The Acquisition Of Equipment In A Research And Development Environment

This research addressed a critical issue that has faced managers of business organizations: the efficient and effective utilization of diverse resources to achieve a common objective. The chosen environment for this research was the involvement of purchasing in the acquisition of equipment within a research and development function. The research involved new scale development, administration of questionnaires and field interviews with scientists, purchasers and managers in twenty seven research centres in Canada and the United States. Case vignettes are presented to enrich the understanding of the acquisition process.;Examples of both low and high purchasing involvement were found. In low involvement situations, the time spent by the scientist on the acquisition task was predictable. The scientists expressed little confidence in purchasing\u27s ability to contribute beyond a narrow role definition of the buying task. Scientists felt strongly about control over the equipment decisions. The relationship between the scientist and the purchaser can be considered as one of task specialization with contradictory objectives.;In those cases where purchasing was playing a significant role in the equipment acquisition process, both direct financial and perceptual benefits were recorded. The scientists expressed confidence in purchasing\u27s ability to contribute during all stages in the acquisition process. A good predictor of high involvement was the purchaser\u27s technical ability. The relationship between purchasing and the scientist was one of mutual respect and shared values. In all high involvement cases, purchasing regarded the scientist as a valued customer.;The research is believed to have merit to practicing managers and suggests future research opportunities. High involvement by purchasing may be a small but important contributor to the creation of a conducive research climate. The perceptual benefits from meaningful involvement (client satisfaction) may be more significant in the long term than the direct and measurable ones.;This research also adds support to the importance of cooperation and team work for business success. High levels of purchasing involvement may be indicative of the general management philosophy within the firm and a predictor of competitive success

How Can Medicare Lead Delivery System Reform?

Explores options and design issues for reforming the fee-for-service payment system to encourage better, more efficient health care through greater accountability for specific populations and totality of care. Proposes a Medicare demonstration program

What does ‘decent work’ mean to low-paid workers? Working practices and how to improve them

When it comes to work, it’s not just the level of pay that matters to employees but the broader quality of employment. Low-paid work, however, is more likely to feature characteristics that make it hard for employees to speak of it as ‘decent work’. Hartwig Pautz and Francis Stuart look at what low-paid workers in Scotland think is most and least important for work to be ‘decent’ – the findings are relevant UK-wide

Biodiversity loss threatens human well-being.

The diversity of life on Earth is dramatically affected by Human alterations of ecosystems. Compelling evidence now shows that the reverse is also true: biodiversity in the broad snsse affects the properties of ecosystem and, therefore, the benefits that humans obtain from them. In this article, we provide a synthesis of the most crucial messages emerging from the latest scientific literature and international assessments of the role of biodiversity in ecosystem services and human well- being. Human societies have beeb built on biodiversity. Many activities indispensable for human subsistence lead to biodiversity loss, and this trend is ikely to continue in the future. We clearly benefit from the diversity of organisms that we have learned to use for medicines, food, fibers, and other renwable resources. In addition, biodiversity has always been an integral part of the human experience and there are many moral reasons to preserve it for its own sake. What has been less recognized is that biodiversity also influences human well- being, including the access to water and basic materials for a satifactory life, and security in the face of environmental change, through its effects on the ecosystem processes that lie at the core of the Earth´s most vital life support system.Fil: Díaz, Sandra Myrna. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Córdoba. Instituto Multidisciplinario de Biología Vegetal. Universidad Nacional de Córdoba. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas Físicas y Naturales. Instituto Multidisciplinario de Biología Vegetal; ArgentinaFil: Fargione, Joseph. Universidad Nacional de Córdoba; Argentina. University Of New Mexico; Estados UnidosFil: Chapin III, Francis Stuart. University Of Alaska; Estados UnidosFil: Tilman, David. University of Minnesota; Estados Unido

Using the UK general offender database as a means to measure and analyse Organised Crime.

Purpose Organised Crime is notoriously difficult to define and measure, resulting in limited empirical evidence to inform policy makers and practitioners. This study explores the feasibility of identifying a greater number of organized crime offenders, currently captured (but invisible), within an existing national general crime database. Methodology All 2.1 million recorded offenders, captured over a four year period on the UK Police National Computer (PNC), were filtered across three criteria associated with organized crime (co-offending, commission of specific offences, three years imprisonment or more). The 4109 ‘organized crime’ offenders, identified by the process, were compared with ‘general’ and ‘serious’ offender control groups across a variety of personal and demographic variables. Findings Organized crime prosecutions are not random but concentrate in specific geographic areas and constitute 0.2% of the offender population. Offenders can be differentiated from general crime offenders on such measures as: criminal onset age, offence type and criminal recidivism. Research implications Using an offence based methodology, rather than relying on offenders identified through police proactive investigations, can provide empirical information from existing data sets, across a diverse range of legislative areas and cultures. This allows academics to enhance their analysis of organized crime, generating richer evidence on which policy makers and practitioners can more effectively deliver preventative and disruptive tactics. Originality This is the first time an ‘offence based’ methodology has been used in differentiating organised crime from other offenders in a general crime database

Maximum likelihood estimates of pairwise rearrangement distances

Accurate estimation of evolutionary distances between taxa is important for many phylogenetic reconstruction methods. In the case of bacteria, distances can be estimated using a range of different evolutionary models, from single nucleotide polymorphisms to large-scale genome rearrangements. In the case of sequence evolution models (such as the Jukes-Cantor model and associated metric) have been used to correct pairwise distances. Similar correction methods for genome rearrangement processes are required to improve inference. Current attempts at correction fall into 3 categories: Empirical computational studies, Bayesian/MCMC approaches, and combinatorial approaches. Here we introduce a maximum likelihood estimator for the inversion distance between a pair of genomes, using the group-theoretic approach to modelling inversions introduced recently. This MLE functions as a corrected distance: in particular, we show that because of the way sequences of inversions interact with each other, it is quite possible for minimal distance and MLE distance to differently order the distances of two genomes from a third. This has obvious implications for the use of minimal distance in phylogeny reconstruction. The work also tackles the above problem allowing free rotation of the genome. Generally a frame of reference is locked, and all computation made accordingly. This work incorporates the action of the dihedral group so that distance estimates are free from any a priori frame of reference.Comment: 21 pages, 7 figures. To appear in the Journal of Theoretical Biolog