Virtual Teams: Work/Life Challenges - Keeping Remote Employees Engaged

Remotely located employees are quickly becoming a norm in the modern workplace in response to evidence that telecommuters save on costs and produce more efficiently. There are many intangible benefits also felt with the increasing prevalence of remote employees. Telecommuters are more satisfied with their work/life balance and report lower rates of job burnout. Though there are also many well-identified setbacks remotely located managers and employees may face. Employers see the most success with telecommuting by first recruiting the people best fit to fill these remote roles. However, the process of developing remote employees is a process that requires constant monitoring. The purpose of this paper is to identify the best practices being used by companies to keep remote employees engaged while simultaneously avoiding burnout

Worldsheet scattering in AdS(3)/CFT(2)

We confront the recently proposed exact S-matrices for AdS(3)/CFT(2) with direct worldsheet calculations. Utilizing the BMN and Near Flat Space (NFS) expansions for strings on AdS(3) x S(3) x S(3) x S(1) and AdS(3) x S(3) x T(4) we compute both tree-level and one-loop scattering amplitudes. Up to some minor issues we find nice agreement in the tree-level sector. At the one-loop level however we find that certain non-zero tree-level processes, which are not visible in the exact solution, contribute, via the optical theorem, and give an apparent mismatch for certain amplitudes. Furthermore we find that a proposed one-loop modification of the dressing phase correctly reproduces the worldsheet calculation while the standard Hernandez-Lopez phase does not. We also compute several massless to massless processes.Comment: 20 pages, 1 figure; v2: Some clarifications in comparison to literatur

Supervisees' and supervisors' experiences of group climate in group supervision in psychotherapy. Effects of admission procedure

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effects of two different admission procedures (high school grades/scholastic aptitude test (SAT) versus high school grades/SAT + interview) to a program in professional psychology on students' and supervisors' experiences of the group climate in psychotherapy supervision groups during an eighteen-month clinical practicum. A self-rating scale constructed to measure experiences of group climate in group supervision in psychotherapy was used. The results showed that students who were admitted based on the alternative admission procedure reported that their supervision groups had a more beneficial climate compared to those who were admitted based on high school grades/SAT. The evaluation suggested that admission via interviews together with high school grades/SAT is a good alternative to traditional admission procedures

Extrinsic curvature effects in brane-world scenarios

We consider models of bosons on curved 3+1 dimensional space-time embedded in a higher dimensional flat ambient space. We propose to derive (rather than postulate) equations of motions by assuming that a standard Klein-Gordon field on ambient space is restricted to space-time by a strong confining potential. This leads to a modified Klein-Gordon equation on space-time which includes, in addition to the standard terms, a term with a so-called induced potential which depends on intrinsic- and extrinsic curvature of the embedded space-time but not on the details of the confining potential. We compute this induced potential for natural, simple embeddings of Schwarzschild- and Robertson-Walker space-times. We also discuss possible observable implications of our results and, in particular, propose and study an extension of a standard model of cosmological inflation taking into account extrinsic curvature effects. We show that the modified model allows for a solution where the scaling function vanishes like a power law with exponent 0.6830.. at some initial time.Comment: 24 pages; v2: typos correcte

Prevalence of childhood abuse among people who are homeless in Western countries: a systematic review and meta-analysis

Purpose: This article systematically reviews studies of prevalence of childhood experience of physical and sexual abuse in adult people who are homeless in Western countries. Methods: Medline, PsychInfo, and the Cochrane Library were searched using the keywords: homeless*, child* abuse, child* trauma, and child* adversity and the bibliographies of identified articles were reviewed. Sources of heterogeneity in the prevalence rates were explored by meta-regression analysis Results: Twenty-four reports published between January 1990 and August 2013 in three countries provided estimates obtained from up to 9,730 adult individuals who were homeless. Prevalence of reported childhood physical abuse ranged from 6 to 94% with average prevalence of 37%, 95% CI [25, 51]. Reported sexual abuse ranged from 4 to 62%, with average prevalence estimated as 32%, 95% CI [23, 44] for females and 10% for males, 95% CI [6, 17]. Substantial heterogeneity was observed among the studies (I2 ≥ 98%). Including moderators greatly reduced but did not eliminate this heterogeneity. Moderator analyses suggested that reported physical abuse tended to be higher for predominately white samples and tended to be lower for younger samples. Sexual abuse was far more prevalent in predominately female samples and slightly higher in non-US samples and convenience samples

The complete one-loop BMN S-matrix in AdS(3) x S(3) x T(4)

We compute the full one-loop 2-particle S-matrix for excitations of the type IIB AdS(3) x S(3) x T(4) BMN string. The S-matrix is found to respect the expected symmetries and the phases are consistent with the crossing equations. By analyzing how the relevant integrals scale with the IR regulator we show that scattering of massless bosons is trivial at two loops. Based on our results we argue that the additional su(2) S-matrix appearing in the massless sector in the exact solution should trivialize.Comment: 20 pages; v2: References and minor clarification adde

The AdS(n) x S(n) x T(10-2n) BMN string at two loops

We calculate the two-loop correction to the dispersion relation for worldsheet modes of the BMN string in AdS(n) x S(n) x T(10-2n) for n=2,3,5. For the massive modes the result agrees with the exact dispersion relation derived from symmetry considerations with no correction to the interpolating function h. For the massless modes in AdS(3) x S(3) x T(4) however our result does not match what one expects from the corresponding symmetry based analysis. We also derive the S-matrix for massless modes up to the one-loop order. The scattering phase is given by the massless limit of the Hernandez-Lopez phase. In addition we compute a certain massless S-matrix element at two loops and show that it vanishes suggesting that the two-loop phase in the massless sector is zero.Comment: 30 pages, 6 figures; v2: References and comment on type IIB added, acknowledgements updated; v3: Comparison to proposed exact massless S-matrix in sec 5.3 corrected. Only non-trivial phase appears at one loop. Additional minor clarification