A Study of Voluntary Turnover of Air Force Officers in Critically-Manned Career Fields

Turnover in the Air Force has always been a subject of importance. As the costs associated with losing an individual are high, it would be in the best interest of an organization to understand the main reasons for voluntary turnover in order to facilitate retention. Current research has yielded the Unfolding Model of Voluntary Turnover developed by Lee, Mitchell, Holtom, McDaniel and Hill (1999), which identified 5 different paths people take as they voluntary leave organizations. This research effort tested to see if this model held true for a group of former Air Force officers from career fields experiencing low manning levels (32E, 33S, 61S, 62E, and 63A), and found that 47% of the participants fell into the predicted categories. However, more could be explainable with additional paths. With this data, specific areas in facilitating retention were addressed

Long-term calorie restriction in humans is not associated with indices of delayed immunologic aging: A descriptive study.

BACKGROUND: Delayed immunologic aging is purported to be a major mechanism through which calorie restriction (CR) exerts its anti-aging effects in non-human species. However, in non-obese humans, the effect of CR on the immune system has been understudied relative to its effects on the cardiometabolic system. OBJECTIVE: To examine whether CR is associated with delayed immunologic aging in non-obese humans. METHODS: We tested whether long-term CR practitioners (average 10.03 years of CR) evidenced decreased expression of T cell immunosenescence markers and longer immune cell telomeres compared to gender-, race/ethnicity-, age-, and education-matched "healthy" Body Mass Index (BMI) and "overweight"/"obese" BMI groups. RESULTS: Long-term human CR practitioners had lower BMI (p <  0.001) and fasting glucose (p <  0.001), as expected. They showed similar frequencies of pre-senescent cells (CD8+CD28- T cells and CD57 and PD-1 expressing T cells) to the comparison groups. Even after adjusting for covariates, including cytomegalovirus status, we observed shorter peripheral blood mononuclear cell telomeres in the CR group (p = 0.012) and no difference in granulocyte telomeres between groups (p = 0.42). CONCLUSIONS: We observed no clear evidence that CR as it is currently practiced in humans delays immune aging related to telomere length or T cell immunosenescent markers

Criminal Justice and Suicide Outcomes with Indiana's Risk-Based Gun Seizure Law

This article examines the application and effectiveness of a 2006 Indiana law designed to prevent gun violence by authorizing police officers to separate firearms from persons who present imminent or future risk of injury to self or others, or display a propensity for violent or emotionally unstable conduct. A court hearing is held to determine ongoing risk in these cases; a judge decides whether to return the seized firearms or retain them for up to five years. The study examines the frequency of criminal arrest as well as suicide outcomes for 395 gun-removal actions in Indiana. Fourteen individuals (3.5%) died from suicide, seven (1.8%) using a firearm. The study population's annualized suicide rate was about 31 times higher than that of the general adult population in Indiana, demonstrating that the law is being applied to a population genuinely at high risk. By extrapolating information on the case fatality rate for different methods of suicide, we calculated that one life was saved for every 10 gun-removal actions, similar to results of a previous study in Connecticut. Perspectives from key stakeholders are also presented along with implications for gun policy reform and implementation

The Sloan Bright Arcs Survey : Six Strongly Lensed Galaxies at z=0.4-1.4

We present new results of our program to systematically search for strongly lensed galaxies in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) imaging data. In this study six strong lens systems are presented which we have confirmed with follow-up spectroscopy and imaging using the 3.5m telescope at the Apache Point Observatory. Preliminary mass models indicate that the lenses are group-scale systems with velocity dispersions ranging from 466-878 km s^{-1} at z=0.17-0.45 which are strongly lensing source galaxies at z=0.4-1.4. Galaxy groups are a relatively new mass scale just beginning to be probed with strong lensing. Our sample of lenses roughly doubles the confirmed number of group-scale lenses in the SDSS and complements ongoing strong lens searches in other imaging surveys such as the CFHTLS (Cabanac et al 2007). As our arcs were discovered in the SDSS imaging data they are all bright ($r\lesssim22$), making them ideally suited for detailed follow-up studies.Comment: 13 pages, 3 figures, submitted to ApJL, the Sloan Bright Arcs page is located here: http://home.fnal.gov/~kubo/brightarcs.htm