Accreditation: Implications For Hospitality Management Education

Accreditation was previously defined as a voluntary process in which recognition is granted to educational programs which meet or exceed established standards of educational quality. One of the inherent problems in the application of the accreditation process lies in the identification of educational quality, an elusive and subjective concept which creates the fear of the accreditation process becoming equally subjective. The author discusses this fear, along with other misconceptions regarding the implementation of accreditation in hospitality management programs at the baccalaureate level, concluding a two-part series begun in the Spring 1985 issue

Accreditation: What It Is … and Is Not

The conceptual notion of accreditation is as specialized, complex, and diverse as is the field of hospitality management education. Before an argument can be made for or against accreditation within the professional field of hospitality management, a common understanding of accreditation must be achieved. The following article, the first of a two-part series, is intended to expand the reader\u27s knowledge of the accreditation process. Part two will discuss its relationship to hospitality management education at the college or university level

Serotonin, cortisol, and stress-related psychopathology:from bench to bed

Stress has been implicated in the etiology of many psychiatric disorders, the most common stress-related disorder being major depressive disorder. However, stressful events do not automatically lead to psychopathology, important is the interaction between the stressor and someone’s vulnerability to stress and psychiatric disorders. This vulnerability is individual and likely to be determined by genetic, psychosocial, and biological factors. Two biological systems that have been related to the development of stress-related psychiatric disorders are the hypothalamus-pituitary-adrenal(HPA)-axis and the serotonergic system. In the present thesis, the interaction of these systems on coping with stress in rats and vulnerability to psychopathology in humans was investigated. The results indicate that changes in serotonergic activity and HPA-axis activity as a consequence of a disease process, treatment condition or other environmental factors may have behavioral consequences in both animals and humans. For example, low serotonergic activity may increase susceptibility to stress and HPA-axis activity, which in combination with individual genetic make-up may result in psychiatric symptoms. Impaired HPA-axis function is associated with more severe symptoms of major depressive disorder. We plead for the inclusion of a separate “serotonergic” symptom profile list in psychiatric questionnaires, and future incarnations of the DSM

Imaging of RNA in situ hybridization by atomic force microscopy

In this study we investigated the possibility of imaging internal cellular molecules after cytochemical detection with atomic force microscopy (AFM). To this end, rat 9G and HeLa cells were hybridized with haptenized probes for 28S ribosomal RNA, human elongation factor mRNA and cytomegalovirus immediate early antigen mRNA. The haptenized hybrids were subsequently detected with a peroxidase-labelled antibody and visualized with 3,3'-diaminobenzidine (DAB). The influence of various scanning conditions on cell morphology and visibility of the signal was investigated. In order to determine the influence of ethanol dehydration on cellular structure and visibility of the DAB precipitate, cells were kept in phosphate-buffered saline (PBS) and scanned under fluid after DAB development or dehydrated and subsequently scanned dry or submerged in PBS. Direct information on the increase in height of cellular structures because of internally precipitated DAB and the height of mock-hybridized cells was available. Results show that internal DAB precipitate can be detected by AFM, with the highest sensitivity in the case of dry cells. Although a relatively large amount of DAB had to be precipitated inside the cell before it was visible by AFM, the resolution of AFM for imaging of RNA–in situ hybridization signals was slightly better than that of conventional optical microscopy. Furthermore, it is concluded that dehydration of the cells has irreversible effects on cellular structure. Therefore, scanning under fluid of previously dehydrated samples cannot be considered as a good representation of the situation before dehydration.\ud \u