Explaining the willingness of public professionals to implement new policies: A policy alienation framework

Nowadays, many public policies focus on economic values, such as efficiency and client choice. Public professionals often show resistance to implementing such policies. We analyse this problem using an interdisciplinary approach. From public administration, we draw on the policy alienation concept, which consists of five dimensions: strategic powerlessness, tactical powerlessness, operational powerlessness, societal meaninglessness and client meaninglessness. These are considered as factors that influence the willingness of professionals to implement policies (change willingness - a concept drawn from the change management literature). We test this model in a survey among 478 Dutch healthcare professionals implementing a new reimbursement policy. The first finding was that perceived autonomy (operational powerlessness) significantly influenced change willingness, whereas strategic and tactical powerlessness were not found to be significant. Second, both the meaninglessness dimensions proved highly significant. We conclude that clarifying the value of a policy is important in getting professionals to willingly implement a policy, whereas their participation on the strategic or tactical levels seems less of a motivational factor. These insights help in understanding why public professionals embrace or resist the implementation of particular policies. Points for practitioners Policymakers develop public policies which, nowadays, tend to focus strongly on economic values, such as increasing efficiency or offering citizens the opportunity to choose among suppliers of public services. Public professionals, who have to implement these policies, are often reluctant to do so. This study shows that the causes of this resistance are unlikely to be found in the lack of influence these professionals have in the shaping of the policy at the national or organizational level. Rather, professionals might resist implementing policies because they do not see them as meaningful for society, or for their own clients. Therefore, policymakers should focus on this perceived meaninglessness and adopt ways to counter this, for example by intensively communicating the value associated with a policy

Trials of large group teaching in Malaysian private universities: a cross sectional study of teaching medicine and other disciplines

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>This is a pilot cross sectional study using both quantitative and qualitative approach towards tutors teaching large classes in private universities in the Klang Valley (comprising Kuala Lumpur, its suburbs, adjoining towns in the State of Selangor) and the State of Negeri Sembilan, Malaysia. The general aim of this study is to determine the difficulties faced by tutors when teaching large group of students and to outline appropriate recommendations in overcoming them.</p> <p>Findings</p> <p>Thirty-two academics from six private universities from different faculties such as Medical Sciences, Business, Information Technology, and Engineering disciplines participated in this study. SPSS software was used to analyse the data. The results in general indicate that the conventional instructor-student approach has its shortcoming and requires changes. Interestingly, tutors from Medicine and IT less often faced difficulties and had positive experience in teaching large group of students.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>However several suggestions were proposed to overcome these difficulties ranging from breaking into smaller classes, adopting innovative teaching, use of interactive learning methods incorporating interactive assessment and creative technology which enhanced students learning. Furthermore the study provides insights on the trials of large group teaching which are clearly identified to help tutors realise its impact on teaching. The suggestions to overcome these difficulties and to maximize student learning can serve as a guideline for tutors who face these challenges.</p

Sleep Loss Produces False Memories

People sometimes claim with high confidence to remember events that in fact never happened, typically due to strong semantic associations with actually encoded events. Sleep is known to provide optimal neurobiological conditions for consolidation of memories for long-term storage, whereas sleep deprivation acutely impairs retrieval of stored memories. Here, focusing on the role of sleep-related memory processes, we tested whether false memories can be created (a) as enduring memory representations due to a consolidation-associated reorganization of new memory representations during post-learning sleep and/or (b) as an acute retrieval-related phenomenon induced by sleep deprivation at memory testing. According to the Deese, Roediger, McDermott (DRM) false memory paradigm, subjects learned lists of semantically associated words (e.g., “night”, “dark”, “coal”,…), lacking the strongest common associate or theme word (here: “black”). Subjects either slept or stayed awake immediately after learning, and they were either sleep deprived or not at recognition testing 9, 33, or 44 hours after learning. Sleep deprivation at retrieval, but not sleep following learning, critically enhanced false memories of theme words. This effect was abolished by caffeine administration prior to retrieval, indicating that adenosinergic mechanisms can contribute to the generation of false memories associated with sleep loss

Evidence for the h_b(1P) meson in the decay Upsilon(3S) --> pi0 h_b(1P)

Using a sample of 122 million Upsilon(3S) events recorded with the BaBar detector at the PEP-II asymmetric-energy e+e- collider at SLAC, we search for the $h_b(1P)$ spin-singlet partner of the P-wave chi_{bJ}(1P) states in the sequential decay Upsilon(3S) --> pi0 h_b(1P), h_b(1P) --> gamma eta_b(1S). We observe an excess of events above background in the distribution of the recoil mass against the pi0 at mass 9902 +/- 4(stat.) +/- 2(syst.) MeV/c^2. The width of the observed signal is consistent with experimental resolution, and its significance is 3.1sigma, including systematic uncertainties. We obtain the value (4.3 +/- 1.1(stat.) +/- 0.9(syst.)) x 10^{-4} for the product branching fraction BF(Upsilon(3S)-->pi0 h_b) x BF(h_b-->gamma eta_b).Comment: 8 pages, 4 postscript figures, submitted to Phys. Rev. D (Rapid Communications

Precise measurement of the W-boson mass with the CDF II detector

We have measured the W-boson mass MW using data corresponding to 2.2/fb of integrated luminosity collected in proton-antiproton collisions at 1.96 TeV with the CDF II detector at the Fermilab Tevatron collider. Samples consisting of 470126 W->enu candidates and 624708 W->munu candidates yield the measurement MW = 80387 +- 12 (stat) +- 15 (syst) = 80387 +- 19 MeV. This is the most precise measurement of the W-boson mass to date and significantly exceeds the precision of all previous measurements combined

Performance of CMS muon reconstruction in pp collision events at sqrt(s) = 7 TeV

The performance of muon reconstruction, identification, and triggering in CMS has been studied using 40 inverse picobarns of data collected in pp collisions at sqrt(s) = 7 TeV at the LHC in 2010. A few benchmark sets of selection criteria covering a wide range of physics analysis needs have been examined. For all considered selections, the efficiency to reconstruct and identify a muon with a transverse momentum pT larger than a few GeV is above 95% over the whole region of pseudorapidity covered by the CMS muon system, abs(eta) < 2.4, while the probability to misidentify a hadron as a muon is well below 1%. The efficiency to trigger on single muons with pT above a few GeV is higher than 90% over the full eta range, and typically substantially better. The overall momentum scale is measured to a precision of 0.2% with muons from Z decays. The transverse momentum resolution varies from 1% to 6% depending on pseudorapidity for muons with pT below 100 GeV and, using cosmic rays, it is shown to be better than 10% in the central region up to pT = 1 TeV. Observed distributions of all quantities are well reproduced by the Monte Carlo simulation.Comment: Replaced with published version. Added journal reference and DO

Performance of CMS muon reconstruction in pp collision events at sqrt(s) = 7 TeV

The performance of muon reconstruction, identification, and triggering in CMS has been studied using 40 inverse picobarns of data collected in pp collisions at sqrt(s) = 7 TeV at the LHC in 2010. A few benchmark sets of selection criteria covering a wide range of physics analysis needs have been examined. For all considered selections, the efficiency to reconstruct and identify a muon with a transverse momentum pT larger than a few GeV is above 95% over the whole region of pseudorapidity covered by the CMS muon system, abs(eta) < 2.4, while the probability to misidentify a hadron as a muon is well below 1%. The efficiency to trigger on single muons with pT above a few GeV is higher than 90% over the full eta range, and typically substantially better. The overall momentum scale is measured to a precision of 0.2% with muons from Z decays. The transverse momentum resolution varies from 1% to 6% depending on pseudorapidity for muons with pT below 100 GeV and, using cosmic rays, it is shown to be better than 10% in the central region up to pT = 1 TeV. Observed distributions of all quantities are well reproduced by the Monte Carlo simulation.Comment: Replaced with published version. Added journal reference and DO

Azimuthal anisotropy of charged particles at high transverse momenta in PbPb collisions at sqrt(s[NN]) = 2.76 TeV

The azimuthal anisotropy of charged particles in PbPb collisions at nucleon-nucleon center-of-mass energy of 2.76 TeV is measured with the CMS detector at the LHC over an extended transverse momentum (pt) range up to approximately 60 GeV. The data cover both the low-pt region associated with hydrodynamic flow phenomena and the high-pt region where the anisotropies may reflect the path-length dependence of parton energy loss in the created medium. The anisotropy parameter (v2) of the particles is extracted by correlating charged tracks with respect to the event-plane reconstructed by using the energy deposited in forward-angle calorimeters. For the six bins of collision centrality studied, spanning the range of 0-60% most-central events, the observed v2 values are found to first increase with pt, reaching a maximum around pt = 3 GeV, and then to gradually decrease to almost zero, with the decline persisting up to at least pt = 40 GeV over the full centrality range measured.Comment: Replaced with published version. Added journal reference and DO

Search for new physics with same-sign isolated dilepton events with jets and missing transverse energy

A search for new physics is performed in events with two same-sign isolated leptons, hadronic jets, and missing transverse energy in the final state. The analysis is based on a data sample corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 4.98 inverse femtobarns produced in pp collisions at a center-of-mass energy of 7 TeV collected by the CMS experiment at the LHC. This constitutes a factor of 140 increase in integrated luminosity over previously published results. The observed yields agree with the standard model predictions and thus no evidence for new physics is found. The observations are used to set upper limits on possible new physics contributions and to constrain supersymmetric models. To facilitate the interpretation of the data in a broader range of new physics scenarios, information on the event selection, detector response, and efficiencies is provided.Comment: Published in Physical Review Letter

Metabolome Based Reaction Graphs of M. tuberculosis and M. leprae: A Comparative Network Analysis

BACKGROUND: Several types of networks, such as transcriptional, metabolic or protein-protein interaction networks of various organisms have been constructed, that have provided a variety of insights into metabolism and regulation. Here, we seek to exploit the reaction-based networks of three organisms for comparative genomics. We use concepts from spectral graph theory to systematically determine how differences in basic metabolism of organisms are reflected at the systems level and in the overall topological structures of their metabolic networks. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: Metabolome-based reaction networks of Mycobacterium tuberculosis, Mycobacterium leprae and Escherichia coli have been constructed based on the KEGG LIGAND database, followed by graph spectral analysis of the network to identify hubs as well as the sub-clustering of reactions. The shortest and alternate paths in the reaction networks have also been examined. Sub-cluster profiling demonstrates that reactions of the mycolic acid pathway in mycobacteria form a tightly connected sub-cluster. Identification of hubs reveals reactions involving glutamate to be central to mycobacterial metabolism, and pyruvate to be at the centre of the E. coli metabolome. The analysis of shortest paths between reactions has revealed several paths that are shorter than well established pathways. CONCLUSIONS: We conclude that severe downsizing of the leprae genome has not significantly altered the global structure of its reaction network but has reduced the total number of alternate paths between its reactions while keeping the shortest paths between them intact. The hubs in the mycobacterial networks that are absent in the human metabolome can be explored as potential drug targets. This work demonstrates the usefulness of constructing metabolome based networks of organisms and the feasibility of their analyses through graph spectral methods. The insights obtained from such studies provide a broad overview of the similarities and differences between organisms, taking comparative genomics studies to a higher dimension