The Impact of Supervisor-Subordinate Exchange on State Government Employees

Interactions such as task assignments and communications between supervisors and subordinates have unintended negative consequences on subordinates such as alienation of subordinates that are not members of the \u27in\u27 group. These relations are determined by the quality of the leader-member exchange (LMX) between supervisor and subordinate. The purpose of this study was to examine the impact of supervisor-subordinate exchange on state government employees by understanding the essence of these exchanges in state government agencies. The theoretical foundation of this phenomenological study was Graen and Uhl-Bien\u27s conceptualization of LMX. Data were collected through 12 semi structured interviews with subordinates from the North Carolina Motor Vehicle Driver\u27s License Section. This group of employees from the NC DMV were selected because of the geographical convenience to conduct interviews with participants. Supervisors were not interviewed for this study because the focus was the perceived effect on the employees\u27 performance, motivation, and attitudes. The data were coded and analyzed using a modified Stevick-Colaizzi-Keen method. The results of this study supported that supervisor-subordinate exchanges can influence subsequent behaviors in government employees. This study may have future policy implications in that the results can be used to influence new policy or revise current policies concerning supervisor training within local, state, and federal government agencies. Organizations that comprehend how and why supervisor-subordinate exchanges impact them can revise training for both management and employees, improve communication and relationship skills, and reduce negative effects from these exchanges to promote positive social change

The Solar-System-Scale Disk Around AB Aurigae

The young star AB Aurigae is surrounded by a complex combination of gas-rich and dust dominated structures. The inner disk which has not been studied previously at sufficient resolution and imaging dynamic range seems to contain very little gas inside a radius of least 130 astronomical units (AU) from the star. Using adaptive-optics coronagraphy and polarimetry we have imaged the dust in an annulus between 43 and 302 AU from the star, a region never seen before. An azimuthal gap in an annulus of dust at a radius of 102 AU, along with a clearing at closer radii inside this annulus, suggests the formation of at least one small body at an orbital distance of about 100 AU. This structure seems consistent with crude models of mean motion resonances, or accumulation of material at two of the Lagrange points relative to the putative object and the star. We also report a low significance detection of a point source in this outer annulus of dust. This source may be an overdensity in the disk due to dust accreting onto an unseen companion. An alternate interpretation suggests that the object's mass is between 5 and 37 times the mass of Jupiter. The results have implications for circumstellar disk dynamics and planet formation.Comment: 11 pages, 5 figures, accepted for publication in Astrophysical Journal, V. 680, June 10, 200

Persistence of PRRSV in Nursery Pigs

Porcine Reproductive and Respiratory Syndrome virus (PRRS)V is known to cause persistent infections in swine populations. We inoculated three week-old feeder pigs with PRRSV (ATCC VR-2332) then collected and analyzed biological samples to determine the pigs’ infection status over time post-inoculation (PI). Infectious virus was detected in 100% of animals at 63 days post inoculation and 90% of animals were still carrying infectious virus at 105 days PI

Donor Complications Following Laparoscopic Compared to Hand-Assisted Living Donor Nephrectomy: An Analysis of the Literature

There are two approaches to laparoscopic donor nephrectomy: standard laparoscopic donor nephrectomy (LDN) and hand-assisted laparoscopic donor nephrectomy (HALDN). In this study we report the operative statistics and donor complications associated with LDN and HALDN from large-center peer-reviewed publications. Methods. We conducted PubMed and Ovid searches to identify LDN and HALDN outcome studies that were published after 2004. Results. There were 37 peer-reviewed studies, each with more than 150 patients. Cumulatively, over 9000 patients were included in this study. LDN donors experienced a higher rate of intraoperative complications than HALDN donors (5.2% versus. 2.0%, P < .001). Investigators did not report a significant difference in the rate of major postoperative complications between the two groups (LDN 0.5% versus HALDN 0.7%, P = .111). However, conversion to open procedures from vascular injury was reported more frequently in LDN procedures (0.8% versus 0.4%, P = .047). Conclusion. At present there is no evidence to support the use of one laparoscopic approach in preference to the other. There are trends in the data suggesting that intraoperative injuries are more common in LDN while minor postoperative complications are more common in HALDN

Effects of Dietary Echinacea purpurea on PRRSV-infected Nursery Pigs

The effect of dietary additions of Echinacea purpurea on the rate of rate of growth, viremia, and ontogeny of the humoral antibody response against porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome virus (PRRSV) infection was evaluated in weaned pigs. In three replicates, weaned pigs (18 ± 1 day of age) from a PRRSV-naïve herd were randomly allotted to one of four pens (diets) in two rooms, each pen containing five pigs. Each pen of pigs (pens) began one of four dietary treatments 1 week before inoculation with PRRSV: 1) basal ration plus carbadox (0.055 g/kg); 2) basal ration plus Echinacea I (2% of the total ration); 3) basal ration plus Echinacea II (4% of the total ration); and 4) basal ration composed of corn, soybean meal, whey, and supplemented essential vitamins and minerals. E. purpurea was purchased in powder form and determined by chemical analysis to contain 1.35% cichoric acid. Seven days after starting the diets (day 7), all pigs in one room were intranasally inoculated with PRRSV isolate ATCC VR-2332 at a concentration of 10 4 TCID50 /ml. To monitor the effects of diet and PRRSV infection, body weight and blood samples were collected from all pigs at 7-day intervals (day 0 to 42). Serum samples were analyzed for the presence of PRRSV and PRRSV-specific antibodies. All inoculated pigs become infected with PRRSV and all uninoculated pigs remained free of infection. PRRSV-infected pigs had a lower percentage increase in body weight between day 7 and 42 compared with uninfected animals (P\u3c0.06). There were no differences in body weight, average daily gain (ADG), average daily feed intake (ADFI), or gain:feed ratio (G:F) in PRRSV-infected compared with uninfected animals. Animals receiving diets supplemented with Echinacea (treatments 2 and 3), no differences were observed in percentage increase in body weight, ADG, ADFI, and G:F ratio in either the PRRSV-infected and the uninfected pigs. Among PRRSV-infected animals, dietary Echinacea did not affect the rate or level of the ELISAdetectable antibody response day 7 to 42 or the level and duration of PRRSV in serum. Under the conditions of this study, dietary Echinacea did not reverse the growthinhibiting effects of PRRSV, did not exhibit antiviral effects and did not show any evidence of immunostimulatory properties

Frame-Dragging Vortexes and Tidal Tendexes Attached to Colliding Black Holes: Visualizing the Curvature of Spacetime

When one splits spacetime into space plus time, the spacetime curvature (Weyl tensor) gets split into an "electric" part E_{jk} that describes tidal gravity and a "magnetic" part B_{jk} that describes differential dragging of inertial frames. We introduce tools for visualizing B_{jk} (frame-drag vortex lines, their vorticity, and vortexes) and E_{jk} (tidal tendex lines, their tendicity, and tendexes), and also visualizations of a black-hole horizon's (scalar) vorticity and tendicity. We use these tools to elucidate the nonlinear dynamics of curved spacetime in merging black-hole binaries.Comment: 4 pages, 5 figure

Adiabatic ring opening in tethered naphthalene and anthracene cycloadducts

The cycloadducts of tethered naphthalene and anthracene derivatives undergo photochemical ring opening to an electronically excited product with adiabatic yields up to 90%

Visualizing Spacetime Curvature via Frame-Drag Vortexes and Tidal Tendexes I. General Theory and Weak-Gravity Applications

When one splits spacetime into space plus time, the Weyl curvature tensor (vacuum Riemann tensor) gets split into two spatial, symmetric, and trace-free (STF) tensors: (i) the Weyl tensor's so-called "electric" part or tidal field, and (ii) the Weyl tensor's so-called "magnetic" part or frame-drag field. Being STF, the tidal field and frame-drag field each have three orthogonal eigenvector fields which can be depicted by their integral curves. We call the integral curves of the tidal field's eigenvectors tendex lines, we call each tendex line's eigenvalue its tendicity, and we give the name tendex to a collection of tendex lines with large tendicity. The analogous quantities for the frame-drag field are vortex lines, their vorticities, and vortexes. We build up physical intuition into these concepts by applying them to a variety of weak-gravity phenomena: a spinning, gravitating point particle, two such particles side by side, a plane gravitational wave, a point particle with a dynamical current-quadrupole moment or dynamical mass-quadrupole moment, and a slow-motion binary system made of nonspinning point particles. [Abstract is abbreviated; full abstract also mentions additional results.]Comment: 25 pages, 20 figures, matches the published versio

Simons Observatory: Broadband Metamaterial Anti-Reflection Cuttings for Large Aperture Alumina Optics

We present the design, fabrication, and measured performance of metamaterial Anti-Reflection Cuttings (ARCs) for large-format alumina filters operating over more than an octave of bandwidth to be deployed on the Simons Observatory (SO). The ARC consists of sub-wavelength features diced into the optic's surface using a custom dicing saw with near-micron accuracy. The designs achieve percent-level control over reflections at angles of incidence up to 20$^\circ$. The ARCs were demonstrated on four 42 cm diameter filters covering the 75-170 GHz band and a 50 mm diameter prototype covering the 200-300 GHz band. The reflection and transmission of these samples were measured using a broadband coherent source that covers frequencies from 20 GHz to 1.2 THz. These measurements demonstrate percent-level control over reflectance across the targeted pass-bands and a rapid reduction in transmission as the wavelength approaches the length scale of the metamaterial structure where scattering dominates the optical response. The latter behavior enables the use of the metamaterial ARC as a scattering filter in this limit.Comment: 9 pages, 8 figures, submitted to Applied Optic