-based estimates of h(2)

Integration of multiethnic fine-mapping and genomic annotation to prioritize candidate functional SNPs at prostate cancer susceptibility regions

Interpretation of biological mechanisms underlying genetic risk associations for prostate cancer is complicated by the relatively large number of risk variants (n = 100) and the thousands of surrogate SNPs in linkage disequilibrium. Here, we combined three distinct approaches: multiethnic fine-mapping, putative functional annotation (based upon epigenetic data and genome-encoded features), and expression quantitative trait loci (eQTL) analyses, in an attempt to reduce this complexity. We examined 67 risk regions using genotyping and imputation-based fine-mapping in populations of European (cases/controls: 8600/6946), African (cases/controls: 5327/5136), Japanese (cases/controls: 2563/4391) and Latino (cases/controls: 1034/1046) ancestry. Markers at 55 regions passed a region-specific significance threshold (P-value cutoff range: 3.9 × 10(-4)-5.6 × 10(-3)) and in 30 regions we identified markers that were more significantly associated with risk than the previously reported variants in the multiethnic sample. Novel secondary signals (P \u3c 5.0 × 10(-6)) were also detected in two regions (rs13062436/3q21 and rs17181170/3p12). Among 666 variants in the 55 regions with P-values within one order of magnitude of the most-associated marker, 193 variants (29%) in 48 regions overlapped with epigenetic or other putative functional marks. In 11 of the 55 regions, cis-eQTLs were detected with nearby genes. For 12 of the 55 regions (22%), the most significant region-specific, prostate-cancer associated variant represented the strongest candidate functional variant based on our annotations; the number of regions increased to 20 (36%) and 27 (49%) when examining the 2 and 3 most significantly associated variants in each region, respectively. These results have prioritized subsets of candidate variants for downstream functional evaluation