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We have all done it: built training programs based on an employee's ability to earn a completion certificate after taking a classroom course. However, this no longer is a meaningful [...]

The role of internal social networks in managing the relationship between high-performance work systems and business success of organizations, is studied.

A study on the impact of an individual's personality and self defeating behavior, on the personal management of the individual, is presented.

Seattle relies on hydropower produced at dams located in the northwestern US for about 90% of its energy needs. Training and succession planning are important topics at Seattle's municipally-owned electric [...]

The circuit court rulings on sexual harassment case, Suder v. Easton, has been reviewed by the Supreme Court. The implications of the case for employers are presented.

The tone of Christopher Leighton's attack on Zionism Unsettled ('False witness,' May 2), a congregational study guide published by the Israel Palestine Mission Network of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), is [...]

Donald B. Fedor [a],[*] Walter D. Davis [b] John M. Maslyn © Kieran Mathieson [d] Abstract This study investigates dimensions of supervisor power and recipient self-esteem as predictors of performance [...]

A study examined the reactions of employees to a peer rating system in which they rate their peers and are rated by their peers. In particular, this research investigated how satisfaction with the system is affected by the experiences of the employees in the dual role, the perceived purpose of the appraisal system, the employees' level of participation in the system and demographic variables. Participations in the study were staff nurses working at an acute care hospital. Findings revealed that higher levels of acceptance were found among nurses who felt that the system fulfilled developmental feedback goals, had positive experiences as raters or as recipients, and recognized that the system allowed them to express their concerns. However, nurses voiced their concerns about the need for more training, biases that influence peer ratings, the time spent on evaluating and the criteria employed for the ratings.

Brian Mossop's 'Equal Rights for Gay Families: Revolution or Counter-Revolution' (Canadian Dimension, August 1993) describes an important legal battle for spousal rights. Mossop and Ken Popert are to be congratulated [...]

Research is presented concerning the factors which affect self-efficacy among trainees participating in a flight-training programme. The relationship between training and post-training performances are discussed.

Gourmet merchandising has to be one of the most satisfying fields that exists in today's retail spectrum; one must eat to live, but with effort on our part we can [...]

Objective: To provide New Zealand population norms for version 2 of the SF‐36 and SF‐12 health surveys and report scoring coefficients that enable the construction of Physical and Mental Component Summary scores from New Zealand SF‐36v2 and SF‐12v2 data.

There are growing concerns about the way predatory mortgages erode housing equity. We examine another potential impact: the relationship between abusive loan terms and foreclosure. Do predatory characteristics increase the likelihood of foreclosure once other risk factors are taken into account? We use a national database of subprime refinance first-lien loans originated in 1999 to analyze this question.Even after we control for other factors, refinance loans with prepayment penalties are 20 percent more likely and those with balloon payments are 50 percent more likely to experience a foreclosure than other loans. These findings suggest that predatory loans have the potential not only to erode household wealth, but also to heighten negative effects on individuals, households, and communities. Excluding losses to borrowers, we estimate that prepayment penalties and balloon payment requirements in 1999 refinance originations increased national foreclosure-related losses to lenders and investors by about $465 and $127 million, respectively.

This article documents the growing importance of preventive servicing—business practices that emphasize early intervention in delinquency and default management practices that also help financially troubled borrowers avoid foreclosure. We suggest that the loan servicing side of the affordable housing delivery system may be underappreciated and undercapitalized.We use a database of more than 28,000 affordable housing loans to test several preventive servicing-related propositions and find that after we control for loan and borrower characteristics, the likelihood that a delinquent mortgagor within this universe will ultimately default varies significantly across servicers. This suggests that loan servicing is an important factor in determining whether low- and moderate-income borrowers who fall behind in their mortgage payments will end up losing their homes through foreclosure. It also suggests a need for policy makers to incorporate preventive servicing into affordable homeownership programs.

This essay focuses on the US use of depleted uranium in Iraq as a war crime repressed by the media. The use of this weaponry is seen as continuous with the death drive that shapes American society. The essay argues that in order to understand this condition we must overcome all the ideological and metaphysical guarantees that blind us to the contingency of history. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

This article examines changes in subprime mortgage originations before and after the implementation of North Carolina's Predatory Lending Law. Previous studies have noted a decline in overall subprime lending. This was to be expected, since the law was intended to reduce the number of predatory or abusive subprime loans. But which components of subprime lending declined, which remained stable or increased, and what happened to those loans that the law defines as predatory?Using a database of 3.3 million loans from 1998 to 2002, we find that the reduction that occurred after the law took effect was entirely due to a decline in refinancing loans and that almost 90 percent of this decline can be traced to a reduction in predatory loans. The law is doing what it was intended to do: eliminate abusive loans without restricting the supply of subprime mortgage capital for borrowers with blemished credit records.

The federal Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC), which was designed to aid low-income working families and individuals, plays a role beyond that of income support. At a time when the availability of affordable housing is declining, the EITC also provides significant relief to households burdened by severe housing costs. This article examines the EITC's effect on housing cost burdens and analyzes and contrasts three proposals to increase its effectiveness as a housing tool.Because housing policy calculates affordability on a before-tax basis, the positive effects of the EITC are often overlooked. If included in income, the current EITC, assuming full participation, reduces critical housing needs for working households by 18 percent. All three proposals analyzed would reduce the number of households with severe housing costs by considerably more, with our measure relieving these cost burdens the most. Finally, using the EITC as a housing tool specifically incorporates a work incentive into the assistance.

In this article, we analyze the impact of high-tech economic growth on the incidence of critical housing problems both among all households and among moderate-income working families in major metropolitan areas. We rely on 1999 survey data, supplemented by other more recent data on housing market dynamics and building code enforcement.Overall, we found that the level of high-tech activity affects, positively and significantly, the incidence of critical housing problems for all households and especially for moderate-income working households, regardless of tenure. Consistent with anecdotal information about the problems of working families, we found a stronger impact on moderate-income working households than on all households. We conclude that housing policy should be broadened to address the problems of working families as well as those of the poor, especially when the problems arise from rapid economic growth.

In light of recent advances, I reconsider Jacques Ellul's technological imperative in which he places technology in a broad framework of “technique” (including but not limited to machines) meaning any complex of standardized procedures having absolute efficiency for attaining a predetermined result. He conceptualizes technique as a self-perpetuating, totalizing, and deterministic force inevitably leading to self-destruction if not transcended. Here, I provide support for some of Ellul's claims while addressing some of the important criticisms. I suggest a different kind of imperative that supersedes the technological imperative but does not diminish its importance. The new imperative is hierarchical social structures that now prevail at many levels—from global to local—and that reciprocally relate to many social forces, including technique. Central to the maintaining of social hierarchies are both individual and collective goals and beliefs. I argue the importance of ideology in both science and society, and in technological and hierarchical imperatives. Specifically, I argue the necessity to account for the mutual and reciprocal relationship among beliefs, context, and human attributes to fully comprehend technology and education.

Cytochalasin B depresses the hydroosmotic respo!lse of the toad urinary bladder to vasopressin without affecting basal (bulk flow) permeability, diffusional permeability, or the hormone induced increase in short circuit current. Fine structural studies demonstrated that this macrolide fungal metabolite, in the presence of both an osmotic gradient and vasopressin, induces the formation of large intracelIular vacuoles or ‘lakes’ in epithelial celIs lining the bladder mucosa. Some surface changes (shortening and irregularity of microvilli, clumping of the glycocalyx, etc.) were reported by transmission electron microscopy. Scanning electron microscopy demonstrates that cytochalasin B drasticalIy alters the mucosal surface morphology of the hormone stimulated bladder. Lesser changes were seen in the absence of vasopressin. In the presence of arginine vasopressin, excessive celIular swelling and possible rupturing, as welI as surface membrane infolding and rippling, were seen in the cytochalasin treated tissues, The specific entity most affected by this treatment is the granular cell

With information on all U.S. denominations of nontrivial sizes, this paper examines various spatial and temporal prcesses underlying religious expansion between 1900 and 1930. Simmel's provocative and complex essay, “Soziologie des Raumes” (1903) poses the central paradox that religion is both faith—cultural constellations of beliefs—and church—social associations that are spatially situated. This distinction helps to clarify differences among denominations with regard to the extent to which they exert strong demands on their members, and leads to predictions about variation in denominational growth rates, in spatial dynamics, and in the extent to which denominations accommodate to contextual heterodoxy (diversity) or not. In these terms, we re-examine the debate about whether adherence rates increase in competitive markets (under conditions of diversity) or under monopoly conditions (under conditions of little diversity). We finally suggest that Simmel's theoretical emphasis on spatial and temporal dynamics has relevance for understanding the nature of mobilization efforts of various kinds, not only by religious groups, but also by those that organize social and political movements

Summary A study has been conducted to determine the ionic and metabolic requirements for full expression of the hydroosmotic response to antidiuretic hormone in the toad urinary bladder. By appropriate manipulation of incubation conditions it can be shown that there is a pool of serosal sodium necessary for a full hormone response. This serosal sodium pool is not related to the transepithelial sodium transport pool. A full hydroosmotic response also requires serosal potassium; however, no specific anion requirement was demonstrated. Additionally, anaerobic or aerobic metabolism support a full hydroosmotic response equally well.

The concept has been demonstrated of using multiple sources to construct an imaging system to give range to each pixel in a wide field of view without a mechanical scanner. The receiver has a single detector that sees the entire field of view. With a diffuse reflector as a target, the system gave a range of 3 m with a range accuracy of 7.5 cm indoors when light-emitting diodes having an output of 5 mW were used as the sources. When laser diodes having an output of 15 mW were used, the maximum range outdoors in bright sunlight was 13 m with a range accuracy of 15 cm. When operation was outside but the target was shaded, the range accuracy was 7.5 cm.

As Guyon moves from the House of Medina through the Cave of Mammon to the House of Alma, he experiences ever more fully what it is to be human. Similarly, as readers follow the hero through these places, they become more fully aware of the richness of significance involved in the act of reading or learning about humanity. Specifically, the House of Medina invites the reader to seek only the literal and tropological senses of traditional exegesis; the episode in the Cave of Mammon offers a grotesque parody of fourfold exegesis; and the House of Alma invites a reading that is both fully developed along all four senses and broad in its tonal range as well.

In an initial study of visual guidance on throwing, it was hypothesized that precise visual information about the target's center would improve accuracy. Precise information was provided by a small red dot in the center of a large white target. In two experiments, equal numbers of men and women (N= 40) threw chalked tennis balls from a distance of 11 m with and without the dot. Accuracy was determined as the mean absolute and variable radial error. Women especially benefitted from the presence of the dot which supported the hypothesis. In Exp. 2, instructions to focus on the dot throughout the throw had no effect on throwing accuracy for either men or women. Further analysis indicated that skill was not significant in subjects' use of precise information to guide throwing, as might have been predicted from the literature. Consistent with the literature, large gender differences in both absolute and variable errors were found.

The authors use life-history data on analyze the organizational evolution of U.S. minor-league baseball. The article introduces the concept of "structural mutualism" to account for the structural effects of required league membership on team foundings and deaths. This term refers to cooperative behavior that occurs among the teams within a league, that benefits each team, and that league membership promotes. Net of conventional density-dependence and population-dynamics mechanisms, strong evidence is found that structured mutualism affects team foundings and deaths. When structured mutualism is conceived of as variable, the concept may have more general applicability to other sets of membership organizations.

A combined physiological and morphological study of the effects of cytochalasin B (CB) on the toad urinary bladder has been carried out. CB inhibits the hydro-osmotic response to vasopressin without altering basal water permeability or diffusion, or the increase in 3H2O diffusion observed after hormone addition. Although CB increases [22Na]-, [36Cl]-, and [14C]urea fluxes, and decreases transepithelial potential, no alteration in basal short-circuit current, the vasopressin-induced increase in this parameter, or [14C]inulin permeability occurs. In the absence of hormone, CB does not markedly alter the structure of the toad bladder. However, in the presence of vasopressin, CB induces the formation of large intracellular vacuoles. These results suggest a possible coupling of solute and water movement across the tissue.

Periodontal soft tissues were cleavedfrom freshly extracted human teeth. Tissues were then prepared for subsequent biochemical and morphological studies according to the following plan: 1) immediate immersion in liquid nitrogen for the biochemical assay of Superoxide dismutase (SOD); 2) immediate fixation prior to routine preparation for routine transmission electron microscopy; 3) immediate fixation prior to preparation for electron microscopic immunohistochemistry. Biochemical analysis showed that the human periodontal ligament contained about twice as much SOD activity as human skin (dermis), but considerably less enzyme activity than that seen in red blood cells. Interestingly, periodontal SOD activity appeared to decrease with age. Immunohistochemistry localized enzyme activity to the periphery of matrix collagen fibrils and to the glycocalyx of tissue fibroblasts. The pathophysiology of this enzyme regarding inflammatory diseases such as periodontitis is discussed. J Periodontol 1991; 62:413†420.

The ultrastructure of rabbit skeletal muscle was studied following glycerolation and staining with pyroantimonate. Electron-dense deposits were observed within the residual sarcoplasmic reticulum and associated with myofilaments. These dense granules were removed by chelation with EGTA and granules reappeared at these same sites upon the addition of calcium ions to the incubation medium. Specific inter- and intra-myofibrillar binding sites were thus confirmed. Myofilament binding sites were found to be a function of sarcomere length, since the granule distribution was different when shorter sarcomeres were compared to longer sarcomeres. It is proposed that calcium bound to myofilaments plays an essential role in contraction coupling and relaxation.

Evidence for the glyoxylate cycle in the mammalian rat liver was sought. Activity of two unique glyoxylate cycle enzymes, isocitrate lyase and malate synthase, was found in rat liver homogenates. Vitamin D3treatment of rachitic animals produced a five‐ and fourfold increase, respectively, in the activity of these enzymes. Vitamin D3also increased the peroxisomal fatty acid oxidation and the accumulation of glycogen in liver slices in the presence of palmitate. These data suggest that the mammalian rat liver can convert fatty acid carbon to carbohydrate carbon directly.—Davis, W. L.; Matthews, J. M.; Goodman, D. B. P. Glyoxylate cycle in the rat liver: effect of vitamin D3treatment. FASEB J.3: 1651‐1655; 1989.

Sera from two patients with granulocytopenia associated with collagen vascular disease caused the destruction of normal human granulocytes by autologous lymphocytes in vitro. Granulocyte cytotoxicity was measured by the release of 51Cr during incubation with test sera and lymphocytes in microliter plates. Between 8% and 46% granulocytoxicity was produced in granulocytes from 8 normal donors by the sera from these two patients. Less than 6% granulocytotoxicity was seen with the sera from 14 normal subjects and 29 patient controls. Treatment of lymphocyte preparations with carbonyl iron and magnetic separation to remove phagocytic cells or treatment with complement-coated red cells followed by repeated gradient centrifugation to remove complement receptor-bearing lymphocytes did not reduce the granulocytotoxicity. There was a dose-response relationship between the concentration of positive sera and granulocytotoxicity. When these sera were fractionated by Sephadex G-200 gel filtration and by ion-exchange chromatography with DEAE-cellulose, the active component appeared in the IgG-containing fractions. Thus, IgG antibody-dependent, lymphocyte-mediated granulocyte cytotoxicity represents a means of detecting human granulocyte antibodies and is a possible mechanism of autoimmune neutropenia in these two patients.