An Examination of the Government Relations Profession from the Perspective of Contract Lobbyists, Owners of Lobbying Firms and Principal Corporate Lobbyists: A Comparison of Female and Male Lobbyists

In the past decade, some women lobbyists have progressed from representing compassion issues such as healthcare, children and education that were traditionally associated with women to representing concerns such as finance and engineering that are nontraditional for women and of vital importance to major corporations in the United States. Women have become contract lobbyists with major law firms, women have started their own firms. In addition, women have become the principal corporate lobbyists for major American companies.The study was conducted with a mail survey sent to women lobbyists in the three classifications and to male lobbyists who served as a comparison group. The number of respondents in this study was 462 with 107 females (41.5 percent), 151 males (58.6 percent) with a response rate of 56.0 percent and 12 states represented: Connecticut, Pennsylvania, New York, Illinois, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Colorado, California, Washington, Texas, Virginia and Florida.The significance of this study is that it is the first major examination of women as political actors in nontraditional lobbying roles. Because lobbyists are important links between organized interests and government, it was important to examine and explore the similarities and dissimilarities of career patterns and backgrounds, perceptions of women and the methods used to practice lobbying

Degradation of Wood in Standing Lodgepole Pine Killed by Mountain Pine Beetle

Lodgepole pine is widely distributed throughout the Pacific Northwest and is an important commercial species. Although outbreaks of mountain pine beetle can kill extensive areas of pine stands, little attention was paid to postmortality rate of wood quality and quantity deterioration until the most recent outbreak, which because of its unprecedented size has resulted in extensive salvage harvesting. We used dendrochronology to determine the exact year of mortality and destructive sampling to quantify change in wood characteristics with time. We also estimated the fall-down rate of dead trees. Most trees did not start to fall until 8 yr postmortality. We found that change in wood moisture content was the main driver behind changes in wood properties. Dependent variables included checking (number and depth), blue-stain depth, saprot, and damage caused by wood borers and were explained by a small collection of biophysical variables. Biogeoclimatic unit and soil moisture regime were not important predictors of decay and degrade, except for development of saprot at the base of trees. Wood quality significantly changed within the first 1-2 yr postmortality and varied with position along the stem followed by a period of relative stability

Democratic Service Learning

The ultimate purpose of American public education is to help students learn how to be compassionate, problem-solving citizens in a democratic society. It is the job of schools to help each generation envision a better future and acquire the dispositions, skills, and experiences to make this vision a reality. Our youngest citizens need a democratic education, for which service-learning is an indispensable element

Passivizability of Idioms: Has the Wrong Tree Been Barked Up?

A growing number of studies support the partial compositionality of idiomatic phrases while idioms are thought to vary in their syntactic flexibility. Some idioms, like kick the bucket, have been classified as inflexible and incapable of being passivized without losing their figurative interpretation (i.e. the bucket was kicked ≠ died). Crucially, this has never been substantiated by empirical findings. In the current study, we used eye-tracking to examine whether the passive forms of (flexible and inflexible) idioms retain or lose their figurative meaning. Active and passivized idioms (he kicked the bucket/the bucket was kicked) and incongruous active and passive control phrases (he kicked the apple/the apple was kicked) were inserted in sentences biasing the figurative meaning of the respective idiom (die). Active idioms served as a baseline. We hypothesised that if passivized idioms retain their figurative meaning (the bucket was kicked = died), they should be processed more efficiently than the control phrases, since their figurative meaning would be congruous in the context. If, on the other hand, passivized idioms lose their figurative interpretation (the bucket was kicked = the pail was kicked), then their meaning should be just as incongruous as that of both control phrases, in which case we would expect no difference in their processing. Eye movement patterns demonstrated a processing advantage for passivized idioms (flexible and inflexible) over control phrases, thus indicating that their figurative meaning was not compromised. These findings challenge classifications of idiom flexibility and highlight the creative nature of language

Performance improvement technology for building a sustainable OER initiative in an academic library

In keeping with its land grant mission, a university campus library partnered with several OER advocacy efforts on both national and state levels to promote the creation and use of OER at the university. While the program had some initial success in inspiring faculty to create and use OER in their courses, the effort proved difficult to sustain. This paper presents the application of the Performance Improvement/HPT model to an Open Educational Resources (OER) initiative in a university library. This paper focuses specifically on three phases of the process: organizational analysis, environmental analysis, and gap analysis We share results of that application and discuss how the HPT model might effectively be applied to other similar programs.Peer reviewedLibraryEducational Technolog

CAN SIMPLE INTERVENTIONS INCREASE RESEARCH USE IN SECONDARY SCHOOLS?

A variety of interventions have been attempted in education and other fields to increase the use of research use in policy and practice. However, there is still limited research on the impact of these interventions. This paper uses survey and qualitative data to analyze three interventions designed to increase research use among secondary school leaders in nine Canadian school districts. These interventions were found to have little impact, but were more successful where (1) designated facilitators were involved and (2) research used was connected to existing priority issues. The research design for this study (measuring the change in agreement with particular bodies of research knowledge using interventions and pre-post design) is a promising methodology to measure both research use and impact

When the Idiom Advantage Comes Up Short: Eye-Tracking Canonical and Modified Idioms

The literature on idioms often talks about an ‘idiom advantage’, such that familiar idioms (spill the beans) are generally processed faster than comparable literal phrases (burn the beans). More recently, researchers have explored the processing of idiom modification and while a few studies indicate that familiarity benefits the processing of modified forms, the extent of this facilitation is unknown. In an eye-tracking study, we explored whether familiar idioms and modified versions with 1 or 2 adjectives (spill the (spicy, (red)) beans) are processed faster than matched literal phrases (burn the (spicy, (red)) beans) when both were preceded by a biasing context. The results showed that adjectives inserted in idioms induced longer fixations and were more likely to elicit a regression. However, idiom verbs and final words were processed with the same ease in all adjective conditions, implying that modifying idioms did not impede their processing. In contrast to the widely reported ‘idiom advantage’, the results demonstrated that canonical and modified idioms were slower to read relative to matched literal controls. This was taken to reflect the competition between an idiom’s literal and figurative meaning, and subsequently the need to select and integrate the contextually appropriate one. In contrast, meaning integration in literal, unambiguous phrases was easier. We argue that processing costs associated with meaning selection may only manifest when idioms are preceded by a biasing context that allows disambiguation to occur in the idiom region, and/or when literal control phrases are contextually appropriate and carefully matched to idioms. Thus, idiom recognition/activation may elicit the well attested idiom advantage, while meaning selection and integration may come at a cost, and idiom modifications may simply add to the cognitive load

Ecological interchangeability: supporting team adaptive expertise in moments of disruption

While undesirable, unexpected disruptions offer unique opportunities to enact adaptive expertise. For adaptive expertise to flourish, individuals and teams must embrace both efficiency and adaptation. While some industries do it readily, others continue to struggle with the tension between efficiency and adaptation, particularly when otherwise stable situations are unexpectedly disrupted. For instance, in healthcare settings, the efficiency mandate for strict compliance with scopes of practice can deter teams from using the adaptive strategy of making their members interchangeable. Yet, interchangeability has been hinted as a key capacity of today’ teams that are required to navigate fluid team structures. Because interchangeability – as an adaptive strategy – can generate antagonistic reactions, it has not been well studied in fluid teams. Thus, in this exploratory qualitative study we sought to gain insights into how interchangeability manifests when fluid teams from five different contexts (healthcare, emergency services, orchestras, military, and business) deal with disruptive events. According to our participants, successful interchangeability was possible when people knew how to work within one’s role while being aware of their teammates’ roles. However, interchangeability included more than just role switching. Interchangeability took various forms and was most successful when teams capitalized on the procedural, emotional, and social dimensions of their work. To reflect this added complexity, we refer to interchangeability in fluid teams as Ecological Interchangeability. We suggest that ecological interchangeability may become a desired feature in the training of adaptive expertise in teams, if its underlying properties and enabling mechanisms are more fully understood