How Leaders Generate Meanings For Monetary Rewards

Scant research has focused on how to increase the value of monetary rewards when they are delivered by leaders to employees. Drawing upon the perspectives of sensegiving and sensemaking, this study explores how leaders generate meanings of monetary rewards perceived by employee recipients in organizational settings. Using a qualitative method design and analyzing qualitative data from 291 incidents, we found that in the distribution process of monetary rewards, sensemaking of employees included strong and weak instrumental meanings as well as symbolic meanings. The results show that leaders adopted a set of sensegiving strategies in distributing monetary rewards including emphasizing money gain/loss and utility, providing feedback, valuing employees, orienting toward the future, guiding values, and publicizing. In the presence of leader’s sensegiving, employee recipients endorsed more positive symbolic meanings of monetary rewards (i.e., recognition and respect). Our research offers a richer view of the role of leader’s sensegiving in making monetary rewards gain more value through employees’ sensemaking, and enriches understanding of monetary rewards, leadership, sensegiving and sensemaking

Transfer learning for batch process optimal control using LV-PTM and adaptive control strategy

In this study, we investigate a data-driven optimal control for a new batch process. Existing data-driven optimal control methods often ignore an important problem, namely, because of the short operation time of the new batch process, the modeling data in the initial stage can be insufficient. To address this issue, we introduce the idea of transfer learning, i.e., a latent variable process transfer model (LV-PTM) is adopted to transfer sufficient data and process information from similar processes to a new one to assist its modeling and quality optimization control. However, due to fluctuations in raw materials, equipment, etc., differences between similar batch processes are always inevitable, which lead to the serious and complicated mismatch of the necessary condition of optimality (NCO) between the new batch process and the LV-PTM-based optimization problem. In this work, we propose an LV-PTM-based batch-to-batch adaptive optimal control strategy, which consists of three stages, to ensure the best optimization performance during the whole operation lifetime of the new batch process. This adaptive control strategy includes model updating, data removal, and modifier-adaptation methodology using final quality measurements in response. Finally, the feasibility of the proposed method is demonstrated by simulations

High-dimensional quantum key distribution based on mutually partially unbiased bases

We propose a practical high-dimensional quantum key distribution protocol based on mutually partially unbiased bases utilizing transverse modes of light. In contrast to conventional protocols using mutually unbiased bases, our protocol uses Laguerre-Gaussian and Hermite-Gaussian modes of the same mode order as two mutually partially unbiased bases for encoding, which leads to a scheme free from mode-dependent diffraction in long-distance channels. Since only linear and passive optical elements are needed, our experimental implementation significantly simplifies qudit generation and state measurement. Since this protocol differs from conventional protocols using mutually unbiased bases, we provide a security analysis of our protocol

Phylogenetic and Molecular Characterization of H9N2 Influenza Isolates from Chickens in Northern China from 2007–2009

The repeated transmission to pigs and humans, and the long-term endemicity in terrestrial poultry of H9N2 viruses in China lend urgency to the study of their ecology and pathogenicity. In the present paper, we reported an H9N2 virus sublineage isolated from chickens in northern China from 2007 to 2009 has high lethality for mice. Phylogenetic analysis of the full genome indicated that six representative H9N2 isolates shared high homology to each other, and they clustered in the same sublineage with other H9N2 viruses isolated recently in northern China. The isolates were double-reassortant viruses containing M genes similar to A/Quail/Hong Kong/G1/97 (H9N2) and the other seven gene segments from A/Chicken/Shanghai/F/98 (H9N2). These six isolates were capable of replicating in the lungs of infected chickens without producing observable clinical signs of disease or death. However, they were highly lethal to mice with mortality rates as high as 100% (14/14) without prior adaptation. The affected mice exhibited severe respiratory syndromes and diffuse lung injury. The H9N2 viruses could be detected in multiple organs of the infected mice, including hearts, livers, spleens, lungs and kidneys. Our findings demonstrated that H9N2 viruses isolated from the chickens in northern China have established a stable sublineage with enhanced pathogenicity to mice, suggesting that urgent attention will need to be paid to the transmission of H9N2 viruses from chickens to mammals

Graphene Plasmonics: A Platform for 2D Optics

2D optics is gradually emerging as a frontier in modern optics. Plasmons in graphene provide a prominent platform for 2D optics in which the light is squeezed into atomic scale. This report highlights some recent progresses in graphene plasmons toward the 2D optics. The launch, observation, and advanced manipulation of propagating graphene plasmons for 2D optical circuits are described. Representative achievements associated with graphene metasurfaces, challenges, recent progresses like photoexcited graphene metasurfaces, and the transformation optics linking 2D to bulk optics with singularity are investigated

Whole-Genome Sequencing Of Mesorhizobium huakuii 7653R Provides Molecular Insights into Host Specificity and Symbiosis Island Dynamics

Background Evidence based on genomic sequences is urgently needed to confirm the phylogenetic relationship between Mesorhizobium strain MAFF303099 and M. huakuii. To define underlying causes for the rather striking difference in host specificity between M. huakuii strain 7653R and MAFF303099, several probable determinants also require comparison at the genomic level. An improved understanding of mobile genetic elements that can be integrated into the main chromosomes of Mesorhizobium to form genomic islands would enrich our knowledge of how genome dynamics may contribute to Mesorhizobium evolution in general. Results In this study, we sequenced the complete genome of 7653R and compared it with five other Mesorhizobium genomes. Genomes of 7653R and MAFF303099 were found to share a large set of orthologs and, most importantly, a conserved chromosomal backbone and even larger perfectly conserved synteny blocks. We also identified candidate molecular differences responsible for the different host specificities of these two strains. Finally, we reconstructed an ancestral Mesorhizobium genomic island that has evolved into diverse forms in different Mesorhizobium species. Conclusions Our ortholog and synteny analyses firmly establish MAFF303099 as a strain of M. huakuii. Differences in nodulation factors and secretion systems T3SS, T4SS, and T6SS may be responsible for the unique host specificities of 7653R and MAFF303099 strains. The plasmids of 7653R may have arisen by excision of the original genomic island from the 7653R chromosome