Examining Collegiality and Social Justice in Academia and the Private Sector: an Exploratory SYMLOG Analysis

This research compares the perceptions of the private sector, high-technology employees to the perceptions of university faculty members regarding organizational culture, social justice and collegiality concepts. The SYMLOG assessment technique was used to record the perceptions of respondents to four different concepts of organizational culture, two different aspects of social justice and two measures of collegiality. Comparative findings of gender differences across the eight concepts raise key organizational culture, legal, measurement, governance, and social policy issues for academia and high tech organizations. The development of a conceptual framework to guide future research and a blueprint to discuss desired organizational change are highlighted

Optimality of feedback control for qubit purification under inefficient measurement

A quantum system may be purified, i.e., projected into a pure state, faster if one applies feedback operations during the measurement process. However, the existing results suggest that such an enhancement is only possible when the measurement efficiency exceeds 0.5, which is difficult to achieve experimentally. We address the task of finding the global optimal feedback control for purifying a single qubit in the presence of measurement inefficiency. We use the Bloch vector length, a more physical and practical quantity than purity, to assess the quality of the state, and employ a backward-iteration algorithm to find the globally optimal strategy. Our results show that a speedup is available for quantum efficiencies well below 0.5, which opens the possibility of experimental implementation in existing systems

Number squeezed and fragmented states of strongly interacting bosons in a double well

We present a systematic study of the phenomena of number squeezing and fragmentation for a repulsive Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) in a three dimensional double well potential over a range of interaction strengths and barrier heights, including geometries that exhibit appreciable overlap in the one-body wavefunctions localized in the left and right wells. We compute the properties of the condensate with numerically exact, full dimensional path integral ground state (PIGS) Quantum Monte Carlo simulations and compare with results obtained from using two- and eight-mode truncated basis models. The truncated basis models are found to agree with the numerically exact PIGS simulations for weak interactions, but fail to correctly predict the amount of number squeezing and fragmentation exhibited by the PIGS simulations for strong interactions. We find that both number squeezing and fragmentation of the BEC show non-monotonic behavior at large values of interaction strength a. The number squeezing shows a universal scaling with the product of number of particles and interaction strength (Na) but no such universal behavior is found for fragmentation. Detailed analysis shows that the introduction of repulsive interactions not only suppresses number fluctuations to enhance number squeezing, but can also enhance delocalization across wells and tunneling between wells, each of which may suppress number squeezing. This results in a dynamical competition whose resolution shows a complex dependence on all three physical parameters defining the system: interaction strength, number of particles, and barrier height.Comment: 33 pages, 21 figures. Submitted for publication in Physical Review

Competition, Conflict, and Compromise: Three Discourses Used by Irrigators in England and Their Implications for the CoManagement of Water Resources

In this paper we use discourse analysis to explore the current dynamic that exists among farmer irrigators in England, and between irrigators and water managers in order to understand the potential for co-management to develop. To do this we employ two concepts from the field of critical discursive psychology – 'interpretive repertoires' and 'subject positions' – and apply them to a qualitative analysis of 20 interviews with farmers who are members of irrigator groups and two focus group discussions with farmers thinking about forming an irrigator group. The findings reveal that the participants drew upon three interpretive repertoires when talking about the relationship between farming and water resources management, namely the 'competition', 'conflict', and 'compromise' repertoires, with the latter being the least dominant. We situate the repertoires in their wider historical context to reveal the ideological forces at play, and conclude that the relative dominance of the competition and conflict repertoires serve as a barrier to co-management. In particular, this is because they engender low levels of trust and reinforce a power dynamic that favours individualism and opposition. At the same time, the less-dominant compromise repertoire challenges the power of the other two, providing some hope of achieving more participatory forms of water resources management in the future. To this end, we discuss how the restructuring of current agri-environment schemes and government water programmes may be used to promote the adoption and institutionalisation of the compromise repertoire in order to facilitate the emergence of co-management

Power-Sharing in the English Lowlands? The Political Economy of Farmer Participation and Cooperation in Water Governance

Participatory and cooperative forms of water governance have become regular features of government discourse and stated policy objectives in England. We consider this aspiration from the perspective of farmers in the English lowlands, by analysing the current power dynamic that exists among these farmers, and between them and the key stakeholders involved in water management. To do this we undertake a political economy analysis that places lowland farming and water governance within the evolution of historical processes that, over time, have influenced the ability of farmers to participate in the governance of their water environment. These historical developments are interpreted through the lens of the Power Cube, an analytical tool for thinking about the interplay between different forms of power operating in different types of spaces and at different levels of governance. Our findings reveal that, despite there being a number of structural changes that provide lowland farmers with the opportunity to participate and cooperate in water governance, three distinct barriers stand in the way. These relate to the power 'within' these farmers, which continues to align with a productivist ideology founded on individualism and competition, often at the expense of the environment; the power that government water managers still exercise 'over' farmers instead of 'with' them; and the relationship between lowland farming and environmental interests, where historically the two sides’ power 'to' act has been diametrically opposed. The findings point to the importance of developing suitable programmes designed to support and incentivize farmer participation and cooperation

What is the optimal way to prepare a Bell state using measurement and feedback?

Recent work has shown that the use of quantum feedback can significantly enhance both the speed and success rate of measurement-based remote entanglement generation, but it is generally unknown what feedback protocols are optimal for these tasks. Here we consider two common measurements that are capable of projecting into pairwise entangled states, namely half- and full-parity measurements of two qubits, and determine in each case a globally optimal protocol for generation of entanglement. For the half-parity measurement, we rederive a previously described protocol using more general methods and prove that it is globally optimal for several figures of merit, including maximal concurrence or fidelity and minimal time to reach a specified concurrence or fidelity. For the full-parity measurement, we derive a protocol for rapid entanglement generation related to that of (Hill, Ralph, Phys. Rev. A 77, 014305), and then map the dynamics of the concurrence of the state to the Bloch vector length of an effective qubit. This mapping allows us to prove several optimality results for feedback protocols with full-parity measurements. We further show that our full-parity protocol transfers entanglement optimally from one qubit to the other amongst all measurement-based schemes. The methods developed here will be useful for deriving feedback protocols and determining their optimality properties in many other quantum systems subject to measurement and unitary operations

The Creative Work Environment: Manager and Employee Perceptions of Factors that lnfluence Creativity Within Land·Grant Communication Units

According to research, environmental factors have the potential to inhibit or enhance creativity, particularly in a work setting

The Association Between the Long-Term Change in Directly Measured Cardiorespiratory Fitness and Mortality Risk

Introduction: There is a strong inverse association between cardiorespiratory fitness (CRF) and mortality outcomes. This relationship has predominantly been assessed cross-sectionally, however low CRF is a modifiable risk factor, thus assessing this association using a single baseline measure may be sub-optimal. Purpose: To examine the association of the long-term change in CRF, measured using cardiopulmonary exercise testing (CPX) with all-cause and disease-specific mortality. Methods: Participants included 833 apparently healthy men and women (42.9±10.8 years) who underwent two maximal CPXs, the second CPX being ≥ 1 year following the baseline assessment. Participants were followed for 17.7 ± 11.8 years for allcause, cardiovascular disease (CVD), and cancer mortality. Cox-proportional hazard models were performed to determine the association between the change in CRF, computed as visit 1 (V1) peak oxygen consumption (VO2peak (ml·kg-1·min-1)) – visit 2 (V2) VO2peak, and mortality outcomes. Results: During follow-up, 172 participants died. Overall, the change in CPX-derived CRF was inversely related to all-cause, CVD, and cancer mortality (p\u3c0.05). Each 1 ml·kg-1·min-1 increase was associated with a 10.8, 14.7, and 15.9% reductions in allcause, CVD, and cancer mortality, respectively. The inverse relationship between CRF and all-cause mortality remained significant (p\u3c0.05) when men and women were examined independently, after adjusting for years since first CPX, baseline VO2peak, and age. Conclusion: Long-term changes in CRF were inversely related to mortality outcomes, and mortality was better predicted by CRF measured at subsequent examination than baseline CRF. These findings support the recent American Heart Association scientific statement advocating CRF as a clinical vital sign that should be assessed routinely in clinical practice, as well as support regular participation in physical activity to maintain adequate CRF levels across the lifespan

Liquid meal composition, postprandial satiety hormones, and perceived appetite and satiety in obese women during acute caloric restriction

OBJECTIVE: The purpose of this study was to compare postprandial satiety regulating hormone responses (pancreatic polypeptide (PP) and peptide tyrosine tyrosine (PYY)) and visual analog scale- (VAS) assessed perceived appetite and satiety between liquid high-protein (HP) and high-carbohydrate (HC) meals in obese women during acute (24-h) caloric restriction. DESIGN: Eleven obese premenopausal women completed two conditions in random order in which they consumed 1500 calories as six 250-calorie HP meals or six 250-calorie HC meals over a 12-h period. Blood samples were taken at baseline and every 20 min thereafter and analyzed for PP and PYY concentrations. At these same points, perceived hunger and fullness were assessed with a VAS. The incremental area under the curve (iAUC) was used to compare postprandial responses. RESULTS: THE 12-H PP AND PYY IAUC WERE GREATER (P0.05) DURING THE HP CONDITION (PP: 4727±1306 pg/ml×12 h, PYY: 1373±357 pg/ml×12 h) compared with the HC condition (PP: 2300±528 pg/ml×12 h, PYY: 754±246 pg/ml×12 h). Perceived hunger and fullness were not different between conditions (P>0.05). The greatest changes in PYY and perceived fullness occurred after the morning meals during both conditions. CONCLUSIONS: These data suggest that in obese women during acute caloric restriction before weight loss, i) liquid HP meals, compared with HC meals, result in greater postprandial PP and PYY concentrations, an effect not associated with differential appetite or satiety responses, and ii) meal-induced changes in PYY and satiety are greatest during the morning period, regardless of dietary macronutrient composition