How are Companies Engaging Employees in the Succession Planning Process, and What are the Potential Benefits or Concerns Related to Increased Transparency?

[Excerpt] With today’s movement for a more transparent employee experience in the workplace, it is important that companies engage in succession planning whereby employees are more involved. Employers must be willing to both express an employee’s potential and also work with them to achieve it. The advantages, disadvantages, and consequences of transparency in succession planning are examined. (Note: General research on this topic is limited; strong, explicit international research on succession planning is not available and therefore not provided.

How Can You Measure the Productivity of Knowledge Workers?

[Excerpt] According to Peter Drucker (1999), the most valuable assets of a 21st century organization would be its knowledge workers and their productivity. The intangibility of knowledge makes knowledge workers especially hard to measure, which causes problems with standard measurement and evaluation. More complex knowledge work seldom has one single correct or standard outcome, nor are those outcomes usually quantifiable or comparable

How do Organizations Measure the ROI or Impact of Leadership Training and Development Programs?

[Excerpt] In a Harvard Business Review poll, 51 percent of those surveyed said they had diminished confidence in business leaders at non-U.S. companies and 76 percent had less confidence in U.S. business leaders. Another survey by IBM shared that more than 75 percent of their survey respondents identified building leadership talent as their current and most significant capabilities challenge. Thus, the organizations need to focus on building talent and developing leaders internally. Also it is advantageous because they achieve productivity almost 50 percent faster than external candidates’. Leadership development programs can be explained as teaching leadership qualities required for a leadership position

Curcumin and Its Oxidative Degradation Products: Their Comparative Effects on Inflammation

The anti-inflammatory agent curcumin degrades rapidly, leading to speculations that curcumin’s reported effects stem from its degradation products. Curcumin can degrade via hydrolysis, and more recently it was discovered that curcumin can degrade via oxidation at physiological pH. Additionally, bicyclopentadione is the major degradation product from this oxidation reaction. Evidence from the literature suggests that curcumin degrades primarily through oxidation. However, the biology of the oxidation products is not well characterized, and there is debate on whether oxidation intermediates or curcumin itself is more biologically active. To further elucidate the biology of the oxidation products, their effects on inflammation were examined. RAW264.7 murine macrophage cells were stimulated with E. coli lipopolysaccharide (LPS) and treated with curcumin, curcumin’s total oxidative degradation products, and bicyclopentadione. Curcumin strongly decreased LPS-induced nitric oxide production and iNOS expression in a dose dependent manner; total degradation products slightly decreased nitric oxide production and iNOS expression, while bicyclopentadione failed to decrease either. Additionally, curcumin was significantly more effective than either bicyclopentadione or total degradation products in inhibiting COX-2 expression. iNOS and COX-2 arise from the activation of the NF-kB pathway, which curcumin is known to modulate; thus, the oxidation products’ effect on key proteins in this pathway was also examined. Neither total degradation products nor bicyclopentadione inhibited translocation of NF-kB into the nucleus, prevented degradation of IκBα, nor inhibited phosphorylation of IKK as effectively as curcumin. In conclusion, curcumin is significantly more effective at inhibiting inflammation than the oxidation degradation products

Heterogeneity of Rural Schools in the World: Effects of School Location on Academic Achievement Across 28 Countries

Rural schools have been consistently under examined compared with urban and suburban counterparts. This paper examines the effects of school location, specifically rural schools, on student academic achievement in 28 countries, using TIMSS 2011 data for fourth grade students. After controlling for student, family, teacher, and school characteristics, as well as country fixed effects, rural schools in 5 countries have shown significant and positive effects on student math achievement, and those in another 5 countries have shown significant and negative effects

Input-Output Analysis, Linear Programming and Modified Multipliers

The input-output (IO) analysis explores changes in final demand through the regional economy using multipliers. However, it isn’t flexible to investigate the regional impact from the capacity limitations which are directly imposed on production, not final demand. This is because the multipliers are changing with exogenous restrictions on production. Conventionally, the IO analysis is performed assuming exogenous production restrictions being the changes in final demands or assuming the sector being exogenous sector like the final demand. If researchers or policy makers are interested in only economic impacts from production restrictions, there is no need to look into the modified multipliers. The modified multipliers should be considered when researchers and policy makers attempt to analyze the compensation of impact, especially recovery of loss using government expenditure. We suggest that the linear programming is a useful and efficient tool to derive modified multipliers and estimate correct regional impact from the policy changes.Input-Output Analysis, Multipliers, Regional Impact Analysis, Community/Rural/Urban Development, C67, R15, R5,

Modeling US Counties’ Innovation Capacity with a Focus on Natural Amenities

Innovation Capacity, Natural Amenity, Community/Rural/Urban Development, O31, Q51,

Measuring Regional Economic Impacts from Wildfire: Case Study of Southeast Oregon Cattle-Ranching Business

public grazing, regional economic impact, Social Accounting Matrix, Southeast Oregon, wildfire

Recent Advances in Medicago truncatula Genomics

Legume rotation has allowed a consistent increase in crop yield and consequently in human population since the antiquity. Legumes will also be instrumental in our ability to maintain the sustainability of our agriculture while facing the challenges of increasing food and biofuel demand. Medicago truncatula and Lotus japonicus have emerged during the last decade as two major model systems for legume biology. Initially developed to dissect plant-microbe symbiotic interactions and especially legume nodulation, these two models are now widely used in a variety of biological fields from plant physiology and development to population genetics and structural genomics. This review highlights the genetic and genomic tools available to the M. truncatula community. Comparative genomic approaches to transfer biological information between model systems and legume crops are also discussed