Leadership strategies for an engaged workforce.

The ability to create and maintain an engaged workforce is a powerful tool in retaining top talent, improving productivity, and increasing customer loyalty. However, the majority of workers, both in the United States and abroad, are not fully engaged in their work. In this paper we explore one important solution to overcoming the lack of employee engagement: leadership. First, we provide an in-depth review of the extant multiple conceptualizations of employee engagement in the academic literature and related research. To increase the applicability of these multiple definitions for practitioners, we offer a coalesced definition of employee engagement with 2 factors: energy and involvement. Finally, after introducing the importance of leadership, we integrate existing theory and research to identify and describe 4 pathways for increasing energy and involvement, which leaders can leverage for impact on employee, unit, and organizational level work outcomes. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Studies of Rolling-Element Lubrication and Fatigue Life in a Reduced Pressure Environment

Fatigue tests were conducted in a modified five-ball fatigue tester on SAE 52100 steel ball specimens, at atmospheric pressure and at the approximate lubricant vapor pressure with two different lubrication methods, using a super-refined naphthenic mineral oil as the lubricant. Additional tests were conducted with AISI M-50 ball specimens with polyphenyl ether lubricants. Differences in fatigue life, deformation and wear with the mineral oil lubricant were insignificant regardless of the ambient pressure environment or lubrication method employed. Polyphenyl ether lubricants exhibited large amounts of wear both at atmospheric and reduced pressures, indicating a lack of an elastohydrodynamic film with this lubricant under the stresses and sliding velocities present in the five-ball fatigue tester.     

The evolution of ribonucleotide reduction

Ribonucleotide reduction was essential for the transition from RNA to DNA by supplying deoxyribonucleotide precursors. The reaction requires free radical chemistry. Three quite different classes of ribonucleotide reductases are known today. All three are proteins containing a stable free radical amino acid, but each uses a different mechanism for its generation. Did they evolve from a common ancestor, with the arrival of atmospheric oxygen providing the driving force for their divergence, or was each a separate evolutionary invention?     

Zeros of modal models of flexible structures

It is shown that in some situations the zero patterns of a flexible structure change radically with model order. The refinement of the model by the addition of higher-order modes can cause zeros to appear at low frequencies or in the right half-plane. Structures instrumented with piezoelectric actuators and/or fiber-optic sensors are also considered     

Memory training in normal and demented elderly populations: the E-I-E-I-O model

An heuristic classification scheme for memory interventions is described as a 2 x 2 matrix. One dimension of the matrix addresses the use of internal versus external mnemonics, and the other dimension addresses the use of explicit (effortful/conscious) versus implicit (automatic/unconscious) learning. Most attempts at memory interventions in normal older populations, such as the use of mental imagery, fall within the explicit-internal cell of the matrix and require expenditure of large amounts of cognitive effort. As a result, memory interventions in normal older populations, even when "successful," usually produce results that are limited in their generalization and are usually not maintained over time. Such interventions are rarely attempted in demented populations. Interventions are described that require less effort and are representative of other cells in the classification matrix. These may be more effective for demented and normal elders. Information acquired through these alternative means may eventually be stored internally and become consciously available, often producing an "O!" or "aha" experience when the individual realizes a shift to internal, consciously available storage has taken place.     

Chromatic dispersion measurements on long fibre lengths using LEDs

The chromatic dispersion of 50.7 km of single-mode fibre has been measured with a single edge-emitting LED using the phase-shift technique. For a 15 s measurement time the zero of chromatic dispersion is obtained with a standard deviation of 0.7 nm for a 50.7 km fibre length and 0.25 nm for a 38.0 km length.     

High-performance nonscanning Fourier-transform spectrometer that uses a Wollaston prism array

A high-performance nonscanning Fourier-transform spectrometer is reported that is composed mainly of a Wollaston prism array and a two-dimensional photodetector array. It is a substantial improvement over existing Wollaston prism based nonscanning Fourier-transform spectrometers because it offers finer spectral resolution and smaller size. Such spectrometers will find important applications in remote chemical and biological sensing, environmental monitoring, medical diagnosis, etc. Experimental results are consistent with theoretical analyses.     

Types of obesity: A review

Whether obesity is the result of excess caloric intake or an inherent metabolic aberration has long been debated. In the laboratory animal, particularly the mouse, numerous studies suggest that obesity may be divided into two broad categories, regulatory and metabolic. Typical of the regulatory obesities are those induced by surgical or chemical destruction of certain areas of the hypothalamus with resultant hyperphagia and obesity. Metabolic obesity, on the other hand, is characterized by the fact that it is the result of an inborn error of metabolism and, when compared with regulatory obesity, stands in striking contrast to it. While metabolic studies in the normal and obese human are still somewhat sparse, it is of interest to compare the results of these investigations with those obtained in the metabolic and regulatory obese laboratory animal. From this comparison it would appear that many obese humans exhibit metabolic characteristics similar to those seen in the genetically obese laboratory animal.