Customer Loyalty Directives And Employee Turnover Intention: A Qualitative Hospitality Industry Study

The problem of high employee turnover in the hospitality industry is a critical leadership challenge. The focus of this qualitative phenomenological study was the determination of the perceptions, reactions, and experiences leading to retention intentions of frontline hotel employees whose job responsibilities included compliance with customer loyalty directives. Analysis yielded the emergence of six relevant themes: training, directives, customer orientation, compliance failure consequences, customer complaint experiences, and customer loyalty experiences. The findings indicate that compliance with customer loyalty directives and hiring employees with high customer orientation did not result in increased turnover intention

Correlates of criminal victimisation among police cell detainees in Victoria, Australia

People with mental illness are more likely to be crime victims than others; however, little is known about the relationship between offending and victimisation among mentally ill offenders. This study investigated the rates and types of victimisation among people detained in police cells (N = 764), with and without histories of mental illness. Those with mental disorders were 1.56 times (95% CI = 1.11–2.17) more likely to be victims of violent crimes than other detainees. Some subgroups of people with mental disorders were not over-represented as victims, raising the possibility that they were less inclined to report certain types of crimes. Implications are discussed with reference to police practice

Direct observation of mobile protons in SiO{sub 2} thin films: Potential application in a novel memory device

In this work we show that annealing of silicon/silicon-dioxide/silicon structures in forming gas (N{sub 2}:H{sub 2}; 95:5) above 500{degrees}C leads to spontaneous incorporation of mobile H{sup +} ions in the buried SiO{sub 2} layer. We demonstrate that, unlike the alkali ions feared as killer contaminants in the early days, the space charge distribution of these mobile protons within the buried oxide layer can be very well controlled and easily rearranged with relatively high speed at room temperature. The hysteresis in the flat band voltage shift provides a unique vehicle to study proton kinetics in silicon dioxide thin films. It is further shown how this effect can be used as the basis for a reliable nonvolatile FET memory device that has potential to be competitive with state-of-the-art Si-based memory technologies. The power of this novel device is its simplicity; it requires few processing steps, all of which are standard in Si integrated-circuit fabrication

Geographic and species association of hepatitis B virus genotypes in non-human primates

AbstractInfection with hepatitis B virus (HBV) has been detected in human populations thoughout the world, as well as in a number of ape species (Pan troglodytes, Gorilla gorilla, gibbons [Nomascus and Hylobates species] and Pongo pygmaeus). To investigate the distribution of naturally occurring HBV infection in these species and other African Old World monkey species (Cercopithecidae), we screened 137 plasma samples from mainly wild caught animals by polymerase chain reaction (PCR) using several of highly conserved primers from the HB surface (HBs) gene, and for HBs antigen (HBsAg) by ELISA. None of the 93 Cercopithecidae screened (6 species) showed PCR or serology evidence for HBV infection; in contrast 2 from 8 chimpanzees and 5 from 22 gibbons were PCR-positive with each set of primers.Complete genome sequences from each of the positive apes were obtained and compared with all previously published complete and surface gene sequences. This extended phylogenetic analysis indicated that HBV variants from orangutans were interspersed by with HBV variants from southerly distributed gibbon species (H. agilis and H. moloch) occupying overlapping or adjacent habitat ranges with orangutans; in contrast, HBV variants from gibbon species in mainland Asia were phylogenetically distinct. A geographical rather than (sub)species association of HBV would account for the distribution of HBV variants in different subspecies of chimpanzees in Africa, and explain the inlier position of the previously described lowland gorilla sequence in the chimpanzee clade. These new findings have a number of implication for understanding the origins and epidemiology of HBV infection in non-human primates

Building and Improving Reference Genome Assemblies: This paper reviews the problems and algorithms of assembling a complete genome from millions of short DNA sequencing reads

A genome sequence assembly provides the foundation for studies of genotypic and phenotypic variation, genome structure, and evolution of the target organism. In the past four decades, there has been a surge of new sequencing technologies, and with these developments, computational scientists have developed new algorithms to improve genome assembly. Here we discuss the relationship between sequencing technology improvements and assembly algorithm development and how these are applied to extend and improve human and nonhuman genome assemblies. © 1963-2012 IEEE

Habitable Zones of Host Stars During the Post-MS Phase

A star will become brighter and brighter with stellar evolution, and the distance of its habitable zone will become farther and farther. Some planets outside the habitable zone of a host star during the main sequence phase may enter the habitable zone of the host star during other evolutionary phases. A terrestrial planet within the habitable zone of its host star is generally thought to be suited to life existence. Furthermore, a rocky moon around a giant planet may be also suited to life survive, provided that the planet-moon system is within the habitable zone of its host star. Using Eggleton's code and the boundary flux of habitable zone, we calculate the habitable zone of our Solar after the main sequence phase. It is found that Mars' orbit and Jupiter's orbit will enter the habitable zone of Solar during the subgiant branch phase and the red giant branch phase, respectively. And the orbit of Saturn will enter the habitable zone of Solar during the He-burning phase for about 137 million years. Life is unlikely at any time on Saturn, as it is a giant gaseous planet. However, Titan, the rocky moon of Saturn, may be suitable for biological evolution and become another Earth during that time. For low-mass stars, there are similar habitable zones during the He-burning phase as our Solar, because there are similar core masses and luminosities for these stars during that phase.Comment: 6 pages, 7 figures. Accepted by Ap & S

GADGET: A code for collisionless and gasdynamical cosmological simulations

We describe the newly written code GADGET which is suitable both for cosmological simulations of structure formation and for the simulation of interacting galaxies. GADGET evolves self-gravitating collisionless fluids with the traditional N-body approach, and a collisional gas by smoothed particle hydrodynamics. Along with the serial version of the code, we discuss a parallel version that has been designed to run on massively parallel supercomputers with distributed memory. While both versions use a tree algorithm to compute gravitational forces, the serial version of GADGET can optionally employ the special-purpose hardware GRAPE instead of the tree. Periodic boundary conditions are supported by means of an Ewald summation technique. The code uses individual and adaptive timesteps for all particles, and it combines this with a scheme for dynamic tree updates. Due to its Lagrangian nature, GADGET thus allows a very large dynamic range to be bridged, both in space and time. So far, GADGET has been successfully used to run simulations with up to 7.5e7 particles, including cosmological studies of large-scale structure formation, high-resolution simulations of the formation of clusters of galaxies, as well as workstation-sized problems of interacting galaxies. In this study, we detail the numerical algorithms employed, and show various tests of the code. We publically release both the serial and the massively parallel version of the code.Comment: 32 pages, 14 figures, replaced to match published version in New Astronomy. For download of the code, see http://www.mpa-garching.mpg.de/gadget (new version 1.1 available

Rotational master equation for cold laser-driven molecules

The equations of motion for the molecular rotation are derived for vibrationally cold dimers that are polarized by off-resonant laser light. It is shown that, by eliminating electronic and vibrational degrees of freedom, a quantum master equation for the reduced rotational density operator can be obtained. The coherent rotational dynamics is caused by stimulated Raman transitions, whereas spontaneous Raman transitions lead to decoherence in the motion of the quantized angular momentum. As an example the molecular dynamics for the optical Kerr effect is chosen, revealing decoherence and heating of the molecular rotation.Comment: 11 pages, 5 figures, to appear in Phys. Rev.

Signatures of the slow solar wind streams from active regions in the inner corona

Some of local sources of the slow solar wind can be associated with spectroscopically detected plasma outflows at edges of active regions accompanied with specific signatures in the inner corona. The EUV telescopes (e.g. SPIRIT/CORONAS-F, TESIS/CORONAS-Photon and SWAP/PROBA2) sometimes observed extended ray-like structures seen at the limb above active regions in 1MK iron emission lines and described as "coronal rays". To verify the relationship between coronal rays and plasma outflows, we analyze an isolated active region (AR) adjacent to small coronal hole (CH) observed by different EUV instruments in the end of July - beginning of August 2009. On August 1 EIS revealed in the AR two compact outflows with the Doppler velocities V =10-30 km/s accompanied with fan loops diverging from their regions. At the limb the ARCH interface region produced coronal rays observed by EUVI/STEREO-A on July 31 as well as by TESIS on August 7. The rays were co-aligned with open magnetic field lines expanded to the streamer stalks. Using the DEM analysis, it was found that the fan loops diverged from the outflow regions had the dominant temperature of ~1 MK, which is similar to that of the outgoing plasma streams. Parameters of the solar wind measured by STEREO-B, ACE, WIND, STEREO-A were conformed with identification of the ARCH as a source region at the Wang-Sheeley-Arge map of derived coronal holes for CR 2086. The results of the study support the suggestion that coronal rays can represent signatures of outflows from ARs propagating in the inner corona along open field lines into the heliosphere.Comment: Accepted for publication in Solar Physics; 31 Pages; 13 Figure

Nevada Test Site Low-level and Mixed Waste Repository Design in the Unsaturated Zone

The Area 5 Radioactive Waste Management Site (RWMS) at the Nevada Test Site (NTS) is used for shallow land disposal of Low-Level Radioactive (LLW) and for retrievable disposal of Mixed Wastes (MW) from various Department of Energy (DOE) facilities. The site is situated in southern Nevada, one of the most arid regions of the United States. Design considerations include vadose zone monitoring in lieu of groundwater monitoring, stringent waste acceptance and packaging criteria, a waste examination and real-time radiography facility, and trench design. 4 refs