Developing cross disciplinary skills through an undergraduate research project

Undergraduate students can benefit from a research experience with a faculty mentor. Students perceived the research project and faculty mentorship as more beneficial than directed coursework. Mentoring is key to enhancing undergraduate research experiences, but the impact on time should be considered. Linkages between coursework and application should also be considered.student mentor, undergraduate research, Teaching/Communication/Extension/Profession, Q1,

Brake lights at the border: Going international twenty-two miles away (an international marketing/management case): Working paper series--02-13

Russ Clark is a successful NAPA Auto Parts franchisee in Yuma County, Arizona. He sees opportunity in the neighboring Mexican city of San Luis Rio Colorado. But crossing the border with an after-market auto parts store will require building relationships with others, lots of learning to overcome the significant barriers, and some savvy decision-making, in addition to the usual evaluation of business opportunities. Clark must cope with the barriers to doing business in Mexico, a completely foreign environment, even though the projected location of his new store is only 22 miles away from home. Further, his mistrust of lawyers has thoroughly turned him off to the common practice of hiring a lawyer to intercede for him with the Mexican authorities, and he must consider some alternate plan to make the important contacts that could have been easily facilitated by the lawyer. Clark must consider a location decision, product mix, human resource issues, and how to promote the new business in an uncertain context. Clearly, his current American business model will require a great degree of adaptation to make the venture a success. Note: Teaching Notes for this case can be requested from the authors. For contact information, see case

Loyalty Among Relationally Oriented Customers: Not Just an Issue of Managing Satisfaction: Working Paper Series--02-27

This paper explores empirically the relative impacts of satisfaction, brand community, and consumer experience on customer loyalty as expressed by future purchase intentions. Data drawn from qualitative research and a survey of relationally-oriented customers in a casino setting indicate that satisfaction yields to brand community as a key driver of loyalty. Important implications of this research for theory as well as marketing practice are discussed

Sensitivity to radiation-induced chromosome damage may be a marker of genetic predisposition in young head and neck cancer patients

We previously showed that levels of chromosome damage induced by ionizing radiation were, on average, higher in G 2 and G 0 lymphocytes of breast cancer patients than of normal healthy controls, but that there was no correlation between the results in the two assays. We proposed that enhanced sensitivity to G 2 or G 0 irradiation was a marker of low-penetrance predisposition to breast cancer, and have recently demonstrated heritability of sensitivity in families of breast cancer cases. We have now applied these assays to patients with head and neck cancers, for whom there is epidemiological evidence of inherited predisposition in addition to environmental causes. The mean frequency of radiation-induced G 2 aberrations was higher in the 42 patients than in 27 normal controls, but not significantly so. However, cases less than 45 years old were significantly more sensitive than normals of the same age range (P = 0.046), whereas there was no difference between patients and normals of less than 45 years. Also, there was an inverse correlation between G 2 sensitivity and age for patients but not for normals. Radiation-induced micronuclei in G 0 cells were more frequent in 49 patients than in 31 normals (P = 0.056) but, as with the G 2 assay, the greatest difference was seen between early-onset patients and young normals. Again there was an inverse correlation with age for patients but not for normals. Six patients with enhanced toxicity to radiotherapy were G 2 tested and four other such patients were G 0 tested; levels of chromosome damage were not significantly greater than in patients with normal reactions. Both assays were used on 64 individuals (39 patients, 25 normals) and there was no significant correlation between the results. We suggest that a proportion of early-onset head and neck cancer patients are genetically predisposed and that each of the two assays detects a different subset of these cases. © 2001 Cancer Research Campaign http://www.bjcancer.co

A Business Educators Guide To Transitioning To A Digital Curriculum

The authors, representing three key digital media business disciplines, present a case for how business curriculum could be updated to include a strong digital element without recreating the entire business school enterprise or spending millions on new faculty and technology. The three key disciplines are technology, law, and marketing

Shaping metallic glasses by electromagnetic pulsing

With damage tolerance rivalling advanced engineering alloys and thermoplastic forming capabilities analogous to conventional plastics, metallic glasses are emerging as a modern engineering material. Here, we take advantage of their unique electrical and rheological properties along with the classic Lorentz force concept to demonstrate that electromagnetic coupling of electric current and a magnetic field can thermoplastically shape a metallic glass without conventional heating sources or applied mechanical forces. Specifically, we identify a process window where application of an electric current pulse in the presence of a normally directed magnetic field can ohmically heat a metallic glass to a softened state, while simultaneously inducing a large enough magnetic body force to plastically shape it. The heating and shaping is performed on millisecond timescales, effectively bypassing crystallization producing fully amorphous-shaped parts. This electromagnetic forming approach lays the groundwork for a versatile, time- and energy-efficient manufacturing platform for ultrastrong metals