Marketing Strategy Teaching Collaboration

Many business schools offer courses of a similar theme in both their undergraduate and graduate programs. Being common for recent graduates of a school to matriculate into a graduate program of the same school, there is a need to ensure that undergraduate and graduate courses that share a similar theme complement one another. Yet content and assignment overlap must be minimized while providing greater rigor at the graduate level. Using the experiences of faculty from one university’s approach to address this situation, this paper a) explicates the philosophy behind the creation of Marketing Strategy courses at both the undergraduate and graduate levels and b) describes the process of developing/redeveloping and differentiating the courses

The Development of a Christian Leadership and Ethics in Business Course

In Christian higher education, business programs often lack a specific Gospel-centered class on Christian leadership that prepares students well to integrate their Christian faith into their workplace while leading for Jesus Christ. This article addresses the need for a Christian leadership and ethics in business course, the importance of having a biblical worldview of work, the impact leading through humility can have on coworkers, and one specific pathway for developing a course like this

Limited Activity Of Miltefosine In Murine Models Of Cryptococcal Meningoencephalitis And Disseminated Cryptococcosis

Miltefosine is an alkyl phosphocholine with good oral bioavailability and in vitro activity against Cryptococcus species that has gained interest as an additional agent for cryptococcal infections. Our objective was to further evaluate the in vivo efficacy of miltefosine in experimental in vivo models of cryptococcal meningoencephalitis and disseminated cryptococcosis. Mice were infected intracranially or intravenously with either C. neoformans USC1597 or H99. Miltefosine treatment (1.8 to 45 mg/kg of body weight orally once daily) began at either 1 h or 1 day postinoculation. Fluconazole (10 mg/kg orally twice daily) or amphotericin B deoxycholate (3 mg/kg intraperitoneally once daily) served as positive controls. In our standard models, miltefosine did not result in significant improvements in survival or reductions in fungal burden against either C. neoformans isolate. There was a trend toward improved survival with miltefosine at 7.2 mg/kg against disseminated cryptococcosis with the H99 strain but only at a low infecting inoculum. In contrast, both fluconazole and amphotericin B significantly improved survival in mice with cryptococcal meningoencephalitis and disseminated cryptococcosis due to USC1597. Amphotericin B also improved survival against both cryptococcal infections caused by H99. Combination therapy with miltefosine demonstrated neither synergy nor antagonism in both models. These results demonstrate limited efficacy of miltefosine and suggest caution with the potential use of this agent for the treatment of C. neoformans infections.Pharmac

Building a Sports Marketing Program in a College or School of Business

The purpose of this paper is to serve as one roadmap for helping marketing and business faculty understand better how to build a Sports Marketing program within a college or school of business. Specifically, this paper lays out specific coursework that can comprise a robust and industry-relevant sports marketing program and provides connected sports business and sports analytics classes and content that can undergird and support a new or growing sports marketing program. This business education development solves a curriculum problem related often to the need for new, innovative, and industry-relevant business curriculum and new occupational pathways for business students. Finally, this paper lays out a blueprint for intentional collegiality and partnership amongst marketing and business faculty, alumni, advisory board members, and industry partners in helping a newly created sports marketing program not only grow, but be connected to strong industry internships, job placements, and newly related occupational pathways for business students

Derived algebraic geometry over En̳-rings

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Mathematics, 2008.In title on t.p., double underscored "n" appears as subscript.Includes bibliographical references (p. 55-56).We develop a theory of less commutative algebraic geometry where the role of commutative rings is assumed by En-rings, that is, rings with multiplication parametrized by configuration spaces of points in Rn. As n increases, these theories converge to the derived algebraic geometry of Tobn-Vezzosi and Lurie. The class of spaces obtained by gluing En-rings form a geometric counterpart to En-categories, which are higher topological variants of braided monoidal categories. These spaces further provide a geometric language for the deformation theory of general E, structures. A version of the cotangent complex governs such deformation theories, and we relate its values to E&-Hochschild cohomology. In the affine case, this establishes a claim made by Kontsevich. Other applications include a geometric description of higher Drinfeld centers of SE-categories, explored in work with Ben-Zvi and Nadler.by John Francis.Ph.D

Probabilistic optimization for conceptual rainfall-runoff models: a comparison of the shuffled complex evolution and simulated annealing algorithms

Automatic optimization algorithms are used routinely to calibrate conceptual rainfall-runoff (CRR) models. The goal of calibration is to estimate a feasible and unique (global) set of parameter estimates that best fit the observed runoff data. Most if not all optimization algorithms have difficulty in locating the global optimum because of response surfaces that contain multiple local optima with regions of attraction of differing size, discontinuities, and long ridges and valleys. Extensive research has been undertaken to develop efficient and robust global optimization algorithms over the last 10 years. This study compares the performance of two probabilistic global optimization methods: the shuffled complex evolution algorithm SCE-UA, and the three-phase simulated annealing algorithm SA-SX. Both algorithms are used to calibrate two parameter sets of a modified version of Boughtoh's [1984] SFB model using data from two Australian catchments that have low and high runoff yields. For the reduced, well-identified parameter set the algorithms have a similar efficiency for the low-yielding catchment, but SCE-UA is almost twice as robust. Although the robustness of the algorithms is similar for the high-yielding catchment, SCE-UA is six times more efficient than SA-SX. When fitting the full parameter set the performance of SA-SX deteriorated markedly for both catchments. These results indicated that SCE-UA's use of multiple complexes and shuffling provided a more effective search of the parameter space than SA-SX's single simplex with stochastic step acceptance criterion, especially when the level of parameterization is increased. Examination of the response surface for the low-yielding catchment revealed some reasons why SCE-UA outperformed SA-SX and why probabilistic optimization algorithms can experience difficulty in locating the global optimum.Mark Thyer and George Kuczera, Bryson C. Bate

A Study of the Diverse T Dwarf Population Revealed by WISE

We report the discovery of 87 new T dwarfs uncovered with the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) and three brown dwarfs with extremely red near-infrared colors that exhibit characteristics of both L and T dwarfs. Two of the new T dwarfs are likely binaries with L7+/-1 primaries and mid-type T secondaries. In addition, our follow-up program has confirmed 10 previously identified T dwarfs and four photometrically-selected L and T dwarf candidates in the literature. This sample, along with the previous WISE discoveries, triples the number of known brown dwarfs with spectral types later than T5. Using the WISE All-Sky Source Catalog we present updated color-color and color-type diagrams for all the WISE-discovered T and Y dwarfs. Near-infrared spectra of the new discoveries are presented, along with spectral classifications. To accommodate later T dwarfs we have modified the integrated flux method of determining spectral indices to instead use the median flux. Furthermore, a newly defined J-narrow index differentiates the early-type Y dwarfs from late-type T dwarfs based on the J-band continuum slope. The K/J indices for this expanded sample show that 32% of late-type T dwarfs have suppressed K-band flux and are blue relative to the spectral standards, while only 11% are redder than the standards. Comparison of the Y/J and K/J index to models suggests diverse atmospheric conditions and supports the possible re-emergence of clouds after the L/T transition. We also discuss peculiar brown dwarfs and candidates that were found not to be substellar, including two Young Stellar Objects and two Active Galactic Nuclei. The coolest WISE-discovered brown dwarfs are the closest of their type and will remain the only sample of their kind for many years to come.Comment: Accepted to ApJS on 15 January 2013; 99 pages in preprint format, 30 figures, 12 table