How Chamber of Commerce executive directors perceive newspaper publisher\u27s involvement in community affairs

Those outside of the journalism field sometimes are surprised to learn journalists profess to ethics. A fellow graduate student, upon having been assigned a research paper on journalism ethics, commented that she did not realize journalists attempt to be ethical. Looking back on the history of journalism, that view is easy to understand. Journalists have been “yellow” (i.e., sensationalist), bought by news sources and untruthful in order to win a Pulitzer Prize. Perhaps journalism’s somewhat scarred reputation has led to an increase in interest in journalism ethics during the past two decades. Professional trade journals favor the topic, while professional organizations and societies have been updating their ethical codes

Use Of An Advising Team

The Michael J. Coles College of Business at Kennesaw State University uses selected faculty members on an Advising Team, and provides access to them through walk-in advising hours.  Compared to our previous approach of assigning students to all faculty members, the benefits of this system for the students are more efficient and effective advising.  Students have access to advising at more times, and are more likely to get correct answers quickly.  The benefits for the faculty are that the faculty members on the Team enjoy advising and can have their performance expectations tailored to include advising, while those faculty members who are not interested in advising do not have to participate.  This system acknowledges the differing interests, performance requirements (e.g., research), and abilities of faculty members.  Other colleges and universities may find this approach beneficial for their students and faculty

A Frame Work for Identifying Factors to Consider When Implementing an Academic Program at a Satellite Campus

Making a strategic decision to launch an academic degree program at a satellite site offers unique challenges. Many factors should be carefully considered in creating degree offerings, supporting student needs, allocating faculty resources, satisfying accreditation concerns, and meeting student demand. This paper establishes a framework and decision model regarding a satellite campus program utilizing an undergraduate accounting degree program as a case analysis. The case analysis provides details of how the components of the framework should be considered in making decisions regarding the possible implementation of a satellite academic program. The purpose of this paper is to propose a roadmap while highlighting the resources required and information to be considered in order to launch a 2+2 BBA- Accounting degrees at a satellite campus. The Kennesaw State University (KSU) BBA- Accounting program at the satellite campus in Paulding County is designed for graduates of Georgia Highland College’s (GHC) Associate of Science in Business Administration degree, located at the KSU/GHC Paulding County Instructional Site

Obstacles to International Accounting Standards Convergence

Given the recent changes in the international sector, along with the similarities in the conceptual frameworks of the FASB and IASC, the relatively swift convergence of US GAAP and International Accounting Standards is a distinct possibility. This article contends convergence is possible, and reviews 3 key areas that could hinder or foster it: 1. the general organization, in terms of form and topical content, of the frameworks, 2. a significant pervasive difference between the frameworks, and 3. specific differences within the major topical areas of the frameworks

The High Road

Discusses the obstacles to international accounting standards convergence. Effort of the International Accounting Standards Committee (IASC) to promote to convergence theme; Comparison between the convergence frameworks of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and the Financial Accounting Standards Board; Sections of the \u27Framework for the Preparation and Presentation of Financial Statements\u27 document issued by the IASC

Training recruiters to randomized trials to facilitate recruitment and informed consent by exploring patients' treatment preferences

BACKGROUND: Patients’ treatment preferences are often cited as barriers to recruitment in randomized controlled trials (RCTs). We investigated how RCT recruiters reacted to patients’ treatment preferences and identified key strategies to improve informed decision-making and trial recruitment. METHODS: Audio-recordings of 103 RCT recruitment appointments with 96 participants in three UK multicenter pragmatic RCTs were analyzed using content and thematic analysis. Recruiters’ responses to expressed treatment preferences were assessed in one RCT (ProtecT - Prostate testing for cancer and Treatment) in which training on exploring preferences had been given, and compared with two other RCTs where this specific training had not been given. RESULTS: Recruiters elicited treatment preferences similarly in all RCTs but responses to expressed preferences differed substantially. In the ProtecT RCT, patients’ preferences were not accepted at face value but were explored and discussed at length in three key ways: eliciting and acknowledging the preference rationale, balancing treatment views, and emphasizing the need to keep an open mind and consider all treatments. By exploring preferences, recruiters enabled participants to become clearer about whether their views were robust enough to be sustained or were sufficiently weak that participation in the RCT became possible. Conversely, in the other RCTs, treatment preferences were often readily accepted without further discussion or understanding the reasoning behind them, suggesting that patients were not given the opportunity to fully consider all treatments and trial participation. CONCLUSIONS: Recruiters can be trained to elicit and address patients’ treatment preferences, enabling those who may not have considered trial participation to do so. Without specific guidance, some RCT recruiters are likely to accept initial preferences at face value, missing opportunities to promote more informed decision-making. Training interventions for recruiters that incorporate key strategies to manage treatment preferences, as in the ProtecT study, are required to facilitate recruitment and informed consent. TRIAL REGISTRATION: ProtecT RCT: Current Controlled Trials ISRCTN20141297. The other two trials are registered but have asked to be anonymized

Phylotastic! Making Tree-of-Life Knowledge Accessible, Reusable and Convenient

Scientists rarely reuse expert knowledge of phylogeny, in spite of years of effort to assemble a great "Tree of Life" (ToL). A notable exception involves the use of Phylomatic, which provides tools to generate custom phylogenies from a large, pre-computed, expert phylogeny of plant taxa. This suggests great potential for a more generalized system that, starting with a query consisting of a list of any known species, would rectify non-standard names, identify expert phylogenies containing the implicated taxa, prune away unneeded parts, and supply branch lengths and annotations, resulting in a custom phylogeny suited to the user's needs. Such a system could become a sustainable community resource if implemented as a distributed system of loosely coupled parts that interact through clearly defined interfaces. Results: With the aim of building such a "phylotastic" system, the NESCent Hackathons, Interoperability, Phylogenies (HIP) working group recruited 2 dozen scientist-programmers to a weeklong programming hackathon in June 2012. During the hackathon (and a three-month follow-up period), 5 teams produced designs, implementations, documentation, presentations, and tests including: (1) a generalized scheme for integrating components; (2) proof-of-concept pruners and controllers; (3) a meta-API for taxonomic name resolution services; (4) a system for storing, finding, and retrieving phylogenies using semantic web technologies for data exchange, storage, and querying; (5) an innovative new service, DateLife.org, which synthesizes pre-computed, time-calibrated phylogenies to assign ages to nodes; and (6) demonstration projects. These outcomes are accessible via a public code repository (GitHub.com), a website (www.phylotastic.org), and a server image. Conclusions: Approximately 9 person-months of effort (centered on a software development hackathon) resulted in the design and implementation of proof-of-concept software for 4 core phylotastic components, 3 controllers, and 3 end-user demonstration tools. While these products have substantial limitations, they suggest considerable potential for a distributed system that makes phylogenetic knowledge readily accessible in computable form. Widespread use of phylotastic systems will create an electronic marketplace for sharing phylogenetic knowledge that will spur innovation in other areas of the ToL enterprise, such as annotation of sources and methods and third-party methods of quality assessment.NESCent (the National Evolutionary Synthesis Center)NSF EF-0905606iPlant Collaborative (NSF) DBI-0735191Biodiversity Synthesis Center (BioSync) of the Encyclopedia of LifeComputer Science

The novel urinary proteomic classifier HF1 has similar diagnostic and prognostic utility to BNP in heart failure

Aims: Measurement of B‐type natriuretic peptide (BNP) or N‐terminal pro‐BNP is recommended as part of the diagnostic workup of patients with suspected heart failure (HF). We evaluated the diagnostic and prognostic utility of the novel urinary proteomic classifier HF1, compared with BNP, in HF. HF1 consists of 85 unique urinary peptide fragments thought, mainly, to reflect collagen turnover. Methods and results: We performed urinary proteome analysis using capillary electrophoresis coupled with mass spectrometry in 829 participants. Of these, 622 had HF (504 had chronic HF and 118 acute HF) and 207 were controls (62 coronary heart disease patients without HF and 145 healthy controls). The area under the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve (AUC) using HF1 for the diagnosis of HF (cases vs. controls) was 0.94 (95% CI, 0.92–0.96). This compared with an AUC for BNP of 0.98 (95% CI, 0.97–0.99). Adding HF1 to BNP increased the AUC to 0.99 (0.98–0.99), P < 0.001, and led to a net reclassification improvement of 0.67 (95% CI, 0.54–0.77), P < 0.001. Among 433 HF patients followed up for a median of 989 days, we observed 186 deaths. HF1 had poorer predictive value to BNP for all‐cause mortality and did not add prognostic information when combined with BNP. Conclusions: The urinary proteomic classifier HF1 performed as well, diagnostically, as BNP and provided incremental diagnostic information when added to BNP. HF1 had less prognostic utility than BNP

The control of translational accuracy is a determinant of healthy ageing in yeast

Life requires the maintenance of molecular function in the face of stochastic processes that tend to adversely affect macromolecular integrity. This is particularly relevant during ageing, as many cellular functions decline with age, including growth, mitochondrial function and energy metabolism. Protein synthesis must deliver functional proteins at all times, implying that the effects of protein synthesis errors like amino acid misincorporation and stop-codon read-through must be minimized during ageing. Here we show that loss of translational accuracy accelerates the loss of viability in stationary phase yeast. Since reduced translational accuracy also reduces the folding competence of at least some proteins, we hypothesize that negative interactions between translational errors and age-related protein damage together overwhelm the cellular chaperone network. We further show that multiple cellular signalling networks control basal error rates in yeast cells, including a ROS signal controlled by mitochondrial activity, and the Ras pathway. Together, our findings indicate that signalling pathways regulating growth, protein homeostasis and energy metabolism may jointly safeguard accurate protein synthesis during healthy ageing