Leadership and vision

�Leadership and vision' is the subject of Chapter 3 and Rogers and Reynolds look at how managers can encourage leadership from other people, whether in their team, the organisation or in collaborative work with different agencies. They explore leadership style, and the extent to which managers can and should adapt their personal style to the differing needs of situations and people. Frontline managers may not always feel that they have much opportunity to influence the grander vision and strategy of their organisation. Rogers and Reynolds argue that they none the less play a role in the vision sequence even at the level of putting it into practice and looking for better ways of doing things. Practice-led managers relay their experience from the front line back to more senior management so that they can contribute to strategic planning

Barriers to Community: The Development of an Instrument to Assess Components of Prejudice

Contemporary theory and practice defines leadership as a collaborative effort, based in community, and purposefully guided by a mutual vision of freedom, justice and equality. Prejudice, as a preset of negative beliefs and behaviors toward a person or a group is a primary barrier to the transformational process of team-building and formation of community. The purpose of this study was to contribute to the effectiveness of training and educational interventions through further understanding of the origins and aspects of prejudice which act as barriers to community. The Retroductive Triangulation process served as a guiding methodology for the development of a conceptual framework for prejudice and for an instrument which allowed that framework to be tested in a sample population. The seven stepped process involved a deductive phase (I) consisting of a review of the related theoretical and empirical literature, and an identification and analysis of themes. During the inductive phase (II), interviews were conducted with experts and practitioners in the content area. An analysis of the data yielded themes related to the concept. A conceptual framework (III) was created from an analysis and synthesis of measured and unmeasured dimensions which emerged. An assessment protocol (IV) focused on the unmeasured dimensions as the basis for the instrument development (V). The instrument was tested for psychometric properties (VI) in a diverse sample population from five local educational institutions. The four hundred and fifteen subjects were upper level undergraduates, graduate students, and participants in executive training programs. The results of the study supported an association of important aspects of contemporary prejudice with Western world views and values. These included competition, and a quest for power to bolster identity, evaluation of others by external and material standards, and a belief in the inevitability of hierarchical systems. The study highlighted also the American ambivalence between values of individualism and community. The implications of the study for interventions suggest that an emphasis be placed on the identification and examination of basic assumptions which guide individual behavior and the formation of organizational systems. The preliminary 30 item instrument may be further developed as a self assessment tool (VII) to be used in organizational interventions

Oxide Scales Formed on NiTi and NiPtTi Shape Memory Alloys

Ni-49Ti and Ni-30Pt-50Ti (at.%) shape memory alloys were oxidized isothermally in air over the temperature range of 500 to 900 C. The microstructure, composition, and phase content of the scales were studied by SEM, EDS, XRD, and metallography. Extensive plan view SEM/EDS identified various features of intact or spalled scale surfaces. The outer surface of the scale was a relatively pure TiO2 rutile structure, typified by a distinct highly striated and faceted crystal morphology. Crystal size increased significantly with temperature. Spalled regions exhibited some porosity and less distinct features. More detailed information was obtained by correlation of SEM/EDS studies of 700 C/100 hr cross-sections with XRD analyses of serial or taper-polishing of plan surfaces. Overall, multiple layers exhibited graded mixtures of NiO, TiO2, NiTiO3, Ni(Ti) or Pt(Ni,Ti) metal dispersoids, Ni3Ti or Pt3Ti depletion zones, and substrate, in that order. The NiTi alloy contained a 3 at.% Fe impurity that appeared in embedded localized Fe-Ti-rich oxides, while the NiPtTi alloy contained a 2 v/o dispersion of TiC that appeared in lower layers. The oxidation kinetics of both alloys (in a previous report) indicated parabolic growth and an activation energy (250 kJ/mole) near those reported in other Ti and NiTi studies. This is generally consistent with TiO2 existing as the primary scale constituent, as described here

Materials Characterization of Electron Beam Melted Ti-6Al-4V

An in-depth material characterization of Electron Beam Melted (EBM) Ti-6Al-4V material has been completed. Hot Isostatic Pressing (HIP) was utilized to close porosity from fabrication and also served as a material heat treatment to obtain the desired microstructure. The changes in the microstructure and chemistry from the powder to pre-HIP and post-HIP material have been analyzed. Computed tomography (CT) scans indicated porosity closure during HIP and high-density inclusions scattered throughout the specimens. The results of tensile and high cycle fatigue (HCF) testing are compared to conventional Ti-6Al-4V. The EBM Ti-6Al-4V had similar or superior mechanical properties compared to conventionally manufactured Ti-6Al-4V

Updating the TSP Quality Plan Using Monte Carlo Simulation

Humphrey tries to answer one of software management’s biggest questions, showing how one naval organization with large system projects, over a 15-year period, used the TSP to help them with planning and tracking, meeting schedules, and understanding knowledge work. by Watts S. Humphrey An Interview with Watts S. Humphrey Who else can boast more than a half-century in the software industry? Humphrey sits down with CrossTalk to reflect on some of his most illuminating experiences in the software industry and discusses the past, present, and future of his innovations—including the TSP

mlplasmids : a user-friendly tool to predict plasmid- and chromosome-derived sequences for single species

Assembly of bacterial short-read whole-genome sequencing data frequently results in hundreds of contigs for which the origin, plasmid or chromosome, is unclear. Complete genomes resolved by long-read sequencing can be used to generate and label short-read contigs. These were used to train several popular machine learning methods to classify the origin of contigs from Enterococcus faecium, Klebsiella pneumoniae and Escherichia colt using pentamer frequencies. We selected support-vector machine (SVM) models as the best classifier for all three bacterial species (Fl-score E. faecium=0.92, F1-score K. pneumoniae=0.90, F1-score E. coli=0.76), which outperformed other existing plasmid prediction tools using a benchmarking set of isolates. We demonstrated the scalability of our models by accurately predicting the plasmidome of a large collection of 1644 E. faecium isolates and illustrate its applicability by predicting the location of antibiotic-resistance genes in all three species. The SVM classifiers are publicly available as an R package and graphical-user interface called 'mlplasmids'. We anticipate that this tool may significantly facilitate research on the dissemination of plasmids encoding antibiotic resistance and/or contributing to host adaptation.Peer reviewe

gplas : a comprehensive tool for plasmid analysis using short-read graphs

aSummary: Plasmids can horizontally transmit genetic traits, enabling rapid bacterial adaptation to new environments and hosts. Short-read whole-genome sequencing data are often applied to large-scale bacterial comparative genomics projects but the reconstruction of plasmids from these data is facing severe limitations, such as the inability to distinguish plasmids from each other in a bacterial genome. We developed gplas, a new approach to reliably separate plasmid contigs into discrete components using sequence composition, coverage, assembly graph information and network partitioning based on a pruned network of plasmid unitigs. Gplas facilitates the analysis of large numbers of bacterial isolates and allows a detailed analysis of plasmid epidemiology based solely on short-read sequence data.Peer reviewe

Impact of Enquiry Based Learning (EBL) on student midwife praxis.

Midwifery training in Ireland moved to Higher Education in 2006. This shift established a physical and educational separation of theory and practice. The adoption of Enquiry Based Learning (EBL) by one Irish midwifery education institution attempted to address this division. Enquiry Based Learning (EBL) has the potential to develop student reflexivity and evidence assimilation across the career-span and may therefore enhance student praxis. EBL has been championed as an example of an educational model that supports praxis, helping to create competent practitioners through the use of authentic learning scenarios that address the theory practice divide. The current research study represents the first formal evaluation of EBL in undergraduate midwifery education in the South of Ireland. The study was a mixed-methods design that utilised focus groups, interviews and survey to ascertain the opinions of first exposure to EBL amongst a cohort of first year student midwives. Findings demonstrate the value of EBL in enhancing student midwife praxis