Development of a series of experiences to help students evaluate their aptitudes for the study and practice of industrial design

In this thesis, author tries to discover and define the aptitudes that are desirable for industrial designers, and explore ways to allow the students to experience and realize what these aptitudes are in order to help the students self-evaluate their fit for the study of industrial design

Matched Comparison of Magnetically-Controlled Growing Rods with Traditional Growing Rods for Severe Early Onset Scoliosis >90 degrees. An interim report at 2-year follow-up

Peer reviewe

Middle Preclassic Period Maya Greenstone Triangulates : Forms, Contexts, and Geology of a Unique Mesoamerican Groundstone Artifact Type

Over the past twenty years our understanding of the Middle Preclassic (900–300 BCE) period has become much clearer through archaeological investigations at a number of sites located in the Upper Belize River Valley region of the eastern Maya Lowlands. While the picture of Middle Preclassic Maya life, including their material culture, has sharpened, there are aspects that remain uninvestigated. One artifact type, identified as greenstone triangulates, has been found at several Belize Valley sites and in a variety of contexts. Although a number of these multifaceted, polished groundstone items have been recovered, little research has focused on their distribution and function in the archaeological record. An evaluation of these items from primary contexts provides data for determining how they were used in daily social and/or ritual activities throughout the lowlands. Comparative data from other regions of Mesoamerica are also discussed. A detailed geological and petrographic pilot study of a sample of greenstone triangulates is provided, pointing conclusively to early, long-distance and complex exchange networks in exotic raw materials

Some Observations and New Discoveries Related to Altar 3, Pacbitun, Belize

The Pre-Columbian Maya city of Pacbitun, Belize (Fig. 1) is distinguished by the high number of stone monuments (n- 20) identified during the roughly three decades of archaeological research conducted there (Healy et al. 2004:213). Altar 3, recovered in a cache within the main pyramidal structure of the site in 1986, was one of those monuments, but, unlike most of the others from the site, it is carved and bas a short hieroglyphic text. Yet, similar to several of the others, it had been broken in the past and, its pieces scattered. Archaeological excavations in 2016 recovered another piece of the same monument, this one having been used as part of a wall foundation in antiquity

Reviews and syntheses : Turning the challenges of partitioning ecosystem evaporation and transpiration into opportunities

Evaporation (E) and transpiration (T) respond differently to ongoing changes in climate, atmospheric composition, and land use. It is difficult to partition ecosystem-scale evapotranspiration (ET) measurements into E and T, which makes it difficult to validate satellite data and land surface models. Here, we review current progress in partitioning E and T and provide a prospectus for how to improve theory and observations going forward. Recent advancements in analytical techniques create new opportunities for partitioning E and T at the ecosystem scale, but their assumptions have yet to be fully tested. For example, many approaches to partition E and T rely on the notion that plant canopy conductance and ecosystem water use efficiency exhibit optimal responses to atmospheric vapor pressure deficit (D). We use observations from 240 eddy covariance flux towers to demonstrate that optimal ecosystem response to D is a reasonable assumption, in agreement with recent studies, but more analysis is necessary to determine the conditions for which this assumption holds. Another critical assumption for many partitioning approaches is that ET can be approximated as T during ideal transpiring conditions, which has been challenged by observational studies. We demonstrate that T can exceed 95% of ET from certain ecosystems, but other ecosystems do not appear to reach this value, which suggests that this assumption is ecosystem-dependent with implications for partitioning. It is important to further improve approaches for partitioning E and T, yet few multi-method comparisons have been undertaken to date. Advances in our understanding of carbon-water coupling at the stomatal, leaf, and canopy level open new perspectives on how to quantify T via its strong coupling with photosynthesis. Photosynthesis can be constrained at the ecosystem and global scales with emerging data sources including solar-induced fluorescence, carbonyl sulfide flux measurements, thermography, and more. Such comparisons would improve our mechanistic understanding of ecosystem water fluxes and provide the observations necessary to validate remote sensing algorithms and land surface models to understand the changing global water cycle.Peer reviewe

Use of financial indicators to evaluate the impact of High Involvement Work Practices

[EN] (The High Involvement Work Practices (or High Performance Work Practices) are a set of human resource management practices that act synergistically to improve organizational efficiency, creating work conditions that increase the satisfaction of the employee, encourage them to link with the Organization and to better carry out its tasks (Huselid, 1995). On the basis of this approach, and applying a purely instrumental point of view, many researchers have raised the following question: There is relationship between the implementation of the High Involvement Work Practices and firm performance?. The meta-analysis done by Combs (2006) provides consistent evidence of this relationship, after evaluating the results of 92 researches in this regard. Framed in this approach, the aim of this paper is double: 1. To identify what indicators have been used in the last decade to evaluate the relationship between the High Involvement Work Practices and firm performance. 2. To identify, in the case of the use of financial indicators, which are the most commonly used.[ES] Las Prácticas de Alta Implicación o Rendimiento (en inglés HIWP o HPWP) son un grupo de prácticas de gestión de recursos humanos que actúan sinérgicamente y mejoran la eficiencia organizativa al crear condiciones laborales que incrementan la satisfacción del trabajador, le incentivan a vincularse con la organización y a desempeñar mejor sus tareas (Huselid, 1995) Partiendo de este planteamiento, y aplicando un punto de vista puramente instrumental, muchos investigadores se han planteado la siguiente cuestión: ¿existe relación entre la aplicación de las Prácticas de Alta Implicación y el rendimiento (performance) empresarial?. El metaanálisis realizado por Combs (Combs et al., 2006) aporta pruebas consistentes de esta relación tras evaluar los resultados de 92 investigaciones realizadas al respecto.Enmarcado en este planteamiento, el objetivo de este artículo es doble:1.- Identificar qué indicadores se han utilizado en la última década para evaluar la relación entre las Prácticas de Alto Rendimiento y el rendimiento empresarial; 2.- Identificar, en el caso del uso de indicadores financieros, cuales son los más utilizados. ABSTRACT:(The High Involvement Work Practices (or High Performance Work Practices) are a set of human resource management practices that act synergistically to improve organizational efficiency, creating work conditions that increase the satisfaction of the employee, encourage them to link with the Organization and to better carry out its tasks (Huselid, 1995). On the basis of this approach, and applying a purely instrumental point of view, many researchers have raised the following question: There is relationship between the implementation of the High Involvement Work Practices and firm performance?. The meta-analysis done by Combs (2006) provides consistent evidence of this relationship, after evaluating the results of 92 researches in this regard. Framed in this approach, the aim of this paper is double: 1.- To identify what indicators have been used in the last decade to evaluate the relationship between the High Involvement Work Practices and firm performance; 2.-To identify, in the case of the use of financial indicators, which are the most commonly used.)Juárez Tárraga, A. (2011). Uso de indicadores financieros para evaluar el impacto de las Prácticas de Alta Implicación (Use of financial indicators to evaluate the impact of High Involvement Work Practices). Working Papers on Operations Management. 2(2):32-43. doi:10.4995/wpom.v2i2.847SWORD32432

Finding the engram.

Many attempts have been made to localize the physical trace of a memory, or engram, in the brain. However, until recently, engrams have remained largely elusive. In this Review, we develop four defining criteria that enable us to critically assess the recent progress that has been made towards finding the engram. Recent \u27capture\u27 studies use novel approaches to tag populations of neurons that are active during memory encoding, thereby allowing these engram-associated neurons to be manipulated at later times. We propose that findings from these capture studies represent considerable progress in allowing us to observe, erase and express the engram