Search

Citizen science can play an important role in school science education. Citizen science is particularly relevant to addressing current societal environmental sustainability challenges, as it engages the students directly with environmental science and gives students an understanding of the scientific process. In addition, it allows students to observe local representations of global challenges. Here, we report a citizen science programme designed to engage school‐age children in real‐world scientific research. The programme used standardized methods deployed across multiple schools through scientist–school partnerships to engage students with an important conservation problem: habitat for pollinator insects in urban environments. Citizen science programmes such as the programme presented here can be used to enhance scientific literacy and skills. Provided key challenges to maintain data quality are met, this approach is a powerful way to contribute valuable citizen science data for understudied, but ecologically important study systems, particularly in urban environments across broad geographical areas.

BACKGROUND: For Canadian regulatory purposes, an analgesic study was required to complement previously completed, pivotal studies on bowel effects and analgesia associated with controlled-release (CR) oxycodone/CR naloxone.OBJECTIVES: To compare the analgesic efficacy and safety of CR oxycodone/CR naloxone versus placebo in patients with chronic low back pain.METHODS: Patients requiring opioid therapy underwent a two- to seven-day opioid washout before being randomly assigned to receive either 10 mg/5 mg CR oxycodone/CR naloxone or placebo every 12 h, titrated weekly according to efficacy and tolerability to 20 mg/10 mg, 30 mg/15 mg or 40 mg/20 mg every 12 h. After four weeks, patients crossed over to the alternative treatment for an additional four weeks. Acetaminophen/codeine (300 mg/30 mg every 4 h to 6 h as needed) was provided as rescue medication.RESULTS: Of the 83 randomized patients, 54 (65%) comprised the per-protocol population. According to per-protocol analysis, CR oxycodone/CR naloxone resulted in significantly lower mean (± SD) pain scores measured on a visual analogue scale (48.6±23.1 mm versus 55.9±25.4 mm; P=0.0296) and five-point ordinal pain intensity scores (2.1±0.8 versus 2.4±0.9; P=0.0415) compared with placebo. After the double-blinded phase, patients and investigators both preferred CR oxycodone/CR naloxone over placebo. These outcomes continued in the 79% of patients who chose to continue receiving CR oxycodone/CR naloxone in a six-month, open-label evaluation.CONCLUSIONS: In patients complying with treatment as per protocol, CR oxycodone/CR naloxone was effective for the management of chronic low back pain of moderate or severe intensity.

To innovate, organizations need to enhance variance, see old things in new ways, and break from the past. They need to do things that make money later rather than now and to be open to creative failure. Robert Sutton refers to this as “organizing for exploration,” and in this excerpt from a recent book, he posits 11½ “weird” ideas that nurture an innovative spirit—managerial toys that expand the frontiers and fuel the long-term success of corporate activities.

The European Spallation Source (ESS), currently under construction in Lund, Sweden, will house a suite of 16 user instruments for neutron scattering experiments. The spallation source of the ESS will emit relatively long, 2.8 ms, neutron pulses with an integrated flux that will greatly exceed that of current facilities. This leads to both large advancements in instrument performance as well as to increased length and complexity of the beam delivery systems. The instruments will each be equipped with neutron beam monitors used for data normalisation and analysis, as well as commissioning and diagnostics. In this paper we present the requirements for beam monitors for the ESS and the strategy to meet these in a standardised approach. A large range of specifications in efficiency, dynamic range, time and position resolution, compatible materials are needed. A new feature for neutron beam monitors for some locations, is the ability to measure time profile of each source pulse individually. In general, event mode readout will be used for monitors, similarly to other neutron detectors at the facility. A selection of detectors based on different technologies will be available. Monitors will be integrated with beam lines and choppers in a way that allows to freely choose the type of monitor based on final requirements of an instrument. For this end, space for a standardised module, housing a monitor will be provided in conjunction with chopper assemblies and elsewhere on each beam line.

The quest for information and research-based insight is an obsession in the capital markets. There is a veritable industry of analysts, investment bankers, portfolio managers, and investors who seek any informational advantage, which is one reason that academics who study finance have been recruited to work on Wall Street and with money managers. Yet the potential payoff for using valid evidence is even greater when it comes to managing organizations. At the same time, however, imitation is much slower and less effective in the world of management practices, in part because such practices depend on tacit knowledge and implementation skill, on knowing not just what to do but how to do it. In addition, management practices and logic resist copying because of the power of precedent and ideology. Most managers actually try to act on the best evidence. They follow the business press, buy business books, hire consultants, and attend seminars featuring business experts. While companies sometimes benefit from these efforts, there is surprisingly little rigorous use or serious appreciation of evidence-based management. This article explores these obstacles and offers guidelines to enable managers to better practice evidence-based management.

PurposeThis article advocates for evidenced‐based management and aims to demonstrate how it works.Design/methodology/approachThe article identifies seven implementation principles to help people and companies that are committed to doing what it takes to profit from evidence‐based management.FindingsThe seven principles are: treat your organization as an unfinished prototype; no brag, just facts; see yourself and your organization as outsiders do; evidence‐based management is not just for senior executives; like everything else, you still need to sell evidenced‐based management; if all else fails, slow the spread of bad practices; and the best diagnostic question: what happens when people fail?Research limitations/implicationsA follow‐up article needs to show results when firms institute evidence‐based management.Practical implicationsA key underpinning of evidence‐based management are three truths: that most so‐called breakthrough ideas are either old, wrong, or both; that effective companies and leaders are more interested in what is true than what is new; and that those that do simple, obvious, and even seemingly trivial things well will dominate competitors who search for silver bullets and instant magic.Originality/valueThe article explains why the implementation of evidenced‐based management promotes competitive advantage.

States the top reason why managers should take notice of scholarly research is because actions based on sound evidence beat those based on suspect intuition every time. Posits that even academic research at its best is perhaps not that much of a better alternative to guru’s fads and fantasies.

Why, in light of all the substantial resources firms devote to improving their performance, do so few management practices actually change? In fact, knowledge management at many companies often makes the "knowing-doing" gap worse. This article explains why firms find it so difficult to translate knowledge into practice and offers a set of guidelines that address the sources of this problem. Knowing what to do is not enough; the challenge for managers is to figure out how to do what they know needs to be done.

Existing theory and research on organizational impression management focuses on how spokespersons use remedial tactics, following image-threatening events, to put their organization in the best possible light. By contrast, little theory or research has considered how organizations use impression management tactics to avert undesirable responses to upcoming events. This paper uses a qualitative and inductive study of billing procedures at three large hospitals to develop theory about how organization members use impression management tactics to fend off specific, expected challenges to organizational practices that are ambiguously negative. We found that hospitals use anticipatory impression management tactics to: (1) distract, diminish, or overwhelm patients' attention to hospital charges; and (2) to induce emotions that lead patients to simplify their information processing of those charges. Hospitals appear to use such anticipatory obfuscations both to fend off patients' initial challenges and to prevent their existing challenges from escalating. We discuss these findings in terms of their contributions to theories of symbolic management, social influence, and routine service encounters.

Most studies of organizational performance define performance as a dependent variable and seek to identify variables that produce variations in performance. Researchers who study organizational performance in this way typically devote little attention to the complications of using such a formulation to characterize the causal structure of performance phenomena. These complications include the ways in which performance advantage is competitively unstable, the causal complexity surrounding performance, and the limitations of using data based on retrospective recall of informants. Since these complications are well-known and routinely taught, a pattern of acknowledging the difficulties but continuing the practice cannot be attributed exclusively to poor training, lack of intelligence, or low standards. Most researchers understand the difficulties of inferring causal order from the correlations generated by organizational histories, particularly when those correlations may be implicit in the measurement procedures used. We suggest that the persistence of this pattern is due, in part, to the context of organizational research. Organizational researchers live in two worlds. The first demands and rewards speculations about how to improve performance. The second demands and rewards adherence to rigorous standards of scholarship. In its efforts to satisfy these often conflicting demands, the organizational research community sometimes responds by saying that inferences about the causes of performance cannot be made from the data available, and simultaneously goes ahead to make such inferences. We conclude by considering a few virtues and hazards of such a solution to dilemmas involving compelling contradictory imperatives and the generality of the issues involved.

Most existing writings imply that creative work is best done in physical and social isolation from outsiders, including case studies of successful product development teams that worked in isolation and psychological research showing that novel responses are inhibited when observers are present. In contrast, this article describes how one organization, IDEO Product Development, innovates routinely even though it has a constant and diverse stream of backstage visitors. IDEO uses visitors9 knowledge to enhance its creative work. Other benefits of such visits include enhancing the organization9s reputation and improving the innovation process in client organizations. This case implies that creative work does not always require isolation and that visitors can be brought backstage in ways that help rather than hamper creative work.

This essay asserts that, although qualitative methods now enjoy wide legitimacy among organizational researchers, there are still times when it is best to conceal or downplay the role that qualitative data played in developing an author's ideas. I identify four circumstances where treating qualitative research as a closet rather than an open activity may help authors write papers that flow better, are more convincing, and are more readily accepted for publication. These circumstances are when weak qualitative data lead to good insights, when describing the qualitative research reduces the quality of the writing, when an outlet does not publish “empirical” papers, and when writing for an audience that remains biased against qualitative research. I illustrate these points primarily with my own closet qualitative research, but also draw on Cialdini's writings on the qualitative inspiration for his experimental research and discussions with colleagues about how they have used closet qualitative research.

Fluid Interfaces Grazing Angles ReflectOmeter (FIGARO) is the new horizontal neutron reflectometer at the Institut Laue-Langevin, Grenoble, France. It is a versatile, high-flux time-of-flight instrument with features suitable for a range of studies in soft condensed matter, chemistry, physics and biology both at free air/liquid interfaces and buried liquid/liquid and solid/liquid interfaces. Most of the experiments exploit isotopic contrast variation to determine the structure and composition of surface layers. Multiple chopper discs allow variable wavelength resolution, with the loose-resolution options increasing the available neutron flux for fast kinetic studies of thin films and improving the data acquisition efficiency from complex samples requiring multiple contrast measurements. It is possible to approach the interface with neutrons from below or above the horizon. The instrument is equipped with a range of sample environments including free liquid adsorption troughs, a Langmuir trough, an overflowing cylinder and a range of solid/liquid sample cells. FIGARO was launched as a user instrument in April 2009 and its success has been steadily increasing since. This article includes an introduction to the scientific case, detailed sections on the instrument components and performance, and descriptions of standard sample environments developed to date as well as some selected early scientific highlights.

This article links institutional and impression management perspectives in a process model of how controversial and possibly unlawful actions of members of organizations can lead to endorsement and support from key constituencies. This model is grounded in interview, archival, and observational data concerning eight illegitimate actions attributed to members of two social movement organizations. We found that institutional conformity and decoupling illegitimate activities from legitimate structures facilitated spokespersons’ efforts to use impression management tactics that shifted attention away from the controversial actions and toward the socially desirable goals endorsed by broader constituencies. As a result, these organizations used publicity generated by illegitimate actions to obtain endorsement and support from those constituencies. We discuss the implications of the model for other kinds of organizations and derive testable propositions. We also consider implications for institutional and impres...

Using institutional theory, we developed predictions about organizational units that moved from an environment making consistent demands to one making conflicting demands. Many community mental hea...

THE ORGANIZATIONAL CONTEXT AS AN INFLUENCE ON GROUPS AND INDIVIDUALS .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . ... . . . . . .. .. . ........ . .. . . . . . . . . ... ... ......... .. . . . . . ... ..... ..... . . . . . 198 Context as Opportunity and Constraint 198 Context as a Distal or Proximate Influence ...... .. ......... ........ 201 Context as Similar and Dissimilar 205 WHEN CONTEXTS HAVE MINIMAL INFLUENCE .... ......... 208 INDIVIDUALS AND GROUPS AS INFLUENCES ON ORGANIZATIONAL CONTEXTS 209 Powerful Individuals as an Influence on Organizations 210 Powerful Groups as an Influence on Organizations 215 A'dra;���ti!�;.��������: .. ���.�����:.���.�.���.�����.��.���.������.�� 215 THE INTERACTIONS OF INDIVIDUALS AND GROUPS WITH THEIR ORGANIZATIONAL CONTEXTS .. . . . . ... . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ... . . . ........ 217 The Homeless 218 Air Disaster 218 Nuclear Power Plant 219 HOW CAN WE PUT ORGANIZATIONS BACK INTO ORGANIZATIONAL BEHAVIOR? 220 Methodological Implications 220 Substantive Implications 222

This chapter considers the social structuring processes that occur in groups using computer medicated communications (CMC). Building on a model of status dynamics in face-to-face groups, we develop a series of propositions that indicate how characteristic differences between face-to-face and computer-mediated communications media are likely to affect the behaviors used by individuals to manage their status in a group setting. We propose several types of behaviors or moves that appear to be used to create, negotiate, and manage status in electronically communicating groups. We use qualitative field data from on-going teams to illustrate this perspective of how communication technology can shape the informal social structures of groups.

Arteriovenous malformations (AVM) of the spinal cord are rare. We report the successful management of a patient with a cervical spinal cord AVM undergoing Caesarean section delivery, using a spinal anaesthetic.Based on previous radiological investigations, the patient was known to have an AVM at the third cervical level of her spinal cord. After application of monitors and intravenous administration of 1 L normal saline, a 25 g Whitacre needle was inserted into the subarachnoid space at the L3-4 interspace. Spinal anaesthesia was established with a solution consisting of hyperbaric spinal bupivacaine 12 mg, fentanyl 12.5 micrograms and epidural morphine 0.25 mg. There was no neurological deficit during hospital stay or after discharge.The safe outcome of spinal anaesthesia for our patient is encouraging. The presence of spinal cord AVM at the cervical region is not an absolute contraindication to spinal anaesthesia.

This study compared the condyle/disk relationships on magnetic resonance images (MRIs) in a group of subjects with completely silent temporomandibular joints (TMJ) when tested clinically with those in subjects with readily discernible TMJ sounds. The sounds were recorded with an accelerometer as the transducer. Selected degrees of jaw separation were electronically determined and recorded with interocclusal wafers for use with the imaging process. Of the “silent joints” 89% were found to have sounds when tested with the accelerometer. These “subclinical” sounds tended to be of shorter duration and occurred at a greater degree of vertical opening than the clinically discernable sounds. The MRIs of the group with clinically discernable sounds tended to show a change in the relationship between the head of the condyle and the intermediate zone of the disk, at the degree of jaw separation of the sound occurrence, whereas no condyle/disk change occurred in the group with “clinically silent joints.” It is likely that all joints create sound during function. The different characteristics of the subclinical sounds versus the clinical sounds may indicate differing sound origins.

For at least the past decade, the holy grail for companies has been innovation. Managers have gone after it with all the zeal their training has instilled in them, using a full complement of tried and true management techniques. The problem is that none of these practices, well suited for cashing in on old, proven products and business models, works very well when it comes to innovation. Instead, managers should take most of what they know about management and stand it on its head. In this article, Robert Sutton outlines several ideas for managing creativity that are clearly odd but clearly effective: Place bets on ideas without much heed to their projected returns. Ignore what has worked before. Goad perfectly happy people into fights among themselves. Good creativity management means hiring the candidate you have a gut feeling against. And as for the people who stick their fingers in their ears and chant, "I'm not listening, I'm not listening," when customers make suggestions? Praise and promote them. Using vivid examples from more than a decade of academic research to illustrate his points, the author discusses new approaches to hiring, managing creative people, and dealing with risk and randomness in innovation. His conclusions? The practices in this article succeed because they increase the range of a company's knowledge, allow people to see old problems in new ways, and help companies break from the past.

Interview, archival, and observational data from four computer firms were used to develop a theory about how Chapter 11 of the Federal Bankruptcy Code spoils the image of top managers and firms. We...

The organizational literature on selection and socialization concentrate on what happens to recruits from interview through acculturation. In contrast, little has been written about what happens to “insiders” as they choose new members and help bring them on board. In this paper, we demonstrate how involvement with newcomers can have profound effects on insiders' attitudes, performance, and knowledge. We emphasize how managers can harness these rarely discussed features of selection and socialization to enhance the effectiveness of veteran members and their organizations.

1 The question whether prejunctional alpha-adrenoreceptors subserve a physiological role in a noradrenaline-mediated autoinhibitory feedback loop has been studied in guinea-pig isolated atria by stimulating the accelerans nerve and measuring chronotropic responses and the release of radioactivity after labelling transmitter stores with 3H-noradrenaline. 2 Phentolamine (0.3 micrometer) significantly enhanced chronotropic responses when stimulation was with 0.5 Hz for 30 s, but the increase in the release of radioactivity was too small to be measured reliably. When the frequency of stimulation was increased to 4 Hz for 30 s, phentolamine significantly increased the release of radioactivity but the chronotropic response to stimulation was near maximal and phentolamine had no significant effect on it. 3 With prolonged stimulation (12 min) at the lower frequency (0.5 Hz), both the release of radioactivity and the chronotropic response to stimulation were significantly enhanced by phentolamine (3 micrometers). 4 The results support a physiological role for prejunctional alpha-adrenoreceptors in guinea-pig isolated atria.

Organizational research entails encounters with two groups of people who are usually labeled "nonparticipants": (1) those who are never asked to participate, but whom the investigator encounters during the data gathering, and (2) those selected to participate, but who cannot or will not do so. This paper demonstrates the value of these data for field research, particularly for studies that rely on questionnaires, interviews, and structured observations. The sequence of events typically associated with recruiting respondents and informants is proposed to create five key junctures at which research can be designed to gather such data. Ethical issues are raised concerning the use of information from nonparticipants.

Declining organizations frequently, sometimes necessarily, reduce their work forces. This paper introduces a hierarchy of work force reduction strategies and advances a series of propositions focusing on organizational and environmental variables that influence the managerial choice of work force reduction strategies.

This paper advances a theory about the functions that parting ceremonies serve for members displaced by organizational deaths. The theory is grounded in data from 11 parties, picnics, and dinners t...

The problem-solving framework developed by Georgopoulos and his associates was used in the present investigation to explore the relationships among problem-solving adequacy, the appropriateness of organizational structures, and effectiveness in 52 subunits of a large, general hospital. Evidence obtained from interviews with subunit managers or directors, interviews with hospital executives, and aggregated responses of unit members are used to explore these relationships. Following most closely from Georgopoulos and Cooke's (1979) version of the problem-solving framework, hypotheses were derived from the following two propositions: (1) organizational subunits are problem-facing open systems that must solve a set of generic problems to be effective and (2) organizational structures are problem-solving mechanisms. Drawing from this theoretical perspective, it was hypothesized that subunit structural appropriateness would be positively related to problem-solving adequacy and to effectiveness. Subunit problem-solving adequacy was also hypothesized to be positively related to effectiveness. Further, it was hypothesized that problem-solving adequacy would mediate the relationship between structural appropriateness and subunit effectiveness. The results provide support for all of these hypotheses, although the positive relationship between structural adequacy and effectiveness receives only limited confirmation.

An experiment, conducted at Olds College, involving seven pregnant and five open half-Arabian (half-sib) mares had the primary objective of evaluating the adequacy of National Academy of Sciences–National Research Council (NAS–NRC 1973) nutrient requirements of horses as they applied to mares receiving minimal shelter under central Alberta winter conditions. Mares were randomly assigned to two groups, the first receiving a diet formulated to meet NAS–NRC requirements and the second the same diet at a level of 85% of the former by weight. The dietary regimen was maintained from mid-gestation until 30-days post-partum. No significant (P

The apnoea, accompanied by bradycardia and hypotension caused by injection of 5-Hydroxytryptamine (5-HT) into the vascularly isolated nodose ganglion is characterised by intense electrical activity in the internal intercostal muscles. No such activity was recorded when apnoea was provoked by electrical stimulation of the central end of the superior laryngeal nerve. The cardiac slowing induced by 5-HT was less marked when the superior laryngeal nerve was concomitantly stimulated with an intensity sufficient to inhibit the internal intercostal activity. When central respiratory drive was depressed by hypocapnic ventilation nodose ganglion-induced bradycardia was comparable to that provoked during electrical stimulation of the superior laryngeal nerve in eupnoea. Unlike chemoreceptor-induced bradycardia the cardiac slowing caused by nodose ganglion stimulation was not reduced by “ramp” inflation of the lungs. The results were similar during hypocapnic depression of the “Respiratory Centre”. These findings suggest that: (a) central expiratory activity contributes to the bradycardia induced by nodose ganglion stimulation, and (b) the inhibition of bradycardia by lung expansion occurs before the neural impulses reach the nucleus ambiguus but does not involve the central respiratory neurones.

Retrograde infusion of blood into a pulmonary vein raised the pressure by 0.5-1 kPa in the cannulated vein. There were no changes in heart rate, arterial blood pressure, left atrial pressure, right atrial pressure or the pressure in the other pulmonary veins. The rise in pulmonary venous pressure was associated with an increase in urinary sodium concentration and excretion. However, there was no change in urine volume. The natriuresis was abolished by cooling the vagi to 9 degrees C. It is argued that receptors up-stream in the pulmonary veins themselves may be involved in the increase in sodium excretion that follows a rise in left atrial pressure.