1,712 research outputs found
DEVELOPING A PROJECT MANAGER COMPETENCY MODEL TO BETTER SERVE THE WARFIGHTER AND THE DOD
As of today, the Department of Defense (DOD) project management competencies are structured differently from industry. Industry has made advancements in project management that the DOD does not currently take advantage of. By better aligning the DOD and PMI competency standards we can decrease cost, schedule, and performance issues. Based on previous research on the topic, the current DOD competency model is not sufficient for assessing today’s program managers. The purpose of this research is to use the three PMI industry standards to develop a survey tool to better serve the DOD acquisition workforce. We were able to create this survey tool and hope that, by using this survey tool, future research teams will be able to effectively gauge the acquisition community’s correlation between the three PMI standards and the current DOD workload. The information gathered from this research can be useful not only to DOD acquisition communities, but also can set future guidelines to program managers in order to save the DOD on schedule, cost, and performance.Civilian, Department of the NavyCivilian, Department of the NavyApproved for public release. Distribution is unlimited
People Who Punish or Reward Tend to Moralize Even Conventional Behaviour
Managers who have to reward or punish
others may be prone to moralizing. This
can create problems because it may
make the manager less tolerant of
errant behavior while others in the social
group, who may be wary of moralizing
attitudes, may react against the
manager.York's Knowledge Mobilization Unit provides services and funding for faculty, graduate students, and community organizations seeking to maximize the impact of academic research and expertise on public policy, social programming, and professional practice. It is supported by SSHRC and CIHR grants, and by the Office of the Vice-President Research & Innovation.
[email protected]
www.researchimpact.c
Minimal subtraction and the Callan-Symanzik equation
The usual proof of renormalizability using the Callan-Symanzik equation makes
explicit use of normalization conditions. It is shown that demanding that the
renormalization group functions take the form required for minimal subtraction
allows one to prove renormalizability using the Callan-Symanzik equation,
without imposing normalization conditions. Scalar field theory and quantum
electrodynamics are treated.Comment: 6 pages, plain Te
Whole family-based physical activity promotion intervention: the Families Reporting Every Step to Health pilot randomised controlled trial protocol
Introduction : Family-based physical activity (PA) interventions present a promising avenue to promote children’s activity, however, high-quality experimental research is lacking. This paper describes the protocol for the FRESH (Families Reporting Every Step to Health) pilot trial, a child-led family-based PA intervention delivered online. Methods and analysis : FRESH is a three-armed, parallel-group, randomised controlled pilot trial using a 1:1:1 allocation ratio with follow-up assessments at 8- and 52-weeks post-baseline. Families will be eligible if a minimum of one child in school Years 3-6 (aged 7-11 years) and at least one adult responsible for that child are willing to participate. Family members can take part in the intervention irrespective of their participation in the accompanying evaluation and vice versa. Following baseline assessment, families will be randomly allocated to one of three arms: (1) FRESH, (2) pedometer-only, or (3) no-intervention control. All family members in the pedometer-only and FRESH arms receive pedometers and generic PA promotion information. FRESH families additionally receive access to the intervention website; allowing participants to select step challenges to ‘travel’ to target cities around the world, log steps, and track progress as they virtually globetrot. Control families will receive no treatment. All family members will be eligible to participate in the evaluation with two follow-ups (8 and 52 weeks). Physical (e.g., fitness, blood pressure), psychosocial (e.g., social support), and behavioural (e.g., objectively-measured family PA) measures will be collected each time point. At 8-week follow-up, a mixed-methods process evaluation will be conducted (questionnaires and family focus groups) assessing acceptability of the intervention and evaluation. FRESH families’ website engagement will also be explored. Ethics and dissemination : This study received ethical approval from the Ethics Committee for the School of the Humanities and Social Sciences at the University of Cambridge. Findings will be disseminated via peer-reviewed publications, conferences, and to participating families
Effective and resource-efficient strategies for recruiting families in physical activity, sedentary behavior, nutrition, and obesity prevention research: A systematic review with expert opinion.
We systematically identified effective and resource-efficient strategies for recruiting families into health promoting intervention research. Four databases were searched for reviews. Interventions were extracted from included reviews. Additionally, a Delphi study was conducted with 35 experts in family-based research. We assessed extracted data from our review and Delphi participants' opinions by collating responses into overarching themes based on recruitment setting then recruitment strategies to identify effective and resource-efficient strategies for recruiting families into intervention research. A total of 64 articles (n = 49 studies) were included. Data regarding recruitment duration (33%), target sample size (32%), reach (18%), expressions of interest (33%), and enrollment rate (22%) were scarcely reported. Recruitment settings (84%) and strategies (73%) used were available for most studies. However, the details were vague, particularly regarding who was responsible for recruitment or how recruitment strategies were implemented. The Delphi showed recruitment settings, and strategies fell under six themes: school-based, print/electronic media, community settings-based, primary care-based, employer-based, and referral-based strategies. Underrecruitment in family-based trials is a major issue. Reporting on recruitment can be improved by better adherence to existing guidelines. Our findings suggest a multifaceted recruitment approach targeting adults and children with multiple exposures to study information.This work was supported by the National Institute for Health Research Public Health
16 Research Programme (project number 15/01/19). Funding was also received from the Medical
17 Research Council (project number MC_UU_12015/7) and National Institute for Health Research
18 Biomedical Research Centre Cambridge: Nutrition, Diet, and Lifestyle Research Theme (Grant IS19
BRC-1215-20014)
Renormalization of composite operators
The blocked composite operators are defined in the one-component Euclidean
scalar field theory, and shown to generate a linear transformation of the
operators, the operator mixing. This transformation allows us to introduce the
parallel transport of the operators along the RG trajectory. The connection on
this one-dimensional manifold governs the scale evolution of the operator
mixing. It is shown that the solution of the eigenvalue problem of the
connection gives the various scaling regimes and the relevant operators there.
The relation to perturbative renormalization is also discussed in the framework
of the theory in dimension .Comment: 24 pages, revtex (accepted by Phys. Rev. D), changes in introduction
and summar
Critical specific heats of the N-vector spin models on the sc and the bcc lattices
We have computed through order the high-temperature expansions
for the nearest-neighbor spin correlation function of the
classical N-vector model, with general N, on the simple-cubic and on the
body-centered-cubic lattices.
For this model, also known in quantum field theory as the lattice O(N)
nonlinear sigma model, we have presented in previous papers extended expansions
of the susceptibility, of its second field derivative and of the second moment
of the correlation function.
Here we study the internal specific energy and the specific heat
, obtaining new estimates of the critical parameters and therefore
a more accurate direct test of the hyperscaling relation on a range of values of the spin dimensionality N, including N=0
[the self-avoiding walk model], N=1 [the Ising spin 1/2 model], N=2 [the XY
model], N=3 [the classical Heisenberg model]. By the newly extended series, we
also compute the universal combination of critical amplitudes usually denoted
by , in fair agreement with renormalization group estimates.Comment: 15 pages, latex, no figure
Gawky is a component of cytoplasmic mRNA processing bodies required for early Drosophila development
In mammalian cells, the GW182 protein localizes to cytoplasmic bodies implicated in the regulation of messenger RNA (mRNA) stability, translation, and the RNA interference pathway. Many of these functions have also been assigned to analogous yeast cytoplasmic mRNA processing bodies. We have characterized the single Drosophila melanogaster homologue of the human GW182 protein family, which we have named Gawky (GW). Drosophila GW localizes to punctate, cytoplasmic foci in an RNA-dependent manner. Drosophila GW bodies (GWBs) appear to function analogously to human GWBs, as human GW182 colocalizes with GW when expressed in Drosophila cells. The RNA-induced silencing complex component Argonaute2 and orthologues of LSm4 and Xrn1 (Pacman) associated with 5′–3′ mRNA degradation localize to some GWBs. Reducing GW activity by mutation or antibody injection during syncytial embryo development leads to abnormal nuclear divisions, demonstrating an early requirement for GWB-mediated cytoplasmic mRNA regulation. This suggests that gw represents a previously unknown member of a small group of genes that need to be expressed zygotically during early embryo development
Simplicial Gravity Coupled to Scalar Matter
A model for quantized gravity coupled to matter in the form of a single
scalar field is investigated in four dimensions. For the metric degrees of
freedom we employ Regge's simplicial discretization, with the scalar fields
defined at the vertices of the four-simplices. We examine how the continuous
phase transition found earlier, separating the smooth from the rough phase of
quantized gravity, is influenced by the presence of scalar matter. A
determination of the critical exponents seems to indicate that the effects of
matter are rather small, unless the number of scalar flavors is large. Close to
the critical point where the average curvature approaches zero, the coupling of
matter to gravity is found to be weak. The nature of the phase diagram and the
values for the critical exponents suggest that gravitational interactions
increase with distance. \vspace{24pt} \vfillComment: (34 pages + 8 figures
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