Evaluating Executive Performance in the Public Sector

The ability of a government organization to evaluate and reward executive performance is of critical importance if performance management systems are realistically expected to promote successful execution of the organization’s strategic goals and objectives. Government organizations must move away from evaluating performance based on equity, time in grade, personal attributes and effort (all inputs) and toward systems based on output, results, and outcome achievement. We provide a model that can be used to evaluate executive performance in government. The model allows executives to focus on what is important to their organization and customers, and ties their performance evaluations not only to the organization’s objectives, but to the importance of each objective; thus it gives leaders an open and explicit linkage between performance of the individual and organizational objectives. We measure individual achievement by defining results or measures of performance and then aggregating them into higher-level objectives. We discuss how to use the model to rank performance among executives, how the model results might be used to reward performance and limitations of using the model for performance evaluation

Massive Complex Scalar Field in a Kerr-Sen Black Hole Background: Exact Solution of Wave Equation and Hawking Radiation

The separated radial part of a massive complex scalar wave equation in the Kerr-Sen geometry is shown to satisfy the generalized spheroidal wave equation which is, in fact, a confluent Heun equation up to a multiplier. The Hawking evaporation of scalar particles in the Kerr-Sen black hole background is investigated by the Damour-Ruffini-Sannan's method. It is shown that quantum thermal effect of the Kerr-Sen black hole has the same characteras that of the Kerr-Newman black hole.Comment: Revtex, 5 pages, no figure, submitted to Phys. Rev.

Monitoring the lucky strike vent field in real time

Peer Reviewe

From bottom landers to observatory networks

For a long time, deep-sea investigation relied on autonomous bottom landers. Landers can vary in size from 200 kg weight to more than 2 t for the heaviest scientific landers and are used during exploration cruises on medium periods, from one week to some months. Today, new requirements appear. Scientists want to understand in detail the phenomena outlined during exploration cruises, to elaborate a model for future forecasting. For this, it is necessary to deploy instrumentation at a precise location often for a long period. A new mode of ocean science investigation using longterm seafloor observatories to obtain four dimensional data sets has appeared. Although this concept has been proposed for many years, the high level of investment required limits the number of projects implemented. Only multidisciplinary programs, supported by a strong social requirement were funded. Some observatories have been deployed

Bacterial α(2)-macroglobulins: colonization factors acquired by horizontal gene transfer from the metazoan genome?

BACKGROUND: Invasive bacteria are known to have captured and adapted eukaryotic host genes. They also readily acquire colonizing genes from other bacteria by horizontal gene transfer. Closely related species such as Helicobacter pylori and Helicobacter hepaticus, which exploit different host tissues, share almost none of their colonization genes. The protease inhibitor α(2)-macroglobulin provides a major metazoan defense against invasive bacteria, trapping attacking proteases required by parasites for successful invasion. RESULTS: Database searches with metazoan α(2)-macroglobulin sequences revealed homologous sequences in bacterial proteomes. The bacterial α(2)-macroglobulin phylogenetic distribution is patchy and violates the vertical descent model. Bacterial α(2)-macroglobulin genes are found in diverse clades, including purple bacteria (proteobacteria), fusobacteria, spirochetes, bacteroidetes, deinococcids, cyanobacteria, planctomycetes and thermotogae. Most bacterial species with bacterial α(2)-macroglobulin genes exploit higher eukaryotes (multicellular plants and animals) as hosts. Both pathogenically invasive and saprophytically colonizing species possess bacterial α(2)-macroglobulins, indicating that bacterial α(2)-macroglobulin is a colonization rather than a virulence factor. CONCLUSIONS: Metazoan α(2)-macroglobulins inhibit proteases of pathogens. The bacterial homologs may function in reverse to block host antimicrobial defenses. α(2)-macroglobulin was probably acquired one or more times from metazoan hosts and has then spread widely through other colonizing bacterial species by more than 10 independent horizontal gene transfers. yfhM-like bacterial α(2)-macroglobulin genes are often found tightly linked with pbpC, encoding an atypical peptidoglycan transglycosylase, PBP1C, that does not function in vegetative peptidoglycan synthesis. We suggest that YfhM and PBP1C are coupled together as a periplasmic defense and repair system. Bacterial α(2)-macroglobulins might provide useful targets for enhancing vaccine efficacy in combating infections

Conductance of nano-systems with interactions coupled via conduction electrons: Effect of indirect exchange interactions

A nano-system in which electrons interact and in contact with Fermi leads gives rise to an effective one-body scattering which depends on the presence of other scatterers in the attached leads. This non local effect is a pure many-body effect that one neglects when one takes non interacting models for describing quantum transport. This enhances the non-local character of the quantum conductance by exchange interactions of a type similar to the RKKY-interaction between local magnetic moments. A theoretical study of this effect is given assuming the Hartree-Fock approximation for spinless fermions in an infinite chain embedding two scatterers separated by a segment of length L\_c. The fermions interact only inside the two scatterers. The dependence of one scatterer onto the other exhibits oscillations which decay as 1/L\_c and which are suppressed when L\_c exceeds the thermal length L\_T. The Hartree-Fock results are compared with exact numerical results obtained with the embedding method and the DMRG algorithm

Efficiently combining water reuse and desalination through Forward Osmosis-Reverse Osmosis (FO-RO) hybrids: a critical review

Forward osmosis (FO) is a promising membrane technology to combine seawater desalination and water reuse. More specifically, in a FO-reverse osmosis (RO) hybrid process, high quality water recovered from the wastewater stream is used to dilute seawater before RO treatment. As such, lower desalination energy needs and/or water augmentation can be obtained while delivering safe water for direct potable reuse thanks to the double dense membrane barrier protection. Typically, FO-RO hybrid can be a credible alternative to new desalination facilities or to implementation of stand-alone water reuse schemes. However, apart from the societal (public perception of water reuse for potable application) and water management challenges (proximity of wastewater and desalination plants), FO-RO hybrid has to overcome technical limitation such as low FO permeation flux to become economically attractive. Recent developments (i.e., improved FO membranes, use of pressure assisted osmosis, PAO) demonstrated significant improvement in water flux. However, flux improvement is associated with drawbacks, such as increased fouling behaviour, lower rejection of trace organic compounds (TrOCs) in PAO operation, and limitation in FO membrane mechanical resistance, which need to be better considered. To support successful implementation of FO-RO hybrid in the industry, further work is required regarding up-scaling to apprehend full-scale challenges in term of mass transfer limitation, pressure drop, fouling and cleaning strategies on a module scale. In addition, refined economics assessment is expected to integrate fouling and other maintenance costs/savings of the FO/PAO-RO hybrid systems, as well as cost savings from any treatment step avoided in the water recycling

Technical advances in near real time seafloor monitoring implemented for the momar-d project

Peer Reviewe

Practical considerations for operability of an 8″ spiral wound forward osmosis module: Hydrodynamics, fouling behaviour and cleaning strategy

© 2016 Elsevier B.V. A better understanding of large spiral wound forward osmosis (SW FO) module operation is needed to provide practical insight for a full-scale FO practical implementation desalination plant. Therefore, this study investigated two different 8″ SW FO modules (i.e. cellulose tri acetate, CTA and thin film composite, TFC) in terms of hydrodynamics, operating pressure, water and solute fluxes, fouling behaviour and cleaning strategy. For both modules, a significantly lower flow rate was required in the draw channel than in the feed channel due to important pressure-drop in the draw channel and was a particularly critical operating challenge in the CTA module when permeate spacers are used. Under FO and pressure assisted osmosis (PAO, up to 2.5 bar) operations, the TFC module featured higher water flux and lower reverse salt flux than the CTA module. For both modules, fouling tests demonstrated that feed inlet pressure was more sensitive to foulant deposition than the flux, thus confirming that FO fouling deposition occurs in the feed channel rather than on the membrane surface. Osmotic backwash combined with physical cleaning used in this study confirmed to be effective and adapted to large-scale FO module operation