All Work: An Evaluation of Worker\u27s Attitudes, Worker\u27s Behavior and Productivity in the U.S. Automobile Industry

The American automobile industry has become extremely sensitive to the increased number of Japanese cars and plants in the United States. Some parties believe that in order to operate competitively in the future labor and management must continue to find ways to work together and improve relations. Irving Bluestone, a former labor leader, believes that humanistic relations between the two parties are essential to the welfare of everyone involved. Joint efforts between the workers and management need to be continued and expanded. Both sides can benefit from such cooperation

All Work: An Evaluation of Worker\u27s Attitudes, Worker\u27s Behavior and Productivity in the U.S. Automobile Industry

The American automobile industry has become extremely sensitive to the increased number of Japanese cars and plants in the United States. Some parties believe that in order to operate competitively in the future labor and management must continue to find ways to work together and improve relations. Irving Bluestone, a former labor leader, believes that humanistic relations between the two parties are essential to the welfare of everyone involved. Joint efforts between the workers and management need to be continued and expanded. Both sides can benefit from such cooperation

All Work: An Evaluation of Worker\u27s Attitudes, Worker\u27s Behavior and Productivity in the U.S. Automobile Industry

The American automobile industry has become extremely sensitive to the increased number of Japanese cars and plants in the United States. Some parties believe that in order to operate competitively in the future labor and management must continue to find ways to work together and improve relations. Irving Bluestone, a former labor leader, believes that humanistic relations between the two parties are essential to the welfare of everyone involved. Joint efforts between the workers and management need to be continued and expanded. Both sides can benefit from such cooperation

The compound Poisson limit ruling periodic extreme behaviour of non-uniformly hyperbolic dynamics

We prove that the distributional limit of the normalised number of returns to small neighbourhoods of periodic points of non-uniformly hyperbolic dynamical systems is compound Poisson. The returns to small balls around a fixed point in the phase space correspond to the occurrence of rare events, or exceedances of high thresholds, so that there is a connection between the laws of Return Times Statistics and Extreme Value Laws. The fact that the fixed point in the phase space is a repelling periodic point implies that there is a tendency for the exceedances to appear in clusters whose average sizes is given by the Extremal Index, which depends on the expansion of the system at the periodic point. We recall that for generic points, the exceedances, in the limit, are singular and occur at Poisson times. However, around periodic points, the picture is different: the respective point processes of exceedances converge to a compound Poisson process, so instead of single exceedances, we have entire clusters of exceedances occurring at Poisson times with a geometric distribution ruling its multiplicity. The systems to which our results apply include: general piecewise expanding maps of the interval (Rychlik maps), maps with indifferent fixed points (Manneville-Pomeau maps) and Benedicks-Carleson quadratic maps.Comment: To appear in Communications in Mathematical Physic

Semileptonic form factors - a model-independent approach

We demonstrate that the B->D(*) l nu form factors can be accurately predicted given the slope parameter rho^2 of the Isgur-Wise function. Only weak assumptions, consistent with lattice results, on the wavefunction for the light degrees of freedom are required to establish this result. We observe that the QCD and 1/m_Q corrections can be systematically represented by an effective Isgur-Wise function of shifted slope. This greatly simplifies the analysis of semileptonic B decay. We also investigate what the available semileptonic data can tell us about lattice QCD and Heavy Quark Effective Theory. A rigorous identity relating the form factor slope difference rho_D^2-rho_A1^2 to a combination of form factor intercepts is found. The identity provides a means of checking theoretically evaluated intercepts with experiment.Comment: 18 pages, Revtex, 4 postscript figures, uses epsfig.st

Long-range DNA looping and gene expression analyses identify DEXI as an autoimmune disease candidate gene

The chromosome 16p13 region has been associated with several autoimmune diseases, including type 1 diabetes (T1D) and multiple sclerosis (MS). CLEC16A has been reported as the most likely candidate gene in the region, since it contains the most disease-associated single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs), as well as an imunoreceptor tyrosine-based activation motif. However, here we report that intron 19 of CLEC16A, containing the most autoimmune disease-associated SNPs, appears to behave as a regulatory sequence, affecting the expression of a neighbouring gene, DEXI. The CLEC16A alleles that are protective from T1D and MS are associated with increased expression of DEXI, and no other genes in the region, in two independent monocyte gene expression data sets. Critically, using chromosome conformation capture (3C), we identified physical proximity between the DEXI promoter region and intron 19 of CLEC16A, separated by a loop of >150 kb. In reciprocal experiments, a 20 kb fragment of intron 19 of CLEC16A, containing SNPs associated with T1D and MS, as well as with DEXI expression, interacted with the promotor region of DEXI but not with candidate DNA fragments containing other potential causal genes in the region, including CLEC16A. Intron 19 of CLEC16A is highly enriched for transcription-factor-binding events and markers associated with enhancer activity. Taken together, these data indicate that although the causal variants in the 16p13 region lie within CLEC16A, DEXI is an unappreciated autoimmune disease candidate gene, and illustrate the power of the 3C approach in progressing from genome-wide association studies results to candidate causal genes

A branching, positive relief network in the middle member of the Medusae Fossae Formation, Equatorial Mars - evidence for sapping?

The Medusae Fossae Formation (MFF) is a geological formation comprising three geological units (members) spread across five principal lobes. It dominates a quarter of the longitudinal extent of the equatorial region of Mars. Positive relief features referred to as ‘sinuous ridges' (commonly interpreted as inverted paleoflow channel or valley fills) have been observed in the lowest member of the western MFF, but have not been identified within the central and eastern portions of the formation, in the middle and upper members. This paper presents the identification and analysis of a branching, positive relief system which occurs in the central lobe of the MFF in what appears to be an exposure of the middle member. A simple geomorphological map of the system is presented, from which we have adopted the working hypothesis that this is an inverted fill of a branching fluvial channel or valley system. A suite of morphological and topographic evidence supporting this hypothesis is presented, including analysis of the network using a~15 m per pixel digital terrain model derived from a Context Imager (CTX) stereo image pair. The evidence supporting this hypothesis includes: 1) The local slope and topography of the upper surface of the network are consistent with a contributory network, 2) The braided, fan-like form at the termination of the branching network is consistent in morphology with it being a depositional fan at the end of a fluvial system, 3) The terminal fan and surrounding deposits show layering and polygonization, 4) There is strong association between the lower order branches and amphitheater shaped scarps in the depression walls. We evaluate the possible origins of this fluvial system and suggest that seepage sapping is the most probable. Two possible models for the evolution of the network and related features are presented; both require melt of ice within the MFF to form liquid water. We conclude that at least some portions of the Medusae Fossae Formation, if not the entire formation, were once volatile-rich. Finally, we note that our observations do not rule out the case that this network formed before MFF emplacement, and has since been exhumed. However, this conclusion would suggest that much of the surrounding terrain, currently mapped as middle-member MFF, is not in fact MFF material at all

Auxinic herbicides, mechanisms of action, and weed resistance: A look into recent plant science advances

Auxin governs dynamic cellular processes involved at several stages of plant growth and development. In this review, we discuss the mechanisms employed by auxin in light of recent scientific advances, with a focus on synthetic auxins as herbicides and synthetic auxin resistance mechanisms. Two auxin receptors were reported. The plasma membrane receptor ABP1 (Auxin Binding Protein 1) alters the structure and arrangement of actin filaments and microtubules, leading to plant epinasty and reducing peroxisomes and mitochondria mobility in the cell environment. The second auxin receptor is the gene transcription pathway regulated by the SCFTir/AFB ubiquitination complex, which destroys transcription repressor proteins that interrupt Auxin Response Factor (ARF) activation. As a result mRNA related with Abscisic Acid (ABA) and ethylene are transcribed, producing high quantities of theses hormones. Their associated action leads to high production of Reactive Oxygen Species (ROS), leading to tissue and plant death. Recently, another ubiquitination pathway which is described as a new auxin signaling route is the F-box protein S-Phase Kinase-Associated Protein 2A (SKP2A). It is active in cell division regulation and there is evidence that auxin herbicides can deregulate the SKP2A pathway, which leads to severe defects in plant development. In this discussion, we propose that SFCSKP2A auxin binding site alteration could be a new auxinic herbicide resistance mechanism, a concept which may contribute to the current progress in plant biology in its quest to clarify the many questions that still surround auxin herbicide mechanisms of action and the mechanisms of weed resistance