A comparative history of Department of Defense Management reform from 1947 to 2005

MBA Professional ReportThe purpose of this MBA Project is to document and analyze the history of management reform within the Department of Defense from 1947 through the present day based on the annual reports of the Secretaries of Defense to the Congress. Since its inception in 1947, the Department of Defense has undergone nearly constant management reforms. It appears that each administration attempts to introduce some type of management reform agenda to improve the Department of Defense business processes and incorporate recent management ideas from the business community. Some of the changes are real and significant; others are changes in name only. Through analysis of annual reports of the Secretaries of Defense, a compilation of significant management reforms was created for each secretary. These reforms were analyzed and compared to one another to identify both general trends and truly unique changes in management practices. Ultimately, this analysis will help distinguish the relative significance in the management reform effort of both the individual secretaries and the specific reform initiatives.http://archive.org/details/acomparativehist1094510068US Marine Corps (USMC) authors.Approved for public release; distribution is unlimited

X-ray photoemission analysis of clean and carbon monoxide-chemisorbed platinum(111) stepped surfaces using a curved crystal

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.-- et al.Surface chemistry and catalysis studies could significantly gain from the systematic variation of surface active sites, tested under the very same conditions. Curved crystals are excellent platforms to perform such systematics, which may in turn allow to better resolve fundamental properties and reveal new phenomena. This is demonstrated here for the carbon monoxide/platinum system. We curve a platinum crystal around the high-symmetry (111) direction and carry out photoemission scans on top. This renders the spatial core-level imaging of carbon monoxide adsorbed on a 'tunable' vicinal surface, allowing a straightforward visualization of the rich chemisorption phenomenology at steps and terraces. Through such photoemission images we probe a characteristic elastic strain variation at stepped surfaces, and unveil subtle stress-release effects on clean and covered vicinal surfaces. These results offer the prospect of applying the curved surface approach to rationally investigate the chemical activity of surfaces under real pressure conditions.We acknowledge financial support from the Spanish Ministry of Economy (Grants MAT2013-46593-C6-4-P and MAT2013-46593-C6-2-P ), Basque Government (Grants IT621-13 and IT756-13). A.L.W. acknowledges support from the US Department of Energy, Office of Science, Office of Basic Energy Sciences, under Contract No. DE-SC0012704. AXBR acknowledges support from the Basque Departamento de Educación and the UPV/EHU through the Zabalduz program. AXBR, PCS and DSP acknowledge the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft through the Sonderforschungsbereich 1083.Peer Reviewe

Social Presence and the void in distant relationships: How do people use communication technologies to turn absence into fondness of the heart, rather than drifting out of mind?

In general terms, Social Presence is a feeling of togetherness regardless of spatial or temporal separation. It is a socioemotional attitude that reflexively centres on other people, via perceptions of their affective attitudes towards oneself. Communication technologies contribute to the maintenance of close personal relationships by facilitating welcome and timely socioemotional presence in the mind of an absent other. Presence of this kind may be ‘in the moment’ of communication and also persist over time, as it is ‘topped up’ through repeated interactions. In this paper, we consider how type of personal relationship and degree of physical separation might condition the Social Presence value of a range of media. We report ratings of Closeness and Social Presence that were gathered over 21 days by 64 participants about the close personal relationships that were meaningful to them. We contrast the communication media they chose to use across four relationship types and whether separations were in the same or in a different city. Our findings are used to discuss new ways of thinking about the connection between people who care about one another, and the meaning of the void that separates them, through the time course of Social Presence and Closeness experiences

A new era of wide-field submillimetre imaging: on-sky performance of SCUBA-2

SCUBA-2 is the largest submillimetre wide-field bolometric camera ever built. This 43 square arc-minute field-of-view instrument operates at two wavelengths (850 and 450 microns) and has been installed on the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope on Mauna Kea, Hawaii. SCUBA-2 has been successfully commissioned and operational for general science since October 2011. This paper presents an overview of the on-sky performance of the instrument during and since commissioning in mid-2011. The on-sky noise characteristics and NEPs of the 450 and 850 micron arrays, with average yields of approximately 3400 bolometers at each wavelength, will be shown. The observing modes of the instrument and the on-sky calibration techniques are described. The culmination of these efforts has resulted in a scientifically powerful mapping camera with sensitivities that allow a square degree of sky to be mapped to 10 mJy/beam rms at 850 micron in 2 hours and 60 mJy/beam rms at 450 micron in 5 hours in the best weather.Comment: 18 pages, 15 figures.SPIE Conference series 8452, Millimetre, Submillimetre and Far-infrared Detectors and Instrumentation for Astronomy VI 201

Atomic Resonance and Scattering

Contains research objectives, summary of research and reports on six research projects.Joint Services Electronics Programs (U. S. Army, U. S. Navy, and U. S. Air Force) under Contract DA 28-043-AMC-02536(E)National Science Foundation (Grant GP-13633)National Bureau of Standards (Grant NBS(G)-269

Atomic Resonance and Scattering

Contains research objectives, summary of research and reports on five research projects.Joint Services Electronics Programs (U. S. Army, U. S. Navy, and U. S. Air Force) under Contract DAAB07-71-C-0300National Science Foundation (Grant GP 28679)National Bureau of Standards (Grant 1-35857

Fine-mapping identifies multiple prostate cancer risk loci at 5p15, one of which associates with TERT expression

Associations between single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) at 5p15 and multiple cancer types have been reported. We have previously shown evidence for a strong association between prostate cancer (PrCa) risk and rs2242652 at 5p15, intronic in the telomerase reverse transcriptase (TERT) gene that encodes TERT. To comprehensively evaluate the association between genetic variation across this region and PrCa, we performed a fine-mapping analysis by genotyping 134 SNPs using a custom Illumina iSelect array or Sequenom MassArray iPlex, followed by imputation of 1094 SNPs in 22 301 PrCa cases and 22 320 controls in The PRACTICAL consortium. Multiple stepwise logistic regression analysis identified four signals in the promoter or intronic regions of TERT that independently associated with PrCa risk. Gene expression analysis of normal prostate tissue showed evidence that SNPs within one of these regions also associated with TERT expression, providing a potential mechanism for predisposition to disease

Thromboxane biosynthesis in cancer patients and its inhibition by aspirin: a sub-study of the Add-Aspirin trial

BACKGROUND: Pre-clinical models demonstrate that platelet activation is involved in the spread of malignancy. Ongoing clinical trials are assessing whether aspirin, which inhibits platelet activation, can prevent or delay metastases. METHODS: Urinary 11-dehydro-thromboxane B2 (U-TXM), a biomarker of in vivo platelet activation, was measured after radical cancer therapy and correlated with patient demographics, tumour type, recent treatment, and aspirin use (100 mg, 300 mg or placebo daily) using multivariable linear regression models with log-transformed values. RESULTS: In total, 716 patients (breast 260, colorectal 192, gastro-oesophageal 53, prostate 211) median age 61 years, 50% male were studied. Baseline median U-TXM were breast 782; colorectal 1060; gastro-oesophageal 1675 and prostate 826 pg/mg creatinine; higher than healthy individuals (~500 pg/mg creatinine). Higher levels were associated with raised body mass index, inflammatory markers, and in the colorectal and gastro-oesophageal participants compared to breast participants (P < 0.001) independent of other baseline characteristics. Aspirin 100 mg daily decreased U-TXM similarly across all tumour types (median reductions: 77-82%). Aspirin 300 mg daily provided no additional suppression of U-TXM compared with 100 mg. CONCLUSIONS: Persistently increased thromboxane biosynthesis was detected after radical cancer therapy, particularly in colorectal and gastro-oesophageal patients. Thromboxane biosynthesis should be explored further as a biomarker of active malignancy and may identify patients likely to benefit from aspirin